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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Patient readers, I spent most of my time disentangling the issues of Trump’s “supersedeas bond” in the Engoron case. More soon, because unfortunately today there was a lot else going on!
Bird Song of the Day
Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Inyo National Forest; near Horseshoe Campground, Kern, California, United States. “Bird was vocalizing from very top of medium sized Bristle-cone Pine tree…” For ten minutes! Grab a cup of coffee…
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
The Constitutional Order (Eighth Amendment)
Engoron’s penalty seems so obviously excessive it could be grounds for appeal under the Eighth Amendment, but IANAL and no appeal has actually been filed. If in fact no Constitutional issues are involved, I’ll move this story to the Trump section under campaign 2024, with the rest of the lawfare stuff.
* * * About that $355 million (plus interest) fine, how Trump can raise it, and whether he must do that right away, alert reader Smith, M.J. commented:
The CNN Wire report on Trump’s appeal of the civil fraud judgment is baloney. He will not have to put the entire $355M in escrow during his appeal.
Let’s juxtapose that with this quote from Engoron’s ruling:
TheCourt hereby enjoins Donald Trump and the Trump Organization and its affiliates from applying for loans from any financial institution chartered by or registered with the New York State Department of Financial Services for a period of three years.
Other non-lawyers have opined that this would prevent Trump from getting a bond; I don’t think so, but let’s clear it up. So, we need to understand what a supersedeas (from Latin, “you must desist”) bond is (in the State of New York), whether Trump can apply one, and the likely amount Trump would have to deposit in escrow. But first a brief overview of the structure of the supersedeas bond business from a podcast by Butler Snow, “How to Get a Supersedeas Bond“:
We specialize in surety bonds. An interesting fact to the readers is surety bonds is a part of the insurance industry. It represents a very small fraction, which is about 1%. We further have a narrower focus than just surety bonds, which is specializing in supersedeas bonds. That’s a tinier sliver, representing about 2% of the surety industry. That’s our whole business. We work with attorneys throughout the country and all state and federal courts. … You’re a bond broker, is that right? That’s right. We represent 35 different surety companies. They’re essentially insurance companies in the industry that provide these types of bonds. Those companies range from household names like Liberty Mutual, Zurich, to more independent companies that are maybe smaller, privately owned, that may focus on that one product.
As you can imagine with a market structure like that, for reasons explained yesterday in two important links (here and here), search queries on supersedeas bonds are utterly polluted by SEO; it’s difficult to come up with anything besides brochureware and Wikipedia. So, not only IANAL, I can only do the best I can with what I can winkle out of the great mass of cruft. Corrections from people who are lawyers welcome! With that caveat–
What is a supersedeas bond? From Surety One’s brochureware, “New York Appeal Bond (Supersedeas Bond ~ New York)“:
An appeal bond is required of defendants and occasionally plaintiffs to a civil lawsuit when the appealing party wishes to stay collection of a judgment. A New York appeal bond, referenced in the New York C.V.P. as an “undertaking”, is the quickest way of staying the enforcement…. Although the statute does not so state the New York “undertaking” is also often referred to in some venues as a New York “supersedeas bond”. The bond is nonetheless the same thing, by ad different name. Sec. 2502, addresses the qualifications of sureties and the New York appeal bond form, to wit; (a) Surety; form of affidavit. Unless the court orders otherwise, surety shall be: 1.) an insurance company authorized to execute the undertaking within the state: AND, (d) a Notary Acknowledgment.
(In the sources I found, “supersedeas bond” and “appeal bond” were treated as synonymous. Note also that there are an awful lot of bond products, from bailbords to bonds for tradespeople. Probably each one of these verticals is regulated differently.) And:
Obtaining an appeal bond quote is simple and immediate. We require a only complete judicial bond application to offer a quote…. A New York appeal bond application submission is reviewed and responded to within one hour of receipt. We are the most agile surety bond underwriter in the United States.
(Not, quite possibly, for $355 million, however (although I suppose a really masterful broker could put together a sort of syndicate or flotilla, Dunkirk-style).
