Another good news day in Minnesota’s #COVID19 reports: raw cases and positivity rate both trended down today. Our 7-day average positivity rate is now down to 8.8%.
A LOT could change, but right now it looks like we might have peaked circa Nov. 15.
That said, remember all our data is still messy due to the holidays. Case in point: deaths, which weren’t reported yesterday due to holiday staffing issues.
That meant @mnhealth reported 100 deaths today — a huge number — but that represents multiple days of data. Trend is flat
@mnhealth Deaths are actually down slightly from our peak last week, but this dataset is messy enough it’s too early to call a peak yet.
Reported #COVID19 hospital admissions have actually dipped a little, which isn’t implausible given cases apparently peaking a few weeks ago.
No sign of a drop yet in bed occupancy stats.
As of today’s report, 69% of Minnesota residents have at least one vaccine dose.
That includes 23% of 5-11-year-olds, and more than 60% of every other age group. (Except 0-4-year-olds, who are of course at 0%.)
Some big news today. @mnhealth has finally — after more than a year of requests on my part — started published #COVID19 testing data by sample date.
That means we can calculate sample-date positivity rate!
@mnhealth That said, sample-date positivity rate largely tracks report-date positivity, with three key differences:
1) Given reporting delays, report-date data lags sample-date data. 2) Sample-date data is smoother due to lack of reporting issues. 3) Sample-date data has a 1-week delay.
@mnhealth In the long run, sample-date is by far the best way to track the course of #COVID19 in Minnesota.
That said, it’s not ideal for tracking what’s new TODAY, so I’ll continue sharing positivity by report-date.
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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."