Another day, another dismal record

Yesterday the US saw a sharp rise in covid-19 daily cases to 144,270 and hospitalizations to 65,368 (both records) and another sharp rise in the seven day average of deaths to 1,421. At this rate, we are looking at more than 300,000 deaths by the end of the year.

The trend shows all the signs of the early stages of exponential growth and if nothing is done soon, the impact will be devastating. It is unconscionable that not only is Trump not doing anything, he is not allowing Biden’s task force (that is refreshingly comprised of leading scientists and infectious disease experts) to get important information, and many Republican governors are following his lead of being cavalier about mandating basic precautions.
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The new political parlor game: Asking WWTD?

Now that the presidential election is over and Joe Biden has won, a new cottage industry has sprung up that consists of speculating on the answers to the question: What Will Trump Do? I think that even he has to realize that there is no way that he will retain the office of the presidency. He has made a practice of thinking that he can bend reality to his will by denying it but first the pandemic proved him wrong and now the election has also done so. So what will he do now?

It is hard to predict because he has no identifiable political ideology or moral or ethical or philosophical or ideological core. Over his lifetime, he has been all over the map when it comes to issues. So trying to treat him as if he is a rational person acting on some set of principles is useless. What is necessary is to identify those things that he cares about and it is clear that what he only cares about is himself, and that is the most appropriate basis for speculation.
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John Oliver looks back on a tumultuous week

He reviews the events of the past week. He ends by saying that whatever disappointments people may have about the loss of seats in the House of Representatives and the failure to win a majority in the Senate, we should savor the many, many good things that happened.

My own view is that Democrats likely over-performed in 2018 because Trump was not on the ballot that year and so the loss of some Democratic house seats this year, while regrettable, may just be a sign that polls did not take into account the Trump black swan effect and thus had inflated and unrealistic expectations. This is supported by the fact that the Democrats who lost tended to be in Republican-leaning states like Florida, Oklahoma, and South Carolina where the Trump coattail effect was likely to be greater. They did lose a seat in New Mexico that Biden won but gained a seat in Georgia that has long been Republican.
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More bad news on the pandemic front

The US had its fourth consecutive day of record covid-19 positive tests at 128,396, a death toll that stood at 1,097, and a steadily increasing seven-day average of deaths at 924 and hospitalizations at 51,763. The total number of confirmed cases also passed the grim milestone of 10 million.


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We should not be too hard on the pollsters

As in 2016, the final results of the presidential election had Donald Trump massively over performing when compared to the expectations based on the results of almost all the major polling outfits. There will be a temptation to beat up on the pollsters who got it so wrong and we can expect Nate Silver and others to be relentless grilled as to why the polls were so off. The ire aimed at them may be less this time because the final outcome of a likely Biden win is looking like it will be correct, unlike in 2016 where the prediction was of a Clinton win. But there will, and should be, much soul-searching as to why the polls were so off again.
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Trump’s loss poses dangers to the pandemic

If and when Trump is declared the loser of the election, I fear for what will happen with the covid-19 situation. Yesterday saw yet another new daily record of 116,255 new cases. Daily deaths again broke the 1,000 mark with 1,124 and the seven-day average of deaths also rose to 869.

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“Trump is the worst criminal in human history”

The person who said this is renowned linguist and political analyst Noam Chomsky. How did Trump beat out the usual favorites for that title such as Hitler and Stalin? Chomsky explains in an interview that while those people targeted specific groups of people for extermination, Trump’s appalling policies that will aggravate global warming risks the extinction of everyone.
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The case for a single global time

Today we had to go through the dreary routine of setting the clocks back by one hour as we move from daylight time to standard time. And then in the spring , we move the clocks forward by one hour again. I was interested to learn that in China they tried doing this biannual shifting from 1945 to 1948 and then again from 1986 to 1991 but then gave it up and now no longer shift the clocks.
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