The Wall Street Journal reports President Biden has signed an executive order on Covid-19 measures which include some that apply to travel.
Travelers will have to wear masks in airports and in certain types of public transportation such as many trains, ships, intercity buses and airplanes. International travelers will have to show proof of a negative Covid-19 test before departing to the U.S. and comply with self-isolation and quarantine guidelines upon arrival.
My view is not universal, but I support proof of negative Covid-19 test before international travel. Of course, utility of the measure requires availability of tests with fast turn around. These are no advertised in my area. (Ideally, tests with less than 30 minute turn around time could be done at the airport. But I don’t think that’s going to happen soon and logistics could be complicated.)
By creating a market, I suspect this will encourage the proliferation of convenient phone app based health-passports to replace the old paper vaccination records my mother kept so we could travel from El Salvador to the US when I was a kid.
I’m not sure how they are going to enforce self-isolation or quarantine. I’m guessing that will be widely violated.
The requirement seems to be testing within 3 days of travel, similar to what it is currently for travel to Hawaii.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-covid-19-testing-rules-for-travel-to-the-u-s-what-they-mean-for-you-11610566341?st=01cgi76eq9jbdju&twopenpaywall
United is first to bring mandatory vaccinations of employees to the table
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United Airlines Looks to Require Employees to Get Covid-19 Vaccines
United CEO calls on other companies to mandate vaccinations for their employees
https://www.wsj.com/articles/united-airlines-looks-to-require-employees-to-get-covid-19-vaccines-11611349963
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“Several big employers have said they would urge employees to be vaccinated, and some will offer incentives such as cash bonuses to do so. But few so far have mandated it, although the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said last month that employers generally can have such a requirement as long as they accommodate those who object because of religious beliefs or medical conditions.”
Yet another example of the biased handling of protests. It seems support of facial recognition is pretty conditional.
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Portland passes strongest facial recognition ban in the US
The law bans both public and private use of the technology
https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/9/21429960/portland-passes-strongest-facial-recognition-ban-us-public-private-technology
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“Portlanders should never be in fear of having their right of privacy be exploited by either their government or by a private institution,†Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said during a hearing Wednesday,”
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And on the other hand: This site posted every face from Parler’s Capitol Hill insurrection videos
Faces of the Riot used open source software to detect, extract, and deduplicate every face.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/this-site-posted-every-face-from-parlers-capitol-hill-insurrection-videos/
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“Late last week, a website called Faces of the Riot appeared online, showing nothing but a vast grid of more than 6,000 images of faces, each one tagged only with a string of characters associated with the Parler video in which it appeared. The site’s creator tells WIRED that he used simple, open source machine-learning and facial recognition software to detect, extract, and deduplicate every face from the 827 videos that were posted to Parler from inside and outside the Capitol building on January 6”
“The site’s developer counters that Faces of the Riot leans not on facial recognition but facial detection.”
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Ummmmm … what? My opinion is if you are in the public people can photograph you and you can be held accountable for your actions. My guess is the rather sizable bulk of Capital protestors will get light sentences based on previous sentences for similar conduct. There is a good reason for the wheels of justice to turn slowly.
Tom,
I suspect when restaurants and hotels open, some of them will start either requiring or encouraging vaccination.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t start seeing wait staff wear “I’ve been vaccinated” buttons. I know someone is going to bring up the fact that we don’t yet know if the vaccine makes someone unable to transmit. But it’s obvious that’s the medical communities “null hypothesis”. After all: no one would discuss the level of vaccination we need to reach herd immunity if they thought vaccination would not make recipients non-infectious.
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If the vaccinated merely become symptomless but infective, then the vaccine cannot result in “herd immunity”. The unvaccinated will still be as susceptible as always. Fortunately for the unvaccinated usually, vaccines make people unable to transmit or at least drastically reduce their potential for transmission. This is the expected consequence of having a zero or lower viral load as a result of pre-existing immunity.
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The “we don’t know” schtick of experts on whether vaccinated people can transmit the virus is once again them not treating people like adults. Not knowing with medical certainty in this specific case is not equivalent to knowing nothing. They are adverse to fear of being wrong, and incentivized to be cautious medically. Fine, however that is why we don’t always “follow science” because we need other people to balance the other needs such as economic. At the moment those people are politicians unfortunately.
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They think people only have any attention span of 126 characters. Maybe they are correct in some cases on that, but they need to provide both the short and long story.
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Vaccinated people will probably not spread the infection, but we aren’t sure yet. I think there is even a few spare characters.
Lucia,
“If the vaccinated merely become symptomless but infective, then the vaccine cannot result in “herd immunityâ€. The unvaccinated will still be as susceptible as always.”
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That would be something of a shock, but I suppose it is possible. However, given the age (and health) profile for serious cases, just vaccinating 25% of the population at real risk nearly eliminates serious illness and death. Of course, that won’t save those at high risk who refuse the vaccines.
Tom Scharf,
Honestly, I think it’s mostly the sort of “covid-vacine-reluctant” who are circulating the fact that the vaccine might not make the vaccinated non-transmissible. When I see the factoid it is generally embedded in some article that suggest there should be no rush to get the vaccine.
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It’s a true fact as far as it goes. But the write up of stories I’ve read are deeply misleading because they pretty much skirt the fact that the reason we “don’t know” or “unproven” is merely lack of testing. Lack of data is merely because the vaccine is new and such tests are onerous.
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There are also people wanting to strongly encourage people to continue wearing masks and following social distancing even if vaccinated. “For others” don’t cha know.
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There are some decent arguments why the vaccinated should follow protocols at least until the time window for immunity is past. There are also some moderately decent social based arguments for following it until a fair number of people are vaccinated. But using a misleading fact about “unproven” that you can’t transmit strikes me as both disingenous and counter productive on many fronts.
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Besides that, as far as I’m concerned, if the vaccine doesn’t make the vaccinated non-transmissible, that’s an even stronger reason for me to want it STAT!
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SteveF,
Yes. The vaccine not reducing transmission would be very surprising. And yes: if the goal is to reduce deaths, just vaccinating those likely to die is useful whether or not the vaccine reduces transmission. As I already wrote, my view is if it does not reduce transmission, it makes a stronger case for the vulnerable to get vaccinated.
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But that’s just me.
There are plenty of animal studies showing reduced transmission after flu vaccination.
https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/science-research-biologics/universal-influenza-vaccine-candidate-reduces-transmission-virus-best-when-given-nasally-mice
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3258204/
Vaccination resulting in reduced viral shedding
https://www.pnas.org/content/109/8/3173
Tom Scharf (Comment #197388)
January 24th, 2021 at 11:49 am
It never hurts to have some fear to keep an emergency going. You never know when down the road we will need the state to jump in again and save us all from ourselves.
Merck is out of the vaccine race, bad results. Wouldn’t want to be the person in charge of their vaccine team. J&J’s efficacy is still a bit mysterious but supposedly they can add 100M single doses by spring/summer time.
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“Published data from the early stage trials found that more than 90% of people who were vaccinated developed neutralizing antibodies (which are expected to stop SARS-CoV-2 from infecting your cells) 29 days after they received the first dose of the vaccine. Two months after the first dose, all participants had developed neutralizing antibodies, which stayed put for at least 71 days.”
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This seems very carefully worded and they only reported on 55 and under age group. It seems this will likely be subpar to mRNA variants (or else we would be hearing about it more) but still pretty good.
Almost the entirety of the US is in a case count decline now. Once again there is no real reason that this is happening that can be pointed to with real data. It’s so seemingly random. Everyone hates it when things are beyond human control.
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I still am somewhat amazed/enraged that there is a basically a media blackout on what would have happened if we had the vaccine 3 months earlier, nobody is talking about what can be done next time to potentially save a large number of lives and the downsides of medical “ethics” that we have in place.
If there are age effectiveness discrepancies then it would make sense to give older people the mRNA variants and others the J&J.
The obvious hypothesis would be that person-to-person contact rates soared around Christmas and Thanksgiving, and now the death rate has induced enough fear to sharply reduce contact rate. That and maybe HIT reached in some places. Testable? Well the paper I posted back in October – https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Arnon-et-al-conference-draft.pdf was using a no. of proxies for contact rate including google mobility and unicast data. In principle, the same methodology can be used to test that hypothesis using same methodology as the October paper. Just a lot of work.
Phil,
That could be. Wanting to see evidence of HiT could be wishful thinking.
Phil,
I have noted that case counts increased drastically in most places in the states with the arrival of cooler weather. And it is not just in the States; most of Europe as well. I suspect that staying indoors most of the time, maybe combined with covid fatigue on social distancing, caused most of the jump in case counts, not Thanksgiving and Christmas. In any case, some places, like the Dakotas, do seem well past the HIT…. there was little or no bump near the holidays in those states.
Phil Scadden (Comment #197428): “The obvious hypothesis would be that person-to-person contact rates soared around Christmas and Thanksgiving”
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Obvious but provably false. There was no increase in transmission from the holidays. If anything, transmission rates for the US as a whole started to drop right around Christmas. In at least some states, the decrease started as early as October.
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Phil Scadden: “and now the death rate has induced enough fear to sharply reduce contact rate.”
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I’d bet against that, at least as the only cause, but I don’t have the evidence. As you say, it should be testable.
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Phil Scadden: “That and maybe HIT reached in some places.”
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Far more likely, Which, of course, does not mean it has been reached in other places.
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Here is something odd. From the Financial Times charts, it looks like Death took some time off at both Thanksgiving and Christmas.
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&areasRegional=usca&areasRegional=usnd&areasRegional=ussd&cumulative=0&logScale=0&per100K=1&startDate=2020-09-01&values=deaths
The rise in the US started in October and was close to peak the week before Xmas. It was sustained about another month maybe due to more travel and family gatherings.
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It’s January and still pretty cold and we have rapidly declining case counts.
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It’s multi-factorial but I still think it’s pretty hard to tie down even the leading causes. Clearly biology/contact rates has something to do with it, but it seems we have pretty large swings in R not tied to anything very obvious.
I would agree that there seems to be a seasonal effect as well, just that given way virus has worked in different climatic zones, that is going to be very hard tease out what the factors are. Record-keeping also would appear to be an issue around holiday period. However, worldometer numbers show daily cases peaking on Jan 8 which certainly looks like holiday effect to me.
Far too many hopeful declarations that “we have got to HIT” have proved wrong. I would be very cautious.
Mike M,
I expect covid 19 will go out with a whimper, not a bang. Cases are already falling in most places in the states, but the distribution of the vaccines is so slow that it will be difficult (impossible?) to differentiate the coming drop in deaths over the next two months due to vaccinations from that due to obvious herd immunity and dropping cases.
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I guess it doesn’t matter all that much, just so long as the death rate falls to the point that covid-19 is no long used by the left as a bludgeon with which to take away personal liberties.
Phil
“I would agree..”
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Agree under what conditions? Or do you mean, “I do agree”?
Phil Scadden (Comment #197440): “However, worldometer numbers show daily cases peaking on Jan 8 which certainly looks like holiday effect to me.”
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Daily cases are irrelevant. The supposed holiday effect would impact transmission. That means that it would affect the *slope* of the logarithm of daily cases, with a delay of a couple weeks. Looking at the logarithmic plot for the USA, it looks like it was steepest around the end of October, so transmission peaked in mid-October. It finally went negative a couple weeks ago, just about when it should have been spiking, according to the holiday transmission theory.
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In CA, the growth rate looks pretty constant until about the time it should have been spiking. Instead, cases flattened out, then started dropping a little after the Christmas/New Years surge was supposed to show up.
SteveF (Comment #197441): “just so long as the death rate falls to the point that covid-19 is no long used by the left as a bludgeon with which to take away personal liberties.”
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The left voluntarily putting down a bludgeon? Fat chance.
Steve, I mean that I do agree. Sorry for the confusion.
Phil
I do not mean to bust your chops, but exact language does hep define people’s positions.
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Of course, with covid-19 there is almost an infinite range of dishonest representation of people’s views. Do not worry… any honest representation, if not supportive of the most extreme views of the left, will be suppressed and generally punished as much as possible. It is simply bad people doing very bad things.
Mike M,
“The left voluntarily putting down a bludgeon? Fat chance.”
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I honestly do hope you are mistaken about that. There is a limit to the intrusions into their privater lives that people will tolerate. Joe Biden and his crazy left minions need to be aware of that limit. I fear they will not be.
Phil
I do not mean to bust your chops, but exact language does hep define people’s positions.
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Of course, with covid-19 there is almost an infinite range of dishonest representation of people’s views. Do not worry… any honest representation, if not supportive of the most extreme views of the left, will be suppressed and generally punished as much as possible. It is simply bad people doing very bad things.
“exact language does hep define people’s positions.”
Again, I agree – I am just not very good at it. My daughter teaches languages and she says that when she wants examples of idiomatic English and especially NewZild, then she spends 5 minutes listening to me. I try to better when I am writing but often don’t succeed.
SteveF (Comment #197450): “I honestly do hope you are mistaken about that.”
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Me too. But I am not holding my breath.
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SteveF: “There is a limit to the intrusions into their privater lives that people will tolerate.”
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I suppose there must be. But we have blown past where I expected that limit would be. And there is not much sign that it is being reached.
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SteveF: “Joe Biden and his crazy left minions need to be aware of that limit. I fear they will not be.”
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I suspect they are aware of that and that they think it is in a very different place than where you or I would expect. I fear they might be right. I very much hope that I will be proved wrong.
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p.s. – Is it “Biden’s minions”? Or is Biden the minion?
Tom Scharf,
“I still am somewhat amazed/enraged that there is a basically a media blackout on what would have happened if we had the vaccine 3 months earlier, nobody is talking about what can be done next time to potentially save a large number of lives and the downsides of medical “ethics†that we have in place.”
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The acceptance by the voters of entirely inappropriate delays in the approval process (not even considering the month-long FDA delay politically targeting Trump!) reminds me of a herd of wildebeests being hunted by lions… if the thousands simply turned on the lions and trampled them, not even giving them the chance to eat the ones they killed, then lions would soon figure other animals are a better choice. But the wildebeests just accept being hunted and eaten by lions. The FDA bureaucrats need to be turned on and trampled by the voters; their delays cost at least many tens of thousands of lives, and probably more than 100 thousand. Their incompetence in the face of a real emergency should have serious consequences for those responsible.
Tom/Steve,
Having the vaccine earlier would have saved live in the US and elsewhere. Many poorer countries piggy back off our approval process. Of course that also increases the risk if there is a boo-boo. But in this case, the vaccines just worked.
Lucia,
I think a huge consideration is risk/benefit, something the FDA does not even weigh. Yes, shortening the approval process (as the Russians did) would add marginal risk, but when there is a 30% death rate for people over ~80 (and 12% for people who reach 70!), the benefit for those age groups overwhelms any plausible downside, especially considering the vaccines had already passed phase 2 safety checks. The FDA approval process killed people, lots and lots of them, and should be changed, along with all the numbskulls who insisted on following that process, even when facing a real emergency. The FDA’s delays in approval, as Tom suggests, are an outrage, and one the MSM has not even touched.
SteveF
Yes. There risk/reward ratio is much different during a pandemic. They could have said the government will wait to buy until phase III test are completed but people can buy the vaccine out of their own pockets provided the signed a waiver. The principle of the government not actually buying unproven makes some sense based on the principle of not wasting taxpayer money. Then people who were willing and had money could protect themselves. Individuals should be allowed to waste some money, generally are allowed to, and it’s even rather impossible to utterly prevent it.
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Work places could have been prohibited from requiring the unproven vaccine. (After all: it’s unproven.)
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Those worried about “equity” would have squawked though. After all: the poor wouldn’t have gotten the “unproven” vaccine while the rich could if they wished. But if even 10% of people had taken the unproven vaccine which, in fact, turned out to work they would have become immune and not spread. A 10% drop in R would have been big deal and had the side effect of protecting the poor a little. Not as much as letting them have the vaccine, but somewhat.
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Also: the squawking might have had the unintended benefit of making everyone eager to get the vaccine when they finally could. After all: being deprived of something while only the “rich” can get it often makes people want it. Plus, people would have been able to see all those rich people didn’t keel over and die.
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Roll out would probably have been more efficient if some had been administered to “the rich” for $$ too. Pharmacies, medical groups and so on would have knocked out the bugs in their work flow.
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I’d have happily paid at least $200 for the ‘unproven’ vaccine after phase 2 testing. I suspect my sister would have sent checks for that much to her kids if they couldn’t afford it but wanted it. The number of willing would have grown over the 3 months it took to “prove”.
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I know there are others here who would not have. But they wouldn’t have had to take it. (They still don’t have to. )
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I don’t know how they could have done this given “rules” for the FDA. I rarely know what I would have done as President, but I would have been trying to find ways to adjust rules after Phase II trials.
Lucia,
There were lots of options to speed the process and reduce deaths, not to mention reduce economic damage. But those options were not pursued…. much better, I guess the FDA believes, to let lots of people die than change the way the FDA bureaucracy functions.
Lucia, 13 years ago, I was happy to pay $CAN 175 for Avastin eye injections. It was unproven but it worked and still does (my last injection was Friday). Eventually, the Québec Government decided to pay, and absolve the ophthalmologists (who were acting illegally while preserving their patients’ eyesight).
P-E Harvey,
And that sounds like $175 you were willing to pay over and over! With the vaccine, it would be $200 one or two times (depending on how you interpret what I’d be willing to pay. ).
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I admit that if the sideeffects were horrible after the first injection, I would not have done it a second time. MD’s might have been appalled. (But it does look like I’d have gotten some protection at least for a little while. How long is not known since only getting 1 injection was not tested.)
I have not seen or heard about any statistical analyses about the holiday surges in Covid-19 cases. It appears that some in the media just throw that out without any concrete evidence or analyses. Looking at the Worldometer plots there are no holiday spikes that would indicate surges but an ongoing trend could make a statistical analysis a bit more difficult. I suspect those who want or need to see a surge can talk about a general TG, Xmas, NY holiday surge. It might motivate me to do my own analyses.
Challenge testing could have cut months off of the vaccine. It’s still an unknown if they could have gotten mass production up and running any earlier. Making a billion of anything is pretty hard.
“The FDA’s delays in approval, as Tom suggests, are an outrage, and one the MSM has not even touched.”
Steve, this should be no surprise to those who have some understanding how most of the MSM thinks and leans. The left that the MSM looks to is very much in tune with state control of things and that means giving state actors like the FDA a pass on matters such as these.
I have also contemplated why the MSM did not also give a pass to state actions under so-call non leftist administrations. I believe it has much to do with having something or somebody to blame when the state has failures (of which there are many). It must be a people failure not one by the state. I see this on the news pages of the Wall Street Journal whereby their tone has changed significantly since Trump left town and Biden entered stage left. With Biden it is back to the picture of how government is run according to the simple-minded theme of some Civics 101 courses whereby nasty political actions and motivations are ignored and the state heroically and righteously performs.
William Briggs’ blog has a critique of a recent PNAS paper claiming “a significant increase in intense hurricanes” due to global warming. The critique shows the paper’s conclusions are wrong and the entire approach of the paper is very dubious at best. An interesting read, but only the error filled and misleading paper, and the even more misleading press releases and author interviews, will ever get MSM coverage. I fear we now live in a post-truth world, and that is not likely to end well.
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Kenneth,
I believe Biden is little more than a demented placeholder for the left. I doubt he is fully aware of what his administration is doing, and that will only become worse over the next couple of years. But yes, no matter how bad the Biden administration becomes, the MSM will treat it with love and kindness, not the tough questions they should be asking.
New Playbook for Covid-19 Protection Emerges After Year of Study, Missteps
Mask-wearing, good air flow and frequent rapid tests are more important than surface cleaning, temperature checks and plexiglass. Scientists say America needs to double down on protection protocols as potentially more-contagious coronavirus variants take hold and vaccines are slow to roll out.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-playbook-for-covid-19-protection-emerges-after-year-of-study-missteps-11611680950
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This article is OK for what it is, a snapshot of what we know. There are too many assertions of new knowledge in it without adequate proof, and it is totally silent on the slight contradiction of “science knowing more” and “we are having the biggest outbreak by far right now”.
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Science says we don’t have adequate tools to contain the outbreak is my reading.
” It might motivate me to do my own analyses.”
Please do! I dont follow the “slope of the log” from Mike M nor the 2 week delay. But agree that change in rate in transmission is the key. However, I think the data, even with 7 day smooth, has holiday hiatus in reporting giving artificial surge when catch up happens.
There is an interesting model to play with https://observablehq.com/@sscollis/interactive-seir-model-of-the-us with code on github that could be played with. I am pretty tempted myself.
Tom Scharf,
“There are too many assertions of new knowledge in it without adequate proof, and it is totally silent on the slight contradiction of “science knowing more†and “we are having the biggest outbreak by far right nowâ€.”
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That’s why it’s journalism, not science. Journalist usually make doubtful assertions of fact….. driven by their reliance on ‘experts’, their personal political biases, or both. I have completely given up on taking the journalist’s word for it, and go when I can to the original source…. when that is not available, I just ignore what is reported.
Here in TN, it’s looking more and more like we’ve also passed the HIT. Hospitalizations, new cases and test positivity rates are all dropping.
lucia,
For Pfizer and probably Moderna as well, the Phase II trial was combined with the Phase III trial. When you’re talking about lack of immediate, serious side effects, that’s the Phase I trial. You wouldn’t recruit 20,000 people (plus an additional 20,000 for the placebo arm) for a Phase II/III trial if you didn’t have some evidence that you weren’t going to kill or injure a lot of people.
The problem is that at the end of the Phase I trial, you’re still not sure if the vaccine is sufficiently effective. Merck just dropped their vaccine effort because early evidence showed it wasn’t going to be effective enough to compete with Pfizer, Moderna and Astra-Zeneca.
I also think the Biden’s proposal (I was going to say ‘plan’ but it doesn’t reach that level) to increase vaccine production is not going to accomplish anything. I suspect that every bit of cGMP manufacturing capability is already being used and it would take months to construct and certify more. It’s not at all like repurposing an automobile plant to make B-17 and B-24 bombers. And even that wasn’t done overnight.
In other news, Tampa is going to the Super Bowl!
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Yes, the same Tampa that won the Stanley Cup in 2020
Yes, the same Tampa that went to the World Series in 2020
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Too bad they don’t have an NBA team, ha ha. Now back to normal programming.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/republicans-challenge-trump-impeachment-trial-11611683182?mod=hp_lead_pos1
As expected, the impeachment article is dead, or at least moribund, on arrival. The precedent set with the Senate trial of William W. Belknap of not convicting an official who is no longer in office, even though Belknap was obviously guilty as charged, will likely stand.
DeWitt,
I haven’t checked exactly what Pfizer did, but Moderna started its phase 2 trial on May 12 (or a couple days later) and finished on July 8. The FDA reviewed the phase 2 results and the Moderna phase 3 trial started on July 27. I am pretty sure Pfizer did something very similar. Why do you say the phase 2 and 3 trials were combined?
SteveF,
Because that’s what it said in the BioNTech SE/Pfizer trial protocol statement. Perhaps combined isn’t quite the right word, concurrently might be better.
DeWitt,
I think it is clear that the intent of the Constitution was always to remove an officeholder who is guilty of ‘high crimes’. The framers when out of their way to state that once removed from office, the person would be subject to normal criminal law for their crimes. Hard for me to see how acting like an a$$hole is magically changed to a ‘high crime’. If they could have foreseen the nutty impeachment trials that have taken place since Bill Clinton’s, I suspect they would have been a lot more clear in restricting the process to actual criminal activity. Try as I might, I can’t find being an a$$hole in the actual text:
The “impeachment” of someone not in office is, IMO, simply bizarre, stupid, destructive, divisive, and contrary to the clear intent of the framers.
Phil Scadden (Comment #197482)
January 26th, 2021 at 2:29 pm
We played with these SEER type models here at the Blackboard and they looked good until they didn’t. A changing R value has to be taken into account and can greatly affect the shape of the curve. You also have 2nd and 3rd surges. I agree with Tom Scharf that the scientists just do not know what and how many variables there are and that is what you need for these models.
It is always interesting to have a model and put confidence limits on the results but right now I judge they would be large.
SteveF,
In an article or comment defending the Senate’s right to try Trump after he left office, I’ve seen it said that Nixon didn’t need to be impeached and tried after he resigned because he would have been ineligible to run for President again per the 22nd Amendment, having been elected twice. But that argument fails because he could have run for, say, the US Senate. That’s happened only once, IIRC, but it was a possibility.
And wrt stolen elections, the 1960 election of JFK was almost certainly due to machinations in Texas and Illinois. The difference in the national popular vote was only about 100,000 and if you flip Texas and Illinois to Nixon, he would have won. But he had the decency to not throw a temper tantrum and challenge the results.
Phil Scadden (Comment #197482): “I dont follow the “slope of the log†from Mike M nor the 2 week delay.”
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The slope of the log is the percentage increase per unit time. If you have a fixed R, then you get exponential growth and a constant slope of the logarithm. Controls are meant to change R, so they should change that slope.
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The two week delay is an estimate of the time from infection to positive test result (a “case”). That could be under 10 days if you get tested as soon as you get symptoms. But it could be much longer if you don’t get tested until you get really sick or until you have a medical procedure for something else. Most people never get tested.
Kenneth and Mike M.,
The problem with simple models is that R isn’t a constant. As measured, it’s an average value. It varies significantly with time and between individuals, thus the statement that 20% of the population is responsible for 80% of the cases. Good luck modeling that. The map is definitely not the territory for this.
DeWitt,
I have read multiple articles making similar arguments. I think they are all 100% hogwash. And that is being a bit unfair to people who often fed their hogs kitchen garbage (called hog wash)… that garbage was a lot better than what the Dems are trying to feed to the public. Nixon faced criminal charges and jail time had Ford not pardoned him. Nixon wasn’t going to run for anything. Trump’s situation is very different…. lots of people loath him, and they want to be sure (by any means they can find, constitutional or not) that he can’t run for office again.
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The Senate Republicans are not going to vote to convict private citizen Trump of a non-crime in a bizarre, unconstitutional impeachment process. 45 have already said with their vote on Rand Paul’s motion that the process is unconstitutional, so I have no idea what makes Dems think those Republicans would ever vote to convict someone in an unconstitutional process. If the Dems had a lick of sense they would drop it; but they don’t have a lick of sense. Their unlimited lust for power and control turns them into fools…. or perhaps it is the other way around.
I would have been surprised if Chief Justice Roberts had agreed to preside over the senate trial of Trump’s impeachment. If Trump is convicted, which would be another surprise in a year of surprises, it would be unsurprising if his conviction was not challenged before the supreme court. Trump was impeached as a sitting president but will be tried as a private citizen. Roberts’ participation would have been an endorsement of the constitutionality of the trial. I doubt we will ever conclusively know whether the trial is constitutional or not. Would be interesting to know if Roberts consulted his colleges before he declined to participate.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #197497): “The problem with simple models is that R isn’t a constant.”
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Absolutely. I only use it as a guide to what sort of descriptive statistic might give us insight into what has happened.
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And, of course, Herd Immunity Threshold is not a constant.
Mike M,
“Most people never get tested.”
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That was certainly true early on (say, until June or July), but testing is now much more common in most states. For sure there are still lots of asymptomatic cases, and these people do not get tested, but I suspect nearly all symptomatic cases are tested. Whether asymptomatic cases represent a majority is an interesting question, and one I guess will not be answered until long after the pandemic is over.
PMHindSC,
“Would be interesting to know if Roberts consulted his colleges before he declined to participate.”
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Ya, but that won’t be disclosed…. at least not for decades, if ever.
I’d guess Roberts consulted at least one or two colleagues. I can’t blame him for not wanting to be involved. There is so much grandstanding to sit through. Impeachment is a political process.
I’d expected he preside, but I guess he doesn’t think he’s required. So they have to find someone else. Maybe Kamala will be stuck there!
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Enough! Live not by lies, including lies of omission.
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Biden announced ‘equity’ measures, which appeal to the emotion of white guilt.
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Here’s why it’s not just wrong, but dangerous – it appeals to race, not individual – which is itself racist.
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Society might work if we treat every individual with dignity and respect and equal rights under the law.
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However, expecting equal outcomes is dangerous because it villifies some and inflames victimhood of others.
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Biden cited George Floyd’s death as eye opening to ‘systemic racism’, however, that’s a specific event, not general.
I was aware of
this analysis of police shootings per arrest. But I analyzed the WaPo police shootings and the FBI arrest records
and verified that the rate of black shootings per arrest was slightly lower than that of white/hispanic or of asian.
That was so because black arrest rates were higher. Is that where the systemic racism was?
I looked further.
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I had been aware of The Bell Curve, by Charles Murray but had never read it until cancel culture and the idea of censorship prompted me to.
The first twelve chapters are not about race at all, but are deep explorations of the
importance of intelligence to numerous factors of life and behavior. The statistics of the first twelve chapters are white only.
Knowing the controversy, I read the first twelve chapters and set the book
aside before reading the rest some months later ( an approach I would recommend ).
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The troubling aspect of IQ is that it governs so much of the statistics of life choices and outcomes for all groups.
This is perhaps not as controversial as the further observation that the bell curve distributions appear to vary between racial groups.
Evidence of this is that the same distributions of coarse group ordering
seems to occur outside the US as
inside the US.
It should be noted that there is larger variance among individuals within groups ( and within the population at large )
than there is between groups.
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But, if one is considering group characteristics, as one is if one is considering
systemic racism, one must consider these group differences.
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Consider the rank ordering above and then consider the rank ordering of:
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4yr High School Graduation Rate
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College Graduation Rates
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% of Bachelor’s Degrees By Group, in STEM
.
Unemployment Rate
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Marriage Rates
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1st Marriage Divorce Rates
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% Children Born Outside Of Marriage
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% Children Living Without A Father
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Male Victims of Homocide
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Victims of Domestic Violence
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Per Capita Arrest Rates for Homocide
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Per Capita Arrests for All Crimes
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Body Mass Index
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Sweetened And Fruit Beverage Consumption
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Fast Food Consumption
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Life Expectancy
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Now, these orders are all relative, not absolute, and sometimes the differences are small ( worst is not absolutely bad and best is not absolutely good ).
And these statistics represent effects, not cause.
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But that these orders are all so consistent among measures and all consistent with IQ raises questions and contradictions with racism being the cause.
