The US reported +883 new coronavirus deaths today, bringing the total to 582,456. The 7-day moving average rose to 747 deaths per day.
The US had +60,317 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 today, bringing the total to over 32.5 million. The 7-day moving average declined to below 68,000 new cases per day.
16 US states had over 1,000 new cases today. Michigan led the pack with over 6,000 new cases, followed by Florida and Pennsylvania with over 5,000 each.
The more contagious UK B.1.1.7 variant now accounts for 44.7% of all new cases in the US, including 61.2% in Tennessee, 59.7% in Michigan, 57.3% in Minnesota, and 54.6% in Florida. (The Brazilian variant P.1 account for just 1.5%).
This shift towards these more contagious variants is very striking and helps account for why new cases remain stubbornly high despite a growing number of people being vaccinated.
New hospital admissions in the US due to COVID-19 are up +1.5% from a week ago.
The US administered 1.8 million vaccine shots today, bringing the total to 213 million, or 64.3 doses per 100 people. The 7-day moving average declined to 3.03 million shots to per day. Hard to say if this decline is due to the J&J pause or reaching the wall of public resistance.
51.1% of all American adults have received at least one vaccine shot; 33.3% are now fully vaccinated.
80.3% of Americans age 65 or older have received at least one shot; 65.1% are now fully vaccinated.
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In re-reading all my old books about China, I’m often surprised by where I originally learned about certain things that stuck in my mind. I have to say, I’ve found several of the books by Harrison Salisbury - mostly now out of print - invaluable.
I'll share my below-the-hood analysis of the GDP numbers here. Headline real GDP growth for the U.S. came in at +1.6% (annualized q/q) in 1Q24, lower than expected. That's the lower quarterly growth rate since 2Q22.
The composition of real GDP growth in Q1 was: +1.6 = +1.7 consumption +0.4 business investment -0.4 inventories +0.5 housing +0.2 government spending -0.9 net exports.
By comparison, the composition in Q4 was: +3.4 = +2.2 consumption +0.5 business investment -0.5 inventories + 0.1 housing +0.8 government spending +0.3 net exports.
1) This is true, but only when you artificially limit it to "MSM". Which means ignoring the #1 cable news channel, talk radio, Epoch Times, and host of other podcast, etc. that have increasingly eclipsed legacy media outlets as sources of news and opinion.
2) Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, have always had different institutional sources of power in America, and they each like to tell themselves that the other has the institutions that matter and are thus all-powerful, which makes them the underdogs.
Why did the Allies nickname the Germans "Huns" in World War I? Many believe it was inspired by German atrocities in Belgium, and that's true as far as it goes, but there was a specific reason why "Huns" was the reference that stuck ...
In the 1890s, Kaiser Wilhelm II developed an obsession over the so-called "Yellow Peril", the racial bugbear that the Chinese and Japanese would unite to invade the Western world, either by arms or by mass migration ...
On July 27, 1900, the Kaiser gave a particularly unhinged speech to German soldiers departing to help rescue the foreign diplomats and residents besieged in Beijing by the Boxer Rebellion ...
I'm going to tell you a little story about Trump and the people around him.
Back in around 210 BC, a nomadic people called the Xiongnu lived on the northern borders of China. Historians think they may have been the ancestors of the Huns.
The leader of the Huns was named Tumen, and he had a son and heir named Modu. Father and son we're on very friendly terms, and Modu was impatient to take over as leader.