Last week was nothing but good #COVID19 news in Minnesota.
It’s hard to judge for sure what’s going on this week — a lot of messy or contradictory data — but we’re clearly no longer in “everything’s getting better” mode. Our positivity is on par with last Thursday’s 6.7%.
A few weeks from now, we may look back at this week as a brief hiccup interrupting a long-term improvement.
Or as the start of a new plateau.
Or as a return to growth.
Hard to say for sure.
Here’s maybe a clearer look at what’s going on. We’ve had a minor uptick in reported cases this week. The uptick is tiny in comparison to last week’s plunge. We’re not yet back to the case levels we saw before the mid-September surge, let alone June.
But it’s striking that cases by *sample date* aren’t showing any uptick.
Now this data is a week out of date. So there could be something from the past 7 days of results that this isn’t showing.
If you include the past week of sample-date data instead of filtering it out, you can see the next few days are due to level out, if not rise again, as this data trickles in. We won’t know which until time has passed.
We’re also not seeing any uptick yet in the count of active, confirmed cases. But that’s partly because the 10-day contagiousness lag in this dataset means we’re still showing the side effects of last week’s fall.
Non-ICU hospital bed use has ticked back up a bit.
Most of the increase in reported cases is happening in Greater Minnesota (but *some* of what this chart is showing is artificial, backlogged cases — no way to filter that out at the sub-state level).
Current cases remain disproportionately in Greater Minnesota, but Greater MN’s share is no longer accelerating.
We are seeing a noticable uptick in booster shots. New first doses remain flat.
I don’t think tomorrow’s data is going to salvage the week, either. Last Friday was a relatively encouraging day, with positivity below 6% and 2,100 cases (less than today).
If we want 7-day averages to fall, we probably won’t see that until next Tuesday at the earliest.
No one would think to condemn the genre of historical nonfiction just because there's a bunch of badly researched polemics on the shelf at Target or Barnes & Noble. The same is true for history podcasts — the problem isn't the medium, which has been used to good & ill effect.
"Ah, but some of the most popular history podcasts are of the worst historical quality," one might say. But so it has always been, in all mediums.
I've been revisiting "The Last Dance" as late-night viewing the past week, and am continually impressed by the quality of its writing as narrative nonfiction.
One key thing that struck me last night: how the documentary handles the BAD parts of Michael Jordan's story.
"The Last Dance" is overall extremely pro-Jordan — unsurprisingly since he was involved in its production. It's been criticized for how it slighted some of the NBA players Jordan came into conflict with.
But — and this is key — it's not purely hagiographic.
"The Last Dance" spawned a bunch of imitation documentaries as other athletes and celebrities tried to capture that magic for themselves. I've seen a few, and they're often not good — in part because they're TRYING to avoid controversy. TLD's director Jason Hehir knew better.
If Walz resigns as governor to become vice president, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan will become governor.
It's what happens next that gets INTERESTING. The President of the MN Senate (currently Minneapolis Democrat Bobby Joe Champion) becomes Lt. Gov....
The Minnesota Senate is currently split 33-33 between Democrats and Republicans, with one vacancy on the ballot this fall that's probably Lean D. If Champion resigns, that could lead to either a temporary Republican majority, or extended 33-33 tie, until Champion's replaced.
But it turns out that it's a murky, unsettled legal question whether Champion will HAVE to resign. Minnesota went through this issue a few years ago, when Tina Smith resigned as LG to accept a U.S. Senate appointment, and Republican Michelle Fischbach became LG.
“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.