Investopedia gives the rationale:
An appeal bond, or supersedeas bond, is a payment that a court requires from an appellant who is awaiting the appeal of a judgment. The appeal bond is required as a sign of good faith that the judgment will be paid if the appellant loses, and to protect the winning party should the losing party go bankrupt during the appeals process.
The appeal bond is also used to limit frivolous attempts at an appeal, as the appellant still has to pay the judgment upfront in the form of a bond, and may end up paying more ultimately due to interest, fees, lawyers, etc.
Can Trump apply for a supersedeas bond? First, let’s put the general question of whether Trump can apply for a loan at all in context. From Raw Story:
“Since Judge Engoron’s decision, folks have assumed that Trump cannot borrow from any major bank,” [MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin] said. “That’s not the case, according to a finance friend.”
Rubin posted an image from the ruling, in which Engoron outlines the conclusions.
“The order prohibits borrowing from any institution chartered or registered with New York’s Department of Financial Services,” Rubin said. “And that’s not a long list.”…. “To be clear, I am not saying any federally-chartered bank, say, would or should loan to him,” she wrote on Saturday. “But the formal restrictions are not what some folks thought they were.”
This is a useful clarification, but not quite on point for this mini-post. What I did was find a surety bond firm licensed in all fifty states: Colonial Bonds & Insurance. Then I searched the New York State Department of Financial Services website (NYDFS) for that institution. It does not appear. I therefore conclude that the supersedeas bond line of business is not regulated by the NYDFS, and hence Engoron ruling does not forbid Trump from applying for a supersedeas bond.
How much would Trump have to put up? That would seem to be highly subjective (and I would imagine to a degree dependent on the client’s level of desperation). Butler Snow again:
A big part of what we end up working through with clients is understanding, first of all, what assets they have available. What their preferences are. Everybody’s different. You will have one client that may want to use a letter of credit and for another that would not be an ideal situation, even though they might have access to it, because maybe they have a borrowing capacity and they don’t want to impede that borrowing capacity. Stepping in each of those different categories and then also layering that in with the timeframe that they have to post this bond. While they may have a preference, they have to prioritize and make sure that their assets don’t get pursued under the judgment. There’s a combination of factors that have to be considered.
So, 10%? 100%? 100% plus future costs? Unknown. Investopedia:
The amount of money required for the bond is often the actual judgment plus interest and is held while the appeal is being debated.
While usually in the amount of the original judgment, the court could require the bond to be significantly larger. Such bonds are intended to cover the judgment, interest, court costs, and attorney’s fees incurred during the appeals process.
Some states have specific rules on the value of supersedeas bonds, like California, which requires them to be 150% of the judgment. In Florida, the amount of the bond may include two years of statutory interest and be limited to no more than $50 million per appellant. Texas requires the amount of the supersedeas bond to be equal to the judgment, interest, and court costs, but cannot exceed 50% of the judgment debtor’s net worth or $25 million, whichever is less.
I can’t find what New York requires. Readers?
I do think, however, that for an aggressive supersedeas bond firm, setting up Trump’s bond would be “the deal of the century.” Who wouldn’t want to be the J.P. Morgan of the surety bond trade? Of course, everybody’s got to eat….
* * * “‘Who’s going to do that?’: Trump faces hurdles in securing appeal bond for fraud case” [NBC]. “Unless he wants to pay the entire penalty while his expected appeal is considered, Trump will need to post an appeal bond. This is typically up to 120% of the judgment plus the current interest. At that rate, Trump’s original ruling with interest would indicate he will need to secure a bond worth more than $540 million. But it’s unlikely that the real estate baron will be able to use his properties as collateral. It’s ‘not very attractive to take real estate as collateral,’ said Neil Pedersen, owner of New York-based surety bond agency Pedersen & Sons.” Meaning, Pederson has already started to dicker on price; as he should. More: “Those assets are not liquid, so if Trump loses the appeal, the process of converting them to cash could be difficult — perhaps even more so in a case that was centered around disputes about the value of Trump’s properties.” More: “Another complicating factor: Trump’s status as a presidential frontrunner…. ‘No one’s ever had to enforce an indemnity agreement against what could very well be the next U.S. president,’ he said.” • There is, of course, an enormous inverted pyramid of liberal Democrat triumphalism balanced on the tiny apex of this single story…..