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The narrative is of white discrimination holding minorities down.
But were that the case, one would ask why asians, a minority that did suffer discrimination in the past, lead among groups in all the categories above.
Why would white discrimination decide to elevate asians so consistently? This contradicts systemic racism, but is consistent with heritable IQ as a cause.
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Also, many of the characteristics above represent personal choices where even imagined racism would not appear to be a factor.
Percentage of Bachelors Degrees in STEM, Marriage Rates, First Marriage Divorce Rates, Children Born Outside Of Marriage, Children Living Without A Father,
Male Victims of Homocide ( because most crime is intra-racial ), Domestic Violence Deaths (because most couples are intra-racial ), Body Mass Index,
Sweetened & Fruit Beverages Consumption, Fast Food Consumption, represent personal choices and not likely to be from racism.
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There are other characteristics not as uniform – EXCEPT that asians are in the best category for just about everything.
Whites are worst for tobacco consumption, alcohol consumption, and mental illness.
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Why Bring This Up? Why Not Let It Be?
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These are difficult issues. But wrongly accusing racism of inherited differences leads to false accusation,
divisions, and demonization of groups. Such demonization of any group ( race, class, political party, etc. )
has been the precursor to totalitarianism, police states, and genocides.
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Government, mostly through its own restriction, can ensure equal rights.
Government does not ( at least yet ) control individual genetics which vary between racial categories.
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None of this means that racism does not exist ( ironically by people of all racial groups ),
but if heritable characteristics predict most of the variance, ‘systemic racism’ is still a dangerous lie of exaggeration.
There is one other factor that has a tendency to vary by race, and other factors such as “rich” and “poor”, and that’s culture. The differences between groups may not be large, but differences in culture can be massive.
TE,
You and Murray (and others) may be correct in what you’re saying about the heritability of IQ and its power to explain disparate outcomes. Regardless, it’s not the argument I’d use in today’s environment to argue against the systemic racism hypothesis, because it is too easy to dismiss on the (not utterly unfounded) fears of leading to racial supremacist positions. Nobody is going to follow you there.
Shrug.
It’s not clear to me that its necessary to fully explain the reasons behind disparate outcomes to refute systemic racism. Maybe it is, but I’m not convinced.
mark bofill – thanx for the reply.
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I vent here because I think the denizens are
a thoughtful group that is more immune to bigotry and bias.
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You may be right that the population at large is not capable of considering these things.
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I think it probably is necessary to supply the accurate causes of disparity because systemic racism is amorphous and not defined and hence, not refutable.
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Demanding a concise definition might help, but would still leave people looking at specific statistics to ask why and proclaim racism.
Turbulent Eddie
The inside/outside tells us little since racism certainly can be world wide and due to history over the past 200-300 years can favor the same races everywhere.
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I read the Bell Curve something like 10 (15?) years ago and my impression is that it’s discussion of IQ and statistics was not well grounded. I’m really not going to spend my time becoming an expert, but it just contains a mega s**t ton of stuff that is unconvincing in terms of “the numbers”.
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Yes. I suspect some of IQ is inherited and it matters. But Murray’s book is not well argued.
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Like Mark, I don’t think “IQ differs between races” is a convincing approach to arguing about that “systemic racism” does not exist. But my reasons are different. Among them,
* First “proving” the claim IQ differs by race doesn’t disprove the existence of systemic racism. It’s pretty obvious we did have systemic racism when we had slavery and we also had it in the Jim Crow era. Presumably whatever you “prove” about IQ being racially linked doesn’t suddenly make anyone believe there was no systemic racism back then.
* Second, those advancing the claim they can “prove” IQ differs by race nearly always over egg that pudding by using scads of dubious statistical support that could be interpreted in other ways.
* Cultural factors and collective choices are likely a much bigger factors affecting outcomes for races. I mean, it’s pretty dang obvious that recent immigrants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are all prioritizing education and hard work. They want to advance and the parents are being smart about helping their children. They are also willing to invest significant family resources. Yes, many parent are also smart and on average higher IQ– because educational and professional achievement is how the got their visas in the first place. They are probably higher IQ than the average person in the country they left. But once here, they are also helping their children succeed. As a group, those kids are going to succeed. (They will even if Harvard doesn’t admit them.)
Turbulent
This is precisely why the argument the differences are explained by IQ doesn’t help. Evidence that it is the cause of differences in outcome of races is extremely weak. So throwing it around as if you can confidently prove that just makes people conclude that the real reason might very well be systemic racism. Otherwise, you could find some cause that has more convincing evidence.
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This is not to say that IQ has no heritable component. It probably does. So does height. But other factors affect IQ and other factors also affect height. And factors other than IQ and height also affect achievement, wealth and so on.
People who assign a higher priority to race than culture in IQ debates are in my experience either disingenuous or ill-informed. Or they just have never traveled outside the U.S.
Turbulent,
The kinds of data you cite are well known…. none of it is new or surprising.
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That said, I think you are too focused on intelligence and not focused enough on the very strong influence of social and cultural factors. It is clear that intelligence (as measured by standardized tests) does correlated with many of those same ‘life outcome’ factors even within the same racial group. However, the measured mean differences in IQ across racial groups do not seem to me nearly large enough to account for the very large differences in average life outcomes for different identifiable groups. Social and cultural factors seem to me at least as important as measured intelligence.
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But really, arguing with factual data against the left’s insistence on equality of outcome for all identifiable groups is not going to change many minds; the disagreement is not and has never been about a factual analysis of cause and effect. It is fundamentally a disagreement about morality and values.
.
As your quote from Solzhenitsyn point out, the left cares very little about people having personal liberty and very much about people being completely equal. It is a philosophical and moral disagreement, not one based on fact; you might as well try to convert Christians or Muslims to atheism via rational argument as convince people on the left that liberty (freedom of speech, equality of opportunity, reward for achievement, etc) is far more important than equality of outcomes. The issue will only be resolved at the ballot box. It is unclear to me if the substantial personal liberty we enjoy today will survive the next decade or two.
Thomas Fuller,
I have traveled extensively outside the USA. Cultures which enable success teach and encouraging personal behaviors which are productive, rather than counterproductive. Those productive behaviors accrue benefits to the individual, of course, but also to the society. Counterproductive behaviors, which are unfortunately encouraged by some cultures, hurt both the individual and the wider society.
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Danial Moynihan, to this day reviled by many, had it exactly right. Proving once again that no honest and insightful analysis will go unpunished when the subject is racial disparities.
mark bofill:
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Ironically for those considering ‘white supremacy’ is that the data indicate ‘asian supremacy’. Still, the higher east asian IQ and subsequent life measures haven’t prevented wars of aggression or other social ailments in east asian countries. IQ is a lot, but it’s not everything and regardless, we seek to treat every individual as such, with dignity and respect. Further, unless an individual is truly exceptional, there are always individuals more and less genetically fortunate, regardless of one’s categories.
The impeachment trial is mostly political at this point. The Dems are just trying to get the Republicans on record supporting Trump to use against them later. I imagine if the sides were switched the right would do the same. SSDD.
Turbulent Eddie,
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Sure. I understand that you’re not arguing a white supremacist position and that there are arguments against such a position. I personally don’t think this matters in today’s toxic cancel culture environment – nobody on twitter is looking for nuance, and everybody knows nobody cares about nuance. I maintain that such an argument as the one you’re espousing will get little traction.
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Also though, this does brush up against very thorny problems that we don’t know how to solve particularly well. I’ve heard people make the case that our society and workplaces are becoming increasingly technologically complicated and that this magnifies the impact of intelligence on outcomes. What do we do about that, as a society? I do not believe race is anywhere near the most significant or dominant factor in determining intelligence, but suppose it was for a moment. That’d be a helluva problem. Eugenics becomes an obvious policy option.
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I don’t believe race is a significant factor, and I’m glad of it. I’m not going to make arguments that can easily be misconstrued or misrepresented that way in today’s environment and I don’t think many other people are going to be interested in that either, for obvious reasons. That’s really all I was trying to convey.
“I suspect nearly all symptomatic cases are tested”
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I don’t have any data, but I doubt this is true with the large list of common symptoms. Many cases are “mild”. If you have a runny nose or nausea are you going to go get tested? Perhaps, but the results of that test make no difference in the treatment of mild cases, so it is pointless unless your symptoms become severe.
Turbulent Eddie, I am in essential agreement with what SteveF posted in reply to your posts. Dealing with other people for me has always been the individual and not some member of an amorphous group to which they might belong. Dealing with people as groups is something politicians do when they are more interested the votes of a group. That often means making that group more dependent on the government and the power of a political party.
The variation from individual to individual far surpasses that between identifiable groups even when grouping is arbitrary. I have granddaughters who are identical twins. While you might have a difficult time telling them apart when you first see them, after talking to them for an hour or so about their interests and seeing their personalities at work you would definitely know that they are very different individuals.
Turbulent Eddie, your tendency to group is, in my view, more in line with the politicians’ tendencies to group. I am more certain of their motivations than yours.
Tom Scharf (Comment #197525)
January 27th, 2021 at 10:18 am
I agree that the Democrat Senate trial is politically motivated for the reason you give and if the shoe were on the other foot the Republicans would return the favor.
Having said that, I agree with the WSJ that Trump’s last days in office presented a case for impeachment and conviction. In my view of things where I judge that politicians generally are let off the hook much too readily, the trial should set a precedent and maybe even instill some fear for future Presidents. This case is like some of Trump’s actions as President with which I might agree without accepting the motivation of the actor.
Biden’s equity orders were just political grandstanding.
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Genetics and culture versus group disparate outcomes are real. I think everyone knows that. Why this is a “forbidden topic” in the social sciences is a more interesting question than the actual subject itself I think, but forbidden it is. It is ironic that the people most emotionally attached to excluding this from conversation are the same people lecturing us on following science. It is just another example of what hurts the credibility of the expert class and arguments with appeals to authority in general.
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This doesn’t mean that systemic racism isn’t also a factor to some degree. Everyone is for eliminating racism where it exists and can be identified. Using racism as the null model for all social ills is misguided and poisonous I think.
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It all goes wrong when (trigger warning, huge generalization coming) the enlightened upper whites place all the blame for racism and disparate outcomes on the knuckle dragging lower whites, even though they hold the bulk of the economic and cultural power. The perception by the knuckle draggers is the enlightened class then attempts to solve this racism problem by elevating minorities above the knuckle draggers, but conveniently still leaving them below the enlightened class (see college admissions scandal).
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Not allowing serious discussion of culture is the scream and pound the table form of winning an argument. Ostracize and impugn the morals of someone making the counter argument. That’s what is happening, but it’s neither clever nor effective.
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The subject of genetics is of little importance in public policy because it can’t be changed by policy, it is only relevant as a counterargument to the theory that any disparate outcome measurement must be due to systemic racism. That theory is espoused frequently.
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The enforced conformity of thought in the social sciences just makes me not take the entire subject seriously because I don’t have the energy to discriminate what is a serious argument. In my opinion we should threaten to deprive this segment of the social sciences of public funding unless they can become less activist and work on their monoculture problem.
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In the end, if culture and genetics are large root causes of the identified problem, then they won’t make progress until they address these issues and they only hurt themselves by ignoring them. That’s where we are today I think.
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Asians in (east) asia have the highest measured IQs globally.
Asians in the US have the highest measured IQs.
I don’t believe this is a coincidence or that racism caused this.
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Of course, most of the book is not about heritablity or race. But since its publication, the human genome has occurred. The understanding and strength of association of heritabilty has increased.
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This is to the point.
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Clearly, slavery, as tolerated by US law and codified by the addition of slave states, was systemically racist. We can identify the system ( the law ) and the racism.
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The (first)civil war and subsequent emancipation proclamation resolved this systemic racism so far as the constitution, but the states’ practice of the law was still systemically racist under jim crow. Civil rights legislation eventually ensued to ensure that states lived up to equal rights before the law. Those systems are ostensibly now not racist.
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So it is highly encumbent to define what is meant by systemic racism. What system? Certainly not the constitution or federal code. How will one objectively measure systemic racism?, which is very important, since IQ is highly measured and correlated with life outcomes while systemic racism is not defined nor measured, but presumed to be the source of outcome disparity.
Eddie,
You’re trying to climb Everest in a light jacket and carrying a small bottle of water. Give it up. The standards aren’t even objective measurement anymore, but ‘lived experience’ (AKA anecdote and subjective experience) and other ‘ways of knowing’. Objectivity is racist and colonial and all that crap. You’ll never make it up the side of the mountain that way. [Edit: Not to mention the fact that ‘systemic racism’ is mostly a scam to begin with in today’s parlance. It’s not about truth, it’s about power, and it’s for the suckers. Those up at the top pontificating about it don’t actually believe it, that’s not what the game is all about.]
I won’t clog the thread up any further and will instead bow out now.
I think the human brain is hard wired for reductionism, which is why we have such a hard time dealing with complex, multifactorial, non-linear problems. The instinct is always to find a singular cause.
Turbulent Eddie,
You are making claims about IQ in the US. IQs are generally not measured in public school, universities or jobs. Who has measured IQs of people in the US? How were the subjects picked? Could you provide a citation so we could know whether your statistical claim is based on a random sample, and so on and so on?
(And please don’t claim an entire book. Cite papers so we can find the actual studies.)
If you are looking for Race vs IQ you will find what you want. Africa doesn’t score particularly well but Africa also has more poverty and thus potentially more issues due to environment. So that argument can be made, but with enough work that can be normalized.
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https://www.worlddata.info/iq-by-country.php
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country
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This stuff has been studied extensively. Lots of interesting arguments could be made, like there was selection bias for those who left Africa for Europe and elsewhere 1000’s of years ago, there is evolutionary pressure for intelligence living in colder environments, with new predators, etc.
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“None of the studies used here, conclude that the intelligence quotient is influenced by a particular race. In some cases, differences within population groups were found (e.g. in Basil: Blacks 71, Mulatto 81, Whites 95, Japaneses 99), but all differences could be attributed to their origin, level of education or other factors.
In 2006 Donald Templera and Hiroko Arikawab found a connection between increasing skin pigmentation and a decreasing IQ. Even this was not racially dued, because the pigmentation grade is climatically conditioned. The observations were also made within the same groups of other races, e.g. caucasians.”
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Very carefully worded. I think the word “origin” is carrying a lot of weight here, and I doubt the studies concluded anything at all regarding race if they were done in last several decades, the Murray Effect if you will. There shouldn’t be any controversy that differences exist and are measurable. I’m fine with regional and ancestral differences, using race as a proxy for origin or evolutionary path is intertangled. An argument that intelligence is not tied to evolution fails at almost every level. Different humans evolved differently, but are still very close in the grand scheme.
mark bofill,
“Objectivity is racist and colonial and all that crap.”
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Ya, when I read about people claiming that the learning of chemistry, physics and engineering are inherently racists activities, it became clear that the “systemic racism” they are claiming has absolutely nothing to do with reality….. it is 100% political values and outcome preferences, not rational…. if clever Asian kids (or white kids, or Jewish kids, etc) excel at doing something, then it has to be racist in nature.
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We live in a crazy, post truth era. With the most demented and crazy now in charge in Washington, I fear it will not end well.
Tom Scharf,
“in Basil: Blacks 71, Mulatto 81, Whites 95, Japaneses 99”
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I know Brazil very well, having spent about 3 years in total there over the last 25. I can tell you for certain that cultural factors are hugely important in life outcomes in Brazil. Even 2nd and 3rd generation Japanese are often pressured by their families to not marry a non-Japanese person. The Japanese in Brazil are over-represented in the most “intellectually demanding” jobs…. they also study like hell, while lots of Brazilians, and especially those of full or partial African descent, take a much more ‘relaxed’ attitude about study. Among “white” Brazilians, cultural values are closer to US middle class values than anywhere else… although they seem to me more tolerant of political corruption than people in the States.
Steve,
It is nutty. Critical race theory went viral somehow over the last thirty or forty years and has spread from academia into HR, government, media, entertainment, and all over the darn place. Now and then I spend time trying to understand how exactly that happened. Near as I can tell, it never faced any serious challenge & people just swallowed this garbage for some reason. I’d like to understand why, but so far it’s something of a mystery to me.
[Edit: I say over the last 30 or 40 years. It only became obvious [since] the 2000’s that our culture is lousy with this disease. Looking at the academic careers of Richard Delgado and Derrick Bell and others, I figure America got infected started sometime in the ’80s or ’90s.]
I would make the supposition that searching for and discussing distinctions about groups albeit, race, culture, IQ or what have you should lead to the question: what are you going to do about it?
In a society where a powerful government can attempt to equalize and to penalize according to these distinctions there will be an effort to distinguish. In a society where individual freedom has a larger reign these distinctions become relatively unimportant and may be relegated to some pure academic research that has no practical bearing.
Probably the most recent incantations of “systemic racism” tells us how far we have come down the path of making a generalized distinction about a group that for political reason remains amorphous but is evidently needed politically to do something –
even though so far that something has been mainly posturing and virtue signaling.
Kenneth,
“I agree that the Democrat Senate trial is politically motivated for the reason you give and if the shoe were on the other foot the Republicans would return the favor.”
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The first part is absolutely true, but I very much doubt the second part is true. I don’t say that because I think Republicans are Saints. I say it because I believe the entire process of impeachment was specifically designed to remove a criminal from office. IMO, what is going on right now is a constitutional travesty; Republicans actually care about the Constitution, ‘progressive’ Dems do not. It is a destructive and divisive travesty as well. Which is why Rand Paul forced the Senate to vote on the Constitutionality of the process.
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With 45 votes declaring it unconstitutional, it is now completely clear: Trump is not going to be ‘convicted’ as a private citizen. Whether or not he holds office again (and I very much doubt he will… he is such an a$$hole) should be up to voters, not morally dubious Congress critters.
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If the capital riots had happened after the 2018 midterms, and Trump had made speeches that clearly encouraged the rioting, that would be a legitimate use of impeachment. The crap going on now is not…. it is just crazy.
Lucia,
“They will even if Harvard doesn’t admit them.”
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Which is good, because Harvard will most certainly put them at a disadvantage in admissions. One must never reward excellence too much you know.
Turbulent,
“How will one objectively measure systemic racism?”
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You keep asking questions as if the issue were in some way objective. It is not objective at all. It has NEVER been objective. It is 100% based on non-objective moral/political/philosophical beliefs. When I was graduating from high school in the late 1960’s (in Massachusetts), very selective colleges were giving enormous preferences (in admissions and in financial aid) to “disadvantaged minorities”… some of whom went to my high school and who I knew well. It has not changed much since then.
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Here it is in summary: if any identifiable group has average life outcomes lower than the overall average, then that is proof of systemic racism against that group. If any identifiable group has life outcomes higher than the average, then that is proof of racial preferences favoring that group. The argument stops right there; it is not a rational argument. It is an emotional argument. You can’t change it, you can only fight against it if you think it is immoral.
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Captain Ahab became possessed by Moby Dick; you seem similarly possessed by the idea that this issue is rational and objective. It is not.
Has there been any mention of what to do about people who have recovered from COVID-19 in terms of documents? I’m not planning on getting vaccinated any time soon, so I would be at a disadvantage if access to something is restricted to only those who can prove they were vaccinated.
The game has changed from disparate outcomes with proven intent equals racism, to simply disparate outcomes equals racism. At least in the media and polite company. Law still runs up against equal protection and so forth. Activists keep nibbling away at this but if they bite off more than they can chew then they will likely end up in front of the SC and get a new precedent they aren’t going to like very much. I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunity over the next four years as the usual suspects overplay their cards.
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Oregon is contemplating inserting explicit racial preferences in vaccine distribution. It is these type of crazy performative thoughts that will get legal limits to the madness set for good.
https://reason.com/2021/01/26/oregon-weighs-race-based-vaccine-preferences/
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The reason why it is so clearly performative and peer virtue signaling is that they can gain almost all the same things by economic class preferences without the mess and divisiveness. It is still best to just go by age in the case of vaccines.
mark bofill (Comment #197542): “I figure America got infected started sometime in the ’80s or ’90s.”
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I think the infection occurred in the 60’s, the patient started to show symptoms in the 90’s and became critically ill since 2012. Whether the patient will survive is to be determined.
Tom,
Actually I read that critical race theory started with law professors and probably has already had a corrosive impact there, although I should think not at the SC level.
Mike,
Yeah. I’m not sure how to assign dates properly in this just yet.
DeWitt,
I haven’t heard if they will do anything to add people who got Covid and recovered to any ‘passport’ or health document. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s know what people will want to prove.
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Did you have a positive Covid test? I think you did. But I ask because I have a friend who insists that she absolutely had Covid, but never went in for any Covid test. I would imagine whatever documents exist they wouldn’t indicate her as being proven recovered from Covid.
DeWitt,
The good news is that you are very unlikely to ever die from covid 19, no matter what else happens. The bad news is that restrictions applied to the unwashed covid masses (and I remain in that sullied group) of “potentially infectives” are very likely to apply to you as well, in spite of your obvious immunity. Data? Reason? Logic? Even admitting reality? All horse-shit; none of it will matter. Who said life was fair…. or even rational? Not John Kennedy, and certainly not me.
lucia,
Yes, I did have a positive SARS-CoV-2 test. The test was administered because I was going to transfer to a skilled care facility from the hospital. I didn’t have COVID-19 symptoms at the time of the test, although with what was going on with me at the time, it might have been hard to tell. The fatigue came a little later and was pretty obvious.
DeWitt,
That you’d been confirmed Covid and recovered might be something an app would show. No rules have been made yet for needing to show any sort of status. But if the rule accepted recovered and likely immune, then the app would want to be programmed for that.
Fauci truly is an idiot.
https://www.sciencealert.com/fauci-says-wearing-2-masks-is-common-sense-here-s-how-to-do-it-properly
Two masks means increased air resistance and therefore more air going around the edges of the mask. Therefore, efficiency is reduced.
lucia:
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Much of Murray’s analysis is of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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Because this is a longitudinal survey, it offers numerous measures of populations followed into adulthood. As such, it allows the various correlations and to control correlations for IQ.
Looks like the US chose wisely:
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NYT: “(European) Tensions were also raised by an escalating dispute with AstraZeneca over the drugmaker’s announcement that it would slash deliveries of its vaccine by 60 percent because of production shortfalls.”
“By this week, a mere 2 percent of E.U. citizens had received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine”
“Some critics have blamed the European Commission for the mess. The commission struck deals on behalf of the member states to secure a total of 2.3 billion vaccine doses from several companies. But some of its agreements lagged behind those struck by the United States and Britain by weeks.”
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WSJ: “President Biden announced plans to boost supplies of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines sent to states for the next three weeks and purchase enough additional doses to vaccinate most of the U.S. population by the end of summer. ”
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As usual when the news is (relatively) good for the US, the word Trump was MIA in the articles, ha ha. SOP. The “US” and “Biden administration” are doing or have done all the good work. The UK has given shots to 11% of it’s population, somehow the word Brexit was never brought up either.
Tom Scharf,
“The UK has given shots to 11% of it’s population, somehow the word Brexit was never brought up either.”
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Unfortunately they need to reach ~20% innoculated (and wait a few weeks) to see the impact on deaths. Politics is a hard game.
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BTW, I holed a 60 yard wedge today on a par 4 for 3, followed by a near hole-out on a par 3, for 2, and made a good putt for 3 on the next par 4. 3, 2, 3. Sadly, the rest of the round was forgettable.
If you aren’t a fan of hedge fund short sellers on Wall Street check out the GameStop insanity. These short sellers are some of the least sympathetic people on the planet, but I’d rather not see the markets controlled by Reddit whims.
Turbulent Eddie,
So, you don’t have a citation to a published study. You’re just liking to the top of a web site.
I suspect that you are a pretty good golfer , but those 6 straight holes would make a pro proud. I also suspect that it would not be polite to ask what you consider forgettable.
I once had a boss who was a scratch golfer and when he would go 2 or 3 strokes above par he would threaten to quit golfing altogether.
Turbulent Eddie,
So I poked around the longitudinal study. Without a specific paper or analysis claiming to have plowed through and found something to support your claimes (like for example “Asians in the US have the highest measured IQs.”) I can’t state with confidence that no one could possibly have based that on that longitudinal study.
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However, it seems rather unlikely since almost none of the cohorts reported any IQ scores at all. Two have some NLS mature and young Men and NLS mature and young Women– but the number of participants whose IQ scores were measured was less than 20% of the group and even those were limited to the “young” groups.
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20% is such a low rate for the IQ tests that I would presume bias in who was selected to be tested. That bias would arise based on what school systems people went to and so on.
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And, also, “Asian” was not a racial category in those studies. So it would be rather difficult (The categories are “black”, “not black” and “other”. Other does include “Asian” but also American Indian, Eskimo and basically anyone who they did not consider “black” or “not black” at the time. https://www.nlsinfo.org/content/cohorts/older-and-young-men/topical-guide/household/race-ethnicity-and-nationality)
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So, it would be nice if you identify specific paperswhere you think your claim comes from so we can look at whatever statistics supposedly underlie the claim. If the claim is from Murray’s book, you should be able to find the footnote that lists the paper reference.
TE,
And on further reading even the test that was most “IQ” like on the “NLS mature and young [X]” cohort was not actually an IQ test! It’s discussed here: https://www.germantownschools.org/faculty/kkorek/Handouts/Intelligence/Otis%20Quick%20Scoring%20Mental%20Ability%20Tests.pdf
The test relies on the assumption that those who achieved well in school were probably higher IQ and substituted educational attainment questions for pure intelligence questions. (The questions are provided, and some are very obviously questions detecting education, not IQ. See for example question 18.)
So as far as I can tell, one wouldn’t be able to make any claims about IQ based on that study. But perhaps I’m missing something.
Kenneth,
I am a streaky golfer. I once shot 8 over par on the first 9 holes (with multiple horrible swings) followed by 2 under par on the second nine holes. When I play and practice a bit I average about 10 to 12 over par for 18 holes these days…. age diminishes performance in most things. Golf is no exception. I never say I want to quit; the good shots make the terrible ones bearable. I’ve heard lots of golfers threaten to quit, but I don’t know any who did, except when forced to by health or injury.
SteveF, I took up golfing when I was 30 and that being during a very busy part of my life, I never took the time to learn the game well and instead depended on my natural athletic abilities. Golf humbled me dearly.
I think we were all getting weary of the unscientific pronouncements emanating from the previous administration that included terms like hoax. Now we have an administration that we of a scientific mind can appreciate. I will demonstrate with a recent comment from President Biden about climate change: “In my view, we’ve already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis. We can’t wait any longer. We see it with our own eyes, we feel it, we know it in our bones, and it’s time to act.”
Here I was thinking that my bones were telling me I was getting older when it was actually climate change. Who knew – but in the spirit of the inspirational thoughts and guidance of our new President, I will follow the science.
We further have the political and scientific mind of Charles Schumer telling us that we should declare climate change an emergency and use the dictates of the state as were found in the precedent of Covid-19 restrictions to fix the problem. I believe those thoughts come from the scientific theory that we should never let a crisis and emergency go to waste.
Kenneth,
I started playing golf at 32. There was a practice range just a few minutes drive from where I worked, so I was able to practice a few times a week during lunch hour if the weather was good. That allowed me to improve rapidly. I reached a 4 to 5 handicap in 6 years, but I never got any better, no matter how much I practiced. I could never reach a level of consistency that would allow it. Those who reach scratch or better almost always start playing by the time they are age 12 or so and have naturally good eye-hand coordination. I have a younger brother who started playing when he was 13, and was scratch by the time he played in college. He is still a solid 3 handicap player, even though he is now 64.
Biden was an influence peddling moron his whole political career. Now he is also suffering from dementia. Not a good combination. The only question is if the intellect in his bones has already surpassed that in his head; I fear it has.
lucia, remember the working theory of intelligence is that is reduces to a single dimension g – generalized intelligence.
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IQ has been estimated by numerous different tests – of various compositions. There is not a single unambiguous measure, but very strong correlation among them. One of the tests is the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, the graphic for which appears here:
https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence
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The citation is from Reynolds 1987, which I assume is this paper:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223586560_Demographic_characteristics_and_IQ_among_adults_Analysis_of_the_WAIS-R_standardization_sample_as_a_function_of_the_stratification_variables
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The sample sizes of ‘non-white’ and ‘non-black’ are very small, but of course, in 1987 the proportion of asian and hispanic adults were considerably less than today. It would be instructive to have complete ongoing national testing, of course. But imagine the political pushback on such a thing in today’s environment.
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It would not be surprising that measured IQ would correlate highly with other tests, such as college entrance:
https://nypost.com/2018/10/17/harvards-gatekeeper-reveals-sat-cutoff-scores-based-on-race/
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Interestingly, one of the strong correlates of IQ is reaction time. Intelligence quite literally correlates with ‘quick thinking’. This is proposed as a culture free measure of intelligence. Asians tend to have the fastest reactions times:
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https://openpsychologyjournal.com/contents/volumes/V3/TOPSYJ-3-9/TOPSYJ-3-9.pdf
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Also in that paper, brain size and skull cavity volume are largest for asians. Brain size is not necessarily an intelligence measure. In his latest book, Human Diversity, Murray cites research that males tend to have larger brains than females, but that females brains are much more efficiently organized into clusters than male brains, resulting in much the same intelligence of males and females, though they may really think differently. However, it is not clear that this same principle applies across races.
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That there are racial differences in intelligence is increasingly understood by genetics, where again, asians tend to rank the highest. Genome-Wide Association Studies ( GWAS ) are statistical correlations with specific single nucleotide polymorphisms:
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http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/PifferIntelligence2015.pdf
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Much of this is necessarily inferential and indirect. But it tends to remain consistent.
Consider this. The US Educational Testing Service does correlates with IQ and major field of study in college.
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https://thetab.com/us/2017/04/10/which-major-has-highest-iq-64811
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STEM dominates the high end. As I noted above, asians as a group tend to have the highest percentage of STEM majors and those rank orderings by the four most common racial groups also apply. Individuals tend to pursue what they’re good at.
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The political ramifications are these.
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Libertarian philosophy is based on individual liberty to live and to achieve freely. This represents equal rights.
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But the current government espouses ‘equity’, meaning equal outcome based on race and other groupings. If there are inherent differences among groups, and they are free to achieve as they can, they will achieve different things at different rates. Liberty and equality, at least as defined by ‘equity’ are mutually exclusive.
