Patient readers, I’m still trying to get my arms around the Trump Transition, and so for the next day or so that will be the main focus here. After that, I will return to our various pandemics with renewed éclat. –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
Brown Thrasher, Rondeau PP–South Point Trail East, Chatham-Kent, Ontario, Canada.
In Case You Might Miss…
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
“Trump administration directs all federal diversity, equity and inclusion staff be put on leave” [Associated Press]. ” President Donald Trump’s administration has moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off…. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by President Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It’s using one of the key tools utilized by the Biden administration to promote DEI programs across the private sector — pushing their use by federal contractors — to now eradicate them…. [F]ederal workers are being asked to report to Trump’s Office of Personnel Management if they suspect any DEI-related program has been renamed to obfuscate its purpose within 10 days or face ‘adverse consequences.’” That said, there are implementation issues: ‘Despite the sweeping language of Trump’s order, [Noreen Farrell, executive director of gender rights group Equal Rights Advocates] said, ‘the reality of implementing such massive structural changes is far more complex.’ ‘Federal agencies have deeply embedded policies and procedures that can’t simply be switched off overnight,’ she added.” • That’s a lot of PMC, especially in Northern Virginia and Maryland, suddenly uncertain of their employment prospects.
“Donald Trump’s Medicare Executive Order Explained” [Newsweek]. “The potential impact of rescinding executive order 14087 is as follows: 1. Halted development of cost-reduction models: The directive for the Department of Health and Human Services to develop and test new models aimed at lowering drug costs through the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation has been withdrawn. This move could slow or halt progress on initiatives that were designed to make prescription medications more affordable. 2. Potential increase in out-of-pocket expenses: Without the implementation of new models focused on reducing costs, Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries might continue to face high out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs, possibly affecting access to certain medications. 3. Uncertainty in future drug pricing policies: The rescission creates uncertainty regarding the federal government’s approach to addressing prescription drug costs, which could leave beneficiaries unsure about future measures to control or reduce expenses.” But as usual implementation: “While the executive order has been rescinded, existing laws and regulations governing prescription drug pricing and Medicare and Medicaid policies remain in effect. However, the measures from the previous administration that they say was designed to save on costs has now been disrupted.”
“A Trump Executive Order Could End The Government-Censorship Complex” [The Federalist]. “Trump’s executive order — just one in a slough of Inauguration Day measures — seeks to enforce the First Amendment, ‘essential to the success of our Republic.’” But once again implementation: “It is unclear what steps the Trump administration will take, pursuant to this order, to investigate or shut down agencies or partnerships that constitute the government-censorship complex.”
“Trump’s blanket Jan. 6 pardons stun Republicans on Capitol Hill” [The Hill]. “President Trump’s sweeping pardons of more than 1,500 people charged with crimes related to the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, including individuals who assaulted police officers, stunned Republican lawmakers who witnessed firsthand the chaos on Capitol Hill four years ago. Trump’s action, which defied assurances from his allies that he would examine convictions on a case-by-case basis and not grant clemency to people who committed violence, divided GOP senators and overshadowed talk about his first-100-days agenda. GOP lawmakers are largely willing to overlook the hundreds of people who entered the Capitol illegally four years ago, which disrupted the certification of former President Biden’s victory by several hours, but pardoning people who assaulted Capitol Police, causing dozens of injuries, was hard to swallow. ‘It is wrong to pardon individuals convicted of violent crime, especially when many of the victims of their violence were law enforcement officers,’ Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said in a statement. Moran was expressing a view shared by many of his Senate GOP colleagues, even though many of them are reluctant to criticize Trump publicly.”
