Remember yesterday when I said cases were really low, but this was due to the holiday and we should probably expect a bounceback?
Today’s the bounceback. Numbers today will look scary, but they’re not, really — it’s just a consequence of when things are reported.
Yesterday’s report had 4,511 new cases, 4.34% positive.
Today was 12,632 cases & 17.29% (!) positive.
BUT: if you take the two days together, it’s a 9.7% positivity rate, in line with recent trends. Our 7-day average positivity rate is BELOW where it was at the end of last week
As of Friday’s report, MN was averaging 4,175 new cases per day, and a 9.19% positivity rate.
Today, after yesterday’s fall and today’s rise, we’re at 3,576 cases per day and 9.05%.
Follow the general trend — smooth out the spikes and it’s one of moderate decline.
Ignore anyone hyperventilating about today’s 12.6K cases (technically the most ever in a single report, but this is many days of data) and 17.3% daily positivity. All that shows is someone not understanding the data.
The trends remain cautiously encouraging for MN.
Hospital bed use figures haven’t fallen yet, but we’re no longer seeing the explosive growth of earlier this month.
Some of that may be due to limited capacity, but it also reflects slowdowns in case growth in recent weeks.
Cases and positivity rate are both about 15%-20% below their averages 14 days ago. (I’m less confident that the hospitalization line here has stabilized after the holiday weekend, so don’t pay as much attention to it.)
MN reported no new deaths today due to holiday weekend staffing issues; we’ll get an extra big lump of newly reported deaths tomorrow. Keep that in mind.
Cases continue to be the lowest in Hennepin/Ramsey. But the surrounding suburban counties now have among the highest levels in the state. That’s less b/c the suburban counties are up than because cases have fallen in western MN.
MN is up to 68.7% of the population with at least one dose, and 18.4% with a booster.
22.7% of kids 5-11 now have at least one dose; we’re even seeing a few kids in this age bracket who’ve received their second dose.
Overall it looks like in November just over 8% of the state’s unvaccinated population got their first dose, the highest rate since May.
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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."