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Above it was posited that I am focused on group rather than individual. That may be harsh. It’s true we are all results of our evolution which took part in small groups, an evolution that no doubt is expressed in our genes today. Also, we depend on one another in our much larger society. But it’s also true that our current government has declared that our basis of treatment should be group based, not individual based. My purpose in discussing group differences is very much contrary to group identity. That there are statistical average differences between groups is ever more reason to treat people as individuals, with dignity and respect and to judge them based on their character and deeds and not on groups.
SteveF, you write “Cultures which enable success teach and encouraging personal behaviors which are productive, rather than counterproductive. Those productive behaviors accrue benefits to the individual, of course, but also to the society. Counterproductive behaviors, which are unfortunately encouraged by some cultures, hurt both the individual and the wider society.”
So we agree? It is culture not race.
TE,
First: I note you have now abandonned the Longitudinal study, which did not support your claim about the IQ of asians in the US becuase it basicaly has no data to test any claims about that.
The wikia article looks like it might have been useful. It has an extensive list of papers.
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But I was focused on yoru claim about Asian’s IQ, especially in the US. So the first thing I did was look at that. As you don’t specifically give more, I’m assuming your statement is based on the nifty colored graph showing nice bells haped curves for IQs of Asians, Whites, Hispanics and Blacks at the bottom of that article. It’s source to Reynolds 1987.
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That would, of course, lead one to expect that the results in Reynolds underlie that graph. But. No. You can find Reynolds 1987 here. You will find that Reynolds did not do any statistics on “asians” or “hispanics”. At. All. The 24 “other nonwhite” race samples they collected data for were not divided into “asian” and “hispanic” at all, and were also dropped from their study.
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So clearly this study does not support any claim about asian IQs.
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Since it so clearly cannot support the graph in the wikia article, I stopped there. I didn’t check details on the WAIS-R sample to see how it was collected to determine wither it might have been biased in anyway. (Reynolds didn’t do his own IQ tests, but used that sample.)
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That the very first item I investigated at the Wikia article was so totally bogus makes me not want to waste time there. Sadly, this is the sort of moras I tend to find when people start making claims about IQ. I’m not stupendously interested in those claims in the first place, and then it turns out that the documentation is spectaculary shoddy.
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Since the whole “RACE-IQ” thing is not something I’m particularly interested in, I would be tempted to just drop it there. But if you want to continue pressing your case, that’s fine. But if you could read and check the underlying citations rather than just pointing to scattershot articles like that seemingly shoddy wikia, that would be helpful.
Lucia,
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I’ve watched a number of Daniel Kahneman talks in which he discusses belief. Theories are necessarily incomplete yet we ‘believe’ or ‘disbelieve’ based on the dots with connections.
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I will agree that we connect and even accept and reject the dots differently.
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Thank you for indulging ideas which I believe are important to discuss.
Turbulent,
I dont mind the ideas being discussed. I just find that the evidence at the sites promoting the claims about race and IQ is generally seriously scrambled. I mean… the figure that is cited as being based on Reynolds 1987 not being based on Reynolds at all isn’t a matter of interpretation. The kindest interpretation is whoever put that together is sloppy. But the less kind one is they are just making stuff up to look good hoping no one checks the underlying links.
Thomas Fuller,
We certainly agree that the majority of difference in life outcomes is due to differences in personal behavior, and that culture has enormous influence on which personal behaviors are encouraged (or tolerated) and which are discouraged. Intelligence makes some difference, of course, but counterproductive behavior is easily more harmful than higher intelligence is helpful.
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Where I suspect we will not agree is: if differences in life outcomes (education, income, health, family stability, and much more) are mainly due to individual behaviors (often driven by cultural values), then substituting legally imposed equality of outcome neither addresses the fundamental issue (destructive personal behavior) nor is remotely fair to those who do succeed through more constructive personal behaviors. Or in simpler terms: legally imposed preferences based on race (or gender, religion, etc) are both inherently counter productive and inherently unfair.
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I believe most progressives want every identifiable group to have equal average outcomes. But IMO that is both wildly unrealistic (eg, the NBA is not going to stop being dominated by black athletes) and inherently unfair if it is forced on people by law. If culture is actually important (as Moynahan recognized), then the answer is for counterproductive culture to change. Cultural change can’t be imposed except in a totalitarian country, like China.
I don’t agree. I don’t advocate for equality of outcomes and I am honestly unaware of any who do.
I believe offering assistance to those who have been held back from the starting line is a very fine thing and something we should be proud to do. I believe removing obstacles to participation is healthy and not just for those it directly assists. But the race should still be won and a winner declared.
I believe having aspirational goals for percentages of women and minorities in the boardroom, in the legislature and at the lectern are fine as well.
But I don’t know of anyone arguing that we should have a less competent person in post just because they are a woman or person of color, etc. The argument, and I think it is sound, is that there are people of equal or even superior qualifications that have been passed over because of race, gender, etc., and that not only should that passing over cease, but those that were unfairly passed over should be made whole.
Tom,
I guess you don’t get out much.
Here’s Kamala Harris on the topic. She’s the Vice President of the United States BTW.
https://twitter.com/kamalaharris/status/1322963321994289154?lang=en
The takeaway line:
We all end up in the same place sounds a heck of a lot like equality of outcome to me.
If the same place Ms. Harris refers to is the starting line, then I’m 100% with her.
The place where we all end up is usually not referred to as the starting line.
C’mon, this is silly.
What’s silly is making a big deal out of affirmative action and other policies designed to mitigate the effects of millenia of discrimination.
When we spend as much on schools in poor districts as we do in rich ones, let’s continue this discussion. When Harvard abandons its legacy admissions, let’s continue this discussion. When sexual harrassment is no longer endemic in organizations, let’s continue this discussion. When womens’ careers are no longer sidetracked for the unforgiveable sin of childbirth, let’s continue this discussion.
When you are willing to spend 1% of your energies on solving the problems that led to a call for ending up in the same place, then let’s worry about the socialist horror that menaces us all.
Thanks Thomas.
lucia,
What is it that you do believe? This seems to be an exercise in endless “that’s not convincing to me” statements without making any counter argument at all. Do you believe there aren’t measurable differences? Do you believe the measurable differences are an artifact of testing? Do you not believe in intelligence testing at all? G is not real? That there are differences but they are entirely culturally or environmentally based? Genetics plays no role? Not a proven role? It’s all too messy and we can’t say anything? I can’t figure out what you are even arguing here.
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What absolutely nobody who has looked into this believes is “there are not measurable and consistent differences between certain groups”. It’s better to not think about it as “race” instead of “origin” and “evolutionary path”. A direct link between pigmentation level and IQ is unlikely.
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What there is dispute on is why, and genetics is not a favored subject even though this is somewhat obvious and should be the null model. We are allowed to think tall parents have tall children because of genetics for some reason.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-is-average-iq-higher-in-some-places/
“Before our work, several scientists had offered explanations for the global pattern of IQ. Nigel Barber argued that variation in IQ is due primarily to differences in education. Donald Templer and Hiroko Arikawa argued that colder climates are difficult to live in, such that evolution favors higher IQ in those areas. Satoshi Kanazawa suggested that evolution favors higher IQ in areas that are farther from the evolutionary origin of humans: sub-Saharan Africa. Evolution, the hypothesis goes, equipped us to survive in our ancestral home without thinking about it too hard. As we migrated away, though, the environment became more challenging, requiring the evolution of higher intelligence to survive.”
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In this case they go on to suggest that exposure to infectious disease is the main driver of group differences, but note they aren’t disputing measurable differences.
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What nobody can say is that this group of genes are drivers for IQ and they are better expressed in this group and not that group. That would be definitive. They also can’t say the opposite, they just don’t know yet.
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So the real white supremacist a-holes point to this stuff and claim genetic racial superiority, the activist class then back peddles because science is being used “wrongly” and start to make unsupportable claims in the opposite direction (it’s proven genetics plays no role). Inquisitive regular people then look at inconvenient science being buried for ideological reasons and lose trust in science.
Thomas Scharf
I was focusing on claims recetly. But I think I’ve said above.
1) I think the outcomes of different races are strongly affected by culture.
2) I think there are some measureable differences in IQ but I don’t think we know for sure if the difference is enviromental, genetic a mix of both, nor which dominates. (I lean toward both, with environmental dominating. Environment can include cultural aspect that behave the behavior of social cohorts especially parents that subsequently affect the rest of the environment.
3) I think some claims about the degree to which IQ has been measured, how consistent results are and so on is sloppy and bunk.
4) I think intelligence is real and there is a heritable factor. I’ve thought this since at least the 4th grade. 🙂
5) I think conversation about the claims and theories should be permitted. But when doing it, I think it’s important to ask for evidence and look at it. That’s why I ased TE to support his claims.
6) I think the notion that IQ may vary between races falls in the “not impossible” category. It’s heritable. Anything heritable might vary between groups that underwent different evolutionary pressure. But the claim it has been shown broadly to classes as large as “black”, “white”, “asian” usually falls apart if you actually look at the evidence. Its often just like that wikia article– superficially it looks like they were supporting a claim with a link to a paper. But the paper didn’t support the claim.
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In asking TE to support his claim: I was hoping to find support for the particular claim he made about Asians. He tried to link to evidece. To the extent that he linked to discussions, that appeared to support that claim, on diggint I found it was bunk.
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First: the longitudinal study had pretty almost nothing on IQ and definitely had nothing on Asian. Second, the Wikia article made the claim about relative rank of IQs of whites, black, asians and Hispanics and link to a paper that didn’t even study Asians or Hispanics. This sort of hockum is what I seem to run into when I look at long winded claims of having proven something about IQ and race.
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So the claim seems to boil down to “Well… seems to me we all know this. So when we find something that claims, there is no need to look further. That must be the proof.” But on looking this stuff generally falls apart.
Thomas
I don’t know what “offering assistance” means. I think offering assistance is fine. But I don’t think that ought to mean having race be a big factor in college admissions. Having those creates an obstacles to participation, and is unhealthy for those it harms. I think this is also unhealthy for those who were declared a winner because of race many of whom would benefit more from opportunities that match their current level of achievement.
Once again, I don’t know what you are saying. Does “aspirational” mean “a level we say we want but know we can’t meet and expect we won’t”? Or does it mean “a very high level we will impose and achieve by slamming the doors in the faces of people of the wrong sex and race? I think neither of these are good. But perhaps you mean something else by “aspirational”.
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Honest, I don’t know what the part of the sentence before “then” even means. But I think veer off on some tangent that seems to slam someone for disagreeing with your views on socialism is just weird in the context of discussing race.
Thom Fuller
Uhhmm… no. I think we can discuss things now. We don’t need your permission and we don’t need to have already achieved some sort of ideal distribution of resources before we can even discuss good paths forward.
“When we spend as much on schools in poor districts as we do in rich ones, let’s continue this discussion.”
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Do you not think this has been examined and tried? In FL we only have about 90 school districts, NY has over 900. My local school district has over 100K students with a somewhat normal ratio of ethnicity. The schools are funded equally, in fact they recently have tried funding struggling elementary schools at even higher levels.
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Guess what happens in this equally funded school system? A breakout of equity because nobody every thought of this before? You know the answer. The same thing happens here as everywhere else.
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And what objective evidence do you have to support this idea?
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Part of my zeal of US asian IQ may be confirmation bias of my observations that asians are number one in all the life quality measures I cited above.
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But consider that we have three working theories of outcome inequality:
1. systemic racism
2. cultural differences
3. group average IQ differences
Systemic racism is not defined much less objectively measured. Were racism to describe outcomes, one would expect the majority (white) to have the best outcomes. This is not the case, asians have the best outcomes in every category i searched.
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Cultural difference is also not strictly defined and I’m not aware of objective measures or differences. One might also wonder why culture showed asian bests in every category not more distributed.
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There are at least some objective measures of IQ and out of country IQ rankings indicate a clear order. That order is reflected almost perfectly among the various two dozen or so life outcomes.
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http://www.rlynn.co.uk/uploads/pdfs/Intelligence%20and%20the%20Wealth%20and%20Poverty%20of%20Nations.pdf
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http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/The-g-factor-of-international-cognitive-ability-comparisons-the-homogeneity-of-results-in-PISA-TIMSS-PIRLS-and-IQ-tests-across-nations.pdf
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https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/National-IQs-calculated-and-validated-for-108-Lynn-Meisenberg/48d7843f6ce714a684a93530a0c8b7da65d185db?p2df
Thomas,
I figured you would disagree. I believe you see injustice everywhere, even when it doesn’t exist.
Millenia of discrimination? Really? So African Americans suffer today from discrimination of thousands of years ago? Ancient Greeks? Egyptians? Babylonians? Sorry, but no, that is laughable.
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Admitting someone clearly less qualified to a college or university is most certainly what actually happens. I saw it at my college in the early 1970’s when they decided to admit each year some ‘disadvantaged students’ over more qualified applicants… something like 5% of the incoming class each year were “disadvantaged admissions”. They got full scholarships, including room, board, and books. I was hired for a couple of years to tutor some of these students in math and chemistry….. but it was hopeless. They were nowhere near prepared to pass any of the normal freshman courses; you can’t teach calculus to someone who never got past long division…. if they even got that far. Nearly every one of them flunked out by the end of their first year. It’s nice if you think that is a good idea, but what I saw was my school wasting a ton of scholarship money that could have gone to stronger applicants upon whom the money would not have been wasted.
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I have a question for you. The voters in California passed a constitutional plebiscite (Proposition 209, November 1996) that explicitly prohibits public colleges in California from considering race in their admissions (among many other restrictions on racial preferences by the State). This was re-affirmed when Proposition 16 (repeal of Proposition 209) was defeated in November 2020. Do you think voters have the right to pass a restriction on racial preferences? If not, why not?
Lucia, you write, “I don’t know what “offering assistance†means. I think offering assistance is fine. But I don’t think that ought to mean having race be a big factor in college admissions. Having those creates an obstacles to participation, and is unhealthy for those it harms”
So reserving x% for legacy admissions for rich (and overwhelmingly Caucasian) students is fine no matter their test scores (often quite low), but reserving y% for minority students who qualify by admission standards but don’t score as well as some others is not?
Admission score must be higher than 10.
White student A, son of a previous Harvard grad, scores 9 but is admitted as a legacy.
Black student B with a disadvantaged background, scores 12. She is admitted in part because of her race.
White student C scores 13 but is not admitted.
C has two potential targets for his ire–student A or student B. I submit that all of the attention is paid to the leg up student B receives and none to the sliding in through the back door that Student A takes advantage of.
There are those who argue for strict adherence to admission standards but wait until they (or their ancestors) have profited from inequality before getting religion on the issue.
TE,
I didn’t claim it was a fact. I don’t have “objective evidence”. It’s all observational and anectodal. It’s also not systematic. It’s just like the evidence I had that told me intelligence is real and heritable back when I was in the 4th grade. The only difference is I have a larger number of observations than I had when I was in 4th grade.
Thomas
That appears to be a rhetorical question. It also accuses me of holding this position:
I not “fine” with legacy admissions and wouldn’t be even if they were not overwhelmingly for Caucasian students. As far as I am aware, most people dislike legacy admissions.
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I think schools that use legacy admissions should be criticized and I think federal assistance should be barred for tuition paying students at those schools. I definitely do not think non-legacy students of the “wrong” race should be penalized because others of “their” race got in due to legacies.
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Then go find “those” people are argue with them. That some such people somewhere argue this is not a valid counter argument to the ones being posted here.
Thomas,
“So reserving x% for legacy admissions for rich (and overwhelmingly Caucasian) students is fine no matter their test scores (often quite low), but reserving y% for minority students who qualify by admission standards but don’t score as well as some others is not?”
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Where did that come from? Nobody suggested that.
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To be clear: I think that practice is unfair and quite horrible to boot; it is identical to the “Varsity Blues” scandal in spirit if not illegality. I think all public funding should be withdrawn from Harvard or any other private educational institution that does not treat all applicants identically. They can discriminate all they want, just as they always have, for any reason they want…. it is their school. But they shouldn’t be getting public funding. Harvard and a few others are rich enough to thumb their nose at the loss of taxpayer funds, but most colleges and universities are not.
The Chicago public school system spends more per student than the state of Illinois does, but the real issue in educational outcomes has much to do with parents’ involvement in the education of their children. Without that input the amount of school spending is not going to make a significant difference. It will however keep the teacher’s union in support of the political party in control and supply the teachers with a nice pension – and an expense that the state of IL cannot afford in the long run.
There would appear to be interest in inner city school parents in having a larger choice in schools outside the traditional public school, but teachers’ unions and politicians apparently want no part of that movement.
https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/district.aspx?source=environment&source2=perstudentspending&Districtid=15016299025
Thomas Fuller (Comment #197602): “I don’t advocate for equality of outcomes and I am honestly unaware of any who do.”
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So how was your nap? Rip van Winkle must be envious, his only lasted 20 years. I am afraid that you are in for quite a shock at the changes over the last 50 years.
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Blacks go to prison at a much higher rate than whites. The left claims that is *proof* that the criminal justice system is rigged against blacks. They demand equality of outcome.
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The Obama Dept of Ed. issued guidelines to force schools to ensure that black students are disciplined at no higher rate than white students. That is, they demanded equality of outcome. Trump ended that, but Biden is bringing it back.
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The admissions departments of our most prestigious universities insist on racial distribution similar to the general population. As a result, Asians need much better qualifications than whites and blacks get in with much lower qualifications. Once again, equality of outcome is what matters.
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The list goes on and on.
TE,
I don’t know that I’d say there are just three, or that I’d draw the lines that way. Are we calling environmental differences cultural differences, or is that a separate category? Environmental includes things like childhood nutrition and language development that I’m pretty confident has an impact on IQ. Culture can influence environment and childhood development…
Mike M,
Yes, all true, but I think for many people like Thomas, those and 100 other examples or requiring equality of outcome are irrelevant.
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Even while insisting otherwise, they do want want equal outcomes, and they are going to insist upon those outcomes whenever they have the political power to do so. The Biden administration is going to insist upon equal outcomes whenever they can.
Culture is genetic, ha ha. They of course have postulated this, but not too seriously. Those Germans with their violent Neanderthal ancestry prove it!
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Back in the innocent days of academic inquiry into this subject they would seek and test things like “What happens when children from the low preforming group are raised by parents in the high performing group?”. They do better, but not as good as direct descendants, and the gains made tend to diminish through adulthood. They also look at the opposite with similar conclusions. One thing that is surprising/confounding is that IQ scores can vary with age but are most stable after adulthood if you are looking for genetic determinism.
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Another example, IQ correlation:
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Same person (tested twice) .95
Identical twins—Reared together .86
Identical twins—Reared apart .76
Fraternal twins—Reared together .55
Fraternal twins—Reared apart .35
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Different studies studies come up with slightly different numbers but they follow a similar pattern. High heritability is dependent on a good environment, otherwise the numbers go lower. Height is more strongly correlated between twins than IQ.
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One of the original studies with lots of data:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Center_for_Twin_and_Family_Research
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Nothing to do with race here. It’s all very interesting if you leave race out.
The discussion about culture good and bad is interesting because one of my many buttons is multiculturalism, the faith (I was going to say belief, but on consideration didn’t think that was strong enough) that all cultures are essentially equal and should be encouraged to persist in our society as opposed to the melting pot meme. This, IMO, is an important reason why so many people now think that Critical Race Theory should be the required way to analyze our society. CRT, IMO, is the new Marxism with race replacing the labor theory of value.
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No, certainly no restriction, only the first three that came to mind here.
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Clearly with zero nutrition, one will not have a brain to have intelligence with.
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Certainly, most African nations are deficient in vitamin A which when added would hopefully raise current levels to whatever potential there is.
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Consider also that IQ probably has an effect on parenting and nutrition that parents offer and ensure in their children.
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Fortunately, even Cocoa Pebbles are fortified these days, which sadly may have contributed the majority of my nutrient intake through middle age.
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Food is not uniform nor necessarily nutritious, but sufficient calories do not seem to be a problem in fact excess calories are a problem.
Is somebody here defending legacy admissions? Please speak up.
By the way, lest it be unclear, I don’t believe IQ explains everything or at all determines human worth (beyond wages). There are other psychological traits: industriousness, creativity, open-ness, etc. that we value.
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Andy Worhol supposedly had an IQ of 85.
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He is by no means my favorite artist, but the world needs creativity.
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And even if the in country East Asian IQs are accurately and precisely as estimated, that average intelligence has not prevented the Chinese from falling for Mao, or cleansing Tibet, or purging the Falon Gong, or concentration camps in XinJang. It did not prevent the Japanese from imperial conquest or the rape of Nanking.
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~grins~ yeah. Could be worse.
I think that’s true or nearly true in the U.S. today. I doubt it’s true all over the world, and I doubt it’s true if we’re considering U.S. IQ scores from the past / over the 20’th century say.
But OK and thanks, I see that my worry that you were presenting what you thought to be a categoric / comprehensive list was misplaced.
DeWitt,
“all cultures are essentially equal”
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Of course they are not. Japan has few natural resources, little arable land, suffers frequent major earthquakes, tsunamis, and typhoons, yet is one on the most wealthy (per capita) countries with virtually no corruption, while Brazil is rich in resources and arable land, has no earthquakes, tsunamis, or typhoons, yet struggles with poverty, a poor educational system, and widespread corruption. Culture is VERY important, and most certainly not equal.
Steve (and DeWitt),
This is part of my problem with Critical Race Theory. They appear to start from the assumption or premise of widespread systemic racism and then go looking ‘through a racial lens’ to find supporting evidence.
Sort of a witch hunter’s mentality there IMO.
Thomas Fuller,
Bringing up the subject of legacy admissions to Universities is a classic red herring.
Apparently you also have completely missed the disparate impact argument for changing any policy that results in it even if the disparate impact is clearly unintentional. Well, except for professional sports and particularly basketball.
Also, as SteveF pointed out, affirmative action for university admission is much too late to do most people any good and may, in fact, be harmful (see self-segregation at universities e.g.). I also think, but am too lazy to do the research that might support it, that your score numbers are misleading. I strongly suspect that the average ‘disadvantaged’ applicant admitted score is below the average legacy applicant admitted score rather than the reverse. Any ‘disadvantaged’ (read Black) applicant that scores above a race neutral cutoff score is going to be admitted. No affirmative action would be necessary.
mark bofill,
This is the classical logical fallacy called “begging the question” or assuming your conclusion. Note that when you see people using “begging the question” in a sentence, they don’t usually mean assuming the conclusion.
DeWitt,
Yeah, that’s an expression that in my experience gets used improperly 90% of the time. To be fair, ‘begging the question’ is a poor choice of words to summarize the idea.
In some ways, CRT seems so crude. Surely these renown legal scholars aren’t unaware of the holes in the foundation of their theory. On the other hand, it seems like they’re pretty sophisticated about the propaganda they generate. I’m trying to understand what the ‘storytelling’ thing is all about (best I can make out so far, it’s either a propaganda vehicle or a substitute for objective analysis, or maybe both).
Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative”
Turbulent Eddie,
Not to mention preventing blindness and early death.
And now for something completely different:
Resident Alien on SyFy is a hoot. Alan Tudyk is perfectly cast as the titular alien in question posing as a human.
mark bofill,
Another word for story is anecdote. A recent example of storytelling, IMO, would be George Floyd or Breanna Taylor. So now we have Black people claiming that they fear they will be shot by a cop every time they walk out the door, when in reality they are much more likely to be killed by another Black civilian in a drive-by shooting even if they don’t go outside.
Yeah, but it’s like an organized machine. Well, not quite that. It’s a .. subculture industry?
https://justpublics365.commons.gc.cuny.edu/06/2013/5-steps-counter-storytelling-storify/
Did everybody already know this? Maybe I’m the only one this is news to.
It’s interesting to me because it bypasses discussion about evidence or the legitimacy of the arguments and seeks to achieve change by .. telling stories. And it looks to me like it’s been working.
Crazy.
Shrug.
NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/28/world/covid-19-coronavirus
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An investigation by the New York State attorney general has concluded that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration undercounted coronavirus-related deaths at nursing homes by as much as 50 percent.
The count of deaths in state nursing homes has been a source of controversy for Mr. Cuomo and state Health Department officials, who have been sensitive to any suggestion that decisions made at the outset of the pandemic may have caused some of those deaths, which the state puts at more than 8,700.
They have also been accused of obscuring a more accurate estimate of nursing home deaths, because the state only counted deaths at the actual facilities, rather than including deaths of residents who were transferred to a hospital and died there.
There are a number of open and active court cases regarding the last election.
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I find the below open records lawsuit interesting. This, and similar actions, have the potential to heat up politics to a degree even higher than currently exists.
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This action is solely limited to enforcement of an open records request made on the day of the election and never responded on. Quite a bit of sworn testimony on directly observed irregularities that prompted the records request.
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Interesting times
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Favorito v. Cooney (Fulton County Georgia District Court)
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https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/2020/12/petition-for-declaratory-and-injunctive-relief-stamped.pdf
A lot to respond to.
I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to acknowledge that our culture, despite many real virtues, has been plagued by systemic racism since its inception. You don’t need much of a racial lens to find evidence of it, even today, sadly.
If you have a pool of qualified potential entrants and will be making admission decisions based on some criteria, giving some extra points to disadvantaged, differently abled, or minorities does not seem inherently evil. Especially in a country where college enrollment is declining, universities are closing their doors and people can get into another college pretty easily. (That holds true for minorities, disadvantaged, etc. as well.)
As damaging as the lack of vitamin A is in many developing countries is the prevalence of lead in the air, paint and soil of low income communities in this country.
Young black men are indeed more likely to be shot be other young black men. Sadly, those killed by police are added to that total.
Blacks do go to prison at a higher rate than whites. The prevalence of crime is higher among blacks. So is poverty. So is lack of education. So is the prevalence of lead. So is the ease of prosecution. So is the incidence of harsher sentencing.
I would have been well pleased to play Rip van Winkle for the past four years. I’m really happy to be awake now. I’m excited by the potential of the current administration to undo some of the damage of the prior one and to chart out a new course for what I hope is a series of Democratic administrations.
And lastly, when I say I don’t want equal outcomes it means I don’t want equal outcomes.
Thomas,
“…when I say I don’t want equal outcomes it means I don’t want equal outcomes.”
You can say it, but some may not believe you. At a minimum, you want outcomes that are more equal than today.
mark bofill (Comment #197639)
January 28th, 2021 at 3:40 pm
It is a tool as they say and certainly could be used to start with a conclusion and then build a story around it. The tool is primarily for finding stories to counter some writing with which you might disagree.
I see a lot of this in journalism where it becomes obvious early in a written piece that you are only going to hear a given side of an issue. There are the obligatory anecdotal stories often presented with lots of emotional content. Towards the end of the writing you might see a counter statement presented with either no author comment or sometimes a counter to the counter. None of this is new. I have been seeing it for years.
Thomas Fuller (Comment #197642)
January 28th, 2021 at 4:00 pm
There have been a long series of Democrat administrations of the cities with inner cities with large minority populations. I do not think those outcomes would excite anybody outside the politicians who evidently thrive on it.
Thomas
It also does not seem inherently useful, nor inherently just, nor inherently reasonable. And of course, one can then move on to ask how many extra points is “some”.
Extra points at college admission does nothing to fix this problem. Suppylying vitamine A, fixing the lead , paint and soil are vastly better ways to fix this issue.
Extra points at college admission does nothing to fix this problem. Fixing crime in black neighborhoods will do more to fix this.
Extra points at college admission does nothing to fix this problem.
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And so on. The difficulty here is that preference in college admission is simply unsuited to fixing these things. And worse: advancing it as some sort of solution only distracts from people doing things to address the real problems. If there is lead in drinking water get it out. Don’t propose affirmative action programs which do absolutely nothing to get the lead out!
Lucia,
You have ruined your chances for an appointment by the Biden administration. 😉
Thomas Fuller,
Are you aware that blood lead levels in the USA (and in most countries), adult and children, fell dramatically (factor of 6?) when leaded gasoline was discontinued? Blood lead levels are far lower today than 35 years ago. Only a very small fraction of children (about 1% to 2%) have blood lead levels today that reach the CDC’s “level of concern” (5 micrograms per deciliter, which is lower than the 10 micrograms per deciliter that was the “level of concern” for a very long time). The average level is higher in industrial areas and in big cities, and lower in rural areas. Since I grew up when leaded gasoline was always used, I have no doubt my blood lead levels were higher than most kids have today. I guess I should blame all my intellectual shortfalls on lead. I can only imagine how smart I would have been absent lead in my blood!
SteveF (Comment #197652)
“Since I grew up when leaded gasoline was always used, I have no doubt my blood lead levels were higher than most kids have today. I guess I should blame all my intellectual shortfalls on lead. I can only imagine how smart I would have been absent lead in my blood!â€
________
Sure, and we have nothing to show for all the brain-damaging lead used in gasoline. The pollution from unleaded gasoline also is unhealthy. We should be glad if more and more motorists switch to electric cars.
GM hopes to eliminate gas vehicles in favor of an all-electric vehicle lineup by 2040, according to an article in today’s USAToday.
A less polluted future should contribute to healthier bodies and brains, regardless of what else comes along to screw things up.
While lead in gasoline may play some role in the crime rate, it’s role is far from major and may be small. See this compilation of the various factors affecting the crime rate.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/what-caused-crime-decline
OK_Max,
Nah, unleaded gasoline doesn’t cause much pollution. Among the many heath risks people face,
being poisoned by gasoline is pretty far down the list. I was joking about my childhood lead poisoning.
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WRT GM going all electric: It is very politically correct, and very unlikely to actually happen.
“GM hopes to eliminate gas vehicles in favor of an all-electric vehicle lineup by 2040, according to an article in today’s USAToday.”
I believe one might legitimately question whether GM will even be around in 2040.
If sufficient freedoms in markets, ideas and pursuance of innovations survive, I doubt that anyone can accurately predict what markets, much less the automobile market, will be in 20 years. If the government is heavily involved and determines winners and losers predictions will become more easily made because most alternatives will be depressed or eliminated and with the government way never having to admit failure.
At one period in my career I had considerable contact with management at all levels of Japanese, manufacturing companies. They would often ask about my company’s longer term plans and I would relate a 3 to 5 year very general view. They would often state that their company had a much longer term plan even out to 50 years. I would ask how they included human ingenuity in their plans and never receive an answer. In those days Japanese manufacturing was at its apex and long term planning was in and thus a 50 year plan was more like virtue signaling than anything realistic.