2024
Less than a year to go!
* * * “Master and Commander: The Biden Dogs Accused of Dozens of Additional Attacks at White House” [Jonathan Turley]. “We began our discussion of these incidents with Major, who continued to attack staff until the press finally reported on the complaints from staff. Only when it became a public embarrassment did the Bidens send Major to Delaware. Major was adopted in November 2018 from an animal shelter.” So the Bidens replace Major with Commander: “Commander is responsible for at least 24 attacks. The record shows not only a lack of concern by the Bidens for staff, but a bizarre litany of vicious German Shepherds in their care….. In one eight-day period, agents were bitten every day. Indeed, outside of the White House, the Biden dogs would qualify for strict liability under the common law as displaying a vicious disposition…. I have taught torts for three decades, including animal liability. In that time, I have never come across a case with such a long history of dog attacks from multiple animals in one family. There is no question that the Bidens would be strictly liable in these attacks, but have been allowed to escape such liability due to the fact that this is the official residence. Under the common law, the Bidens could claim that Major and Commander were entitled to ‘one free bite.’ They are well beyond that threshold.” • One vicious dog could be an unfortunate accident. Two, no. Major and Commander are vicious because the Bidens are vicious.
* * *
Republican Funhouse
“Mike Johnson invoked God in a GOP presentation on keeping the majority. It didn’t land well” [Politico]. Good. “Speaker Mike Johnson delivered a presentation at a weekend GOP retreat that — although it was billed as a map to keeping the House majority — took on a surprisingly religious tone, according to two people in the room. Johnson’s private remarks to a small group of Republican lawmakers at Miami’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel over the weekend alarmed both people, who addressed the speech on condition of anonymity. Rather than outlining a specific plan to hold and grow the majority, these people said, Johnson effectively delivered a sermon. The Louisiana Republican showed slides to the members of his Elected Leadership Committee (ELC) team in a bid to tout the party’s prospects of hanging onto its two-seat majority in November. Johnson, a devout Christian, attempted to rally the group by discussing moral decline in America — focusing on declining church membership and the nation’s shrinking religious identity, according to both people in the room. The speaker contended that when one doesn’t have God in their life, the government or ‘state’ will become their guide, referring back to Bible verses, both people said. They added that the approach fell flat among some in the room. ‘I’m not at church,’ one of the people said, describing Johnson’s presentation as ‘horrible.’”
“Why are Republicans leaving Congress?” [The Week]. “Some of Congress’ most experienced Republicans are headed for the exits. The 118th Congress has been ‘dominated by deep dysfunction and bitter divisions’ among House Republicans, CNN said. Rather than stick out the chaos, members of the GOP’s ‘governing wing’ are increasingly deciding to leave — nearly two dozen are either resigning outright or won’t seek reelection. This is leading to concerns of ‘brain drain’ among the party faithful. ‘They’ve signed up to do serious things,’ said Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), who is also leaving. ‘And we’re not doing serious things.’ The departures include three committee chairs who announced their exits within a few days last week, The Associated Press said. For some observers, the departures are a sign the GOP’s House majority may be lost in November. ‘Who wants to finish your career here in the minority?’ asked Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.).”
Democrats en Déshabillé
Never say Democrats can’t turn on a dime:
One of the greatest political ads of this century: the 2012 Obama campaign parades all of its “foreign policy experts” — Hillary, John Kerry, Madeleine Albright — to mock Mitt Romney as “dangerously trapped in the 20th Century” for believing Russia is a grave US enemy:👇 https://t.co/wfUAsqUEqr
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 22, 2024
#COVID19
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Immune Dysregulation
“Spike toxicity/SARS CoV 2 viral persistence and its role in Long COVID.” [The Chris Cuomo Project]. • Good to see the pickup, but for paid subscribers only. Sigh.
