New Mexico COVID Updates

 So, I might as well give the latest update on COVID in New Mexico, and it looks good.  We have had 795,247 tests done out of a population of about 2.1 million.  This does not necessarily mean that over a third of the population has been tested; some of these are repeat tests.

Our positivity rate has been falling steadily and is now at 3.29%.  New tests are well under 3% positive.  

Death rates, after holding steady at about 4.5% early on, started falling.  They hit the lowest in mid-August at 3.03% and have now stabilized and are moving up slightly.  I do not think this is necessarily a bad sign.  Death are, after all, a lagging indicator.  A rising death rate may simply mean the system is not being overwhelmed with new cases.

The hospitalization rate was steady at about 17% earlier in the epidemic and also started falling, below 16%, 15%, 14%, and 13%.  It now appears to be stabilizing a little above 12%.  The absolute number of people hospitalized is way down.  After peaking around 223, it is now in the 60's.

Another lagging indicator is looking promising.  The percentage of infected people who have recovered is over 50% and rising.  Reported recoveries are almost certainly fewer than actual recoveries.

The worst outbreak in the Albuquerque area is past.  Ditto Sandoval County to the north of Albuquerque, where the pueblos are.  The worst also appears to be past in the Navajo northwest part of the state.  Few new cases are coming in, but death rates remain the highest in the state.  

The new center appears to be in the eastern parts of the state.  Incoming from Texas, maybe.  Typically of a new outbreak, the death rate there is low.  I expect it to get higher.  The death rate in Las Cruces, anomalously low before, is creeping up, though still well below the state average.  The real anomaly now is Santa Fe, with over 800 cases, while deaths held steady a 3 for a long time and are now at 4.  I don't know what to make of it.

How Will We Know if a President Biden is as Dangerous as a President Trump?Will

I Alone Can Fix It

Look, I get it. Democracy is hard.  It requires us to be good losers -- and gracious winners.  It requires us to value procedure over substance.  And above all, it requires us to accept that elections have consequences, and that when the other side wins, they will enact policies one's own side does not like, and that this has to be accepted as normal.

Alas, I did not save the link to the post by Erick Erickson in which he began to acknowledge as much.  He acknowledged that after years of believing that the survival of liberty depended on defeating Obamacare, and then on rolling it back once it passed, it had become obvious that it was not politically feasible to repeal Obamacare, and that liberty would, after all, survive.  

Others have commented that this is nothing new.  Republican donors and think tank policy planners are all formally committed to rolling back the New Deal, even though no Republican politician would ever dare actually do such a thing.  Liberty would end with the passage of Social Security.  And when Social Security turned out it was here to stay, Liberty would end with Medicare and Medicaid.  And when those became too well established to repeal, liberty would end with Obamacare.  

All of which leads me to this column in the Washington Examiner.  It is, essentially, a rejection of the Never Trump approach in favor of what they regard as the sensible conservative view:

Some made their peace with Trump — wincing at his nutty tweets while recognizing that he was their only chance to advance their agenda and viewing him as ultimately an ally in the battle against the Left.

Others choose to take things issue by issue — criticizing his outrageous statements and actions while applauding decisions with which they agreed. Yet another group of dead-enders have sought to oppose him at every turn, even when he does something they may have, in a previous life, agreed with.

Never Trumpers, it warns, are "dead-enders"  who let their personal distaste for Trump outweigh their support of him on policy matters.  The author sees their support for Democrats as shocking, even though it can be charitably interpreted:

The least cynical version of their argument is that getting rid of a toxic president, who pays deference to vile conspiracy theories from the White House, is crucial to the future of the republic. They argue that it is worth risking four years of a liberal president to get one who is willing to uphold some basic standards of the office.

To which I can only say, duh!  Pushing vile conspiracy theories from the White House is the work of a demagogue who poses a serious threat to functioning democracy and the rule of law.  Nor is having a liberal President some sort of extraordinary risk that endangers the future of the Republic.  As a matter of fact, having a liberal President is something that has happened quite regularly and our Republic has survived it just fine.  

