Corona-zona

  Last evening's PBS Newshour aired a story about why there are so many unfilled job openings, leaving unemployment at 50+ year lows. It focused on working-age people dropping out of the workforce.  As for why they are doing so, it gave a list that included some of the usual suspects. First, there is a hollowing-out of the labor market.  Mid-tier jobs—ones that had attractive salaries and benefits, including retirement—continue to be replaced by automation. This means there are a lot of low-tier jobs that are not attractive to workers and high-tier jobs they are not qualified for. Another factor cited was the large number of people with felony convictions, a result of our incarceration-happy culture. Yet another was government benefits, particularly disability payments. But the not-usual suspect was the COVID-19 pandemic. For one thing, the pandemic outright killed 217,978 people of working age , and most of those people occupied jobs.  But that's not all. Julia Pol...

  A few players in the NBA are vaccine resisters.  According to an  article in Rolling Stone , they are pushing their players' union to reject plans by the league to require them to get the jab.   According to the story, during a recent teleconference the response from the players to the proposal was “Non-starter. Non-starter.” The group of COVIDiots rejecting the vaccines represents around ten percent of all players.   One of them is apparently Kyrie Irving. I say "apparently" because he refuses to disclose his vaccination status, but that's as good as disclosing your non-vaccinated status.   Mr. Irving makes around $34 million a year to throw a ball through a hoop. If I were paying someone that kind of money to do that work, you can be damn sure he'd either be vaccinated or be out of a job. The twist in the plot is that sensible and well-governed cities like New York and San Francisco have established rules that nobody can enter an in...

  Today, several updates on matters previously discussed on this blog. Florida Fires Back at Idaho Last week, I reported that Idaho was challenging Florida for the title of top COVIDiot state by appointing to a health board a medical doctor who opposes masks and vaccines and supports ivermectin.   Well, Florida was not about to take that challenge lying down! Governor Ron "Florida Man" DeSantis did them one better by making another such medical doctor the state's surgeon general . Take that, Idaho! Doctors Who Spread Misinformation Are Starting to Face Discipline I have never understood how medical professional organizations have been able to look the other way while their members dispense disinformation about pandemic-related topics like masks and vaccines. As noted earlier, many of these physicians are doing it to make money . Idaho even  appointed one of them  to a medical board. It seems the professional organizations are finally losing patience with t...

  You may recall that in February 2020—just when the Apocalypse was getting started—there was a huge outbreak  of COVID-19 in nursing homes in Washington State, leading to many deaths.  An epidemiological study concluded: Long-term care facilities are high-risk settings for severe outcomes from outbreaks of Covid-19, owing to both the advanced age and frequent chronic underlying health conditions of the residents and the movement of health care personnel among facilities in a region. In many states, nursing home personnel have disappointing vaccination rates, as shown in this August 29 data from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services : The Arizona figure is 60.88%.  That's about 10% higher than overall vaccinations in the state, and it puts us in 30th place among states (interestingly, the same rank as for overall vaccinations). But nursing homes aren't the only facilities dealing with residents of "advanced age" who have "frequent chronic underlying h...

I haven't done an update post for some time, so here are a few items of interest. An Epidemic of Resignations I've recently blogged about how people are not all that excited about going back to work.  Also that people who would have normally resigned in 2020 went into a holding pattern and could be expected to resign en masse .   Well it seems to be happening . People quit their jobs at a rate of 2.7% in April.  That's an all time record. Delta "Promoted" to Variant of Concern Earlier this month I blogged about the Delta variant .  It's more contagious and produces more serious disease, and is causing particular problems in the UK. Earlier this week the CDC reclassified it as a "variant of concern." That same story says that as of Sunday, it accounted for about 10.3% of cases in the US.  Yesterday I checked the GISAID database for Arizona. Here delta accounts for just 6.86% of the sequences, so less than the national average. But public health of...

Not quite a month ago, I had a post about people who were queasy about going back to the office. The reasons ranged from growing accustomed to working from home, to distrust of all institutions, to fear of COVIDiot coworkers. Another frequent topic in this blog is shortages. There have been continuing problems with supply chains , particularly those supplying microchips needed to build everything from cars to appliances. There have been more bizarre and temporary shortages of things like ketchup packets and garden gnomes . Now the big issue is worker shortages . The Wall Street Journal calls it the worst ever  (possible paywall) such shortage. Conservative governors are blaming the enhanced unemployment benefits passed as part of pandemic relief.  Half of states are cancelling the extra $300 per month, which leaders they think are keeping people form returning to work. But a study by the Fed says concludes that the payments are not a major driver of the worker shortage. T...