Variants
I hate chasing variants, but:
— 𝙹𝚘𝚎 𝚅𝚒𝚙𝚘𝚗𝚍 joseph.vipond@ucalgary.ca (@jvipondmd) February 22, 2024
Sequelae
“Spontaneous, persistent, T cell–dependent IFN-γ release in patients who progress to Long Covid” [Science]. From the Abstract: “We detected persistently high levels of interferon-γ (IFN-γ) from peripheral blood mononuclear cells of patients with Long Covid using highly sensitive FluoroSpot assays. This IFN-γ release was seen in the absence of ex vivo peptide stimulation and remains persistently elevated in patients with Long Covid, unlike the resolution seen in patients recovering from acute SARS-CoV-2 infection…. Our study highlights a potential mechanism underlying Long Covid, enabling the search for biomarkers and therapeutics in patients with Long Covid.” • The biomarkers that the NIH spent a billion dollars explicitly not looking for.
“Cardiovascular disease as part of Long COVID: A systematic review” [European Journal of Preventive Cardiology]. Meta. From the Discussion: “Our systematic review confirms that chest pain, palpitations, dyspnoea and syncope are the most commonly reported symptoms among patients with Long COVID syndrome. … Long COVID has also been implicated in the development of new onset CV diseases in subjects without pre-existing co-morbidities… Furthermore, Long COVID may have a direct impact on the myocardium.”
Of course, these Redditors are getting no help whatever from the public health establishment:
— Salvatore Mattera (@SalvMattera) November 27, 2023
Elite Maleficence
“Joe Biden Fundraiser Co-Hosts Haim Saban And Casey Wasserman Test Positive For Covid; Will Miss L.A. Event — Exclusive” [Deadline]. Biden’s life is much more valuable than yours: “Haim Saban and Casey Wasserman each tested positive for Covid ahead of tonight’s event, forcing them to miss the event, multiple sources told Deadline. The White House still has strict testing protocols in place for anyone who comes in close contact with the president.” • They know; they just don’t want you to know.
Second verse, same as the first:
Rishi Sunak met King Charles at Buckingham Palace yesterday afternoon for the first time since his cancer diagnosis.
Now, do you see what I see?! 👀
It’s a HEPA air filter, prominently positioned in the background of many of the photos!
— Cat in the Hat 🐈⬛ 🎩 🇬🇧 (@_CatintheHat) February 22, 2024
They know; they just don’t want you to know.
* * * “CDC advisory committee meeting on public health issues” [Alexander Tin’s notes, GitHub]. Various:
[KATE WOLFF:] And as Mandy discussed this morning, really looking at the next chapter of moving forward to be that strong foundational base of operational excellence across CDC, that will help us really succeed in the priority areas that we’ve identified as an agency.Good to see CDC staff on a first-name basis with America’s #1 superspreading smiling face. Wolff is CDC’s chief of staff. She doesn’t mask either (and from her bio, she’s been handling political hot potatoes instead of focusing on public health). More:
[KATE WOLFF:] Our website has hundreds of hundreds of thousands of webpages on it. And we have been working really hard to go through every single one of those to make sure that the information that we have available to the public is useful and meaningful and appropriate for that audience.We are relaunching our website here this spring. And so we’ll keep you all posted as those websites get updated, but we’re expecting that we’ll have a reduction of at least 64% of our current content as part of this process, and to no raise any alarm, we are archiving everything, so we will still have everything available.
And so we can go find anything that we would need, but at least, we expect that this will really enhance the usability of our website for a broad public.
It will be interesting to see how closely Cohen and Wolf reflect HICPAC’s desire to gut patient protections against airborne illness, and whether they go beyond deprecating non-pharmaceutical intervention in their own personal practices and workplace, and craft the website to suppress them. Tin’s notes reflect no awareness of the issues of airborne viruses whatever, and include no self-reflection on CDC’s Covid response.
A good question:
So where are the public health whistleblowers?
Afraid of losing their job?
Is their job worth the death of 100,000+ people yearly? The millions being sacrificed to long covid yearly?— Scott Squires (@scott_squires) February 22, 2024
Naked Capitalism would welcome anything CDC whistleblowers want to throw over the transom. We’ve give whistleblowers a platform for their material before, during the financial crisis.
* * * TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts
LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (Biobot) Again, no backward revisions. The uptick is real (at least to Biobot). Note this anomaly:
Looks like Covid might not be seasonal? Who knew? Hoerger comments:
[2] (Biobot) Here, FWIW, is Verily regional data as of February 20. CDC Region 1: Bad News: Biobot #wastewater levels are still rising.