Please see Chevy Bolt.
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I’m not for or against electric cars, but the market will determine whether we go all electric, not a pronouncement from GM. If GM goes all electric and their competitors don’t and they lose market share then they will reverse immediately.
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I think electric cars are becoming more viable, they have solved the “range anxiety” issue, need to work on the recharge time, and the infrastructure for recharging on long trips.
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So it can definitely happen, and most likely will eventually, but GM’s announcement is more marketing. What isn’t marketing is if they decide to push enormous amounts of R&D money into the change.
The GameStop saga is full on entertainment now, better than Netflix. There are so many angles to this story.
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One is how the SEC has now cornered themselves, such that there is blatant market manipulation at hand and one of their primary job’s is to step in and protect the integrity of the market … to the advantage of hedge fund short sellers.
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To say that this isn’t politically viable after 2008 is an understatement. If they protect these people of ill repute then the internet will literally explode.
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The hedge funds will have to pay off ginormous losses with their other stock holdings and dragging the market down a bit as they crash and burn. Couldn’t happen to nicer people. I definitely believe Wall Street provides a real service but they are now in a position that they cannot be protected without severe backlash.
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Oh, and Janet Yellen has received $800K in “speaking fees” from hedge funds involved in this mess over the past several years. No conflict of interest there.
J&J vaccine 66% effective. That’s a bit disappointing, but adequate I suppose. Not very good against South African variant. I think we are heading to mRNA vaccines for older and susceptible people and the other vaccines for general population if they do it wisely.
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I don’t want to be Debbie Downer here, but I still don’t see a vaccine effect in the death data. One could postulate that it is still helping a death rate that could have been worse, but I expected it to show up by now. Maybe I was wrong. One could look at the death rate from old folks homes and see if anything really changed, not sure where to get that data.
Tom Scharf,
The Bolt is much more expensive than a comparable small gasoline powered car, so the lifetime fuel savings (say over 120,000 miles) of about $6,000 is not enough to cover the extra purchase price. Under the Biden administration, artificial gasoline shortages could change the economics, of course. But I think the real problem is that the range (officially 259 miles on a full charge), is actually considerably lower at normal highway speeds….. probably not over 200 miles.
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Around town daily use? Sure it would work for lots of people, but it isn’t going to work for any longer trips. It is just not a general purpose substitute for a gasoline powered car.
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Assuming most electric power is going to be generated by natural gas in the near future, there is a reduction in CO2 emissions, since gas turbine generators with a steam bottoming cycle reach over 60% thermal efficiency, and have less carbon per kilocalorie produced than gasoline as well. I haven’t tried to do an exact calculation of the CO2 reduction, but I suspect it is in the range of 70%.
The Bolt was basically a failure, that was the point. In order to meet the Obama era regulatory MPG requirement the companies were selling their electric vehicles at a loss until the fleet MPG numbers were met and then they could increase the prices to standard. It was a shell game. Once these rules are put back in place the same thing will happen. SUV’s will subsidize electric vehicles.
Tom Scharf,
The Gamestop story is interesting. I was unaware that hedge funds routinely short-sell shares to the market that don’t actually exist…. it is often all paper entries by brokerage houses. In the case of Gamestop, the short sellers had “short-sold” 140% of the outstanding shares in the company! This amounts to a “kiting” of the target stock, and seems to me little more than the willful manipulation of the market to drive down price (to the benefit of hedge funds, and detriment of everyone else). This awful activity is usually hidden from view, but this episode has exposed just how ugly and manipulative the entire scheme of short-selling by hedge funds is.
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I certainly hope there will be major reforms to rein in the hedge funds. I see little economic benefit from allowing short selling at all. But even if you were to accept the argument that short sellers help to inform the market about weak companies and increase market “liquidity”, those seem to be poor reasons for not severely restricting short-selling to avoid systemic manipulation (depression) of the stock prices of target companies. Three reforms that come to mind are:
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1) Stop all short sales when the total volume of shorts reaches a small fraction of outstanding shares… say 5% or 10%.
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2) Drastically increase margin requirements (initial and maintenance) so that shorts are effectively much less leveraged (and so less profitable).
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3) Criminally prosecute any fund manager who holds short positions on a stock (or a market segment) and then makes public pronouncements…. or even distributes “confidential tips”… which could depress prices in that stock (or that market segment).
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But I’m not going to hold my breath.
This is the best type of “reform” a hedge fund short seller can possibly get. Ruinous Financial Fear. The fear that they will get squeezed if they over expose the short. These short sellers have been engaging in their own legal reverse pump and dump schemes for a while now. Just because it can be a valid tool sometimes doesn’t mean it should be allowed when it is routinely abused.
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One big problem with shorts is there isn’t any theoretical limit to losses.
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The more complicated “innovative financial instruments” get the worse things are for a normal investor IMO and the higher the potential for abuse and bad outcomes.
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High frequency trading is yet another version of sophisticated skimming of the system that should be eliminated or restricted.
Tom Scharf,
“The more complicated “innovative financial instruments†get the worse things are for a normal investor IMO and the higher the potential for abuse and bad outcomes.”
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On this we agree. Regulatory approval of these instrument ought to be based on what real economic value they produce…. and by real economic value I do not mean “a more clever way to take money from the rubes”.
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If government can regulate gambling, certainly it can regulate “investment activities” which amount to little more than gambling… especially when those appear fraught with the potential for fraud. If government can outlaw obvious fraud, certainly it can outlaw financial activities which represent little more than a very clever fraud on the individual investor.
Tom
Disappointing only because the the mRNA vaccines are so spectaculary effective. Also, it’s a bit hard to compare because all the vaccines were made based on the early variant and JJ’s later tests means they are tested against later variants.
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Yes: I would prefer 95% effective. But if my choice is JJ 66% effective tomorrow vs. waiting until July for 95% effective, I’m taking the JJ tomorrow! Granted, that’s not going to be my choice. But right now, availability is low. JJ will be easier to deploy.
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Heck, I might be able to get JJ early and then get a Moderna booster later. It’s all good.
SteveF
I know!! That means they hadn’t even borrowed someone’s share. It’s seriously dangerous of the FTC to allow that.
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I don’t mind it existing. But someone should at least have to ‘borrow’ a share from a named person so they can transfer real ownership to the purchaser. Then the person from whom it was borrowed might request being paid something during the interim. This automatically limits the short sales because the only convenient way to borrow the share is if it’s held in a brokerage account. Also the person ‘lending’ the share would know they lent it and also know there could be a risk they would never get their share back if the borrower went belly up.
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I don’t quite know what happens when someone short sells a “pretend” non-existent share.
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Lucia,
The high effectiveness of the m-RNA vaccines is already driving other products from the market, even before going very far into the approval process. Merck pulled the plug on their two vaccines when phase 1 testing indicated a weak immune response compared to the m-RNA vaccines. Sanofi Pasture wisely contracted to produce the Pfizer vaccine, rather than try to duplicate its effectiveness.
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The J&J vaccine is just effective enough, if it can be made cheaply and in large volume quickly, to be worth distributing, but given the choice, few are likely to opt for the J&J vaccine if a better alternative is available. So I think the J&J vaccine, unless improved a lot, is not going to survive long term. I would take it, if it were available, but I will almost certainly get one of the other vaccines long before the J&J vaccine becomes available.
Lucia,
“I don’t quite know what happens when someone short sells a “pretend†non-existent share.”
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Fraud happens.
Hmmmm … now would be a good time to short GameStop, ha ha.
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I think I’ll pass on that circus. Apparently you can get to over 100% by the fact that shorts are done at different times and people can borrow a share from someone who already borrowed it etc.
RB (Comment #197664)
January 28th, 2021 at 11:37 pm
While lead in gasoline may play some role in the crime rate, it’s role is far from major and may be small. See this compilation of the various factors affecting the crime rate.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/what-caused-crime-decline
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RB, thank you for the link to the crime study.It’s a thorough study of what caused the decline in the nation’s crime rate. I look forward to reading more than the part on lead in gasoline.
Breathing lead in the air can affect brain development in children and lead to aggressive behavior, but the study says removal of lead from gasoline probably played only a small role in reducing the crime rate.
Tom Scharf,
” shorts are done at different times and people can borrow a share from someone who already borrowed it etc”.
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The short seller sells the borrowed shares. The buyer has them held by a broker. The short sellers says “Hey broker, you holding any Gamestop shares I can borrow?” and the broker replies: you betcha!, Round and round, without limit, always driving down the price. It is a market manipulation scam, the reverse of “pump-and-dump” on steroids. Effectively a fraud on the market that should be illegal.
I have been thinking about the best way to analyze the US daily Covid-19 cases and at the same time see if the holiday activity might have an effect on the numbers. I am familiar with a method of decomposing time series that is called CEEMDAN which is an improved version the method Empirical Mode Decomposition. It is a purely empirical method and it works without invoking prior assumptions about parameters. It can be applied to non linear and non stationary series.
For the US Daily Cases from Worldometer time series from February 13, 2020to January 27, 2021 the CEEMDAN method decomposed the series into 8 components which included a secular trend and 7 periodic components of vary frequencies and amplitudes. There is a heuristic method that can separate the components into signal and noise. When applied to this series the method determined that all the components were signal. I was somewhat surprised since this seldom occurs with time series.
I have produced two plots which can be viewed from the link below. Included are reference lines indicating the main holidays. The first plot includes the series data with the secular trend and the 4 lowest frequency period components. The secular trend continues upward with the lowest frequency and highest amplitude periodic component heading downward. I do not see consistent peaks with these periodic components that might indicate a holiday surge – but I leave judgment of that to posters viewing it.
For completeness I show in the second plot the 3 highest frequency and lowest amplitude periodic components along with the original series to give proper perspective of scale.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/butkyc3oetuoejz/BB_CEMDAN_Covid_Plots.pdf?dl=0
Kenneth,
Looks to me like the 7 day cycle is introducing a terrible level of noise. Would a 7-day running mean as a starting point do better at showing the underlying trend?
SteveF,
Chill out dude. If you think short selling more stock shares than actually exist is bad, you should look at the commodity futures markets. Those options normally far exceed the volume of actual commodity sales.
I don’t even feel sorry for the retail (read day) traders that are going to lose big when GameStop share prices finally collapse. They should have known better, as should the hedge fund when the price run up started. It wasn’t exactly a secret that a short squeeze was being engineered on Reddit. Remember all the day traders bragging on how much money they were making back in 2000 at the peak of the dotcom bubble? Most of them ended up losing it all and then some.
Btw, this sort of thing is exactly what you would expect to see at a market top.
Woo Hoo!
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Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Success with the browser refresh Olympics for my wife (just turned 65 last week). Vaccine appt on Monday.
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The system was crashing and not responding as last time, but we had 3 people hammering the site.
I suspect your average investor does not understand well the bottomless pit that a short seller can face and particularly when squeezed, but I am more certain that hedge fund investors do and thus they need to face the music when it happens. The Hedge funds surely know better and I hope they are not considered too big to fail. I also suspect that the small investor knows that investing in a super momentum stock is gambling more than investing and when the get-rich-quick scheme fails I have no sympathy for them. I doubt that there are but a very tiny fraction of your small investors who do short selling and that that fraction has extra funds to lose.
A half way informed investor can easily stay away from these risky methods of investing, but unfortunately not always so informed as to avoid selling when the market goes down, buying when it is up and attempting to time the market. Those are more human weaknesses that need to be overcome or least contained.
SteveF (Comment #197697)
January 29th, 2021 at 2:02 pm
The secular trend is very clearly shown.
The seven day or weekly cycle is real and is not noise but rather a cycle. I wanted to show all the periodic components of which the weekly is one. The weekly cycle, of course, increases in amplitude in correspondence with the case number increase.
More interesting are the lower frequency cycles and what they mean.
I would next do an analysis where I would use a week case number and not a running 7 day average.
Here is a link to a reasonable explanation of how the short is used in the real world.
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/05/shortexceed50.asp
Kenneth,
Indeed. Adding autocorrelation by using a running mean would not help the analysis.
In a normal environment even reasonable hedge fund masterminds would not have anticipated a short of $10/share to end up at $325/share. There are no fundamentals to support that, GameStop itself is just a random company in this frenzy. So it is openly artificial and targeted. One finds it hard to sympathize with these guys but the rules of engagement are not supposed to have empathy for the target written into them as a factor.
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The SEC has not been doing its job particularly well over the past 20 years, and it is probably time to clean house. Had they been effective in stopping this type of stuff then people would understand them stepping in now.
DeWitt,
“Chill out dude.”
You too.
I have no dog in this fight. I do have a dog in the fight when very rich and powerful people are making the rules change when they get their ‘tit in the wringer’ (so to speak), just to avoid losses… losses they very richly deserve.
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“Those options normally far exceed the volume of actual commodity sales.”
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I am fully aware of the options market; Hillary is, they say, a legend in the options market, so you could consult with her. 😉 But options are a completely different story. Options are a dangerous game, where even the hedge funds are a lot more careful.
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Massive short selling of stocks… including shares which do not even exist… with the clear intent to depress market prices, is not the same as betting on the balance between supply and demand in soybeans. It is a scam, where those with enough financial power (usually) take from those with less.
Tom Scharf,
The pros should have never been involved with a stock with a short interest of 50%, much less 140%. That was begging for a short squeeze. And this is far from a normal environment. Can you say robinhood.com? I knew you could.
As far as the SEC stepping in, it reminds me of how the commodities exchange changed the rules when the Hunt brothers managed to corner the silver market.
SteveF,
Do we know if it was only the hedge funds that drove the short interest far beyond the rational bounds? It almost never gets to even 50%. Were there retail investors on the short side as well?
On Gamestop: I think investors are seeing what can happen with the “new normal”. 🙂
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I anticipate some rule changes. I hadn’t thought of how limiting shorts only to those who borrow a real share won’t necessarily limit float. It might help if a purchased share was “tagged” as “borrowed from Joe” an then couldn’t be relent. But that would have weird effects.
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Maybe they could make a rule that you couldn’t lend a stock to a shortseller if you haven’t held it at least 3 months. You might still get above 100% float but it would slow things down. I’m sure real traders could come up with better ideas than mine though.
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Like everyone else: I don’t feel sorry for the hedgefunds. I won’t feel sorry for the retail traders when the time comes. I might feel sorry for the families of some of the retail traders.
Making them put up a lot more collateral for shorts will slow them down. This is just one of many financial instruments out there though and I suppose you aren’t going to stop private transactions very easily no matter what. I don’t know enough about it to know where regulation starts and ends with public/private transactions. People who want to gamble on short term stock moves are probably going to do it no matter what. It’s likely better for it to be transparent than hidden.
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When it gets to the point of distorting “real” investing then things need to be changed. I’d like to have confidence the SEC is on top of that, but I don’t. I don’t want to have to know about things like unregulated derivatives causing the 2008 meltdown.
The hedge funds could have reduced their risk by using puts, but they wanted to take the greater risk to make a bigger profit on their shorting. They made a mistake and should have to pay the price. That is why markets are better than regulations.
The link below is in line with my thinking on the GameStop story.
https://mises.org/wire/gamestop-market-distortions-and-manipulations
The hedge funds had to be very much aware of the ratio of shorts to float for GameStop and the risks involved. You cannot regulate away stupidity.
In my view it was the Federal Reserve and easy money that was the primary root cause of creating the bubble that caused the financial melt down. The prompting of the Federal government for easing credit worthiness for mortgages did not help.
When it happens again the Feds will be ready with another cause pointing away from them and lot of the public will once again buy their story.
The purpose of stock market from my point of view isn’t so Hedge Funds can do death match battles against pimply teenagers on Reddit over a stock bet that has nothing to do with what GameStop actually does for a living. That is a distortion of what most investors are interested in. I’d just prefer them both to take their silly Russian Roulette gambling feud offline somewhere.
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“My point of view” being the operative phrase of course. I’d prefer to see day traders disappear. I’m just not sure the very short term stock gambling adds much value to the intent of this market. Maybe somebody can explain how it does. As it sits now, and has been, this is just high frequency noise to long term investors. If it starts threatening Mommy and Daddy’s retirement accounts then somebody needs to get spanked. We aren’t there yet.
WSJ: Covid-19 Cases Decline in Nursing Homes, Offering Hopeful Sign for Vaccines
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-cases-decline-in-nursing-homes-offering-hopeful-sign-for-vaccines-11611933118
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“According to data released Thursday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the 17,584 reported coronavirus infections among nursing home residents in the week ending Jan. 17 marked the fourth straight week of declines.”
“What we’re seeing is a lot of early, positive signs,†said David Grabowski, a professor at Harvard Medical School. “They’re all encouraging and collectively suggest the vaccine is potentially starting to take effect.â€
.
If you have access, see the comparison of total cases vs nursing home cases graph.
Lucia,
Pierre L. Gosselin @NoTricksZone has a re-tweet about some nasal ionized spay that is supposed to kill the Covid virus in the nose. In the comments, there is some mentions of Ivermectin. It is in French, but you can probably get the gist of it with Google Translate.
Tom Scharf,
Hedge funds shorting stocks and simultaneously distorting the market to guarantee their own profits is far worse and far more destructive to mom and pop’s retirement account than “pimply day traders” buying stocks. Not sure how you know about their skin.
DeWitt,
Whether there were shorts among retail investors will likely become known in the several investigations that I expect will take place in the coming weeks. Based on the descriptions I have read, most of the short squeeze loses were at hedge funds, with most estimates of fund loses at $5 billion or more. What I suspect is more likely is that other hedge funds became involved in buying once the squeeze got started, and that helped the price explode. Like the left, hedge funds even eat their own.
P-E,
My French is rusty, but I can probably get the gist.
But anyway, it’s going to be the carageenan spray I’m using. There is an “invermectin” study done in Argentina that used invermecting and carageenan combined as a prophelaxix. For some reason “everyone” on twitter is all hepped up about the invermectin and seems to have been ignoring the nasal spray. I, in contrast, am only using the nasal spray.
.
I’m not using the nasal spray because it necessarily works better (or even works at all), but the possible negative effects of the spray are much less than the invermectin (which can cause liver damage). Homemade spray is cheap. The major cost is the bottles.
.
I’ll post details this weekend. (I’ve waited because there were issues that needed to be ironed out in making a decent spray using bottles I got from Amazon. I don’t think I’ve got the best possible solution to the problem of constantly plugging bottles. But I want to explain what can go wrong if you just try to make this as homemade spray. )
PE-
They don’t mention the active ingredient!!
I hunted. It looks like it might be this (in English)
https://apnews.com/press-release/business-wire/science-business-public-health-products-and-services-coronavirus-pandemic-d6bf385141184700a2bde035c6b47678
=====
The SaNOtize Nitric Oxide Nasal Spray (NONS) is designed to kill the virus in the upper airways, preventing it from incubating and spreading to the lungs.
The SaNOtize treatment is based on nitric oxide, a natural nanomolecule produced by the human body with proven anti-microbial properties shown to have a direct effect on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. The treatment can be delivered by nasal spray, throat gargle or nasal lavage.
“If, as we expect, the current Phase II results in Canada confirm the very …
======
Looks like phase 2 trials. Carageenan and Xilytol sprays are also undergoing trials.
Lucia,
Looking forward to reading your recipe. I am an experimental research chemist (ret’d), so it should be fun.
lucia,
The problem with that is it won’t help if the infection starts in the lungs. Otherwise asymptomatic people have had classic COVID-19 ‘ground glass’ patches in their lungs in chest x-rays. I have also seen in several places that the lungs are the primary target of SARS-CoV-2, not the upper respiratory tract.
I had no symptoms of an upper respiratory tract infection when I had COVID-19.
Tom Scharf
I happen to think that the stock market doesn’t trade on fundamentals most of the time and this has been true for hundreds of years. But even today, thinly traded stocks have quite wide bid/ask spreads.
PE–
It’s not a brilliant recipe!!! It’s not even a secret. It’s just that I find I have to heat the stuff to get a spray. Otherwise, the gel that forms plugs the sprayer. I’d thought it was the sprayer were flawed for a while.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #197734): “The problem with that is it won’t help if the infection starts in the lungs. Otherwise asymptomatic people have had classic COVID-19 ‘ground glass’ patches in their lungs in chest x-rays. I have also seen in several places that the lungs are the primary target of SARS-CoV-2, not the upper respiratory tract.”
.
From what I have read, the infection starts in the upper respiratory tract, then often moves to the lungs. When it gets to the lungs, the trouble starts.
If I suddenly decide to buy 1% of a company’s stock, the price will go up; but probably not by much. If for some reason 90% of the stock can not be sold, my purchase will cause a much larger rise in price. If 99% of the stock is not available for sale, then my attempt to buy every available share will send the price through the roof.
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140% of GameStop stock was tied up by short sales. Talk about a recipe for disaster. Anyone selling the stock short under such conditions deserves to lose their shirt. Even if nothing illegal was being done.
.
But how is 140% short interest legal? I am no day trader, but I thought that to take out a put, you either have to own the stock or borrow it. Surely, I can’t legally loan the same shares to two different people. Surely, I can’t legally loan out the shares I have borrowed to cover the put. Am I missing something? If not, then the hedge fund manages who are losing billions are not getting what they deserve. They deserve long prison sentences.
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Why would the hedge funds guys take such an extreme position? The only thing I can think of is that they were somehow trying to manipulate the stock price to their advantage. In which case they belong in prison.
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So three cheers for the guys pulling off the squeeze! They look like heroes to me. If they get rich in the process, good for them.
.
And the firms like Robinhood trying to drive down the sock price by banning purchases by ordinary investors? They should be made to repay every penny lost by such investors. Plus nice fat punitive damages. And then send the people in charge to prison.
MikeM
Evidently, they don’t need to borrow. (Which I think is a problem. )
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But even if you have to borrow a real share, you can end up with more than 100% short interest. It’s similar to growth of the money supply when banks lend money.
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Let physical share looks like a piece of paper.
.
* Say the “real” owner is A. (Note: it’s not stamped to indicate it is owned by A.)
.
* A lends it to B who short sells to C. C now “owns” a share. C doesn’t know it’s borrowed. He just owns one.
.
* So, C lends his share to D who short sells to E. Neither D nor E know this share was borrowed from someone who borrowed it in the first place.
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* There is now 1 physical share which is short-sold two times.
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At the end of this whole process, A is supposed to get “his” share back. But really he only gets “a” share back. It’s not marked; they are fungible.
.
Banks make the money supply grow in the same way when they lend since most transactions don’t involve actual physical paper. But they are required to keep a set fraction of physical money on hand, which prevents the money supply from growing infinitely.
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Short selling isn’t restricted the same way banks are. A person can lend 100% of their stock to others. The short sellers generally need to put up a certain amount of money to meet margin calls. If the price of the stock rises too much, they have to put the money in place or buy the stock to cover their shorts. Presumably they pay interest on their loans, but it might not be too much (perhaps they can put up other stock as collateral. I don’t actually know what the rules are. I don’t short stock.)
MikeM/DeWitt
I’ve read that it at least usually starts in the nose. I doubt they fully know anything with 100% certainty with this disease. But if it usually starts in the nose, then a prophylactic nasal spray has potential to usually work. That’s enough for a prophylactic.
.
It seems at least 4 are being proposed and at least 3 of these are undergoing clinical trials:
1) ι-Carageenan only.
2) Xylitol & grapefruit seed. ( I haven’t seem Xylitol only. The spray being tested is an already existing product that is a mix.)
3) κ-Carageenan and gellan gum. (This is a really cool paper discussing this. That doesn’t mean it necessarily works better than the others.)
.
I guess the NO one is being tested. NO is usually a gas, but the articles I found say it’s a nano-particle. The ones I found are scant on other details.
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Xylitol and ι-carageenan has been tested in vitro and works. I haven’t read of any clinical trials.
.
Anyone could make sprays with the carageenans, Xylitol or gellan at home. They are food ingredients and the test don’t seem to involve much of anything other than mixing them with water. I couldn’t find NO nanoparticles at Amazon, but it’s marketed as an ingredient in all sorts of bodybuilding supplements. But those contain lots of other junk so even if they contain the right stuff, you really couldn’t make a homemade spray.
MikeM
I saw a tweet that claimed trading companies explained it actually had to do with rising costs. They were losing money on transactions. Of course I don’t have a link to the tweet. I wasn’t interested enough to track down anything more at the time, so this is a rather dim memory.
Lucia,
One spokesperson for Robinhood said they were concerned that “customers would be unable to cover their positions”, and the firm would then lose money. Which sounds like they are talking about short positions. The statement was perfectly unclear, so it was impossible to say for certain what justification they used, but my guess is they had customers with significant short accounts in Gamestop and in other consumer goods retail companies… those other companies were also heavily shorted by the same hedge funds, although they had not been squeezed as much as with Gamestop. I suspect regulators were pressing them to suspend purchases until some large short positions could be covered, avoiding bankruptcies. When (if?) the Robinhood CEO testifies under oath we may hear what really happened. What is clear is that retail purchases of several heavily shorted stocks were temporarily blocked and only retail sales were allowed. Of course, if sales are allowed at all, then there is obviously a counter party that remains able to purchase shares, even though the public was blocked. Those allowed to purchase will almost certainly turn out to be hedge funds with large short positions.
.
Seems to me many lawsuits will result from the blocking of retail stock purchases while still allowing short sellers to buy. That is AKA theft.
lucia (Comment #197755): “Evidently, they don’t need to borrow. (Which I think is a problem. )”
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Yes, that is called a “naked short”. I am almost certain that is not legal. But it seems that people get away with it since it is hard to catch people at it.
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lucia: “But even if you have to borrow a real share, you can end up with more than 100% short interest.”
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But can you do it legally?
.
lucia: “It’s similar to growth of the money supply when banks lend money.”
.
By that logic, checking kiting is perfectly legal.
I don’t think that is a good analogy since money is just an accounting tool. Shares of stock are not.
Maybe “share kiting” is legal. But I very much doubt it. Not much point in speculating without more information. But it definitely should not be legal.
Lucia
A does not know B or C. When A’s broker lends it to B for short-selling, the new purchaser C and A both own GME stock – so you created a fictitious one. But this essentially functions as the real thing for C as far as trading it goes. The only issue is dividends. If GME paid dividends before the short sale was covered, the short-seller B is on the hook for those dividends. So, C still gets dividends as if it were the real thing. When the short-sale is eventually covered, the system is restored.
SteveF (Comment #197763): “I suspect regulators were pressing them to suspend purchases until some large short positions could be covered, avoiding bankruptcies … if sales are allowed at all, then there is obviously a counter party that remains able to purchase shares, even though the public was blocked.”
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If so, then those regulators need to go to prison. They have no business protecting some investors at the expense of others. Exchanges will sometimes temporarily freeze trading in a stock so that nobody can buy or sell. But picking and choosing who can buy or sell? Allowing that sends us down the path to revolution.
Re: Robinhood restricting trades, it has to do with the settlement of trades by the third-party where buyers and sellers have to be matched in the T+2days period after the trade. The brokers have to put up collateral and this collateral requirement was raised by the third party (the NSCC).
Nitric Oxide is a gas, a very unstable one. It may be a “nano-particle” if it’s in the form of some kind of donor molecule ie nitroprusside. It acts to dilate blood vessels, which could prove useful for bodybuilders etc to increase oxygen supply. I’m not sure how this is supposedly being used against covid (I might have missed the original message on this), but if it’s as a nasal spray, I suppose dilation of blood vessels in the nose may help “clear” virus particles more rapidly by promoting more efficient blood flow (especially in cold weather) increasing the speed of the immune response. Alternatively, it might be some free radical effect.
MikeM
Yes.
No. The shorts have nothing to do with the sort of “float” involved in check kiting. Anyway, “logic” that you see an element of A that is similar to an element of B doesn’t trump explicitly written law saying “A” is legal and “B” is not. The law can explicitly detect a context and make A legal and B not even if there is some “similarity”. Selling aspirin is legal. Selling crack is not. Both share the “logic” of involving monetary transactions between a buyer and seller. Telling a judge your crack sale should be legal based on this logic ain’t going to fly in court.
MikeM
I can go to the bank and get cash, as in paper money. I can also get coins. Money is not just an accounting tool. And anyway both the short sales and the money circulation use accounting to keep track of who owns what. Sometimes that the paper-share associated with a short sale stays in the same dang vault at a brokerage.
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FWIW: I learned about banks regulation and how much they are required to hold being used to expand and contract the amount of money in circulation above the number of printed bills in something like the 4th or 5th grade. So, yes, this happens.
DaveJR
You haven’t missed anything. The string of info we have here is:
*Pierre Gosselein posted something about nasal spray on twitter. IT’s in French.
* I hunted down his tweet and found text and video. It was vague. It just proclaims there is a magic-bullet nasal spray being made by a start-up firm in Marseille. No ingredients or details provided. No discussion of clinical trials. Just your usual business hype. (Not to suggest it’s not true, just no details.)
* I used the french terms to hunt more. I found something that mentioned enough details to suggest NO is the French firms magic ingredient and that mentions they are going into Phase II trials. I think this is where the “nano-particles” may have been mentioned.
* I concluded this is probably the hyped nasal spray.
* I googled at Amazon to see if I could find NO of any sort in particular the nano-particles. I found the bodybuilding supplements. Also stuff that mentioned the word “beets” (bleh!!) Possibly they were ‘super beets!”
So, I suspect the Marseille nasal spray has something to do with NO. But it’s a trail of breadcrumbs with no heft.
I also concluded I definitely do not have enough information to imitate the French nasal spray concoction (and likely never will.)
I should add, there is another spray I see discussed on the intertubes: colloidal silver.
Short selling does have some useful benefits.
https://www.equuspointcapital.com/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-short-selling/
Jim Chanos was a short seller of Enron based on his extensive research on their operations that finally exposed the problems to the public.
In an earlier post I said the hedge funds could hedge a short with a put when that, of course, should have been with a call. I am not sure exactly how hedge funds do this hedging of shorts, but with GameStop they obviously did not do what their name suggests and the market made them pay.
Sorry…. nitric oxide gas?
