Today’s #COVID19 update (really the last update from last week — this is data as of Friday morning) closes off an up-and-down week on a bright note. Cases and positivity rate both fell slightly week-over-week, but remain quite elevated.
Hospitalization numbers are still ticking upwards, though, which is more concerning.
Overall, the impression I’m getting from the data in Minnesota is a plateau — not recovering, but also not accelerating again.
Looking at rate of change, you can see we’ve been at constant slow growth for close to 3 weeks now, excepting a teasing blip last week.
You may have noticed that this #COVID19 wave has just dragged on and on in Minnesota, unlike any of our past waves.
Of course, this wave also started at MUCH lower levels than the last two…
The line for the Spring 2020 wave here starts at the beginning of April, when positivity rate really started taking off. But of course the disease was circulating in MN for a month before that.
So as an experiment, I rejiggered the Summer 2021 start date from the date when positivity rate started to rise to the date when positivity surpassed our March low point.
No idea if this is anything, but we don’t look so weird any more…
Cases are growing most quickly in northwest Minnesota, and most slowly in Hennepin/Ramsey:
We have not seen cases spike following the State Fair.
That’s not to say that cases wouldn’t have been lower had the Fair not happened! COVID is really complicated, and it’s *super hard* to sort out exactly what impact any one event or policy had.
New #COVID19 cases in Minnesota are highest among Native Americans (the least-vaccinated racial/demographic group) and lowest among Asians (the most-vaccinated group).
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“No principles, any methods, but no flowery language — always Yes or No, though you could only count on him if it was No.” — Clement Attlee on Stalin
“Soviet biologists were instructed to adopt the theories of the charlatan Lysenko… to disastrous effect… It is significant that Stalin left his nuclear physicists alone & never presumed to second guess *their* calculations. Stalin may well have been mad, but he was not stupid.”
“Fortunately for the West, American popular culture had an appeal that American political ineptitude could do little to tarnish.”
I finally hit on why "Hazbin Hotel" is leaving me so cold. I love a stylized sitcom about depraved souls in the afterlife struggling toward redemption: It's called "The Good Place," & while it lacked raunch, songs & art deco animation, it had sophisticated multi-layered writing.
Partly this is a difference in execution — if you hired Michael Schur to script-doctor the dialogue on "Hazbin Hotel" you'd get a much better show — but in large part it's just intent. TGP was aiming at the border between middle- and high-brow; HH is aiming at middle-low.
I see everything "Hazbin Hotel" is trying to do, and can appreciate it in an abstract sense. It's not a terrible show, it's just, like, a C+. It's competently done and has a few interesting ideas, but (4-5 episodes in) doesn't display any real verve or finesse in its writing.
You BET we polled people about #Napoleon. On the eve of a new biopic, most Americans don't know very much about Bonaparte, and what they do know, they don't especially like.
The U.S. actually has the highest rates of considering Napoleon's legacy to be "negative" of any of 8 countries YouGov polled. That includes several other countries that Napoleon actually invaded, humiliated and occupied.
What DO Americans know — or think they know — about Napoleon? Well, I regret to inform you that one of the most popular descriptors was "short," with no real difference between people who said they knew a fair bit about Napoleon and those who didn't.
cc @WaltHickey @pbump @PatrickRuffini @goodreads @DanielBGreene @aedwardslevy @NateSilver538
How many books do people own, anyway? My @YouGovAmerica survey found most people own at least SOME physical books, but most of these collections are pretty small. 20% of Americans own between 1 & 10 books.
NEW: Full-time caregiving is the #1 reason prime-age Americans don't work. In my latest for the @MinneapolisFed, I break down the stats behind this key demographic group:
Among adults age 25-54, women are 90% of full-time caregivers. But that's down from 96% two decades ago, while the share of full-time caregivers who are men has doubled.
Social conventions, health and individual preferences all impact parents' choices when one of them is going to stay home. But sometimes finances drive the decision, and in opposite-sex prime-age couples, men are twice as likely to be the top earner:
When the @Suntimes ran an undercover bar to catch sleazy officials: "I think one of the things that amazed us is that these inspectors sold out public safety on the cheap. They were not taking huge amounts. We were told to leave $10 for one inspector & $25 for another inspector."
@Suntimes @kottke Also: "[Columnists] smiled & gave me a thumbs-up. And I thought, ‘Well, that’s nice! They liked it!’ And it made me feel good. I was later told they gave me a thumbs-up b/c I got the word ‘ass’ in the paper. They’d been trying to get the word ‘ass’ past the copy desk for years."