Historically, February is marked by a rapid decline in transmission. 929 copies/mL corresponds to 1.35 million infections per day in the U.S. pic.twitter.com/tRvRhU9xA9
— Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA (@michael_hoerger) February 20, 2024
And Region 2:
Verily data, then, shows no anomaly. Presumably, Biobot sewersheds and Verily sewersheds do not overlap.
[3] (CDC Variants) “As of May 11, genomic surveillance data will be reported biweekly, based on the availability of positive test specimens.” “Biweeekly: 1. occurring every two weeks. 2. occurring twice a week; semiweekly.” Looks like CDC has chosen sense #1. In essence, they’re telling us variants are nothing to worry about. Time will tell. [4] (ER) Does not support Biobot data. “Charts and data provided by CDC, updates Wednesday by 8am. For the past year, using a rolling 52-week period.” [5] (Hospitalization: NY) A little more decrease in slope, consistent with Biobot data, but not much. Let’s wait and see. [6] (Hospitalization: CDC) Still down. “Maps, charts, and data provided by CDC, updates weekly for the previous MMWR week (Sunday-Saturday) on Thursdays (Deaths, Emergency Department Visits, Test Positivity) and weekly the following Mondays (Hospitalizations) by 8 pm ET†”. [7] (Walgreens) It would be interesting to survey this population generally; these are people who, despite a tsunami of official propaganda and enormous peer pressure, went and got tested anyhow. [8] (Cleveland) Flattening, consistent with Biobot data. [9] (Travelers: Posivitity) Down, albeit in the rear view mirror. [10] (Travelers: Variants) JN.1 utterly dominant.Stats Watch
Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “The number of people claiming unemployment benefits in the US sank by 12,000 to 201,000 on the week ending February 17th, well below market expectations of 218,000, to mark the lowest claim count since the 16-month low of 189,000 recorded five weeks prior. Additionally, continuing claims fell by 27,000 to 1,862,000 in the earlier period, undershooting expectations of 1,885,000, suggesting that unemployed individuals are having an easier time in finding suitable jobs. The data added to the strong jobs report from January to underscore historical tightness in the US labor market, adding leeway for the Federal Reserve to hold rates higher should inflation remain high.”
National Activity: “United States Chicago Fed National Activity Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Chicago Fed National Activity Index decreased to -0.30 in January 2024, from a revised 0.02 in the prior month, indicating activity contracted during the month. Three of the four broad categories of indicators used to construct the index decreased from December, and three categories made negative contributions in January.”
* * * Finance: “Bad property debt exceeds reserves at largest US banks” [Financial Times]. “Bad commercial real estate loans have overtaken loss reserves at the biggest US banks after a sharp increase in late payments linked to offices, shopping centres and other properties. The average reserves at JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have fallen from $1.60 to 90 cents for every dollar of commercial real estate debt on which a borrower is at least 30 days late, according to filings to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The sharp deterioration took place in the last year after delinquent commercial property debt for the six big banks nearly tripled to $9.3bn. Michael Barr, who oversees bank supervision at the US Federal Reserve, said on Friday that regulators ‘have been closely focused on banks’ CRE lending’, including ‘how they are reporting their risk’ internally and whether they ‘provision appropriately and have sufficient capital to buffer against potential future CRE loan losses’. Across the wider US banking sector the value of delinquent loans tied to offices, malls, apartments and other commercial properties more than doubled last year to $24.3bn, up from $11.2bn the year before.” • That’s not very much, unless it’s levered up, and there’s no indicator it is. CRE mavens in the readership?
The Bezzle: “Exclusive: Reddit in AI content licensing deal with Google” [Reuters]. • Hence, I would speculate, the moderator purge. The enshittification of Reddit proceeds apace.