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canadian-company-sanotize-research-aims-to-limit-covid-19-spread-with/
Nitric oxide to the lungs is also being explored:
https://journal.chestnet.org/article/S0012-3692(20)34397-X/fulltext
Here’s the closest to original source I have for claims on the nitric oxide nasal spray working. It’s still a PR announcement:
https://sanotize.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/SaNOtize_HC_USU_release_FINAL.pdf
Links to web site or paper were not clickable for me.
Clinica trial on the NO (NORS ) nasal spray
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04337918
lucia,
Do you have a source for the legality of naked shorts and stock kiting? The fact that the hedge funds were doing it does not mean it is legal.
lucia (Comment #197780): “Clinica trial on the NO (NORS ) nasal spray
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04337918”
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lucia (Comment #197778): “Nitric oxide to the lungs is also being explored”
.
They all laughed when Trump speculated about delivering some sort of disinfectant to the lungs. But he may have been right! 🙂
Mike M,
You can read about the tradable stocks = float + synthetic longs here.
https://www.shortsight.com/short-interest-of-float-2-0/
Correction to my post above (Comment #197766).
When B borrows A’s stock (with whom the broker has a lending agreement) and short sells it to C, you create one synthetic long position. However, C gets the dividends from GME and A gets the dividends from the broker (routed from B), not the other way around.
Naked shorting is illegal, though it apparently happens.
This seems to say that naked shorts are illegal but that is problematic to enforce:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_short_selling#Naked_shorts_in_the_United_States
So it seems the SEC creates regulations to try to prevent naked shorts and people find ways around them. But that does not make the naked shorts themselves legal.
.
If I understand the link provided by RB (Comment #197784), short interest over 100% could be an artifact of how the calculation is done. But I only skimmed that link.
——–
p.s. – RB’s link (from September) discusses the short interest in Gamestop and says that which such numbers:
GME has 50M float and currently ~60M shorts. Done legally without naked shorts, there should only be 60M corresponding synthetic longs. So, short interest on this larger stock base is 60/(60+50) and can never exceed 100%.
RB,
Short interest is normally calculated using the float, not the float plus the synthetic shares. But yes, if there are no naked shorts, then the fraction of the shorts to the float plus shorts can never exceed 100%. Then there’s the short interest ratio which is the ratio of the total short sales to the daily trading volume. It’s also known as days-to-cover.
On why Robinhood suspended trading in GME and a few other hot stocks from the WSJ:
I would bet my own money that somewhere in the agreement that Robinhood users have to sign to be able to trade with them, this is covered. So Robinhood doesn’t owe GME traders who weren’t able to execute a trade a dime.
DeWitt,
Agree.
Yes, the WeBull CEO did a much better job of explaining this. But everybody is trying to shoehorn their political takes into this – from AOC to Greenwald/The Federalist.
And on the depressing news front from the WSJ:
And we were told it was only Trump that was a threat to democracy. It gets even more depressing with calls to deplatform Fox News from cable and satellite providers and for advertisers to not buy ads there because unlike CNN and MSNBC, Fox News is misinforming the public. [/sarc]
Venezuela here we come.
It’s possible that the above link gets around the paywall, but I don’t know for sure.
MikeM,
Why would I? I never claimed naked shorts are legal. I made a comment on this
My example did not involve any “naked shorts”. Every short was base based on the person who borrowed from someone who has purchased a share stock. What I described is legal.
.
Naked shorts are illegal though. See https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/nakedshorting.asp.
DeWitt,
“So Robinhood doesn’t owe GME traders who weren’t able to execute a trade a dime.”
.
Maybe, but I think it will very much depend on what actually happened. It wasn’t that they couldn’t execute a trade, it was that they could only sell, not buy. Of course the brokerage houses will claim to be as innocent and pure as new fallen snow. But I think there will be pointed questions raised about whether companies like Robinhood received pressure from the SEC (or the Biden administration, or others) to stop retail purchases. If in fact certain investors (holding large short positions) were allowed to purchase Gamestop shares but others were not, then I think there could be very bad consequences for those involved in doing that.
In fact, Donald Trump was never a threat to democracy. He is a great defender of democracy. The real enemies of democracy paint him as a threat, partly as smoke screen for their designs and partly because he was their enemy.
Mike M,
Sure, Trump was never a threat to democracy. But he did adopt policies opposed by the left, and he was such an a$$hole that he made an easy target. The left would strenuously oppose those policies, and would attack any Republican who advanced them, in any way available. Trump just made it very easy for the left to claim horrible things about him. They still are, and will continue to.
I have completed another analysis using the CEEMDAN method of decomposing the Covid-19 weekly series for cases and deaths. The intent was to look for holiday surges and any other interesting observations looking at the series components.
The weekly series gives a better view of what might be occurring in yielding the plots which are linked below. The CEEMDAN decomposition produced 5 components: a secular trend, 2 low frequency periodic components and 2 high frequency components that can be classified as noise.
A quick perusal of the plots might indicate surges in cases and deaths in the Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Year time periods. That view, however, does not hold up when looking at the components whereby the series blips for those time periods appear in a noise component. Further comparison of the cases and deaths series shows the blips in the same time periods which would indicate a holiday reporting artifact since we would expect the deaths to trail the cases.
Somewhat disconcerting is the secular trend in the weekly and daily cases and deaths plots which shows a continuing upward movement. Countering that trend is the highest amplitude periodic component, that corresponds to the three major US surges, that shows a downward trend. Without a high rate of vaccination or some other mitigation action one might expect another national surge in a few months bigger than the most recent.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ch1sa755bywtyd2/CovidWeeklyUS_CEEMDAN_Jan2021.pdf?dl=0
Steve, that is why I do not understand those Republicans that nominated him and continue to stand by him. It is like attempting to make your case with your brain tied behind your back.
MikeM, I would rather have an articulate defender of individual freedom and at least of a republic and not a democracy. Trump’s bizarre behavior in not accepting the outcome of an election, asking the Georgia official to find votes for him and asking Pence not to accept the election results was not exactly acts of a defender of democracy. His persona and operating procedure were such that he has left an indelible negative mark on his presidency and party.
What DeWitt posted above about “The Post piece argues that though their solution was “flawed,†the Federalists had reason to worry about “unregulated freedom of the press.— is very troubling but it does not make Trump look better in my view.
Asking the Georgia official to find votes for him was not what Trump did. He thought the votes were not counted correctly and had multiple reasons for expecting a much larger turnaround in his favor, as detailed in the lawsuit filed in December at the earliest possible date, which still has not gotten a court appearance. Trump was saying you just need to give me x amount of the hundreds of thousands of votes we have in the lawsuit.
The Secretary of State has rebutted nearly everything in the lawsuit, but has refused to share data with the Trump campaign and David Shafer to confirm for themselves.
Kenneth,
And in a similar vein: Socialism is the ideal form of government but it’s implementation has been ‘flawed’ every time it’s been tried. I’ve seen reports that there are still Venezuelans who actually believe that.
Do these columnists not read the stories coming out of Hong Kong and the rest of China? What they propose is almost exactly what the CCP is doing to its citizens. Then again, maybe that’s what they think they want.
Kenneth,
What was the alternative to Trump in 2016? Jeb!? Carley Fiorina? Any of a number of Rinos? After Trump won the nomination, the alternative was Hillary. I am not sure who would have been a better choice among Republicans, but I very much doubt any of them would have bested Hillary. Yes Trump has a multitude of flaws, but was far better for the country than Hillary. Trump without the schoolyard insults, the crazy twitter habit, the bonkers ad-libbing on prepared speeches, and the verbal diarrhea would have been a big improvement, but that was never destined to happen. Trump lost mainly because of covid and his many personal flaws, but I would take Trump over a profoundly evil person like Hillary every time.
Kenneth,
Those graphs are a lot easier on the eyes.
.
I am not sure what information can be gleaned from them. The early surge was mostly in places like the NE of the USA where a combination of lack of awareness of the threat and downright stupidity on the part of several governors causes many deaths. The summer surge looks like the spread of the virus to places where there had been very few cases and deaths early on. The autumn/winter surge looks like everyone staying indoors, making spread far more likely…. perhaps combined with covid fatigue. California’s giant surge looks like people just got very tired of Newsome’s rules.
SteveF,
You and other people keep saying that, but only well after the 2016 election. Before the election, Hillary wanted Trump as her opponent. He was about the only one of the multiple candidates she was sure she could beat. If she hadn’t run such a poor campaign, not to mention James Comey’s meddling, she would have. What was it, a total of 40,000 votes in three states, or something like that?
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #197801): “I would rather have an articulate defender of individual freedom and at least of a republic and not a democracy.”
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Yeah, right. Someone who would bravely let the would-be tyrants’ dogs tear him to shreds while going down politely to defeat. I’ll take a thick skinned fighter any day. Would I prefer someone with Trump’s grit and cunning behind Reagan’s nice smooth exterior? Yes. But that person does not exist.
Mike M.
I’ll take almost any GOP candidate other than Trump. I don’t think Trump has any cunning.
I supported Trump a long time, but in the end I couldn’t accept it anymore. He advocated for Pence to effectively overturn the election. This is not fake news or media spin; it’s what happened. I’m not OK with that. Trump did not appear to appreciate that there are things more important to this country than whether or not he rules another four years. It looked to me like he was badly out of touch with reality, to think he could prevail by such a device and that his second term would be accepted; that he would be effectively able to rule under such circumstances. He would not. The lasting damage set by such a precedent in my view far outweighs anything he could have dreamed of accomplishing.
Trump did some good, but his time is done. Maybe DeSantis will be the guy in 2024. Maybe somebody else. But I’m done with Trump.
The MSM was very much in Trump’s corner during the Republican primary campaign and finding humor in his disparaging remarks used against his opponents. That they then turned on him during the Presidential campaign was predictable, but they certainly showed their inclinations of wanting Trump for Hillary’s opponent. Hillary was a terrible candidate and over confident besides. Trump barely defeated her.
Joe Biden in many ways was even a worse candidate than Hillary but in the first debate he bested Trump by saying hardly anything and Trump never shutting up. A comparison of that to the Pence/Harris debate shows how a normal and rational candidate can appear to the voting public.
Overall I think that Trump has invigorated enough of left and turned off a sufficient number of Republican voters that he will and end up being a large net minus for the conservative/Republican cause. The Biden administration very much appears headed towards being the most left wing in US history.
Trump’s former Democrat leanings were very evident when he called for “going big” on so-called Covid-19 recovery bills and then after agreeing to a bill with a $600 per person allocation in the bill upped the ante to $2000.
I think many if not most of the Trump voters and supporters were voting against his opponent and not for him, some probably thought there was a method in his madness and others well might be as delusional as he is – as in the example of storming congress to overturn the election.
Kenneth
Yes. I think the Democrats learned to let Trump just shoot himself in his own foot. In 2016, they didn’t know how to handle him. Now the do. In a one-on-one, just let him be a loud doofus. Don’t let him turn you into a loud doofus or to being visibly defensive. Leave him looking foolish punching air. People will see the fool.
.
If Trump is the GOP candidate in 2024, he will continue to be a loud doofus in public. He will lose again.
I think voters have very short memories and dislike both political parties. The Republicans will win next time if they have a viable candidate. Pence, Rubio, etc. The left is every bit as good at self sabotage as the right is (deplorables, mostly peaceful protests, defund the police, etc.) . Their active attempts to suppress speech (and thought!) is a lifetime vote against them for me, I just cannot stomach that. That the media itself is cheerleading speech suppression is beyond the pale.
.
Trump’s impeachment lawyers just quit, he is obviously in la-la land. The deeper he goes, the more likely we will never see him again. He did go too far, and it is politically unforgivable. In the end it is a good thing that he did as we will unlikely every see him again as a serious candidate.
Mr. Scharf, I pretty much agree with everything you wrote (being a Democrat, my examples of poor behavior would be different).
My wife is French and she predicted Trump’s victory in 2016 while I was scoffing at him as an unviable candidate.
Now I have to explain to her and repeatedly reinforce something I often have to remind myself of–that in no way is the Democratic party good. It is beset with cronyism, often susceptible to machine politics and easily warped by those at the extremes.
Its only saving grace is that Republicans are worse. By an order of magnitude, in my opinion.
Tom,
The GOP is not worse than the Dems. You just prefer the Dem extremes to the GOP extremes, so you think GOP worse.
.
Living near Chicago, “machine politics” is nearly a synonym for “Democrats”.
NBC: “All 50 states in the U.S. are reporting shortages as America’s fragmented administrative and health care systems struggle to distribute even the limited vaccine stocks that have been produced.”
.
What? There are either shortages or we aren’t distributing what we have. It can’t be both.
.
Later … “But what makes the U.S. especially troubled, according to experts, is that its health care system is not centralized”
.
Later … “In Europe the situation is equally fraught. A morass of bureaucratic infighting appears to have stymied the European Union rollout, which has been glacially slow and dysfunctional.”
.
I am finding this kind of conflicting gibberish in the media more and more often lately. It’s basically attack all sides regardless of any coherent argument.
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If there isn’t federalized distribution all the way to the last mile then people who like centralized control imagine that it would be super competent, never mind the super competent rollout of Obamacare, ha ha. It is messy, but government + unprecedented = messy no matter what level it is. It is distressing that we cannot even get a competent website for vaccine scheduling done 6 weeks after the vaccine was approved. Where is big tech here? They need some positive PR, they can get it there.
Here’s my experience with our county scheduling:
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Over 4 weeks ago: Total chaos, no central repository for who had vaccines or how to schedule appointments.
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3 weeks ago: Central website based off some strange online Microsoft Outlook hack using their own local system. Totally non-functional. Crashed and never was usable. Phone lines hopelessly overloaded.
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2 weeks ago: My county starts using a scheduling portal used by other rural counties. Immediately crashed and never worked until they secretly reopened it 6 hours later. Phone lines hopelessly overloaded.
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1 week ago. Same portal, running on a salesforce.com server. Frequently crashed in humorous and non-humorous ways, got a vaccine scheduled after approx. 50th attempt to get through the process. Phone line hopelessly overloaded. Scheduled 10,000 appts in one hour for the week supply.
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There have been glaring errors such as after you schedule your 1st appt, you go to 2nd appt, but when you proceed you are told your 1st appt is no longer available and have to start over (no hold on 1st appt). It is obvious that the server was dropping 80% or more of all requests, and the client would just lockup and never respond.
Tom Scharf,
My wife watches NBC news. I have to leave the room when it’s on. It’s not quite as bad as MSNBC, but I think it’s catching up.
As far as the obvious contradictions and misinterpretations, it appears they are just parroting progressive talking points without any thought involved, i.e. they are on board with a single payer government run health care system so any problem with health care in the US must be caused by not having one in spite of substantial evidence to the contrary, i.e. Canada and most of the EU.
We are, if what I have seen is comprehensive, third best in the world for percent of population vaccinated, at least with highly effective vaccines, behind only Israel and the UK. The UK started earlier, so that’s part of the difference and Israel is a major pharmaceutical manufacturer and small.
I wonder at these crashy websites. Nginx is free and supports load balancing. Amazon (or even Digital Ocean) can be used for scalable servers. I read Amazon has AWS Auto Scaling. I don’t know Amazon’s servers well, but Digital Ocean supports load balancers as well. What are these people doing that their websites suck so badly?
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I imagine them hiring some college kids who whip up something using Python Flask and using that as a production server. Wouldn’t surprise me.
We also spread our risk among many companies and got vaccine priority. Perhaps we got lucky. There are some murmurings about global “vaccine equity” but it is noted that nobody here is really complaining that the US is hogging as much vaccine as they can and calling for changes. Capitalism works sometimes. It was obviously appropriate for the Feds to do the overall negotiations with vaccine companies, imagine if every state had to do their own deal, or we signed up to allow the UN to do it all (the ultimate nightmare).
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The last mile problem is unclear. Perhaps the national guard could have done it better. As it is though, we are using up vaccine as fast as they can make it and I would suggest it will be supply limited for quite a while.
mark bofill,
It’s just amateur hour right now for online scheduling. In my case it would appear that there was a bottleneck getting to the DB that held what appt’s were available, it had to custom create that page for every access. It’s hard to say when all you get is a non-responding web page. It would usually stall when trying to get the list of current available appts, or when trying to write a new appt to the DB.
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I’ve done enough web software (to not want to do anymore, ha ha) to somewhat understand when it was dropping requests and start the process over again. I very much doubt the rest of the 65+ crowd has that insight.
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There are software products that can load test your site, clearly they haven’t gone through that process yet. I think it will likely work pretty good in a few weeks.
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All these problems disappear if you have people pre-register and have a lottery every week.
In an attempt to get a big picture view of what is occurring with Covid-19 I did the same CEEMDAN decomposition of the weekly Worldometer world case and death series as I did with the corresponding US data. It is surprising in my view how the general appearances of the US and world series and decomposed components are similar. There is even the Christmas/New Years reporting blip in both. The US has approximately 25% of the world cases and 20% of the world deaths and thus if the world outside the US were significantly different the series and components should look different.
It is the secular trend that is the component most worth watching. While its continuously going up is disconcerting there is an ever so small curvature change in the most recent US and world data cases data that might be promising. It will be interesting to see how this progresses in the weeks to come.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5icxld3mzqt7vqn/CovidWorld_01_30_2021.pdf?dl=0
Kenneth,
Is there any way to have an error range on the secular trend line? My guess is that the end points have much larger error ranges than the mid points. Note how the trend goes below zero at the start, for example. I would expect the trend would change rather drastically with a few more weeks of declining cases and deaths, assuming they actually do. Either that or you’re going to continue to get even larger negative periodic factors that outweigh the trend, which, IMO, is nonsense.
If it’s not too much trouble, I’d be interested in seeing the technique applied to North or South Dakota data.
I am really, really old here in IL and await my medical group to notify me about making an appointment to get vaccinated. I am Covid cautious and Covid unafraid and thus am in no hurry to be vaccinated as long as other worthy and vulnerable individuals need to be vaccinated.
The neighborhood blog is filled with discussions on getting an appointment for being vaccinated. They talk of going through drugstores, county resources and even grocery stores. I hear of many delays getting online. I have heard of a few getting vaccinated through appointments but do not understand how this occurring.
I expect it will be a while here in IL before I get vaccinated and meanwhile I will be able to get a laugh or two from IL officials and their defenders making excuses and pointing fingers at others.
I am also getting a better insight into why we continue to fail with our state government in IL. I live in an area that at one time not that long ago was a Republican stronghold, but the defenders of IL government and excusing incompetence is very commonplace on the neighborhood blogs. I therefore do not see things changing any time soon.
A very revealing stunt pulled by a Twitter troll. He took a quotation from Maxine Waters, changed one word, and posted it:
Various Democrat politicos went mad condemning the quote and the evil Republicans. The the source of the quote was revealed and the Dems scrambled to delete their condemnations, although a few tried to justify their hypocrisy, saying things like:
https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/29/twitter-troll-replaced-trump-with-cuomo-in-maxine-waters-infamous-call-to-violence-and-democrats-lost-their-minds/
If I’m trading the momentum stock of US Covid, I’m shorting it, ha ha.
DeWitt, the error bars would have to come out of the noise components (but not the periodic components) and those components look small in comparison to the secular trend and are larger toward the end but still small. I can do it. I noticed the few negative secular trend numbers at the series start and attributed that to the empirical nature of the CEEMDAN method that decomposes components with the entire series considered and is not as much locally constrained.
Do you want South and North Dakota separate or together?
Kenneth,
It looks like both states peaked about the same time but ND seems to be declining a bit faster then SD. I think separate might be more interesting because of the apparent difference in rate of decline.
FWIW, I think R<1 arrives much faster than herd immunity and I expect a dramatic decline in cases in the near term. Hope I'm right.
You wouldn’t know this from the MSM, but according to Our World in Data, the US has, as of January 30, administered more doses of vaccine, 29.6 million, than any other country in the world with the possible exception of China, which updates weekly and last updated on January 27.
We’re also in the top five in most other measures including share of the population that has received at least one dose and third on the list of fully vaccinated at 1.6%. Israel at 20%, and the UAE at 2.5% are the only countries ahead of us by that measure. So in spite of how disorganized the vaccination process appears, we’re doing better than almost everyone else.
Note that while the UK is ahead of us in fraction of the population receiving at least one dose of vaccine, they’re well behind in fraction fully vaccinated at 0.7%. I’m guessing they’re delaying second shots to get more people with at least some immunity.
Thomas Fuller,
The point where R becomes consistently less than 1 is called the Herd Immunity Threshold. It is not Herd Immunity. That takes longer. I did a quick search but didn’t see a quantitative definition of HI, only qualitative. I think North and South Dakota passed the HIT in mid-November, but I’m pretty sure they haven’t achieved Herd Immunity yet because the number of new cases per day is still significant and the number of active cases (1,032 on a 7 day average) is still well above the baseline, although way down from the peak (11,719).
DeWitt,
The biggest problem for places like the Dakotas (both well past the HIT) is that the constant introduction of infections from elsewhere means they reach a quasi-equilibrium at a fairly low case level as the remaining susceptible (20-30% or more) continue to catch the virus. So they can only make very slow progress toward near-zero cases.
Here are the North and South Dakota weekly cases series with the 5 CEEMDAN components plotted in the link below.
The secular trends for both North and South Dakota are definitely bending down but the recent weeks series decreases are attributed partially to trend and the lowest frequency period component.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gw9wxulypk3j5np/N%26S_Dakota_Covid.pdf?dl=0
Kenneth,
Let’s hope the secular trend is robust!
About 25% to 30% of healthcare workers refused the vaccine.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-health-care-workers-are-still-saying-no-to-a-covid-19-vaccine-11612089020
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“Meanwhile, 28% of 128 health-care workers in the Kaiser survey said they want to wait and see how the vaccine is working for other people before getting it themselves.”
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Various reasons, the unknown information of how it might affect pregnancies being one of the valid ones.
Seen a few of these around lately.
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Florida’s coronavirus vaccine rollout reveals racial divide in Tampa Bay
White Floridians were about 2.5 times more likely to have received at least one dose as Black residents. And non-Hispanics were nearly twice as likely as Hispanics to have secured doses.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2021/01/30/floridas-coronavirus-vaccine-rollout-reveals-racial-divide-in-tampa-bay/
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“Our country has managed once again to reveal certain kinds of bias don’t require you to be a racist. They’re simply baked into the systemâ€
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This article is a big mess in general, the statistics are flawed and it’s unclear where they even got their data from, you don’t select race during registration. It is true that minorities are more likely to die from covid and are getting vaccinated at lower rates so far, a bit of a double whammy.
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Of course the question is why on the former, and why on the latter, and whether anything could or should be done about it. Minorities have expressed in poll after poll they are more hesitant to get a vaccine, but that is only part of it. The root cause here is also more likely tied to education and poverty than race.
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There is a bit of a push for vaccine affirmative action but that is pretty much a non-starter in most places I think. Better accessibility to getting appointments and convincing people they should get it are better race neutral ideas. Just like getting into a selective school, the usual suspects are much more focused and better at getting results.
The pregnancy concern is valid.
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I think one thing to bear in mind, some “health care workers” seem to be tenuously connected to health care. On reddit, a teacher was complaining that some stay at home moms who used to work as nurses were getting access because on paper they were “health care”. Some “health care” workers also have clerical jobs at hospitals.
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So at least some of these people may know they aren’t at great risk. The article doesn’t really tell us if it’s what I consider “real” health care workers or just “connected to the hospital”. I’d still want to get it, but some might not.
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I know a veterinarian who got it as “health care”.
I should add: If I could jump the line, I would. I don’t disapprove of the veterinarian. She does need to see people and pets! But it does show you that there are a number of ways one might look like “health care” on paper. (Veterinarian are not officially health care in Illinois!)
Tom Scharf
I suspect willingness (eagerness) to play the browser-refresh olympics is higher among wealthier educated people.
Interestingly it appears you can probably mix and max either mRNA vaccines on 1st and 2nd shots, but they advise against it except under exceptional circumstances according to the BBC. Another “not tested but probably works” answer.
Kenneth,
I find it hard to believe that the low frequency periodic signals aren’t just artifacts of the processing algorithm.
SteveF,
I think that would probably be the case anyway even if you don’t get a steady influx of infected people from outside the state. That’s why we still need to get a fairly high percentage of the population vaccinated.
I’ve seen two paper now saying that the risk of getting covid19 on an airplane is about the same as spending the same time in normal activities. If someone who is infected travels from New York to California does he become more of a risk to infect others? I personally don’t know but I personally don’t think adding additional requirements for air travel is likely to accomplish much.
David Young
If they are infectious while on the plane, I’m sure there is a greater risk of his infecting others on the plane than if he stays isolated at home. This doesn’t contradict the risk of getting it on a plane being the same as other “normal” activities, since usually, the person sitting next to you on the plane is not infected. But if they happen to be, your risk will be higher than during a “normal” flight where you are not seated next to an infectious person.
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If an infected person travels from someplace where everyone else has recovered and is now immune to a place where they are not immune, he will tend to infect more people. I don’t know if the fraction of immune people is higher in NY than in CA.
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I think screening people boarding airplanes will be helpful. Those people don’t just sit on airplanes, they sit waiting in the lobby, take cabs, stay in hotels, eat out. All the latter are “normal” activities but travelers tend to do them at elevated rates. Turning those people away will tend to make them stay at home, distance and avoid the cab rise, the hotel stay and eating out. (Or at least one hopes.)
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Also: could you cite the papers you’ve read on exposure on the airplane? It would be interesting to see precisely what they mean by the risk being about the same as normal activities.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.02.20143826v4
https://www.who.int/csr/sars/travel/airtravel/en/?fbclid=IwAR2ilNEYeLvQHQW3av87FjTHGku-5Q5ceAvXgaDaQpRisSOakb3xf2XLoxM
is not a journal paper and is about another virus.
You might also find this interesting reading. It discusses how little we know about influenza, even such basics as transmission and seasonality are still debated.
https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-422X-5-29
And here’s something I found very interesting because it points to a lot of really bad science that has happened with regard to covid19.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2020.580361/full?&utm_source=Email_to_authors_&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=T1_11.5e1_author&utm_campaign=Email_publication&field=&journalName=Frontiers_in_Medicine&id=580361
As I’ve explored the topic, its become obvious to me that viral epidemiology is a crude field dominated by simple mechanistic narratives and explanations that lack quantification. It’s also become evident to me anyway that public health authorities decisions are usually little better than educated guesses.
David Young,
“It’s also become evident to me anyway that public health authorities decisions are usually little better than educated guesses.”
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Unfortunately, that education is often political in nature, not scientific.
I’ll address these and comment on how they might apply to Covid and what you wrote about screening.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.02.20143826v4
https://www.who.int/csr/sars/travel/airtravel/en/?fbclid=IwAR2ilNEYeLvQHQW3av87FjTHGku-5Q5ceAvXgaDaQpRisSOakb3xf2XLoxM
The document you sited discusses SARS, not COVID. But some of the advice must be similar. We can assume that some of advice and observations are similar.
This I’ve read. This is, of course, contingent on the Airlines keeping currently infectious people off airlines. Aircraft also have good HEPA filters and refresh air. So the risk from far away passengers is thought low. But you could be exposed if you are seated directly next to someone as their breath all not have been filtered before reaching you.
It’s worth noting that your source suggests screening probable SARS cases and preventing them from travel. That’s current advice, not a change. If applied to COVID, that would nee screening and preventing from travel is current advice, not a change.
This is SARS specific. It is thought that people who do not currently have symptoms may be able to transmit Covid.
My take on this is that it is telling us:
1) We should be screening. That is not an “additional†requirement. It’s a current requirement.
2) It says nothing about the additional contacts that happens in airports, only on the aircraft. Requirements on air travel need not be justified by what happens inside the aircraft only. They can be justified based on what happens inside the airport which includes check in, TSA screening, listing the coffee shop and so on.
So this document does not justify opinions like “don’t think adding additional requirements for air travel is likely to accomplish much.â€.
This link: https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-422X-5-29
Has absolutely nothing to do with safety of airline travels. So it is irrelevant to opinions like ” “don’t think adding additional requirements for air travel is likely to accomplish much.â€.”
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While it’s an interesting subject change, it is irrelevant to your claim.
This paper is about non-pharmalogical interventions. Notably it does not address airline travel.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2020.580361/full?&utm_source=Email_to_authors_&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=T1_11.5e1_author&utm_campaign=Email_publication&field=&journalName=Frontiers_in_Medicine&id=580361
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So, once again, it is irrelevant to the claim “don’t think adding additional requirements for air travel is likely to accomplish much.â€.
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You are free to stick to your opinion that additional requirements will not accomplish “much”. Much is rather undefined, as are which requirements you consider “additional”. But I think I’m comfortable sticking to my opinion that the following are all prudent measures:
1) enforcing masking in all parts of airports and inside aircraft.
2) requiring COVID specific testing to show one is not infected with Covid to be allowed to check in for a flight.
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I think (2) is new, but technically (1) is not at least in most states of the Union. (Illinois requires masks). It’s just recently been stated at a higher level of enforcement.
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Of course, airlines should continue doing things like using HEPA filters (which predate Covid) and anything else they think prudent.
Research in this area has followed a predictable trend. Jump all over the hot topic of the day. Subject it to intense scrutiny it’s never seen before. Draw conclusions as to what the results mean based on little understanding of what constitutes “normal”. Get excited that your expectations don’t match reality. Publish lots of papers speculating about what it all means, the more lurid the outcome, the more likely it is to get published and noticed. Have it further hyped and mispresented by the media.
David
This link was adjacent and I didn’t notice it wasn’t just the followup link:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.02.20143826v4
The title is
“Covid-19 Risk Among Airline Passengers: Should the Middle Seat Stay Empty?
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The abstract rather undercuts this claim you made:
Rather they find
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It’s model heavy. But they also find the risk of getting covid is higher if there are more full seats on the plane (as happens if they do not leave empty seats between passengers.)
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Naturally, the also find the risk depends on the number of infected travelers who board. (Go figure.) One would imagine then that measures to reduce the number of infected travelers boarding would reduce the risk of becoming infected.
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They engage your claim about “normal†activities
To get to that conclusion, they do consider that the people who are flying are generally not in the major at risk pool, but afterwards they interact with others. So — using modeling similar to that use throughout their paper— they conclude the risk of death to people the travelers contact on grow is higher as a result of the travel.
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These deaths, are of course, what one is trying to avoid by measures.
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You may, of course, disagree with this part of the paper. But what its authors write does not support your view that additional measures would not “do muchâ€. (Admittedly, we don’t know what you men by “muchâ€.)
