Re today's Supreme Court decision to let the Census Bureau stop counting: the only states where it hasn't yet enumerated 99.9% or more of housing units are Louisiana (98.3%), Mississippi (99.4%) and South Dakota (99.8%) 2020census.gov/en/response-ra…
Also big shout-out to Minnesota for having the highest self-response rate
A little background: the original deadline was July 31, and in April for obvious reasons the Census Bureau announced that it was extending it to Oct. 31 census.gov/newsroom/press…
Then in August they announced they would finish by Sept. 30, enabling them to be done counting by the Dec. 31 statutory deadline 2020census.gov/en/news-events…
It definitely looks like the Trump administration is trying hard to finalize the counts while he is still president, and you are welcome to freak out about that. But in terms of field work it doesn't seem like there was a whole lot of that left to do 2020census.gov/en/news-events…
To be sure, my column did mention the possibility that the long iceberg decline was ending, with this 2018 @hels manifesto as the turning point newyorker.com/culture/kitche…
But I really wouldn't that to stand in the way of content like this
At some point after the Covid-19 pandemic fades, mortality rates will drop below normal. But there's not much sign in the data that this is happening yet bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
People keep thinking this low-mortality period has already arrived in the U.S. because of the way the CDC reports excess deaths, but the data for the past couple of months are incomplete and CDC efforts to correct for the incompleteness never quite do the trick
In fact, because of a change in methods on Sept. 9, the CDC warns that "estimates for the most recent weeks for the US overall are likely underestimated to a larger extent than in previous releases" cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr…
This year has already broken the record for the number of corporate bankruptcies of $1 billion or more, according to NYU's Edward Altman. But by some other bankruptcy measures it's not a record-breaker at all
The overall number of business bankruptcies is (as of the second quarter, at least) near a 40-year low
This isn't going to be any solace for NYC parents who just got the news that schools will be reopening even later than promised, but being stuck at home this year seems to have saved kids' lives. A new column, and a mortality-statistics filled thread 1/n bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
Here are deaths by age group for the U.S. for Feb. 2-Aug. 1 and the more or less equivalent period in 2018 2/n
And since anybody familiar with CDC mortality reporting will reply, "But those July 2020 numbers aren't complete yet!" here's what the chart looks like if you stop counting on May 30. Kids 5-14 actually had a mortality decline during spring that mostly disappeared over the summer
The one caveat I'd add to this (excellent) thread is that I do think a higher percentage of New Yorkers than Madrileños have Covid-19 antibodies. In the Comunidad de Madrid (which seems similar to if not identical the metro area) it was ~11.5% in April/May thelancet.com/journals/lance…