Tech: “Google apologizes for ‘missing the mark’ after Gemini generated racially diverse Nazis” [The Verge]. “Google has apologized for what it describes as “inaccuracies in some historical image generation depictions” with its Gemini AI tool, saying its attempts at creating a “wide range” of results missed the mark. The statement follows criticism that it depicted specific white figures (like the US Founding Fathers) or groups like Nazi-era German soldiers as people of color, possibly as an overcorrection to long-standing racial bias problems in AI…. And while a query for pictures of ‘the Founding Fathers’ returned group shots of almost exclusively white men who vaguely resembled real figures like Thomas Jefferson, a request for ‘a US senator from the 1800s’ returned a list of results Gemini promoted as ‘diverse,’ including what appeared to be Black and Native American women. (The first female senator, a white woman, served in 1922.) It’s a response that ends up erasing a real history of race and gender discrimination —”inaccuracy,” as Google puts it, is about right.”
* * * Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 78 Extreme Greed (previous close: 69 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 79 (Extreme Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 22 at 1:41:07 PM ET.
Public Health
“Another pandemic an ‘absolute certainty’, WHO chief warns on visit to Dublin” [Irish Times]. “Another pandemic is an ‘absolute certainty’ for which Ireland and other countries need to prepare, the World Health Organisation’s senior official in Europe has warned during a visit here. ‘We just don’t know when or where it will emerge,’ said Dr Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe. ‘The emergence of novel infectious diseases is a natural condition of living on the planet. Modernity and globalisation [natural, you say] have only sped up the processes whereby they can travel around the world at breakneck speed, as we saw with Covid-19, and will see again,’ he said. The world would have learned nothing from the Covid-19 pandemic if it did not invest in preparedness for future health shocks, he told The Irish Times in an interview.” • I agree. It would be nice if WHO had not completely discredited itself on masking and airborne transmission during the current pandemic (with all those who butchered their tasks so badly still in power).
“The WHO Disease Outbreak News during the Covid-19 pandemic” (preprint) [medRxiv]. “[T]he most frequently used outlet (and the only official public record of outbreak
history curated by the WHO) is the Disease Outbreak News (DON), an online resource that has been curated since 1996 and captures thousands of outbreak reports from around the world. Reports in the DON frequently capture the outbreak location, the causative agent (if known) or symptomology, and other critical information, such as case counts, details on response efforts, or WHO guidance. Between January 1996 and December 2019, a total of 2,789 reports were published in the DON, capturing developments in major epidemics like the 2014 West African Ebola epidemic, unusual events detected by syndromic surveillance, and everything in-between. The DON is generally understood to be an incomplete record of infectious disease outbreaks: the diseases and countries that are represented have shifted through time, reflecting not just the global history of outbreaks, but also the priorities of the WHO and the concerns of Member States. … . An initial cluster of five reports were published between January 5, 2020 and January 17, 2020…. Covid-19 did not reappear in the Disease Outbreak News again until November 6, 2020…. ” And: The most interesting cases may be where WHO breaks from this established process: for example, the Alpha and Beta variants of Covid-19 were recorded in the DON, but the Omicron variant, which not only had a higher impact on human health, but also led to more significant international disruptions of travel and trade, was not.” • “Reflects” “the priorities of the WHO and the concerns of Member States,” eh?
* * * “Florida official defers to parents on if kids should return to school amid measles cluster” [Miami Herald]. “Although measles is highly contagious among those lacking immunity, [Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo} released a statement Tuesday night saying the Florida Department of Health is deferring to parents and guardians to choose if their children are safe to keep going to classes in the face of what health officials are calling a ‘cluster of measles cases’ at the school…. Ladapo cited the ‘high immunity rate in the community’ and ‘the burden on families and educational cost of healthy children missing school’ as his reasons for making the recommendation.” • Commentary:
The WHO estimates 50 million lives have been saved since 2000 by measles vaccinations and outbreak responses.
Disagreeing with COVID policies during a once in a century pandemic is not a valid reason to disregard decades of life-saving health practices. https://t.co/BepcI480fJ
— Jerome Adams (@JeromeAdamsMD) February 22, 2024
And:
Ignoring basic public health for Covid was clearly going to damage our approach to all infectious diseases. The required habits to defeat pathogens are common to all of them. Weaponising those habits as restrictions on freedom has broken what we do for all infectious disease.
— Henry Madison (@RageSheen) February 22, 2024
Correct.