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FWIW: The authors close with concluding that keeping middle seats empty does reduce risk.
Lucia,
I was surprised that on the flights I have taken the planes are generally packed. People do have to wear masks, but how much that reduces risk is anyone’s guess. I remember that we discussed this subject once before and the available data from case tracking did show that infections on a plane flight were all people seated relatively near the passenger that first showed symptoms after the flight…. but not necessarily very close. Most passengers seated relatively close to the infected passenger did not become ill.
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I have noted that there were very few people my age (>70) on the flights I have taken. No surprise there.
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I very much liked the paper David linked to about the spread of influenza (published in 2008, long before covid). The article suggests that the seasonality of the flu is directly the result of vitamin D deficiencies, and that the spread is consistent with a small fraction people they called “good spreaders”, or what is now being called super-spreaders. The article discusses the considerable difficulty of transmitting influenza infection from the sick to the healthy. Many, even most, who are given large doses of live influenza virus never contract the illness, even when they have no preexisting exposure to that strain. The influence of vitamin D is said to be related to the efficiency of the “innate” immune response. They also noted that high vitamin D is associated with a subdued “cytokine storm” response that minimizes the chance for very sever flu illness.
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This article made me wonder about many similar questions surrounding the spread of covid 19. Just like with influenza, covid-19 illness in a single household member often (even usually) does not lead to the rest of the household getting sick from covid-19…. a large fraction of the populace seems inherently resistant to certain exposure. Just like with influenza, there has been a coordinated autumn/winter surge in cases around the globe. Just like with influenza, most people who catch covid-19 spread it to no one, but a few spread it to many.
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The impression I get is that the models used for the spread of covid-19 are likely far from a meaningful representation of the actual process(es) that lead to spread of covid-19.
Thanks for summarizing the references Lucia.
A lot of this has to do with risk tolerance and relative risks. That’s largely an issue of personal preferences so there is not a right answer.
I do think that the public has been unecissarily scared by the media about covid19.
1. Using the most widely used mortality statistic (mortality adjusted for age and population) by professionals to monitor public health, 2020 in Sweden is actually lower than 2013 and every previous year. Americans are much less healthy than Swedes so our number for 2020 is at roughtly 2005 levels.
2. Across all age groups, your chances of dying from something else in 2020 were about 8 times higher than dying from covid19.
3. Someone else mentioned and after looking at the stats I agree that North and South Dakota seem to be close to or past herd immunity. Their population fatality rates are a little bit higher than 0.2%. I suspect these states may have somewhat younger populations than other states.
SteveF
Yes. This is interesting and discussed many places. I was convinced about the likelihood of D as far back as last March. So I’ve been taking it.
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I limited other comments on that paper because it was brought up as a response to my request of papers that would support this by David
The influenza paper is irrelevant to that statement.
I don’t disagree with this. But that would, of course, also pertain to the paper David linked modeling spread inside airplanes.
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If the models aren’t capturing relevant details of transmission in other context, it’s unlikely they are in the specific context of “on a plane”.
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(Having said that, I thought it was worth pointing out that the authors of the “middle seat” paper conclude the net effect of people taking flights is probably to increase deaths. Whether they are right or wrong, that would suggest that keeping infected people off flights would reduce both the rate people get infected on the plane itself and cause death later. So, at a minimum, David really can’t say that paper supports his view that restrictions on planes wouldn’t do much– whatever much might mean. )
DAvi
Well, I don’t know what you think the pronoun “this” fills in for. My questions have to do with you supporting this statement of yours
I want to see those two papers that say that. You’ve provided a model filled one that somewhat supports the first sentence but then utterly contracits the second one.
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Perhaps they have. But that’s a subject change relative to the first statement in your comment. So are points 1, 2 &3.
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So it seems to me that “this” represents a subject change.
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I honestly don’t mind people relating what they think or even saying it’s based on their ‘gut feeling’ or ‘spidey sense’ from processing various things– some of which they can’t trace. I do that. I think many people do.
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But when possible, I like to find out if there is actual data about something. You made some very specific claims about what has been found about airline travel. You said you read in two papers. I asked for those papers hoping to read them to evaluate their claims, arguments and so on. So my questions where about that request for evidence of a claim. And my evaulation was about that.
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My questions about those papers and discussion of those papers was not about relative risk tolerance in deciding what restrictions are worth while and which are not. Relative risk tolerance of individual is an important question. When one inmposes government regulation is also an important question.
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But asking for evidence about factual claims and examining it is not “about” relative risk tolerance!
Lucia,
“I was convinced about the likelihood of D as far back as last March. So I’ve been taking it.”
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I will make the sacrifice to play golf in the Florida sun a couple times a week to get plenty of vitamin D. 😉
I think a big issue with (airline) travel is the seeding of the virus and/or new variants to new areas and not necessarily the risk to a single person sitting in a seat. We may be beyond that now with widespread community dispersion, but maybe not so with the new variants.
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I think it would be a good idea to force testing before airline travel if possible, although this is once again more of a slowing things down type of move. We may enter a new arms race between vaccination and covid variants in which case the speed of transmission of the variants might be important in the long run.
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Having a covid testing machine at the gate would seem optimal.
The “surface contamination is no longer thought to be a primary method of covid spread” has been asserted many times without much data to back it up that I have seen. This seems like a stick your finger in wind gut feeling type of pronouncement.
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I’m not even aware they are doing real science to determine how covid is actually spread just like they have never figured out the flu. My guess is that it is medical “ethics” holding them back and they refuse to do lab tests to really nail this down. Another possibility is that it is just plain messy with lots of non-linear factors (large variations in transmissibility and susceptibility) that make it impossible to do a clean analysis.
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One thing for sure is that “masks and social distancing” are incapable of containing an outbreak with a highly contagious respiratory virus. It is winning and will run to herd immunity unless a vaccine or effective treatment arrives. The vaccine has arrived but effective treatment is still lagging.
USA Today Says Oregon Decriminalizes All Drugs
This might not be a bad idea if done by many States, but Oregon alone could over burden itself if large numbers of addicts move there to escape the laws in other States.
BTW, covid-19 is supposed to be more harmful to illicit drug users (and tobacco users), presumably because they aren’t as healthy as non-users. I suppose this would depend on the type of drug, frequency of use, age, and other factors.
Hard core libertarians have always been for decriminalizing drugs. I’m really wishy washy on it because I don’t really support spending a lot of tax money on prosecuting them and imprisoning them. There are are obviously downsides to addiction in which case it is in the public interest to limit drug use. It’s a hard discussion where the recreational / addiction threshold is, and it has never been coherent with the sale of alcohol and the restrictions on marijuana for example.
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Allowing the open sale of cheap opioids would likely be destructive for society I think.
SteveF (Comment #197887)
Lucia,
“I was convinced about the likelihood of D as far back as last March. So I’ve been taking it.â€
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I will make the sacrifice to play golf in the Florida sun a couple times a week to get plenty of vitamin D. 😉
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If some is good, a lot is better. NO!
Too much vitamin D in pills is unhealthy. I forget why.
Too much sun can cause skin cancer.
The open question on vitamin D has been whether this is just a proxy for other beneficial health characteristics. I have seen no information on whether supplements make a difference here.
Tom Scharf,
Check the link David Young provided. There are a couple of studies that suggest strong benefit for supplements, at least for people with lots of melanin…. who tend to have low vitamin D…. for colds and flu. The good news is that the is a lot of room between a high normal level and where toxic effects of vitamin D become important.
Tom Scharf (Comment #197895)
“Allowing the open sale of cheap opioids would likely be destructive for society I think.”
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Open sale of cheap opioids probably would be destructive to society if what I have read is correct, but I don’t know how destructive. Presumably by “cheap opioids” you mean those that can now be purchased by prescription at a drug store.
Re vitamin D, I’m not sure I understand your comment.
It is a correlation that normal to high vitamin D results in less severe illness from covid. People who have higher levels may instead get a lot more exercise (in the sun) or be less prone to obesity for example. I don’t think they have made a direct connection at this point. Vitamin supplements were all the rage for decades and only recently have they started stating they are only really beneficial to those with deficiencies. I’m no expert on vitamins nor do I want to start a vitamin war here, ha ha.
OK_Max,
In terms of megadoses of vitamins, I believe you are more likely to have problems with vitamin A toxicity than vitamin D. A number of Arctic predators, especially polar bears, accumulate enough vitamin A in their livers that consuming it can cause hypervitaminosis A.
One of the reasons why we have an opioid abuse epidemic is that the FDA and doctors were convinced to recommend opioid use for chronic pain a while back. That was a mistake. People fairly rapidly develop tolerance for opioids that leads to addiction when too much is taken for pain. Opioids should have been restricted to treating acute pain with the number of pills/prescription highly restricted.
Second try on this. I closed the window where I had found the paper about a month ago. I did however find this one. I don’t have a lot of time today so you will forgive me for being unable to do better immediately.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2771435
Tom Scharf,
see: “Vitamin D supplementation to prevent acute respiratory tract infections: systematic review and meta-analysis of individual participant data”, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i6583
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The authors did a metastudy of 25 randomized trials of vitamin D supplements, and concluded:
The effect was statistically significant, although relatively weak overall (20% reduction in overall risk of upper respiratory infection), but quite strong among those who had low starting vitamin D levels (defined as <25 nmol/liter… nanomoles per liter), with a 70% reduction in risk of upper respiratory infection. High melanin, old age, and winter all correlate strongly with low vitamin D level.
David Young,
I would take that article with a very large dose of salt. The authors:
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“Dr Pombal reported being an employee of TAP Air Portugal Group Health Services and is chairperson of the Aerospace Medical Association Air Transport Medicine Committee. Dr Hosegood reported being an employee of Qantas Airways and is president of the International Airline Medical Association. Dr Powell reports receipt of personal fees from the IATA.”
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IATA is the international air transport association. These seem to me blaring sirens announcing potential conflict of interest.
Re Tom Scharf (Comment #197895) & DeWitt Payne (Comment #197904)
Thanks, Tom and DeWitt. I have started taking Vitamin D because of Covid-19. It’s the only vitamin I now take, but for the future it’s good to know about the danger of too much vitamin A.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.02.20143826v3.full.pdf
I think this is the preprint version of the paper I was quoting from memory.
Tom Scharf (Comment #197898)
Yes. High/low vitamin D might be a proxy for other things. Or it might be direct.
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I figure a multivitamine with D is prudent. I’m not positive it works. But it might and a multivitamine is going to be a dose that isn’t going to hurt me. That’s pretty much my full and compelte analysis.
https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/adjunctive-therapy/vitamin-d/
There are insufficient data to recommend either for or against the use of vitamin D for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19.
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“In a meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials, vitamin D supplementation was shown to protect against acute respiratory tract infection.6 However, in two randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials, administering high doses of vitamin D to critically ill patients with vitamin D deficiency (but not COVID-19) did not reduce the length of the hospital stay or the mortality rate when compared to placebo.7,8”
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This may just mean you need to take it long before you get to the hospital. It certainly doesn’t look like it would hurt. I’m not sure we have seen any particular correlations between high sun states and those without high sun at the same time of year.
DAvid
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2771435
Also doesn’t say the risk of contracting Covid on a plane is less than or even not greater than when doing “normal” activities. They do say it’s less than in an office building, classroom, supermarket, or commuter train, which are a subset of “normal” activities. (Specifically, they are the normal activities that people consider potentially risky compared to other normal activities like staying at home and watching tv.)
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This is a declarative with nothing to back it up and no citation. The “source” list is so vague it’s laugably untracable. The statements do not appear to be the result of any sort of study.
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They say there are few confirmed cases of transmission on airplanes. That tells us almost nothing since we have almost zero contract tracing. We almost never know where someone got Covid.
David,
It’s also interesting reading the comments rebutting the articles claims. Unlike the article the comments include references to research!!
Tom Scharf,
Giving vitamin D to already sick people has (as far as I can tell), never been claimed to make any difference. What has been claimed is that regular supplements (preferably daily) to keep blood levels about 30 ng/l helps to protect against respiratory infection. The argued rational (and I have no expertise to judge it) is that higher levels of vitamin D help the innate immune system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innate_immune_system) to keep pathogens from establishing a level of infection that would require the adaptive immune response to fight…. that is, keep you from becoming symptomatically ill. It could be 100% BS, of course, but it seems there is strong evidence the innate immune system in humans really does need vitamin D. Besides, playing golf on sunny days and higher vitamin D levels go together… so I’m not going to complain.
DAvid,
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.02.20143826v3.full.pdf
Yes. The pre-print was revised based on comments. I have a little more time right now, and I’m noticing some assumptions.
* For purposes of modeling, they assume people who are boarding planes are less likely to be contageous than the populatin at large The factors are (3/4)*(0.5). The 3/4 factor is because they presumably aren’t symptomatic. But they actually admit the mildly symptomatic might be boarding and, also, it is widely believed that the presymptomatic state is contagious (and possibly most contagious). So that 3/4 factor is somewhat tenuous. The 1/2 is to account for the fact that flyers are more affluent. That might be fair enough. But the don’t do anything to account for the fact that flyers are less risk averse and so might actually be more likely to be contagious, possibly much more.
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So their “Q” could be rather low (I’d say by a factor of as much as 2.)
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They assume masks are effective and everyone is wearing them.
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They treat the risks of boarding, leaving the aircraft, going to the bathroom and so on as “second order”. They admit this assumption means they are getting the lower bound.
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There are lots of estimated parameters, and I really don’t have much confidence. It appears the authors don’t either. The write
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I think the paper is interesting as a back of the envelop calculation. But I’d hardly say it shows anything much.
From the abstract of my last link (which is the one I was quoting in my original comment).
“We use recent data and research results to approximate the probability that an air traveler in coach will contract Covid-19 on a US domestic flight two hours long, both when all coach seats are full and when all but middle seats are full. The point estimates we reach based on data from late June 2020 are 1 in 4,300 for full flights and 1 in 7,700 when middle seats are kept empty. These estimates are subject to both quantifiable and nonquantifiable sources of uncertainty, and sustain known margins of error of a factor about 2.5. However, because uncertainties in key parameters affect both risk estimates the same way, they leave the relative risk ratio for “fill all seats†compared to “middle seat open†close to 1.8 (i.e., close to 1/4,300)/(1/7,700). We estimate the mortality risks caused by Covid-19 infections contracted on airplanes, taking into account that infected passengers can in turn infect others. The point estimates—which use 2019 data about the percentage of seats actually occupied on US flights–range from one death per 400,000 passengers to one death per 600,000. These death-risk levels are considerably higher than those associated with plane crashes but comparable to those arising from two hours of everyday activities during the pandemic.”
Sorry for not being able to find it right away.
I have read a little more into why Robinhood (and others) closed purchases of many stocks (~50 in total) that were heavily shorted by hedge funds. The CEO of Robinhood said they were forced to stop retail purchases of these share because of a sudden “requirement” for $3 billion additional capital deposit to continue sales, which he suggested was a ~10 fold increase.
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Was this a regulatory requirement from the SEC? No, it was a requirement from a privately held corporation: the National Securities Clearing Corporation. The NSCC is itself an subsidiary of another privately held corporation, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). The owners of which are apparently not disclosed, but believed to be mostly large banks and brokerage companies. The DTCC is a very profitable company providing clearing services for stock transactions. The Robinhood CEO says he negotiated a reduction in the added capital demand from $3 billion to $1.5 billion and then managed to raise that much from investors, so that “limited” purchases of the restricted stocks could resume.
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Since the ownership of the DTCC is not disclosed, one’s imagination runs wild over the potential financial conflicts of interest in this mess. I am buying popcorn futures in anticipation of the hearings to come. If I had to bet, I would bet that the hedge funds looked to be going bankrupt, risking losses to major banks. So they put a stop to the short squeeze by the DTCC demanding a huge capital requirement via its wholly owned subsidiary the NSCC. If so, much possible jail time awaits those involved.
David,
Yes. That’s the last sentence in the pre-print. They backed off the statement you like after peer review.
In the preprint abstract the write
(https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.02.20143826v4)
In the final revision they write
See https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.02.20143826v4
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So, evidently they changed their minds. Or they couldn’t convince the peer reviewer the statement you want to highlight was justified.
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Also: Reading the modeling, and seeing what data and research results and how they use it I’m not convinced they showed much of anything at all. To the extent they did, the ignored effects that might matter quite a bit and the lowballed the probability a person boarding the plane was infected.
The risk from driving in a car with another person probably far exceeds the risk of flying in an airplane. Both due to the total an average person spends per year in cars and the lack of filtering of the car’s airspace relative to a plane. I have no idea how much time people spend in cars with people outside their home bubble but that would seem to be the worst case scenario for spread. It isn’t really talked about much.
In addition, the arguments made in the JAMA article make sense to me. Typical office buildings have terrible ventilation systems where air flow rates are orders of magnitude lower than on aircraft. Likewise for trains and subways. Hospitals may be somewhat better.
In the comments the authors respond to some of the criticisms in the comments.
At the very least I would say there is little real evidence that airplane travel is less safe than other activities. There are a few anecdotal reports of transmission on aircraft but the number is infinitesimal compared to the overall numbers of infections.
My friends and family have flown many many times in 2020 to come out and visit. Many of them are 60-70 years old. My sister (age 65) and her husband (age 70) both of whom are MD’s visited us last summer and will do so again in April. For me personally, that’s good enough to make me comfortable flying.
Tom,
On travel pages discussing airline flight I’ve seen other hazards discussed. Ridesharing (e.g. uber) is discussed as a risk. I admit I don’t remember where I saw that discussed but it wasn’t quantitative anyway.
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The things is, when I think of flying somewhere, I think of all the associated risks. The risk for some one who drives themselves to the airport, parks their car in long term parking, somehow gets in with little contact with others, manages to fly in and out to places with really sparse short TSA lines and can stay far from everyone who boards and then gets picked up by a relative who tests themselves, then stays with that specific relative is likely lower than typical.
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A more typical trip can involve going to the airport in a cab or rideshare, waiting in a TSA line (maybe able to stay social distanced) jostling people a little when boarding and son on, riding in another cab or rideshare and so on.
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Then you have whatever you planned to do at the destination. That’s probably not stupendously “social distanced”. (Some dancers I know went danced in a competition and then, in addition, went to Universal Studio. They made a movie. I’ll assume they went to restaurants and so on too.)
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Its true that technically blocking someone from getting on the plane doesn’t stop all this stuff. But I would expect that requiring tests and blocking from the plane will tend to reduce a lot of the associated external socializing because many people who tests positive will subsequently social distance for at least a while. So I think such a rule would tend to reduce the rate at which people infect each other.
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I’m afraid David’s friends and family flying don’t make me think it’s a totally safe thing. I’m avoiding it. But even if I weren’t avoiding, I think that if we have tests that are (a) not tooooo expensive and (b) have quick turn around, requiring testing for airline travel would be a good thing.
Wow, SteveF, that sounds like crony capitalism to me. Another example of how we have reverted to the corruption of the gilded age.
Don’t expect Democrats to do any hearings. They are the chief financial beneficiaries of Wall Street (and Silicon Valley) these days.
Tom Scharf, surface contamination was never considered to be a serious pathway for COVID transmission. Look at wayback for the CDC’s covid explainer page.
I don’t know why they keep telling me to wash my hands then, ha ha!
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Obviously traveling increases your contact rates with strangers by a magnitude from staying homebound. It is everything, including public bathrooms. It is also a big vector for spreading the virus far and wide. It took decades for pandemics to spread in the middle ages, now it take months.
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I think if you carefully plan, travel by car and then stay nearly homebound somewhere else then you can minimize risk somewhat. We took a huge trip to Europe the year before the pandemic and it seems like the age of innocence when looking at those photos from today’s point of view. One thing for sure is I will more seriously think of travel insurance going forward, although apparently they have exclusions for pandemics in some contracts.
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This thing was a shock to the system and will probably take many years to get over, just like 9/11. I was nervous the first time I flew a couple months after 9/11.
MikeN,
“…surface contamination was never considered to be a serious pathway for COVID transmission.”.
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The constant hand washing and sanitizing reminded me of first grade taunts of cooties on the persons of those less popular. I never paid any attention to it then, nor now. Covid-19 is a respiratory illness.
I don’t believe there was a conspiracy to bail out short sellers, but it should be simple enough to find out by examining how many of them covered their losses in the day(s) trade was slowed down apparently due to more collateral required for the volatility. It’s worth investigating but I’m not confident there is much there there.
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Anyway, the more relevant good news is:
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Melvin Capital Lost 53% in January, Hurt by GameStop and Other Bets
https://www.wsj.com/articles/melvin-capital-lost-53-in-january-hurt-by-gamestop-and-other-bets-11612103117
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“Traders said as GameStop continued to soar—from $30 to $75 and higher—there was a contagion effect. Managers lost confidence that short positions would stop rising in value and covered heavily shorted names, worried social-media-fueled investors would focus on companies they were short. ”
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“Maplelane Capital, another hedge fund that has sustained significant losses this month, ended January with a roughly 45% loss”
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That is going to leave a mark. I doubt many hedge funds are going to “market” their short positions going forward in an attempt to drive down the stock prices for profit. They aren’t going to want to be GameStopped. Additionally investors in hedge funds are going to be rather unenthusiastic about big short positions in the portfolio.
Lucia,
After 10 months, there is now a fast (30 minutes) road-side covid testing service in my town in Florida; I think it costs $50, but you go home with results in hand. Prior to that the best I could find was 48 hours turn-around.
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Still, if everyone were forced to get a test within a short time of boarding a plane, I think that would hurt the already hurting airlines. I just don’t see that it is a practical alternative. Truth is, people below 50 are at minimal risk of serious illness (unless they have other serious health problems), and even those 50 to 60 are at very modest risk. Forcing everyone to have a test would place a burden on all those people with little personal risk. As I wrote earlier, I saw very few people my age or older on airplanes. So it would be a lot of cost and effort to protect people who for the most part are not even on the plane. I understand that someone could catch covid on a plane, and then pass it to someone who really is at risk. To which I say: avoid contact with elderly people for 7 or 10 days after you travel by plane (or for than matter, after you do anything else which increases risk of infection).
Tom Scharf,
“That is going to leave a mark.”
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Not as much as a few widely known bankruptcies would, but some slightly used mega-yachts are likely to soon go on the market between Palm Beach and Miami. 😉
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Yes, stupidity does often leave an impression. Now if only the blatantly corrupt carried interest loophole could be closed.
I don’t know the specifics but the systems are designed to make sure bankruptcies don’t happen, if that was allowed somebody beyond the dumb investors would be left absorbing the losses.
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My general understanding is that there has to be collateral for a short bet, and if the shorted price rises higher than the provided collateral then the company has to either provide more collateral or close their short immediately. Thus the losses are still limited to the provided collateral.
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This is probably why Melvin Capital had to get cash infusions of billions of dollars, possibly because they wanted to wait out the GameStoppers and allow the stock price to eventually collapse. Shorts have expiration dates where they must close and it seems those aren’t publicly available. My guess is GameStop will collapse within a few weeks.
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Losing 50% of your hedge fund value in one month is enough to get you branded as a capital ‘L’ loser in the hedge fund game, so they might as well be bankrupt.
SteveF,
Making everyone take a test before taking a flight would definitely hurt airlines. That’s a different question from whether it would reduce transmission. If it does, then the ultimate question is whether the cost is worth the reduction in transmissions.
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I just don’t think we should allow our preference about the answer to whether the cost is worth it to prevent us from looking honestly at the answer to the question of whether it would reduce transmission.
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Yes. We can advise people who took flights to self-isolate or at least self isolate from older people after flying. (And then, of course, we need to get the uber drivers and wait staff they encounter to stay away from old folks to.) But if it’s only advise, those making judgements about how flying might affect transmission also need to guess whether or not those flying will actually self isolate. Some will. Some won’t.
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Honestly, I suspect most who take elective flights will not self isolate. They will find reasons not to do so. Or they will lie to themselves about what self isolation is.
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I could tell stories… but I don’t want to slam people. And I live in a glass house: I’m taking dance lessons, not sitting at home doing nothing.
Tom,
Yep. Looks like Melvin Capital has to eat a loss. The reddit “trolls” were able to hold their feet to the fire long enough that people who shorted are going to be hurting. Those who thought the “trolls” would fold quickly will likely be hurt the most.
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I can’t feel sorry for Melvin Capital. They were gambling. They thought they were smarter than everyone. They lost. That can happen when you gamble.
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The incident will leave a mark because now hedge funds will know that when very risky position are taken, lots of people will notice. Those people will know that the hedge funds position has created an opportunity for others to profit and move in.
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Melvin thought the risk was lower because they didn’t realize just how many ‘reddit trolls’ might act. They probably thought trolls only had big mouths. Well, turns out they can buy stock too.
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For Melvin: “too bad, so sad” as they say. You lost money. Suck it up.
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This doesn’t seem to be destabilizing anything for anyone. In fact, it looks like “market efficiency” at play.
Turns out the CDC spent $44M on a free to use vaccine scheduling system:
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What went wrong with America’s $44 million vaccine data system?
The CDC ordered software that was meant to manage the vaccine rollout. Instead, it has been plagued by problems and abandoned by most states.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/30/1017086/cdc-44-million-vaccine-data-vams-problems/
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You will find absolutely nothing surprising here.
Back of the envelope:
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An estimated 14.3% of the US population had antibodies against COVID-19 by mid-November 2020.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/01/study-us-covid-cases-deaths-far-higher-reported
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US cumulative cases:
Nov 15: 11.1M confirmed cases
Jan 31: 26.2M confirmed cases
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14.3% x (26.2/11.1) = 33.8% estimated actual cases in the US now.
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There will be an unknown overlap of people who get vaccinated who already had covid but it seems if we get close to 50% vaccination levels then we should be pretty close to HIT. It’s not an unreasonable strategy to show a negative antibody test before vaccination for an optimal rollout, probably too complicated in the real world.
Tom, Actually one of the interesting points made in the influenza paper Iinked earlier is that the speed with which flu epidemics spread in England I think has not changed over a long period of time. This does call into question some of the doctrines about transmission and mobility.
Tom, Your calculation is fascinating. It fits with the prospect that some areas have already reached herd immunity. Most states now have stable or decreasing deaths and some like the Dakotas have come down dramatically since the peak. The simplest explanation is HIT.
Many predicted this outcome was inevitable. All the mitigation may have slowed down the inevitable at a very high cost. I’ve been exploring the issue of mitigation effectiveness and there are quite a few papers claiming that beyond voluntary measures, strict lockdowns don’t matter much. There was an amazing paper by Flaxman finding a massive effect of lockdown that was laughably and obviously very wrong and used a model seemingly designed to produce the desired result. Flaxman seems to be a big man in the field too.
Re: Tom Scharf (Comment #197936)
This is in good agreement with the AI-based projections (with some assumptions about CFR as I understand) made last year at https://covid19-projections.com/infections/us
The same site currently projects 26% of the population has been infected.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2020.580361/full?&utm_source=Email_to_authors_&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=T1_11.5e1_author&utm_campaign=Email_publication&field=&journalName=Frontiers_in_Medicine&id=580361
Link to critique of Flaxman on lockdowns.
David Young,
In the Dakotas, between 12 and 13% of the population has had confirmed infection, and appear to clearly be past the HIT and well on their way to very low case rates. But it is very difficult to know how many people actually have immunity due to contracting an asymptomatic case (or one with very mild symptoms that wasn’t tested). Early in the pandemic relatively few people were getting tested; now most with any symptoms probably are tested. Tom Scharf’s population wide estimate for antibodies (14% nationwide in November) may be distorted relative to the number of confirmed cases, because lots of people in the first few month were not tested, but did develop antibodies. In other words, total confirmed cases now versus November may not be an accurate measure of the number of people with antibodies.
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I now know two relatively young families where someone in the household had confirmed covid. In one family, the father (early 40’s) was pretty sick for about a week (no hospitalization), his 18 YO son had mild symptoms, two younger siblings (13, 10), and their mother never got sick at all, and tested negative. In the second household, the father (late 30’s) got mild symptoms, one daughter (6 YO) had no symptoms but tested positive, another daughter (10 YO) and their mother never got sick and tested negative.
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So in those two households: three symptomatic cases, one asymptomatic case, and five for certain exposed to the virus but never tested positive. Like the paper on influenza you linked to up thread, it is a head-scratcher that a “highly contagious” virus can have 5 of 9 people for certain exposed but never contract the illness. I have heard (but don’t have the details) of several other very similar within-household outcomes, where people never contract the virus, despite certain exposure. At a minimum, I think there is a significant fraction of the population which has substantial resistance to covid infection, so the HIT is reached at much lower total case counts than expected. The CDC’s estimates of over 70% contracting the virus before reaching the herd immunity threshold is almost certainly much too high. If half the population is resistant (and it could be much more!), then the HIT is more like 30-35% infected. Take away 1/3 asymptomatic cases, and the HIT is reached with 20-odd% confirmed cases. And that assumes every symptomatic case is confirmed…. very unlikely.
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In light of all that, the Dakotas and other places being well past the HIT at relatively low confirmed cases doesn’t seem so strange. After the pandemic is over, it will be interesting to see if our understanding of the transmission process improves. It will also be interesting if it is possible to test and identify people more likely to contract the virus. I sure hope so.
Tom Scharf (Comment #197936): “An estimated 14.3% of the US population had antibodies against COVID-19 by mid-November 2020.”
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That looks like a low end estimate, some are quite a bit higher. Hard to know who is right. But one sponsor of that study is Pfizer. They have a horse in the race.
lucia (Comment #197933): “Making everyone take a test before taking a flight would definitely hurt airlines. That’s a different question from whether it would reduce transmission. If it does, then the ultimate question is whether the cost is worth the reduction in transmissions.”
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I don’t see how restricting travel would reduce transmission, unless you are New Zealand or some such place with very few cases. Otherwise, it should hardly matter if a small number of people travel from a place where the virus is circulating to another place where it is circulating. It would be different if airplanes were likely superspread events, with a substantial fraction of passengers leaving the plane with an infection. But that does not seem to be the case.
Being the suspicious character that I am, I’m beginning to wonder about the messaging regarding variants.
If cases decline rapidly it might reduce the motivation to get vaccinated, which would be a pity but would also be pretty predictable.
Hyping the threat from variants a little might help in that regard.
