The US reported +374 new coronavirus deaths yesterday, bringing the total to 623,838. The 7-day moving average - important given the irregular daily reporting from some states - rose back to 259 deaths per day.
The US reported +35,447 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 yesterday, bringing the total to over 34.8 million. The 7-day moving average rose to 26,704 new cases per day, its highest since May 22.
The long US decline in new COVID cases and deaths appears to be over, and are now beginning to rebound - mostly among the unvaccinated.
Eight US states had over 1,000 new cases yesterday. Florida led the pack with over 6,000, though this likely included unreported cases from earlier in the week. California had over 3,000, and Texas and Missouri both had over 2,000.
New cases in Florida are clearly spiking upwards, to over 5,000 per day, their highest since late April.
New cases in Missouri - mostly driven by the Delta variant - are back to their highest levels since January.
New cases in Louisiana hit their highest yesterday since February.
New cases in Arkansas have also hit their highest level since February.
New cases in Georgia are starting to inch upwards.
New hospital admissions in the US due to COVID-19 are up +31.2% from a week ago.
New hospital admissions in the southeastern US states, where vaccination rates are lowest, are up +47.9% from a week ago.
New hospitalization admissions in the south-central US, including Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, are up +44.0% from a week ago.
New hospital admissions in Missouri due to COVID-19 are up +32.1% from a week ago.
New hospital admissions in Arkansas due to COVID-19 are up +64.6% from a week ago, back to their levels in February.
New hospital admissions in Florida due to COVID-19 are up +49.6% from a week ago.
New hospital admissions in Louisiana due to COVID-19 are up +49.3% from a week ago.
This latest map from nytimes.com shows the areas of the US that are seeing a renewed rise in COVID-19 infections, over the past week. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
Hospitalizations from COVID are trending younger in the US, according to the latest CDC data.
As of the latest data (early July), the Delta strain (originating in India) has become dominant in the US, accounting for over half of all new infections.
The main focus of the Delta variant remains the Ozark hotspot. But Nevada is also an emerging hotspot.
New hospitalizations in Nevada due to COVID-19 are up +25.9% from a week ago, though they were already rising noticeably then.
The US only administered 546,000 new vaccine shots yesterday, bringing the total to 335 million, or 101.1 doses per 100 people. The 7-day moving average rose slightly to 548,000 shots per day.
The number of Americans receiving their first vaccine shot has slowed to a crawl.
65.1% of qualified Americans (age 12 and over) have received at least one vaccine shot; 56.1% are now fully vaccinated.
Over 83 million American adults and nearly 16 million qualified children remain completely unvaccinated.
I'd be interesting in an interpretation of this chart. Who are the "multiple/other" and why are their vaccination rates so high compared to everyone else? usafacts.org/visualizations…
Vaccination rates vary predictably by age. Together with the fact that nearly all hospitalizations are now unvaccinated patients, this almost certainly explains why hospitalizations are trending younger.
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I no longer feel like I belong in this country. On a deeply personal level, its values are no longer my values, as they once were. My persistence in it feels increasingly strange and unwelcome.
This is not some angry declaration. The feeling perplexes me, more than anything else.
I say this as someone who served in the military, worked in politics, and spoke proudly and fondly of our country while living abroad.
Well, so it has come to pass. I cannot say I am surprised, because I did see it coming, but it is saddening nonetheless. I will not say much, because I don't trust myself to. But I do think this nation has made a grave mistake. How grave, we shall only learn in time.
This is not the country that I spent a lifetime, at home and abroad, loving and defending. It is something else, and what exactly that means for me I cannot yet say.
I'm cautious about sayihg what I really feel right now, especially on this platform, because I know it would be mocked. And that, itself, is a symptom of what I see, the glee that many now take in other Americans' sadness and fear. We are remaking ourselves in his image.
Then you're a fool. We have a democratic republic. I've been a limited-government conservative Republican my whole life. In fact, some of my major criticisms of Trump are that he is too much a big-government interventionist in the economy.
This inanity about "the US is not a democracy, it's a republic" is getting way too prevalent. The US has a republican form of government - as does China and North Korea. Unlike them, it is democratic in that it derives its authority from the consent of the governed.
"The US is not a democracy, it's a republic" is a line that comes from the old John Birch Society (which was drummed out of the mainstream Republican Party because of its extreme conspiratorial views) based on a very ignorant reading of how the Founders used the term democracy.
If Musk tried to withhold Starlink services to aid a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, our Defense Dept should sit him down and tell him he going to restore it or the U.S. government is appropriating the company in the interests of national security. Full stop.
I’m usually for the U.S. government taking a hands-off approach to business, but we’re talking about a wartime scenario that would almost certainly involve the U.S. in a peer-to-peer conflict and there’d be no room for fooling around.
And quite frankly if he was having conversations with any adversary country about it that would be very problematic in and of itself.
1. There are times when a thread makes so many important mistakes and feeds into so many misconceptions that it's worthwhile to address it point by point. My apologies.
2. It is true that Trump's tariffs against China were ostensibly imposed for the purpose of forcing China to alter it own unfair trade practices - in large part because the President's legal authority to levy special tariffs requires him to cite this as the reason.
3. However, it was unclear from the start what the "ask" was from China - what exactly the Trump Admin wanted China to do that would allow the tariffs to be lifted. And Trump repeatedly talked about tariffs being good and beneficial in their own right.
The reason the bills are “mammoth” is that they includes hundreds, even thousands of legislative changes on a wide variety of unrelated topics. Basically a “bill of bills”.
Where AI could help us by offering some context to what these often small changes actually mean, in terms of policy. Often it’s hard to understand what changing “and” to “or” in Clause 81 of Title II refers to or the impact it could have.