The author then runs by a parade of horrors a Biden Presidency might introduce -- a public option added to Obamacare, a $15 minimum wage, reviving the Iran deal, liberal judges, perhaps an expansion of the judiciary.  At the same time, the author seems to acknowledge that these are well within the mainstream of American politics and that significant portions of the political spectrum might support them, or at least not see them as all that bad.  

Is it reasonable and acceptable for Never Trumpers who supported Biden to oppose these policies?  Of course it is.  But it is also reasonable for Never Trumpers to oppose these policies as ordinary policy disputes, and not in the all-out survival-of-the-Republic way that they oppose Trump.  

The author acknowledges that Republicans may respond to defeat by becoming (even more) radicalized and fall into "conspiracy and extremism."  He also acknowledges that candidates "even more fringey than Trump" are starting to win primaries.  But he doesn't see any of this as seriously problematic, so much as an understandable reaction to riots in US cities and the rise of a radical Left.

I agree that a Biden Administration would have a problem on its hands reigning in the radical Left, and that failure to do so will mean ruin and reaction.  But it is also entirely reasonable and appropriate for Never Trumpers to work on reigning in the radical Right, which has historically been a greater threat to democracy than the far Left.

At what point should Never Trumpers start treating a Biden Administration as just as dangerous as a Trump Administration, rather than a set of normal policy differences?  I would say, when Biden starts to look as procedurally dangerous as Trump.  Will Joe Biden evade the Constitutional requirement of submitting appointments to the Senate by appointing acting officials?  Will he shift funds to pay for pet projects that Congress refused to fund?  Will he make a blanket rejection of all oversight subpoenas by Congress?  Will he say that courts have no jurisdiction to enforce such subpoenas?  Will he sue to block third party subpoenas that might reveal personal information? Will he resist sending aid to red states hit by hurricanes or tornadoes because they didn't vote for him?  In case of national emergency, will he demand that governors praise him as a condition for getting assistance?  Will he cut off military aid to friendly foreign governments to force them to investigate his political rivals?  Will he casually steal government property because he assumes that it is his personal property?  Will he refused to divulge his finances?   Will he routinely -- and proudly -- violate the Hatch Act and treat the federal government as a campaign prop?  When he makes mistakes (as he undoubtedly will), will he force apolitical agencies like the NOAA to change forecasts to match his misstatements?  And above all else, will he refuse to recognize elections as legitimate unless he likes the outcome?

If a prospective Biden Administration does these things, then Never Trumpers, and Democrats as well, should oppose him with the all-out fury that they opposed Trump.

Otherwise, these are just normal policy disputes and should be treated as such. 

Donald Trump -- Post Reality President

Make America Great Again

 What most stands out about Donald Trump and makes him different from other Presidents is his complete indifference to reality, as opposed to appearance.

Of course, many President have found appearance easier to manage than reality,  Many have sought to create illusions; many have preferred to address illusion than reality.  But all have had at least some awareness that reality is out there.

Donald Trump's true innovation is to realize that reality is so large and so complex that voters never see more than a tiny bit of it, so why bother with reality at all. If you promise to build a wall on the southern border, just build a few miles and say you are building the wall along the entire border.  Most Trump supporters have never been to the border at all and have no idea what it looks like.  And for the ones who have been to the border and seen that the wall is not build, just that that most of it is built and their area is one of the last.  How many Americans have the time and money to travel the entire length of the border to see how much of the wall is built?  And how many who could have better things to do?

Getting Mexico to pay for the wall is even easier.  You don't have to get Mexico to pay for the wall at all.  Just say Mexico is paying for the wall.  How can anyone prove you wrong?

The same applies to "taking the oil" in the Middle East.  During the 2016 campaign, a few debate moderators tried to raise the issue of what a logistical challenge seizing every oil field in an entire country would be.  But Donald Trump cares nothing for such things.  Just send a few soldiers to guard a few oil wells and say you have "taken the oil."  Who is going to go the the country in question and personally investigate which oil fields we do and do not control?  