It does seem like cases have fallen almost by half in recent days…
Thomas Fuller,
“If cases decline rapidly it might reduce the motivation to get vaccinated, which would be a pity but would also be pretty predictable.”
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Sure, and there are lots of people who claim to never want the vaccine, independent of new strains. The social impact of people refusing a vaccination will depend on the ages of those people. If they are mostly relatively young, it is a minor issue. Some will catch covid-19 and gain the same immunity as from a vaccination…. but with a bit more personal suffering. But if people over 60 ALSO refuse the vaccine, there will be a lot of unnecessary deaths. That really would be a pity.
RB (Comment #197768): “Robinhood restricting trades, it has to do with the settlement of trades by the third-party where buyers and sellers have to be matched in the T+2days period after the trade. The brokers have to put up collateral and this collateral requirement was raised by the third party (the NSCC).”
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SteveF (Comment #197918): “The CEO of Robinhood said they were forced to stop retail purchases of these share because of a sudden “requirement†for $3 billion additional capital deposit to continue sales, which he suggested was a ~10 fold increase.”
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I have been trying to wrap my head around this and have concluded that the Robinhood CEO must be lying. I have no doubt that they have to post collateral. I have no doubt that requirement was just increased by a large amount. What I don’t believe is that GameStop etc. had anything much to do with that.
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I have not been able to find firm numbers on the volume of trade handled by RobinHood. The best I could come up with was that the order of magnitude is $1 billion per day. A volume somewhat higher than that would be consistent with several billion in collateral to cover maybe a couple billion a day being traded.
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No way are stocks like GameStop more than a tiny fraction of that; I’d guess no more than 1 or 2 percent. So I don’t see how those stocks are responsible for the increased collateral.
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From what I understand, Robinhood has grown enormously over the last year. That would mean a big increase in collateral, which they could only post by raising money and diluting the value of Robinhood shares. My guess is that they did not do that, the NSCC finally caught on, and they were made to raise the funds. Nothing to do with GameStop, except that the Robinhood CEO decided to use it as a smokescreen for their attempt at market manipulation.
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That is a lot of logical inference from sketchy evidence. I am open to correction; especially if someone has facts to add.
MikeM
I’m astonished that you can’t see how reducing travel would reduce transmission. People who travel do the opposite of social distancing. Typically, they interact with others in cabs, in lines at the airport, in restaurants, socially at their destinations and so on. That’s almost the point of travel. People do not travel so they can hole up in their lonely room isolated for a time just to return.
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In contrast, most people at home tend to interact at a less violent pace.
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This behavior pattern would increase transmission whether or not the person traveled from someplace with higher or lower levels of Covid.
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Focusing on what happens inside an air cabin only is just foolish. It may not be the major effect of travel on transmission.
MikeM,
Why would you doubt Robin Hood might be required to have more than 3 times the $ amount of daily trade on deposit? The amount a short seller must leave with his broker isn’t a multiple of daily trade. It’s related to the value of outstanding shorts, which could be many, many times the volume of his daily trade.
lucia (Comment #197952): “I’m astonished that you can’t see how reducing travel would reduce transmission. People who travel do the opposite of social distancing. Typically, they interact with others in cabs, in lines at the airport, in restaurants, socially at their destinations and so on. That’s almost the point of travel. People do not travel so they can hole up in their lonely room isolated for a time just to return.”
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The flaw in that argument is that people want to interact with other people and don’t want to hole up in their rooms. If you restrict one thing, you get more of other things.
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If you restrict *everything*, that might have an effect. So maybe I should have said: “I don’t see how restricting travel would have an outsized effect on transmission”.
lucia (Comment #197953): “Why would you doubt Robin Hood might be required to have more than 3 times the $ amount of daily trade on deposit? The amount a short seller must leave with his broker isn’t a multiple of daily trade. It’s related to the value of outstanding shorts, which could be many, many times the volume of his daily trade.”
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But Robinhood is the *broker*. It is the short seller who must pony up the margin. And I think that is different from the collateral on deposit with the NSCC.
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But let’s suppose that is the reason. Then it *definitely* has nothing to do with trading GameStop. The people buying GameStop on Robinhood are *buying* not selling (let alone shorting) and Robinhood restricted *buying*.
One can always wonder what went on behind the scenes. But the clearing houses (the DTCC and its subsidiaries the NSCC and the DTC) are central institutions that haven’t failed and can never be allowed to fail. They are present to ensure that if someone like Lehman goes down, the trades can still go through. So, in periods of volatility, they raise collateral requirements from everybody, particularly from those brokers most at risk. The more money they can get, the better it is for themselves. That’s the system as it is currently. I suspect that we need to get to a place where trades don’t need two days to be settled. And maybe replace the clearing house with something else that does not amplify instability because of their own self-preservation concerns. That may be a reason not to allow the clearing house to remain in the private sector.
As opposed to a lot of this pandemic action so far, the actual sticking of vaccines into arms was very orderly and smooth for my wife. No waiting, bar code appt scan, ID check, grab a syringe from a big pile on a platter, stick, move to the waiting room for 15 min, done. In and out in 20 min. You get an official CDC vaccination card, whatever that is worth.
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Yesterday the US had vaccinated more people than confirmed cases, an anecdotal milestone. The race is being won.
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Pfizer plans to deliver 200 million doses of Covid vaccine to U.S. by May, sooner than expected.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/02/covid-vaccine-pfizer-plans-to-deliver-200-million-doses-to-us-by-may-sooner-than-expected.html
Robinhood users were net sellers of Gamestop in the past week. It’s on Bloomberg somewhere.
If evidence of a Christmas and New Years holiday surge (with the assumption of relatively heavy air travel and travel in general during that period) in Covid-19 cases cannot be found what might that say about the affect of travel and particularly by air on Covid-19 cases.
The market place is a good regulator in matters like the GameStop and Robin Hood fiasco and can show the way to corrective action.
Government regulation gives people a false sense of security until the next fiasco occurs and then the cry is for more and stricter regulation that only the very large organizations can attempt to follow and then often at a huge cost that is passed on to the general public. If the government runs the overseer operation than, of course, that means the overseer never has to admit to mistakes.
Most of the hedge funds only had paper losses unless they closed out their short positions. The collapse of GameStop is pretty swift, down 50% today, 33% yesterday.
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The Reddit mob looks like it has the attention span of the typical Twitter mob. My guess is the hedge funds have the last laugh here, at least only having minimal losses compared to worst case.
Tom Scharf (Comment #197961): “Most of the hedge funds only had paper losses unless they closed out their short positions. The collapse of GameStop is pretty swift, down 50% today, 33% yesterday.
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The Reddit mob looks like it has the attention span of the typical Twitter mob. My guess is the hedge funds have the last laugh here, at least only having minimal losses compared to worst case.”
——-
It all depends on why the price is collapsing. If it because the Reddit mob is giving up, then maybe the hedge fund losses won’t be too bad. But it might be that the puts were coming due, thus freeing up large amounts of stock. In that case, the hedge funds would have no choice but to close out their positions and accept massive realized losses. Being an optimist, I hope it is the latter.
It will be interesting to see how the vaccines play out. This is the first vaccine for which the initial public vaccinations are part of the trial that previously was completed before vaccinations are offered to the public. My sister doubts the 95% effectiveness numbers.
Also, I’ve seen nothing on how effective the vaccines will be against new strains. Experience with the flu indicates that new vaccines will be needed every year. I’m a little concerned that we may make incorrect public policy decisions based on optimistic ideas about these vaccines.
I’d be interested if anyone here has information on this.
Coronavirus variants: What they do and how worried you should be
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/coronavirus-variants-what-they-do-and-how-worried-you-should-be/
In other news, SN9 may launch this afternoon, for anybody who’s interested in this. Maybe within a half hour.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #197959)
If evidence of a Christmas and New Years holiday surge (with the assumption of relatively heavy air travel and travel in general during that period) in Covid-19 cases cannot be found what might that say about the affect of travel and particularly by air on Covid-19 cases.
______
Kenneth, I thought new cases of Covid-19 in the U.S. didn’t began declining until mid-Jan. Perhaps I’m wrong or don’t understand your point.
I love these SpaceX launches, ha ha.
Sputnik vaccine is 92% effective, I told you these Ruskies were experts in biological weapons, oops I mean vaccine design! They are using similar technology to J&J and AstraZeneca.
Well, using some of the lower math that served me well during the climate conversation…
Worldometers lists about 27 million diagnosed cases. I have read that that may only be about 20% of actual infections. If so, that would be about 135 million who have some degree of acquired immunity.
In addition, we’ve vaccinated about 30 million for a total of roughly 165 million who are essentially a block to rapid transmission.
It looks like there are 235 million adults (18+) in the U.S.
That’s 70%. I believe Dr. Fauci has said repeatedly that herd immunity kicks in somewhere between 70% and 85%.
Again, this is lower math and there are several assumptions in play.
But to me it looks like we’re almost there.
MikeM
That’s the opposite of a hole in my argument.
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The POINT of travel is to got somewhere, see the sights, interact with people there. So people who travel will not hole up in their rooms on travel and they will interact more while on travel. That’s the whole point: They don’t want to hole up especially on travel.
David Young (Comment #197963): “Experience with the flu indicates that new vaccines will be needed every year.”
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How is flu relevant to coronavirus? Experience with smallpox, measles, mumps, polio, etc. says one and done.
The influenza virus is unusual in that it wears camouflage. The outer layer of protein does not seem do much except to present itself to the immune system. So when it mutates, it evades the immune system without impacting the ability of the virus to do its thing. The coronavirus spike protein is critical to the functioning of the virus, so it ought to be highly conserved.
lucia (Comment #197970): “The POINT of travel is to got somewhere, see the sights, interact with people there. So people who travel will not hole up in their rooms on travel and they will interact more while on travel. That’s the whole point: They don’t want to hole up especially on travel.”
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That is the point of recreational travel. It fills a need. Restricting travel does not remove the need. So it will lead to people doing something else. I see no reason to believe that will lead to any less transmission.
MikeM
Yes. But people are also buying on margin and, in those cases, the broker is also a lender. If a @internetTroll buys at $400 on margin, that person puts down some amount (say $80). Robinhood lends them $320. If the price goes down Robinhoold issues a margin call or automatically sells. But if prices are plummeting to $2 in an hour, Robinhood sells at $2. @internetTroll owes Robinhood $318. But Robinhood may not be able to collect that from @internetTroll or may not be able to collect it quickly. If Robinhood does not have case reserves, can end up bankrupt and if they (or enough brokers) can’t market liquidity goes belly up.
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So Robinhood and needs reserves to cover this liability. It’s not proportional to daily trades. It’s proportional to outstanding positions that the broker might need to cover temporarily or eat. These can be very, very large. In times of huge volatility (or things like we see with Gamestop) there is a realistic risk this liability will bankrupt a broker.
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Notice in this situation, the risk to the broker is from people buying especially on margin.
Another rather … dramatic … landing by SpaceX!
Looks like SN9 smashed into the ground trying to land as well. [Edit: The FAA guys are going to love that].
MikeM
Yes. They will do something else. That will generally involve less social circulation.
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If I travel to Napa Valley for wine tasting, I’m going to circulate a lot. It’s a fresh new place. That’s why I’m going.
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If I go to Disney world, I’m going to circulate a lot.
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If I get stuck at home, I’m not going to hunt around for the local equivalent of Napa Valley or Disney World. Even if it exists I’ve already seen it. So I stay home and watch Netflix.
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Business travel also involves lots of personal interaction. If it did not, people would do the business over Zoom.
DAvid
This number can only be achieved if the vaccinated wait and remain isolated for a while. In some cases, only after the 2nd shot. It also doesn’t necessarily apply to new strains.
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I’d take a 20% effective shot if it’s the only option. If I could take a 20% shot today because I can’t get the 95% until April, I’ll take the 20% today. (With luck, I’ll get a booster when they become available.)
Only one engine restarted near the landing pad. Not quite ready for manned flight just yet. Well maybe ready for manned flight, just not manned landing.
Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to have SN10 sitting out there right next to where SN9 crashed. Hope SN10 didn’t get damaged much.
video here.
The Feds are bypassing the states to directly ship to pharmacies as of Feb 11. Yeah government!
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“In his remarks, Zients stressed that equity of vaccine distribution is a key component of the pharmacy effort. In many locations around the U.S., white people are getting vaccinated at much higher rates than are people of color.
“[Pharmacy] sites are selected based on their ability to reach some of the populations most at risk for severe illness from COVID-19, including socially vulnerable communities,” said Zients, who added that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will monitor the site data for equity concerns.”
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That’s not divisive at all. Now states like FL will have separate appointment systems for different places and this will make things more confusing for people. What are they going to do? Ban white people from scheduling certain pharmacies? I have a news bulletin, the same exact people who are already acing the appt system morass will continue to do so if it is made more complicated.
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This is just begging for a legal challenge, it’s almost designed deliberately for it. The media could read Trump’s mind with 100% clarity for his “Muslim ban”, but cannot leverage the same charge of discrimination when it is explicitly stated and understood. Some people are more equal than others.
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Design a fair system. Allow easy access. Run a lottery for weekly appts. Investigate disparities for unfairness of access. Trying crude fixes like this is a bad idea.
lucia (Comment #197973): “But people are also buying on margin”
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True, but hardly relevant. Robinhood sets different margin maintenance for different stocks. So if they are worried about a stock crashing and leaving them holding the bag, they can simply ban buying that stock on margin. No justification for blocking customers from buying the stock.
mark bofill,
Another case where they stuck the landing……. a bit too firmly. Once, OK. Twice? Sounds not so good.
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At least the taxpayer is not funding such spectacular… umm… trials. The FAA is going to have to ask how many people they might kill if the “landing” were to happen a few miles away in Port Isabel.
Tom
Presumably, they’ll find more pharmacies in areas with larger hispanic or black populations. Possibly the Walgreens in West Chicago will get it before the one in Naperville or Lisle.
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I can drive the 24 minutes to West Chicago, 10th larges Hispanic population in Illinois. Driving’s not a big deal. If they screen, for appropriate “ethnic group”. I’ll bring my birth certificate.
Tom Scharf,
“Trying crude fixes like this is a bad idea.”
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I fully expected the new administration would try to control local distribution and priorities, so this is no surprise. It is still a very stupid idea. Count of the Biden administration try to take over 100% of distribution ASAP. They have already said they will increase the number of pharmacies by a factor of six, presumably reaching about 6 million doses per week…… which sounds remarkably close to the total available doses for the coming months.
Steve,
Yup.
I like rapid development and all, but I can’t help wondering if there isn’t some cheaper, safer way to sort out the landing glitches without actually smashing a +200 million dollar rocket into smithereens each try.
And yup. I really don’t think the FAA guys are going to like it one bit. There’s no upside for them for SpaceX to be allowed to take these risks with the repeated spectacular failures. I suspect they’re going to insist on slowing things down in the near future.
MikeM
I think the clearinghouse would find it relevant. That’s why the clearing house (NSCC) wants them to have more case on hand.
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Your preference about what Robinhood might do might be relevant if the story was that Robinhood itself decided it needed more money on hand. It was the clearinghouse (NSCC) that required Robinhood to have more capital on hand. The NSCC wanted this for sane reasons.
Lucia,
Will you really go to a Hispanic neighborhood for the vaccination?
What the DTCC is asking for in deposits from the broker relates to *their* (the NSCC/DTCC) credit risk – which factors in variance in share prices of the net buy/sells from a particular broker over the 2 days of the settlement period, whether there is a particular security that dominates the net, the volatility of the particular security and so on. Of course the fact that RH was able to negotiate the deposit indicates that there is a discretionary aspect to it.
Have at it here:
https://www.dtcc.com/-/media/Files/Downloads/legal/policy-and-compliance/NSCC_Disclosure_Framework.pdf
The systems in FL are currently biased against people who don’t have a lot of education, aren’t technically savvy, and don’t read newspapers.
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How do I know where the FL appt web portals are and the key times of when appts open up? I find it in the local paper’s website and they are posted at Nextdoor (the big neighborhood forum exchange). I search for and educate myself on the best ways to be successful. People who are trying harder are having more success. Make it less hard. The discriminations is apparently too many people can’t type “vaccine pinellas county fl” into Google and click the first link. I’m not being sarcastic. Many people don’t even know it’s run by the county.
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I drive down the road and there aren’t billboards telling me where to go, there aren’t public service announcements on TV shows targeting certain demographics telling me how to do this. I don’t see signs anywhere on how to get a vaccine, but there are signs everywhere telling me to wear a mask entering a building.
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The point here is that the discrimination is on information access, not race. The same exact people who are bemoaning the disparities are the people who are in charge of communications of vaccine access. Do.your.job.better before you start screaming systemic racism and employing crude race tools.
David Young,
What’s your sister’s background in statistics? Or is it just a gut feeling. If it’s a gut feeling, it’s, as they used to say on Perry Mason when objecting to testimony, irrelevant, immaterial and incompetent. In real statistics, the efficacy is calculated to be 95% with p < 0.0001.
Lucia,
“The NSCC wanted this for sane reasons.”
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Maybe, but maybe not. The devil is in the details, and I am not convinced the details are being fully disclosed. If there are hearings, then testimony under oath would be more convincing. But the political noises I am hearing suggest Democrats in Congress are not going to allow that to happen.
SteveF,
Perhaps not for sane reasons. But MikeM suggested CEO of RobinHood is lying because being asked to put up $3billion can’t be true. NSCC is evidently the one who asked. I doubt CEO of Robinhood would make up such a lie as it’s soooooo easy to check. Either NSCC did it or they did not. If they did, Robinhood needed to find the money. Other strategies wouldn’t work.
STeveF
Absolutely. I used to go to West Chicago for a knitting group meeting all the time. It’s a nice town. It’s further than my local Walgreens which is in walking distance. But I’d go to West Chicago in a heart beat.
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Come to think of it, when we were discussing weed shops, that was one of the nearest ones. But I think there are closer ones now. Dunno. Haven’t kept track.
RB,
“Of course the fact that RH was able to negotiate the deposit indicates that there is a discretionary aspect to it.”
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Yes, it all seems remarkably discretionary. The immediate question is: Who owns the NSCC, and what are their potential conflicts of interest in the case that large hedge funds might go under on a short squeeze?
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BTW, I agree that two days to settle a transaction is crazy, and an invitation for a financial meltdown. It should be seconds… or at most minutes. To have private companies doing settlements (over two days!) is an invitation to crony capitalism, or worse.
Thanks Tom for the link. I did find there that 6 times higher levels of antibodies are needed to neutralize the South African strain than the original strain. That suggests that vaccines will be less effective. Apparently its relatively easy to tweak them however to target new strains.
lucia (Comment #197992): “But MikeM suggested CEO of RobinHood is lying because being asked to put up $3billion can’t be true.”
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I DID NOT SAY THAT. I very clearly said that I have no doubt that is true. What I questioned is whether that has anything to do with Gamestop. Even at it’s highest, Gamsstop was maybe 0.1% of all stock value. No way is that a big fraction of trading on Robinhood. Or of margin exposure on Robinhood. I doubt it is more than one or two percent.
David Young,
And that would be relevant if antibodies alone determined the response of the immune system to the variants of SARS-CoV-2. But that’s not all that happens. There’s also T cells, specifically CD4 and CD8. The miniscule number of documented re-infections of people who have recovered from infection with earlier strains is indicative that vaccination will, with high probability, also be highly effective against the South African strain.
MikeM
Ok.. yes. What I remembered was this part
In fact, you said he must be lying that the request for the money was about Gamestop. However, as far as I can tell from reading articles, he didn’t say they ask because of Gamestop. He said this
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9209347/Robinhood-CEO-reveals-NSCC-demanded-3BILLION-security-company-stopped-GameStop-trades.html
We know the “increased volatility” appears associated with Gamestop and a few other stocks. But the CEO of Robinhood didn’t actually say that was why the NSCC demanded the $3billion. The demanded it. That’s pretty much what Robinhood is confronted with.
This is what happens with equity attempts:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/health/white-people-covid-vaccines-minorities.html
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“As soon as this city began offering Covid vaccines to residents 65 and older, George Jones, whose nonprofit agency runs a medical clinic, noticed something striking.
“Suddenly our clinic was full of white people,†said Mr. Jones, the head of Bread for the City, which provides services to the poor. “We’d never had that before. We serve people who are disproportionately African-American.—
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“Fixing the problem is tricky, however. Officials fear that singling out neighborhoods for priority access could invite lawsuits alleging race preference” (yes, the redlining playbook can go both directions)
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“Dallas County’s rollout plans for the vaccine included an inoculation hub in a neighborhood that is largely African-American and Latino. But when the sign-up website went live, the link speedily circulated throughout white, wealthier districts in North Dallas.
The county commissioners quietly contacted Black and Latino faith leaders in South Dallas, who encouraged constituents to show up for shots without appointments, as long as they offered proof that they were 75 and older.
That plan worked for a day or so. … That led again to a huge stampede of people from the suburbs who had reliable cars”
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“But when Judge Jenkins inquired whether geographical priority would pass muster, state officials said that if Dallas proceeded with the plan, the state would withhold the county’s supply.”
lucia (Comment #197998): “We know the “increased volatility†appears associated with Gamestop and a few other stocks. But the CEO of Robinhood didn’t actually say that was why the NSCC demanded the $3billion. The demanded it. That’s pretty much what Robinhood is confronted with.”
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This is still clear as mud. It seems that Tenev has made various statements as to why they restricted trading. I still have not see one that makes sense.
From lucia’s link:
So did the NSCC force Robinhood to restrict trades by using their collateral demand as leverage? If not, what is the connection between the two things?
All Tenev seems to have said is Robinhood needed to provide collateral to meet NSCC’s demand. It’s true we don’t know what other conditions NSCC had. But we know that
* Robinhood has to hand over $$ when it’s customers buy stock.
* Robinhood does not have to hand over $$ when its customers sell stock. In this case, they hand over a stock and receive money.
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So Robinhood not having sufficient cash on hand is a problem for the clearing hose when Robinhood customers buy. It’s not a really problem when they sell. That might be why the halt was on buying only.
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We’ll learn more. But the problem of not having cash in your wallet is not symmetric with respect to buying and selling. You need to have the cash on hand when you buy. You need to have the item you sell when you sell.
Lucia, Mike M,
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Until (unless?) there are explanations, under oath, for what happened, it is all wild speculation. I am actually shocked to learn that 1) the clearing businesses are privately held corporations, and 2) that it takes two (what!?!?!) days to finalize a stock purchase.
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If nothing else come of this, that delay in the transaction needs to change. Switching to a publicly owned corporation for clearing would also make sense. The current arrangement, and associated potential conflicts of interest, are simply crazy.
OK_Max (Comment #197966)
February 2nd, 2021 at 1:48 pm
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #197959)
Upstream I did a CEEMDAN decomposition of the components of the Weekly US and world case and death series. I was looking for holiday blips and did not find any. There is a secular trend which continues to increase over the entire Covid-19 case time frame and there are periodic and noise components. The only blips found were around the Christmas and New Years holidays. Since the case and death blips occurred in the very same time period it was obvious that the cause was a reporting artifact.
If you have found a reference to holiday blips with an accompanying analysis please post them. My analysis does not say that holiday travel does not increase Covid-19 to some extent but rather does not increase the overall counts enough to show significantly in the plots. There are lots of factors involved with Covid-19 infections and I do not believe the relative magnitude of those factors affects have been sorted out very well at this time.
lucia (Comment #198002): “But we know that
* Robinhood has to hand over $$ when it’s customers buy stock.
* Robinhood does not have to hand over $$ when its customers sell stock. In this case, they hand over a stock and receive money.”
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But Robinhood did *not* stop their customers from buying stock. At least, not that I have heard of. They blocked a very tiny fraction of purchases. And it just happened to be the purchases that were inconveniencing the predatory hedge funds.
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If in fact they blocked all purchases, then I will retract what I have said.
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There is also the question of what possible reason the NSCC could have for the massive abrupt demands they imposed on Robinhood and, it seems, all the other zero margin brokers. Or else why did so many of those brokers also block buying GameStop etc.?
MikeM
The ones associated with the huge observed volatility which is what drove the need for having extra cash on hand.
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That would have been pointless. The problems driving the need for extra reserves is related to the stocks that were currently amazingly volatile.
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Because the huge volatility is what resulted in the risk to liquidity during transactions. That volatility did not extend past a few stock.
lucia (Comment #198006): “The ones associated with the huge observed volatility which is what drove the need for having extra cash on hand.”
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I think you are just making that up. If not, show me the numbers.
MikeM,
For what it’s worth, I agree with SteveF that we aren’t going to know until people testify under oath, responding to questions. But I don’t think you can jump to the conclusion the CEO of Robinhood was lying about anything nor that only reason to block only the sales of extremely volatile stocks was to protect “hedge funds”. There is more risk in volatile stocks. The need for cash to cover the transaction is greater on the sell side.
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It may turn out that “other” things could have been done. Or not. But I don’t think its reasonable to conclude that the “only” reason one would only block sales and only of extremely volatile stocks is to protect hedge funds. The reason lots of brokers may have made the same choice (to block sale of Gamestop) is that that specific stock was hellaciously volatile and it was only sales by their customers that risked the broker’s liquidity and capital.
We may not know if there was any foul play. But typically the kind of spike that GME had where it touched $500 only lasts a day or two before crashing down. You can look at the charts of Kodak last year or Volkswagen in 2008 for example. Nothing new here.
RB,
But we know there was weird going on. It just might not fall in the category of foul play. The hedgefunds took the risk of short selling even when the short interest was astronomical. Reddit-trolls (which seems to be what they are called, and they don’t seem to mind.) Anyway, reddit-trolls did hype each other up and were investing based on the observed risk the hedgefunds had taking. Movements became unhinged form underlying value. None of that strikes me as foul play.
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Then the extreme volatility did put liquidity of the brokers and the clearinghouse at risk. Actions on their part to mitigate their own risk is not foul play.
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Of course people sometimes have mixed motives. So it may turn out that there is a little bit of truth in people protecting their side. But some of this just looks like the clearing house acting to protect itself and Robinhood responding to the demand they generate more capital before doing things that could go seriously wrong if they didn’t have cash on hand.
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I also think we saw something new that happened because of faster communication. (That is: individual retail investors being able to communicate directly with each other rapidly rather than merely through market signals.) Evidently some similar things happened when ticker tapes came out and suddenly people who were not physically on Wall Street could get information fast and communicate trades fast. The “in” crowd suddenly had to deal with the previously “out” crowed.
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The system adapted to the ticker tape. Faster communication actually makes the market faster. But insiders who relied on slower communication can get blind sides when things suddenly change.
lucia (Comment #198008): “I agree with SteveF that we aren’t going to know until people testify under oath, responding to questions.”
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As to motives, we will only have suspicions until an investigation provide testimony and/or copies of internal communications. But actions can be judged based on facts.
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lucia: “But I don’t think you can jump to the conclusion the CEO of Robinhood was lying about anything nor that only reason to block only the sales of extremely volatile stocks was to protect hedge funds”.
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I agree. But I did not do that, as least not if by “conclusion” you mean something definitive. I pointed out that that the alleged reason did not seem to make sense, which implies that it is phony. And then said in Comment #197951: “That is a lot of logical inference from sketchy evidence. I am open to correction; especially if someone has facts to add.”
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lucia: “The reason lots of brokers may have made the same choice (to block sale of Gamestop) is that that specific stock was hellaciously volatile and it was only sales by their customers that risked the broker’s liquidity and capital.”
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They did not block sales, they blocked purchases. I don’t see how that places the broker at risk, unless the purchase is on margin.
Maybe customers buying a highly volatile stock puts the broker at risk. If so, there should be nothing secret or hidden as to why. Much more likely is that it might produce a temporary cash crunch that would disrupt the smooth completion of other transactions and thus place the broker at risk with regards to their other customers. The plausibility of that is a quantitative question that should be testable by publicly available facts.
What fraction of the dollar volume of trades on Robinhood were in the stocks they restricted? If it was 10 or 20 percent, then restrictions likely make sense given the high volatility of those stocks. If it was 1 or 2 percent, I don’t see it.
Finally, there is the issue of whether the action taken (blocking purchases but not sales) is a reasonable response. Has that been done previously with other stocks?
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I found a claim that at one point last week, something like 70% of GameStop shares were traded in one hour. If that was the Reddit trolls, then there is a good case to be made for shutting them down. But I am skeptical. For one thing, the Reddit trolls seem to have been committed to buy and hold. So far as I can tell, that would be essential to pulling off a short squeeze. Also, 140% of shares were already committed to short sales. So it seems to me that that huge volume must have been due to the short sellers, in which case it was not happening on Robinhood and thus not placing Robinhood at risk.
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That is a lot of logical inference from sketchy evidence. I am open to correction; especially if someone has facts to add. But “the big boys must have had a good and legitimate reason because they would never have done anything shady” just does not cut it.
How Share Prices Are Set
The prices of shares on a stock market can be set in a number of ways, but most the most common way is through an auction process where buyers and sellers place bids and offers to buy or sell. A bid is the price at which somebody wishes to buy, and an offer (or ask) is the price at which somebody wishes to sell. When the bid and ask coincide, a trade is made.
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For every stock transaction, there must be a buyer and a seller. Because of the immutable laws of supply and demand, if there are more buyers for a specific stock than there are sellers of it, the stock price will trend up. Conversely, if there are more sellers of the stock than buyers, the price will trend down.
The bid-ask or bid-offer spread—the difference between the bid price for a stock and its ask or offer price—represents the difference between the highest price that a buyer is willing to pay or bid for a stock and the lowest price at which a seller is offering the stock. A trade transaction occurs either when a buyer accepts the ask price or a seller takes the bid price.
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Matching buyers and sellers of stocks on an exchange was initially done manually, but it is now increasingly carried out through computerized trading systems.
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(Note: Tom is now speculating below …)
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What happens when I buy a stock at an expected price of $50 in the morning but it turns out that it can only be bought for $55 that day? I give the trader $50 but he has to pay $55. Who covers the $5 difference? Normally the brokers will just buy the stock and then take the money out of your existing brokerage account.
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But suppose there aren’t brokerage accounts but just some app Robinhood? Suppose the trade executes at $55 and the app person refuses to pay the difference? Who covers the difference?
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This almost never matters as the execution price is close enough to the expected price. If the price is excessively volatile though the differences could be significant for a heavily trade stock that is changing more than 50% a day.