* * * “How Trump Is Pushing at Limits of Presidential Power in Early Orders” [Charlie Savage, New York Times]. “On Monday, as Mr. Trump took the oath of office to begin his second term, he asserted a muscular vision of presidential power. He not only revived some of the same expansive understandings of executive authority that were left unaddressed, but went even further with new claims of sweeping and inherent constitutional clout. Among a blizzard of executive orders, Mr. Trump instructed prosecutors not to enforce a law that bans the popular social media app TikTok until its Chinese owner sells it. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had signed the measure into law after it passed with broad bipartisan support, and the Supreme Court unanimously upheld it. Whatever the law’s merits, the Constitution says presidents ‘shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.’ Mr. Trump offered no clear explanation for how he has any legitimate power to instead suspend the law, making only a vague gesture toward his ‘constitutional responsibility’ for national security, foreign policy ‘and other vital executive functions.’” And several of the EOs (border security; energy) depend on invoking Presidential emergency powers. “But facts matter little to whether or when it is legal for presidents to invoke emergency power, declarations that are governed by the National Emergencies Act of 1976. That law does not tightly define the circumstances under which presidents may determine that an emergency exists, leaving them with essentially unfettered discretion to unlock exigent powers for themselves. But previous presidents adhered to norms of self-restraint.” • The Norms Fairy sheds another tear.
* * * “Trump announces private-sector $500 billion investment in AI infrastructure” [Reuters]. “U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a private sector investment of up to $500 billion to fund infrastructure for artificial intelligence, aiming to outpace rival nations in the business-critical technology. Trump said that ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI, SoftBank (9984.T), opens new tab and Oracle (ORCL.N), opens new tab are planning a joint venture called Stargate, which he said will build data centers and create more than 100,000 jobs in the United States. These companies, along with other equity backers of Stargate, have committed $100 billion for immediate deployment, with the remaining investment expected to occur over the next four years. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison joined Trump at the White House for the launch. The first of the project’s data centers are already under construction in Texas, Ellison said at the press conference. Twenty will be built, half a million square feet each, he said. The project could power AI that analyzes electronic health records and helps doctors care for their patients, Ellison said.
• That will be awesome; we’ll be able to have AI-powered upcoding then, or wherever the return is greatest (i.e., wherever fraud and rental extraction is maximized). Commentary:
Omg pic.twitter.com/UYM3eNpikc
— Daniel (@growing_daniel) January 22, 2025
* * * “The Maga movement is out to get Elon Musk – and so is China” [Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph]. MAGA over H1B (rightly). “If it were possible to short a public figure with maximum leverage, Elon Musk would surely be the top target. The political and enterprise value of “Musk Inc” is built on treacherous ideological sands…. Tesla has suffered its first year of falling car sales worldwide. It is running into ferocious competition on price and quality in China and is rapidly losing German market share in electric vehicles (EV) to BMW and Mercedes…. The driving rationale for the parabolic spike in the share price since Donald Trump’s election is the belief that Musk will enjoy techno-regulatory privilege and crony capitalist favour. The Tesla chief was still in good enough grace to earn a spot with the Trump family at the inauguration… His privilege is recompense for spending a quarter of $1bn helping Trump over the line in swing states – whether by fostering free speech or by exploiting the black arts of algorithmic propaganda, depends on your angle of view.” But: “The problem with the market’s political bet on Tesla is that Musk has already made himself arch-enemy of the Maga priesthood, who increasingly regard him as a globalist carpet-bagger. They think he is trying to subvert the ethno-cultural revival of the American nation state, spreading money around to capture the Trump movement for his own purposes.” And: “Musk has manoeuvred himself into an invidious position, caught between the Chinese Communist Party and the Maga movement and reliant on the fickle favour of a volatile American president. Those Icarus wings of beeswax and feathers have flown too close to the sun.” • Bannon didn’t plant this, since he’s quoted in the article. I wonder if anyone else did?
“Elon Musk’s salute falls flat: Why far-right trolling isn’t working this time around” [Amanda Marcotte, Salon]. “Most people, if they made this gesture innocently, would be upset about the neo-Nazis trying to claim common cause with them. As Ed Kilgore argued at New York Tuesday, ‘there is an easy way to clear this up, particularly for someone who owns a major social-media platform and uses it very often.’ All Musk needs to do is ‘make the gesture of denouncing fascism aggressively.’ He adds that explicitly rejecting fascism and white nationalism ‘should be worth a few dozen tweets, wouldn’t you say?’”