And if any reporter tries pointing out inconvenient facts about these things, just dismiss it as "fake news."  How will your followers know the difference?

The same approach applies to the economy as well.  When your opponent is in charge, proclaim the economy a disaster.  As soon as you take over, proclaim the economy the best ever.  Nothing has to change except the marketing pitch.  The day before the election, the economy was a false prosperity, propped up by low interest rates, ready to crash as soon as rates were normalized, which must happen.  If the stock market was doing well, a bubble was forming and about to burst.  And Labor Department statistics showing low unemployment were falsified.  The day after the election, the economy was the best ever!  Any proposal to raise interest rates was sabotage.  The stock bubble filled in overnight and all gains were real!  Unemployment statistics were only fake with Obama in power!  Now they are real!

So naturally his approach to COVID has been the same.  Ignore it and hope it goes away.  Pretend it isn't happening,  And when the disruptions caused by attempts to stop the disease become too obvious to ignore, go back to normal and hope no one notices the outbreak.

Donald Trump, Captain Queeg, and Colonel Jessup

 I follow Tom Nichols following Donald Trump's press conferences.  Nichols is all in favor of broadcasting Trump press conferences because he believes that seeing Trump for who he is will do him immense damage.  He also refers to Trump going "full Colonel Jessup."  

I only half agree.  

There are two famous scenes from military courtroom dramas.  In both scenes, military men are being court martialed.  In order to defend them, their lawyer has to attack their much-respected superior officer and destroys him on the stand.  

I refer, of course, to the Captain Queeg scene in The Caine Mutiny and Colonel Jessup in A Few Good Men.

Consider the differences between the scenes. The Jessup scene is bombastically overacted, while the Queeg scene is done with excellent restraint.  But the substantive differences are more important.

Captain Queeg is incoherent.  Colonel Jessup is entirely coherent.  Both men might be called paranoid, but it is a very different kind of paranoia.  Captain Queeg is facing a very real life-and-death emergency in a devastating war but spins imaginary plots against him.  Colonel Jessup imagines no plots against him, but does insist on treating a peacetime assignment at a time of unprecedented security as an all-out war.  Both men might be called self-centered.  But Captain Queeg can't rise above himself and sees plots everywhere against him personally.  Colonel Jesusp is defending the institutional authority of the Marines and his role in them and sees both the Marines and himself as institutional defenders of the free world.

But above all else, Queeg does not present an institutional world view.  Jessup does.*  His world view is flawed, and the audience is intended to see it as flawed.  Jessup confuses the argument that the military is necessary to the country's defense and the defense of freedom and deserves respect and honor for that -- and that the military should therefore be unaccountable.  Not just that the military cannot be held accountable by civilian leadership (civilian control of the military is basic to our system of government), but that the military's internal system cannot hold front line commanders accountable.  Colonel Jessup is arguing for an unaccountable rogue institution that can do whatever it wants and answer to nobody.  Underlying this view is the assumption that the military always acts with such a high-minded patriotism that it will never fall prey to petty motives of personal gain.  Jessup himself is a pretty good refutation of that assumption.

Nonetheless, not everyone sees things the way the movie makers intended the audience to see things.  Colonel Jesusp has his admirers, the people who applaud him and agree with everything he said.

Captain Queeg has no admirers.  No one is going to defend Captain Queeg, who has clearly sunk into incoherent, self-pitying paranoia and is clearly unfit to command a ship.

And I think it not to great a stretch to assume that there is a very large overlap between Colonel Jessup's admirers and Donald Trump's admirers.  Quite simply, Donald Trump's supporters support him because they think he is Colonel Jessup.

We need to undermine Trump by showing him up as Captain Queeg.

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*And, interestingly enough, after the trial the defense lawyer gives a lower-key version of Colonel Jessup's rant, telling the crew that they owe their captain unconditional loyalty no matter how tyrannical, incompetent and even cowardly he may be, and that anyone who is not a career military officer has no right to hold career military officers accountable.  His speech is less convincing than Jessup's because it is refuted by the entire movie.  It does have some value in underlining the contrast between the brave and honorable first mate who made an ethically questionable decision under circumstances that left no good options, took responsibility, and was prepared to fact the consequences -- and the cowardly officer who instigated the mutiny and then denied responsibility and left others to face the consequences.