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So there are reasons why people need collateral for the efficient trading of stock. Nobody wants to cancel a trade because the price difference was $0.02, but suppose there were 10,000 requested buys at $50 and the actual day price was $80?
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None of this means that there wasn’t undue influence by hedge funds, it just illustrates there is a complex series of transactions where everyone wants a * guarantee * they will be paid.
I will say this, the Wall Street guys are the least likely people on the planet to say dumb things that will come back to haunt them later. They may have whispered “do whatever you can do legally to slow this down” in legalize to their influential friends but the chances of finding a smoking gun are near zero.
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What will likely be shown is that the move to slow down Robinhood was unprecedented, and the Wall Street Titans will respond by saying the situation was unprecedented.
WSJ:
Why would a clearinghouse have to increase requirements?
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As noted earlier, margin requirements often rise with risk. A sharp rise in the price of any security raises the prospect that it will decline just as fast, potentially adding to the risk of those trading and holding as collateral these securities.
A challenge in the stock market is that settlement is not instant. The system allows two days after the day a trade happens until the shares and money must change hands, known as “T+2†settlement. Over those two days, the risk that a party might be unable to complete a trade can, in rare circumstances, change dramatically based on market conditions.
One such circumstance might be when the price of a security is extraordinarily volatile. In that case, the seller is exposed to increased risk that in the event of a failure of a buyer to pay up, the security they would be stuck still owning is worth dramatically less. The extraordinary volatility of a stock like GameStop would increase such a concern.
Another is the risk that a party suddenly owes an outsize amount of cash. In a normal market, any clearing member likely has a mostly balanced book of buys and sells, meaning they are both paying and receiving cash. And often many of their own customers’ trades cancel each other, meaning they have no net obligation to the clearinghouse. But when a firm has a huge imbalance of buy orders, its obligation to pay cash skyrockets. This may have been the case this week, when there was much demand for just one or two stocks.
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So who decides it’s time to increase margin requirements?
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How a clearinghouse judges these risks, and therefore when it makes demands for more upfront funds, is typically formulaic. Margins can be based on equations such as value-at-risk. Exactly how the formula works, and who is responsible for losses in what order, are important elements. In the case of National Securities Clearing Corp., losses would be covered by the defaulting member’s funds before the clearinghouse’s own funds or other members’ funds would be used.
A broker like Robinhood would also have to make decisions about its own capital, and how much it was willing or able to tie up in settlement. A broker may face separate obligations for capital levels, like with the SEC. Other brokers also clear via another intermediary—like Apex Clearing, through which WeBull clears—that is a member. These intermediaries may have their own risk controls they apply to their clients.
Tom Scharf
Then you will pay $55. If you don’t want that, you should execute a ‘limit buy’ and not a ‘market buy’. Also, as the WSJ explains, the deposit requirements are present to ensure that there are no cascading failures i.e. Lehman goes down, but the other brokerage’s clients’ orders still go through but with any losses due to 2-day changes taken out of the various brokerages’ deposits.
Tom Scharf (Comment #198021):
But Robinhood users have funds on deposit in accounts with Robinhood.
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The two days to close is weird. Computer traders buy and sell on a millisecond time scale. I am pretty sure that if I buy a stock, I don’t have to wait two days to find out the price I bought it at. But then, I have never actually bought stock except indirectly via mutual funds.
———
A bunch of useful information is gathered together here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameStop_short_squeeze
Robinhood blocked purchases on Jan. 28.
GameStop volume peaked on Jan. 22-26. Closing price peaked on Jan. 27.
Melvin Capitol covered its short position on Jan. 26.
Citron Research covered its short position at about $90/share, corresponding to Jan. 25-26.
On February 1, GameStop short interests fell to 39 percent. In other words, it dropped by 100% of the float in the last two weeks in January. Consistent with short sellers covering.
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So it seems that the big spike in price and volume was driven by the short sellers covering their positions. As expected for a short squeeze.
But if the short sellers covered before Jan. 28, that would seem to eliminate protecting the short sellers as a motive for what happened on Jan. 28.
MIkeM
You don’t. That’s what the deposit is for – to honor the price you bought at. This is the credit risk for the clearinghouse if the seller’s brokerage goes down and prices have dropped over the next 2 days.
Tom Scharf,
Thanks for the thoughtful comments. It seems clearly opaque ( 😉 ) how clearing houses evaluate risk. But it seems to me the greatest risk the clearing houses faced was bankruptcy of good size hedge funds. If they hold a short position when they fold, I suspect the other entities involved in the short (brokers and the clearing house) would ultimately be on the hook. I find it very strange that the biggest apparent risk is not even mentioned by the WSJ. The simplest way for the clearing house to eliminate that very large risk is to not allow purchases of the shorted stocks. Seems almost like we should invoke a financial equivalent of Ockham’s razor: The simplest explanation of people’s actions are the most likely.
Pretty clearly Melvin was required to find billions of dollars to either cover their losses on a short close or else to increase collateral to allow them to wait it out. It doesn’t seem to be public what exactly happened. I’m guessing they are waiting it out. Somebody out there shorted GameStop at the peak and I suppose we will be reading about that in a book a few months from now.
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The hedge funds would have had to cover their losses on the short by selling the other stocks in their fund. This sell off to cover short losses was what could have dragged the entire market down a little, but that never really happened. The hedge funds may use the other stocks in their portfolio as the collateral for the short, but I’m not sure that is allowed, they might have to use treasury bonds or something of low risk.
Mike M,
I am a bit skeptical of the public pronouncements of hedge fund managers. Maybe it is because I think big-time shorters try to manipulate prices downward, to the detriment of other investors.
RB (Comment #198028): “That’s what the deposit is for – to honor the price you bought at. This is the credit risk for the clearinghouse if the seller’s brokerage goes down and prices have dropped over the next 2 days.”
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Let me see if I understand this. The risk is that the seller might fail to meet his contractual obligation to the clearinghouse. But the clearinghouse still has an obligation to delver the stock. So the clearinghouse might have to buy stock at a different price. But the risk would seem to be if the price goes up, not down.
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So who ends up holding the bag?
Tom Scharf (Comment #198030): “Pretty clearly Melvin was required to find billions of dollars to either cover their losses on a short close or else to increase collateral to allow them to wait it out. It doesn’t seem to be public what exactly happened. I’m guessing they are waiting it out.”
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But on a short sale you may not have the option to wait it out. There is a date on which you must deliver the shares.
And the short interest has dropped dramatically, so it seems that the shorts were covered.
———
SteveF (Comment #198031): “I am a bit skeptical of the public pronouncements of hedge fund managers. Maybe it is because I think big-time shorters try to manipulate prices downward, to the detriment of other investors.”
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Indeed. But that would be a lie that is easy to prove and could bring criminal charges. I am not saying that hedge fund managers don’t lie or try to manipulate the market. Just that they don’t do it in a way that makes it easy for them to get caught.
Mike M,
Yes, the risk is if the price goes up. The buyer bought at $100. Price is now $120 2 days later when the seller’s brokerage went kaput. The clearinghouse buys from open market at $120 and the $20 difference comes from the seller’s brokerage deposits first and then from the deposits of everybody else.
RB (Comment #198035): “the $20 difference comes from the seller’s brokerage deposits first and then from the deposits of everybody else.”
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Thanks. I suppose “everybody else” could then go after the seller’s brokerage in bankruptcy court.
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It now makes sense why the clearinghouse would want Robinhood to either put up a bigger deposit or restrict the selling of volatile stocks. I still don’t get restricting buys.
Same thing with buys except the risk is that an RH buyer buys at 100, a seller at Merrill Lynch expects to be paid 100 but RH goes kaput and the price 2 days later is 80. The clearing house will sell at 80 and the 20 difference will come from RH and others.
I was bored waiting for people to do things and stuff so I can take care of my dependent things and stuff, so in reference to this exchange about Lucia’s Flagrante Delicto analogy, I dug her original comment back up:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/happy-spring-new-comment-thread/#comment-145084
I need to find a new purpose to pursue while I continue to wait for people to complete their things and stuff…
According to the WSJ excerpt, the risk is that the price falls in the T+2 period. The sell doesn’t go through and and the seller is now left holding his original stock which is now worth less two days later. (I think it is the buyer that would commonly fail?).
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So the system is designed to not allow trades to fail in the T+2 settlement period. One can imagine if it was common for trades to fail in the T+2 period that all kinds of worse malfeasance would be possible.
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Imagine somebody agreed to sell their $100,000 GameStop stock on Friday and the specific trade failed today. His stock would now be worth less than $50,000. They might have reason to be upset and suspicious.
RB (Comment #198037): “Same thing with buys except the risk is that an RH buyer buys at 100, a seller at Merrill Lynch expects to be paid 100 but RH goes kaput and the price 2 days later is 80. The clearing house will sell at 80 and the 20 difference will come from RH and others.”
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Of course. I should have realized that. And with Gamestop bid up to such an extreme level, the exposure could be large. I still question whether Robinhood clients were buying enough shares to justify the need $3 billion in collateral.
Mike M.
If their short expired and they wanted to wait it out then they could just open a new short I assume.
Nearly two-thirds of Florida nursing home staffers decline coronavirus vaccine in first round
The percentages are similar for staff of the state’s assisted-living facilities, but not all of those homes have received first-round vaccinations.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2021/02/03/nearly-two-thirds-of-florida-nursing-home-staffers-decline-coronavirus-vaccine-in-first-round/
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I’m a bit torn on this. I think they should probably get to choose but also find it irresponsible for them to not get a vaccine. I can see this being a reasonable condition of employment. The uptake of residents is around 90% from what I read, but new residents are coming in all the time and they would be at risk.
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Haven’t quite figured out what to think.
Tom Scharf (Comment #198042): “If their short expired and they wanted to wait it out then they could just open a new short I assume.”
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But probably at nothing like the price they had to buy at to cover the first short. So maybe they could have gotten some of their losses back, or maybe they could have lost even more.
Re Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #198004)
Kenneth, thanks for your reply regarding the CEEMDAN decomposition.
Tom Scharf,
“The uptake of residents is around 90% from what I read, but new residents are coming in all the time and they would be at risk.”
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Sure, but that should be a very temporary risk. Most all over 65 in Florida should have had the option for vaccination by some time in April, if not sooner. That some of the long term care staff don’t want to receive the vaccine is unfortunate for them, but not catastrophic for their customers…. at least after April.
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Unless the Biden administration takes most of the state allocations for a month or more and uses them to innoculate prison inmates, homeless people, bar hopping 20-somethings, and “people of colorâ€, even if young. These are all real possibilities as far as I can tell.
Tom Scharf,
Do we know what fraction of nursing home staffers have already had the disease? That would be, IMO, a legitimate reason for not getting vaccinated. There’s no mention of that possibility in your linked article. I know that there are at least some staffers that have had the disease at the facility where my wife is staying to recover from two broken kneecaps after a fall at home.
In all the above discussion I have seen no mention of how Robinhood makes money when they don’t charge a commission on trades. It turns out they are paid by the high speed trader who actually places the order. See, for example, here:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-free-trading-on-robinhood-isnt-really-free-1541772001
The high-frequency traders make money from the difference between bid and asked stock prices.
DeWitt,
As far as I can see, the articles that tell us that x% declined never mention if they asked them reasons for declining. For those trying to improve the rate of acceptance of the vaccine, it would be useful to know that. If it’s that they already had the vaccine, that would be worth knowing. If it’s that they thing “mRNA is gene therapy”, that would be worth knowing.
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On twitter, I’ve run across people who are against taking it. I’ll usually hear the same litany of reasons for each. Because of that, I’m not sure they really know why they don’t like it. But it’s “gene therapy” is one. Almost no one dies is another. Only old people die is another. You can just take Vitamin D is another. You can just take Ivermectin (every three days forever? And get possible liver damage?)
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I usually give the obvious to me reason why those aren’t convincing reasons to me. Right now, if they don’t want to take the vaccine, I’m usually ok with that. Heck if they want to never take it, I might be ok with that as long as eventually it’s decreed we don’t wear masks or have any burden of protecting them.
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Still, it would be nice to know their reasons for not taking it. That might help with any future campaigns to get near universal vaccination. (The J&J vaccine getting approved should over come the “gene therapy” theory. It’s not mRNA.)
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But I do think those working in nursing homes and assisted living should take the vaccines. Maybe wait if their pregnant but that’s a job where they should take it. (Also: dentist.)
From other articles I read on healthcare professionals declining the vaccine it is the usual reasons regular people are declining. The lower paid end of the healthcare profession declines in larger numbers and there are the usual race and age differences.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-health-care-workers-are-still-saying-no-to-a-covid-19-vaccine-11612089020
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There is a sizable percentage that are in the “wait and see” category that might eventually do it, however I’m not sure if you are watching people die from covid that there is much left to see to convince you.
My dear wife (PhD, clinical chemistry) has several friends, 60’s and 70’s, who were reluctant to have the vaccination. After my wife’s “are you crazy?” reaction…. and some explanation that the m-RNA technology is not gene therapy…. they all came around and will now get the vaccination. I really think it is mostly a lack of knowledge that lead some older people to doubt the vaccines.
SteveF,
Along the same lines, the Non-GMO project label on food always annoys me. Everyone deserves an informed choice indeed!
RE nursing home workers declining the vaccine. Hopefully most nursing home residents will be vaccinated soon so that won’t matter too much.
My wife is going to get vaccinated because she is diabetic. But its really really difficult to find an appointment in our county. I’m not nearly as motivated as my health is really excellent at the moment.
I am still [48 hrs] recovering from my first Moderna shot….. hasn’t been too bad….. just bad enough for me to milk it for all it’s worth.
A friend of mine who is 70 years old had the virus about 5 months ago and it didn’t hit her hard. Now her doctor is recommending that she take a vaccine. Personally, if she had a moderate reaction to the virus, it probably means it won’t be that serious if she were to get it again. Also, she should have antibodies which would fight the virus.
On the other hand, there have been serious reactions to the vaccines. I am thinking the vaccine could possibly be more dangerous to her than the virus.
Russel,
Let us know how the whole thing panned out in a few days. At least we’ll all be forewarned.
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I admit, I’m planning to schedule the two days after my vaccine as “do nothing” days. But for me, that’s not going to be a for a while. (I hope J&J gets approved fast.)
Lucia… This is my third morning after and things are pretty good …. Not 100% but I made a batch of cheddar- pepper biscuits before 8 AM.
Gavin Newsom might be heading into his last view months as Governor. The recall campaign is rapidly closing in on the required 1.5 million signatures and seems to have a good chance of getting enough extra to have 1.5 million survive challenges. He is now at 31% approval in one poll, although just 36% said they support recall. If he has bottomed out, he will likely survive; but if he keeps sinking, he should be done.
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On the other hand, Liz Cheney easily survived the challenge to her “leadership”, which I did not expect. I keep underestimating the ability of the idiocracy to cling to power.
My wife, father, and sister all got Pfizer and had very little reaction. My wife’s arm was a little sore. The Pfizer has 30/30 units of vaccine in the shots and the Moderna has 100/100. Not sure if it makes a difference.
JD Ohio,
If she does get a vaccine, she should only need one shot of a two shot vaccine. I would like to see her doctor’s reasoning about getting a shot now. AFAIK, having the disease and recovering is still far more effective than any of the vaccines. Reinfection rates are miniscule so having the disease is 99.9+% effective.
Since the virus has been around for more than a year, we can also surmise that immunity lasts at least that long. I’m pretty sure that the speculation you see in the MSM that immunity only lasts a few months is misinformation to generate more FUD. Now if vaccines tweaked for the newer strains appear, that might be worth it. All the reinfections I read about were with different strains.
There’s speculation that the Brazilian strain is causing reinfections in Manaus, but again, I have only seen one documented reinfection.
It doesn’t bother me about Cheney and I don’t care if Taylor Greene is kind of crazy. I dislike dogpiles for thought conformity much more than I object to the isolated bouts of loony behavior.
I have a table with 95% confidence limits for the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine. It’s in .jpg format. I can email it to lucia or upload it to a hosting service and post a link later. I have to go get a CT scan of my chest right now.
I read that intelligentsia are saying that they might recommend people who have had covid just get one shot of the vaccine, kind of a booster.
Mike M,
Liz Cheney is likely to be beaten in a primary in 2022. The voters in her state are not going to easily forgive her for voting for the second impeachment. It was a gratuitous vote with no impact on the outcome… the Democrats were all going to vote for it. It was nothing but Liz Cheney flipping Trump the bird. What she didn’t realize is that she was flipping the bird to the voters in her state at the same time. I really think she is toast.
I agree SteveF. I was surprised she survived in leadership. Her brand of Republicanism is dead too. Marco Rubio gets it when he says Trump has transformed the Republican party into a multi-ethnic working class party. Rubio says the party needs to consolidate that. It’s ironic that for 20 years of Republican handwringing about the Hispanic vote and how amnesty was the only way to make headway, Trump accomplishes that goal, flipping South Florida and South Texas. It shows just how disconnected from Reality the Chamber of Commerce Republicans are.
DeWitt, Your pdf didn’t show up. I am very interested to see it.
David Young,
Do you mean the .jpg rather than pdf?
here it is (I hope)
SteveF (Comment #198071): “Liz Cheney is likely to be beaten in a primary in 2022.”
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That is something to look forward to. It ought to be a safe call, but given the insanity we have been witnessing, I will believe it when I see it.
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David Young (Comment #198072): “Marco Rubio gets it when he says Trump has transformed the Republican party into a multi-ethnic working class party. Rubio says the party needs to consolidate that.”
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Absolutely. If the Republican try to appease the virtue signalling business class and affluent suburbs, they will gain little but lose a big chunk of the Trump voters. To succeed, they need to keep Trump’s policies and work hard to expand support among minorities.
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Visible minorities, whether Black, Latino or Asian, are much more conservative than the Democrat party as a whole, especially on social issues. But they don’t trust Republicans because of that party’s history of catering to Wall Street and Big Business.
———-
Footnote on Liz Cheney: A clear majority of Republican congress critters signed the petition to put her leadership to a vote. But less than a quarter voted against her on the secret ballot. Hypocrites.
Mike M,
“Footnote on Liz Cheney: A clear majority of Republican congress critters signed the petition to put her leadership to a vote. But less than a quarter voted against her on the secret ballot.”
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That is as sorry a commentary on the sincerity of Republicans in Congress as there could be. They are clearly afraid of their own voters. The voters at home will not be so accommodating to Liz Cheney.
SteveF,
I dunno. I could see supporting calling for a vote even if I were planning to vote for Cheney just to get everyone on the record.
On a different note, with the call from academia and the MSM for what amounts to a Ministry of Truth, I think the NYT and the WaPo should change their names to Truth (Pravda in Russian) and The News (Izvestia). They can flip a coin to see which one is which.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/liberalisms-ministry-of-truth-11612395404?mod=opinion_lead_pos1
I’d quote from the editorial, but it’s entirely too depressing.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #198084): “I could see supporting calling for a vote even if I were planning to vote for Cheney just to get everyone on the record.”
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But it is not on the record; it was a secret ballot. So we had congress critters saying one thing publicly and the opposite in private. Hardly shocking for politicians. But it does reveal how few Republicans in Congress actually care about the things their voters care about.
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By the way, I was mistaken when I said less than a quarter voted against Cheney. It was almost 30%.
DeWitt,
“I could see supporting calling for a vote even if I were planning to vote for Cheney just to get everyone on the record.”
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I could see that too if the second vote were not a secret ballot. It was a secret ballot. They are cowards, and afraid of their own voters. As they should be. I am not suggesting the Dems would be much better; they are all scoundrels as far as I can tell.
Mike M,
Cross posted. Yes, the issue is the secret ballot. They are neither honest nor sincere.
To repeat, I don’t have a problem with someone saying Trump is crazy. This is not Cheney’s fault, it is Trump’s fault. This is just another episode of purity testing on the right.
Tom Scharf,
Much depends on your perception of what happened in the lead-up to the storming of the capitol. All the actual evidence I have seen suggests it was planned ahead of time by several individuals, and quite independent of what Trump said (and what he said, odious as it was, was after the police barriers were breached).
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Trump was, without doubt, being a total a$$hole, especially after all plausible routes to him reversing a few critical states were gone. But being a total a$$hole is not a high crime nor misdemeanor; he was, after all, a total a$$hole for 4 straight years. The Dems tried to impeach him for being an a$$hole in early 2020, with no other grounds. Just as in early 2020, being an a$$hole is not grounds for impeachment.
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Should Trump have let it go and recognized defeat in December? Sure, but he is an a$$hole, so he could not. Should he have recognized that he was doing harm to the country through all of December? Sure, but he is an a$$hole, so he could not.
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As for Liz Cheney: she too is an a$$hole. She is wedded to policies which have cost the country dearly in blood and treasure with nothing to show for it. I will be happy she is no longer in Washington after 2022.
GameStop now down 89% from its peak, down another 41% today. It’s lower than before the big Reddit runup. Lots of naïve investors are no doubt learning a lesson.
Tom
It was a matter of when, not if. Yes. I suspect some naive investors thought the “unified” power of reddit could keep it up at those stratospheric $$levels. That was a nutty idea. I suspect that on the balance mostly sophisticated investors ended up “winning”. Not the ones who’d done short sales before reddit got in. But others.
Fund managers who do real analysis are going to outperform teenagers in the basement 95% of the time, but not always. They know Apple production numbers before Apple announces them because they track the suppliers for iPhone components for example and lots of other gray area information exchange. Most of these people are very smart, but can be beaten in the short term because the game has a lot of unknowns in it, like pandemics. It’s really a battle between the very very smart people against the lowly very smart. There is no place to hide when you are a fund manager, performance is all that matters.
Tom,
Smart informed vs other smart. The “reddit trolls” did not have deep information.
Tom Scharf (Comment #198094): “I don’t have a problem with someone saying Trump is crazy.”
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I’ll tell you who is scary crazy: Joe Biden.
Denying the reality of biological sex. Opening the border to whoever wants to walk in. Working hard to drive a wedge through our society. Destroying the effectiveness of the military. Undermining our energy security. Probably going to let Iran get nuclear weapons and dominate the middle east. Probably letting China push unimpeded toward world domination.
Tom Scharf
When it comes to the hedge fund world, not really. There’s a lot of puffery and self-enrichment with their 2 and 20 fees (or more) and many fall for it, all the time. Buffett demonstrated this point convincingly with his index fund vs hedge funds bet.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/030916/buffetts-bet-hedge-funds-year-eight-brka-brkb.asp
RB,
Despite some mistakes over many years, Buffett has consistently outperformed index funds, unlike hedge funds, which have not. Unless a fund is investing ‘forever’, and operates with very low management fees, it is going to be just about impossible for any actively managed fund (normal or hedge) to outperform Buffett, or even an SP500 index fund.
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Since they don’t have very low fees, actively managed funds are a long term loser compared to index funds. And always will be.
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My view of them is lower still because of the carried interest tax scam.
SteveF (Comment #198121): “Despite some mistakes over many years, Buffett has consistently outperformed index funds”
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In other words, a skilled manager can outperform the market.
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SteveF: “unlike hedge funds, which have not.”
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This shows hedge funds outperforming other investments over a 15 year period: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cumulative_hedge_fund_and_other_risk_asset_returns,_1997-2012.png
Of course the time frame chosen makes a difference.
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SteveF: “just about impossible for any actively managed fund (normal or hedge) to outperform Buffett, or even an SP500 index fund.”
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Out performing Buffet is a big ask. But somewhere between Buffet and the index should surely be possible. Exhibit A: Warren Buffet.
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SteveF: “Since they don’t have very low fees, actively managed funds are a long term loser compared to index funds. And always will be.”
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It is not that simple. Index funds are free riders that can not exist without active traders. As their share of the market increases, I would think that the efficiency of the market would decrease. That should create more opportunity for active managers to outperform the market. I would think there should be an equilibrium where active managers outperform the market by enough to cover their fees. Since not all active managers are identical, some should then outperform the index funds even net of fees. I would think that at equilibrium, the average managed fund should then outperform the market by a small margin above fees.
Mike M,
“Outperforming Buffett is a big ask.”
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Since Buffet doesn’t have astronomical management fess, it is just about an impossible ask.
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I agree that at an equilibrium point, index funds would not be at an advantage compared to actively managed funds. Thing is, there is little reason to believe the market is at that point, or even near it. The other issue is range of return: even under the situation you describe, where active managers could provide enough value to cover their fees, there will be a wide range of fund performances…. so unless you were in a “fund of funds” the fund you select could do better or worse than the market. That risk is not present in an index fund. I think that active funds (and especially hedge funds) claim they offer high short term returns, while index funds clearly don’t; human impatience provides actively managed funds with investors.
Mike M,
There are managers who do have strong records over very long periods. One would hopefully have picked the right ones in retrospect.
https://acquirersmultiple.com/2019/05/out-performing-mohnish-pabrai/
Same thing with mutual funds, many of whom are closet indexers for the same reason. Even Buffett is no longer likely to outperform the market (last 10+ years) by self-admission as he deals with a problem of size.
Let’s say the universe of investors is divided into active funds and passive indexers. The group as a whole represents the market. So, active investors as a whole would underperform the market by fees. My guess is that as the number of active investors decreases, and we are likely far from that threshold, the market would become less and less liquid as less research is conducted on individual companies.
SteveF (Comment #198130): “I agree that at an equilibrium point, index funds would not be at an advantage compared to actively managed funds. … the fund you select could do better or worse than the market.”
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It may well be that index funds have not reached equilibrium. I have no idea how much of the market is in such funds or where the equilibrium point is.
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The extra risk with managed funds should result in their having a somewhat better average performance net fees, at equilibrium.
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I am not opposed to index funds. They are a good choice for a low to moderate information investor, like me. And I am invested in one, though also in some other low fee funds.
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SteveF: “I think that active funds (and especially hedge funds) claim they offer high short term returns, while index funds clearly don’t; human impatience provides actively managed funds with investors.”
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I think that hedge funds, at least traditional ones, claim an higher long term return. The traditional ones do not use shorts to speculate, they use shorts to reduce losses in a down market. Then when the market moves up again, they are starting from a better position and thus do better over a full cycle. The Fed driven stock market of the last decade has negated any advantage such funds have. I expect that is why some, such as Melvin, have resorted to riskier strategies.
RB (Comment #198131): “My guess is that as the number of active investors decreases, and we are likely far from that threshold, the market would become less and less liquid as less research is conducted on individual companies.”
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Yes. The resulting inefficiencies would create opportunities for those with the skills to spot them. The market is not perfectly efficient now, as indicated by the ability of some investors to do better long term.
That’s one aspect. What I meant was that if, say index funds represented 99% of the market, the bid/ask spreads would become very wide as not enough is known to assess fair value of a company. In Japan, index funds have now overtaken active funds in assets.
You can’t really compare actively managed funds as a group to index funds over the long term. The reason is only the good performing actively managed funds survive, the poor performers are closed up, while the SP500 index is always there. One could go back and use all the funds that were closed as well as the survivors and get some better numbers, but they won’t reflect well in the comparison.
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But RB is correct at equilibrium the difference is fees and those can be substantial, you are losing 1% to 2% a year and that adds up over 30 years.
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One thing you have to be careful of is “chasing performanceâ€, in other words keep switching to last year’s hot fund. Many fund managers are lucky and good and thus rise for a year or two, then return to the mean.
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Once index funds get to be too large I can imagine there will be some managers that will exploit the characteristics of index funds to somehow make money on their very predictable trades, somehow being one day ahead of the index fund trades or some other scheme.
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I don’t have the time and energy to try to discriminate between lucky and good funds myself.
Tom Scharf
.. which would make their relative performance even worse.
BTW, I’m not trying to say that stocks necessarily trade over fundamentals. Over long enough periods, they do, but nobody knows how long that period is (i.e, 10+ years). Otherwise we wouldn’t have things such as multiple expansion/compression etc over decadal periods. An example today is Tesla, which in my opinion has been in a gigantic bubble for more than a year. Shorting, while decried for centuries, is hard and the shorts have given up.
The “detail” of the $1.9T stimulus is that it will be passed using budget reconciliation. This means that unless further legislation is passed (with 60 votes in the Senate) then the $1.9T has to automatically come out of other programs such as Medicare.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/democrats-risk-unintended-medicare-cuts-if-they-pass-partisan-covid-n1256375
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That could get pretty interesting. The usual people will say all the usual things.
Tom Scharf (Comment #198135): “But RB is correct at equilibrium the difference is fees and those can be substantial, you are losing 1% to 2% a year and that adds up over 30 years.”
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I think that is true as long as there are few enough index funds so that they do not disrupt equilibrium. But as index funds grow relative to the market, it will be easier for active managers to earn their fees.
MikeM,
Remember that they are competing against other active investors. The inexperienced retail investor of course will be roadkill there. Not every retail investor of course, there are many traders with strong 20+ year records of outperformance. But otherwise, some active managers will earn their fees, others will not.
RB,
“I’m not trying to say that stocks necessarily trade over fundamentals.”
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With a background of constant price inflation, I can’t see how the market price doesn’t always outrun the fundamentals. I am more interested in changes in valuations over inflation than simple increases. If we assume an average of 3% per year inflation, then over 50 years (1970 to present) inflation alone has driven prices by a factor of 440% (and I am pretty sure it is much more than that). .
The recent hyper-growth in money supply (and historically low returns on cash) has driven asset prices to very high levels. What has facilitated the dramatic run-up in asset prices relative to prices for goods and services has been a dramatic rise in global productivity and drop in absolute cost of production…. witness the destruction of much US industrial production due to cheap competition. But that can’t continue forever; prices for goods and services have to rise.
I just came across this cartoon over a month late, but it appears prophetic:
https://c1.legalinsurrection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/09-New-Year21-LI-1080.jpg
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But a morsel of good news: The race in NY-22 is finally over and the Republican won.
Mike M.,
Cuomo and the NY State legislature are going to fix that by redistricting out 4 seats currently held by Republicans. Note that they are doing this by ignoring a state constitutional amendment that requires that redistricting be done by a bipartisan independent commission bound by fairly strict anti-gerrymandering rules. The state has failed to fund the commission.
New York is effectively a one party state and Cuomo intends to make it more so and keep it that way for the foreseeable future. Don’t look to Eric Holder and his group to sue NY like he did NC over gerrymandering. According to Eric’s actions, gerrymandering is only unfair if Republicans do it.