The bad #COVID19 news continues in MN — partially explained by some data snafus, but mostly very real.
Not only are new cases expanding, they’re *accelerating*. Same for positivity rate, now over 7%.
Bad news: newly reported cases in MN nearly doubled week-over-week
Less bad news: But some of this was a data error due to cases delayed from yesterday’s report
Still bad news: Yesterday was already showing a huge increase, we just shifted part of it back a day.
The Cases and Positivity lines here are moving upwards, which means those stats aren’t just rising but accelerating. This is bad news.
No sign of this in hospitalizations yet, but this often lags case reports.
Hospitalizations are particularly surging in Greater Minnesota, where there are more #COVID19 patients than the metro for the first time all pandemic:
In the metro and SE Minnesota, #COVID19 accounts for less than 10% of hospitalized patients.
This rate is nearly twice as high or more in much of the rest of the state.
But we’re starting to see case counts rise in the metro, too. They had been basically flat here for a month+. (Just a couple days of uptick so far in the metro, could be a blip…)
Everywhere else is still seeing bigger and faster growth.
Cases are also surging in every age group, from the very young to the very old. The disease is still most prevalent among teenagers, but the trend from recent weeks of ONLY growth among kids is no longer true.
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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."