“Dimon says he and Musk have ‘hugged it out’” [The Hill]. “JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Wednesday that he and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have “hugged it out” and resolved their differences, after Dimon’s bank sued the tech billionaire’s electric vehicle firm in 2021…. JPMorgan Chase sued Tesla in 2021, demanding $162 million from Musk’s firm as part of a stock warrant deal. The dispute centered on a 2018 tweet from the Tesla CEO, suggesting he might take the company private, and the subsequent changes in Tesla’s value. The tweet also prompted a lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that Musk and Tesla each paid $20 million to resolve in 2018. JPMorgan dropped the lawsuit against Telsa last month after the two companies reached a settlement…. Dimon said Wednesday he wished Musk and DOGE the best as they embark on their cost-cutting efforts. ‘I think it is completely rational for someone to look at our government and say it’s been ineffective,’ Dimon told CNBC.”
* * *
“House Democrats privately squirm about their leadership and message” [Punchbowl News]. “The problem for Democrats is two-fold. Trump’s hardline approach to immigration is popular, including deporting migrants, although Americans are still queasy when it comes to large-scale efforts that involve a heavy-handed government approach. Secondly, with Biden and Kamala Harris no longer in power, Democrats lack a leader. Members are asking themselves whether it’s former President Barack Obama, a Democratic governor, Jeffries, Harris or someone else…. House Democratic leaders opted not to whip against the Laken Riley Act, which ended up getting 48 Democratic votes. A revised Senate version will come back up for a final House vote today before it heads to Trump’s desk. Some Democrats wish Jeffries had taken a tougher stance against the bill, which allows ICE to take custody of migrants accused of certain crimes. But Jeffries likely would have gotten flack from Frontliners if he’d pressured members to vote no. In one of the first Democratic caucus meetings after the bruising November election, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas), who represents a competitive district along the southern border, warned Democratic leaders not to tell him how to vote, according to a source familiar with the interaction. So far, Jeffries seems to be walking a very careful line. He’s made clear to members that they need to be able to vote their districts. Yet Jeffries is also counseling them not to take the Republican bait. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who has been very outspoken on this issue, says House Democrats need to take the lead for the party since they have the best chance of winning back power in 2026. That puts Jeffries in the spotlight. ‘This is where the action is. This is where the margin is tightest. This is where we’re within striking distance of winning the majority back,’ Ocasio-Cortez said. ‘That would mean our leader and our leadership here.’” • I’m so old I remember when Sanders won the Hispanic counties along the Rio Grande. Speaking of so-called “frontliners.”
The beatings will continue until the dogs eat the dog food:
really wild that Trump is going scorched earth and liberal media’s response is to just keep platforming the same liberals who helped create the backlash conditions for the rampage pic.twitter.com/3RUsYRf3Fo
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) January 21, 2025
Syndemics
“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
Covid 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 (wastewater); 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, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Treatment: Covid
“Azvudine beats paxlovid in reducing COVID-19 deaths” [News-Medical]. “The present multicenter, retrospective cohort study was conducted in Henan and Xinjiang provinces, China, involving hospitalized patients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection between December 5, 2022, and January 31, 2023. The study population included 37,606 patients from ten hospitals in Henan and 3,270 patients from one hospital in Xinjiang…. The primary outcome was all-cause death, with 469 deaths observed: 288 in the azvudine group and 181 in the Paxlovid group. Kaplan–Meier analysis showed a significantly lower risk of death in the azvudine group compared with Paxlovid (p = 0.038). Multivariable Cox regression analysis confirmed this, with a hazard ratio (HR) of 0.82 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.676-0.987, p = 0.036). Composite disease progression occurred in 681 patients: 446 in the azvudine group and 235 in the Paxlovid group…. Sensitivity analyses supported the accuracy of these findings. Results remained consistent across multiple methods of handling missing data, alternative matching models, and the exclusion of early discharges or deaths.”