Zeitgeist Watch
“LE SSERAFIM Members Talk New Mini-Album Easy & Coachella 2024 Plans” [Teen Vogue]. “… incursions into Latin pop and reggaeton with “Fire in the belly” and ““… the white swan, concept… ” • Can somebody please explain to me how and why Taleb memes have infiltrated K-Pop? I mean, one doesn’t hear Taylor Swift singing about fat tails, amiright or amiright?
Class Warfare
“Ford’s Battery Flagship Socked by Mold Sickness, Workers Say” [Labor Notes]. “Last fall, Dugan was one of thousands of union construction workers to arrive in small-town Glendale, Kentucky, to build a vast factory for Ford and SK On, a South Korean company. The plant, when completed, will make batteries for nearly a million electric pickup trucks each year. When Dugan walked in, huge wooden boxes containing battery-making machines, largely shipped from overseas, were laid across the mile-long factory floor. Black streaks on those wooden boxes, plus the smell, immediately raised alarm bells for workers. But for months, those concerns were met with little remedy from the contractors hired by BlueOval to oversee construction. Dugan and scores of others now believe they are in the midst of a health crisis at the site. ‘We don’t get sick pay,’ Dugan said. ‘You’re sick, you’re out of luck.’ The BlueOval SK Battery Park, billed to open in 2025, is a banner project for President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, a program of public subsidies and financing to companies moving away from fossil fuels. The Department of Energy has pledged to support the construction of three BlueOval plants in Tennessee and Kentucky with a $9.2 billion low-cost loan. But under all the high-tech green fanfare, several construction workers, including some who wished to be anonymous, say the site has been gripped by mold and respiratory illness—medieval hazards that workers feel managers neglected in the pressure to quickly open the plant.” • Amazing. The Biden Administration gave no thought to air quality in the workplace. Hard to believe, I know!
“Performative Contexts” [nonsite.org]. Holy Lord, did the deconstructionists wreak havoc. “What the analysis of context as performative utterance brings out is the way that both relations of force and relations of meaning are at work in acts of contextualization. These acts produce effects in the material world, but they also function as vehicles for intentional meaning.”
News of the Wired
“The mystery of the garage” [Strange Loop Canon]. “Philo Farnsworth, of television fame, did much of his early experiments in a lab set up in his garage. Lego got its start as a toy company, where Ole Christiansen started building wooden toys in his carpentry workshop…. I don’t know why it is that garages became those spaces so perfectly conducive to outsized innovation origin stories. They are the successor to the old days of crazy innovation, of tinkering on a hydroplane with your fortune and a twinkle in your eye. But I do know we ought to find an answer to how we can create more such spaces, and encourage following the kind of passion that leads people to want to spend all their time tinkering on a problem, and try our damnedest to not let overthinking destroy it at the most nascent stages.”
“Did fermented foods fuel brain growth?” [Harvard Gazette]. “‘Brain tissue is metabolically expensive,’ said [Erin] Hecht, an assistant professor of human evolutionary biology. “It requires a lot of calories to keep it running, and in most animals, having enough energy just to survive is a constant problem.’ … For the larger-brained Australopithecus to survive, therefore, something must have changed in their diet. Theories put forward have included changes in what they consumed or, most popularly, that the discovery of cooking gave them more usable calories from whatever they ate. The problem with this theory is that the earliest evidence places the use of fire at approximately 1.5 million years ago — significantly later than the development of the hominid brain. ‘Our ancestors’ cranial capacity began increasing 2.5 million years ago, which conservatively gives us about a 1-million-year gap in the timeline between brain size increasing and the possible emergence of cooking technology,’ said Katherine L. Bryant… ‘Whatever changed in their diets had to have happened before brains started getting bigger,’ said Hecht, who also noted that during the last few years researchers have postulated other options, such as the consumption of rotting meat. In the new paper, she and her team offer a different hypothesis: that cached (or saved) food fermented, and that this ‘pre-digested’ food provided a more accessible form of nourishment, fueling that bigger brain and allowing our ancestors to survive and thrive through natural selection.” • Hmm. Honey, too, so fermented drink?
* * * Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From JM:
JM writes: “I don’t even know what this is, but it was growing next to the thrift store parking lot, and it was so striking.” Readers?
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