Elite Maleficence
[sigh]
“OSHA is now terminating the rulemaking via this rule because.. any ongoing risk by COVID-19.. would be better addressed.. in a rulemaking addressing infectious diseases more broadly.”
dude my coworker swabbed someone for flu, covid and strep without a mask on the other day and… https://t.co/9Y9sAgl8lD— collagen machine broke (@chronicallybeee) January 18, 2025
Lambert here: I don’t like a lot of this week’s charts. In wastewater, too many red dots concentrated in the Midwest and the Atlantic coast, so I started circling areas in red, again. New York’s weirdly persistent higher hospitalization rate continues. Traveler positivity is up, and worse, the dominant traveler variants are JN* and KP*, which, while present in the national variants, are very low. And in the two death charts, the projected deaths seem to have leveled out, when in the past they decreased. Nothing earth-shattering, but it does make me queasy, and it’s well after the holiday bump.
| Wastewater | |
| This week[1] CDC January 10 | Last week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| Variants [3] CDC January 18 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC January 11 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data January 16: | National [6] CDC Janurary 16: |
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| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens January 13: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic January 4: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC December 30: | Variants[10] CDC December 30 |
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| Deaths | |
| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 11: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 11: |
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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] (CDC) Seeing more red and more orange, but nothing new at major hubs.
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.
[4] (ED) A little uptick.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely jumped.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.
[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.
[8] (Cleveland) Continued upward trend since, well, Thanksgiving.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Leveling out.
[10] (Travelers: Variants). Positivity is new, but variants have not yet been released.
[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.
[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.
Stats Watch
There are no official statistics of interest today.
Tech: “Instagram hides search results for ‘Democrats’” [BBC]. “While users who type ‘#Democrat’ or ‘#Democrats’ see no results, the hashtag ‘Republican’ returns 3.3 million posts on the social media platform. By manually searching Instagram for ‘Democrats’, rather than clicking on a hashtag, users are greeted by a screen reading ‘we’ve hidden these results.’ ‘Results for the term you searched for may contain sensitive content,’ it says. There are also limited results when people search for ‘Republicans’ as opposed to ‘Republican.’” • Even if this is an accident, the technical capability is still pretty frightening.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 45 Neutral (previous close: 40 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 31 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jan 22 at 1:34:17 PM ET.
Musical Interlude
Goodbye to Garth Hudson:
Today, we sadly say goodbye to Garth “Honey Boy” Hudson, the last living original member of The Band. A musical genius and cornerstone of the group’s timeless sound, Garth once said, “I found some true enjoyment in helping people get to the bottom of their feelings.” Through his… pic.twitter.com/IdVidFbLOp
— The Band (@TheBandOfficial) January 21, 2025
Hudson sax solo at the end:
Gallery
Picasso as Alma-Tadema:
I wouldn’t have picked it as a Picasso, nor as by a 15-year-old, which just goes to show how little I know ~ ‘Science and Charity’ (1897) Picasso Museum, Barcelona pic.twitter.com/tJ53U2MWyC
— Journal of Art in Society (@artinsociety) January 22, 2025
The Current Cinema
“‘The Brutalist’ Sparks Backlash After Editor Reveals Use of AI in Dialogue and Buildings, but Says It’s ‘Nothing That Hasn’t Been Done Before’” [Variety]. “In an interview with tech magazine Red Shark News, editor Dávid Jancsó revealed that AI tools from Respeecher — a Ukrainian software company — had been deployed in order to improved the authenticity of the Hungarian dialogue of stars Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones. Brody and Jones recorded their voices into the AI software, while Jancsó said he also fed in his voice to ‘finesse the tricky dialect.’ ‘Most of their Hungarian dialogue has a part of me talking in there,’ he added. ‘We were very careful about keeping their performances. It’s mainly just replacing letters here and there.’ Jancsó also revealed that generative AI was used in the final sequence of ‘The Brutalist’ to create a ‘series of architectural drawings and finished buildings’ in the style of Brody’s character, László Tóth.” • And so it begins.
I am not feeling wired today.
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