Alternative to "But Her Emails"

Then again, I can think of alternate captions to "But Her Emails."  One might be "At Least We Got a Tax Cut."  But I am thinking more in terms of "I Alone Can Fix It," or "What Do You Have to Lose?"  And, of course, the old standby, "Make America Great Again."

I Alone Can Fix it

Make America Great Again

What Do You Have to Lose?

"But Her E-Mails" Rides Again

Look, I have officially gone on record warning against catastrophizing everything Donald Trump does for fear of looking like Chicken Little.  I warned that if we kept screaming disaster and nothing disastrous happened, people would stop listening.  This was not to deny that bad things could come of Trump's policies over time, but they were small accumulations occurring slowly, not major disasters.  And this meant cutting out "But Her Emails' jokes. 

"But her e-mails" jokes show some catastrophe befalling the country under Donald Trump and the anti-anti-Trump response of, "but her e-mails."  This is in response to the 2016 election in which there was no accusation against Trump, none, that he could not turn back to the matter of Hillary's e-mails.  If Donald Trump has shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, when asked about it he would have responded that out of a nation of 300 million, he killed just one person, whereas Hillary put us all in danger by her careless handling of classified information.

The usual "but her emails" shows a flood with the comment on a sign, as shown above.  But there have been other versions as well, showing drought, fire, freezing, and nuclear war.

For a while I tried replacing "But her e-mails" with "At least we got a tax cut," ultimately I went ahead and retired the category, except when talking about the actual subject of e-mails or other careless handling of classified information.

Well, that time is up.  The hypothetical disasters may not have come about be we have more than enough real ones on our hands -- pandemic, depression, riots, and military-looking federal forces seizing protesters into unmarked cars.  I get that no one is thinking about Hillary's e-mails now, but I say it is time to bring the category back, with real disasters instead of imaginary ones.  I plan to start posting my own versions quite regularly:

Update in New Mexico COVID

And the latest news in New Mexico COVID is -- not good.  Not as bad as the big four -- California, Texas, Florida and Arizona -- but still bad.  But our numbers are going up, consistently running over 200 new case per day and trending toward the high 200's rather than the low 200's.  Our cumulative total is now 13,063 and rising fast.

It is not enough to compare these to the numbers in the big four.  The big four all have larger populations than New Mexico, so the comparison is not fair.  Arizona has roughly 3.5 times the population of New Mexico; Florida 10 times, Texas 14 times, and California 20 times. 

That makes Florida numbers especially easy to compare to ours -- just knock off the last digit and you have it  Florida's total if just over 200,000, and rising faster with approaching or just above 10,000 new cases per day.  That would be equivalent to about 20,000 total cases in New Mexico -- more than ours, but not spectacularly so.  But the number of new cases a day is equivalent to 1,000 new cases per day in New Mexico --at least four times more.

Texas has 191,790 total cases and about 8,000 new cases per day.  Adjusted for population that is equivalent to 13,699 total cases in New Mexico and 571 new cases per day -- similar in total cases, but at least twice as many new cases.  California has a total of 260,155 cases and is running about 8,000 new cases a day, but with a spike to nearly 10,000.  That is roughly equivalent to 13,008 total cases in New Mexico with about 400 new cases per day and a recent spike to 500.  But Arizona is doing by far the worst, with 94,533 new cases and about 4000 new cases per day.  With only three and a half times the New Mexico population, that is equivalent to 27,000 total cases and about 1,143 new cases per day.

Since none of these states except Arizona has a cumulative total all that much more than ours, it would suggest that California, Texas and Florida all had their outbreak under better control than New Mexico until recently.  I believe that is true.  Although New Mexico has a whole has done reasonably well, we have had a bad outbreak in the Navajo area in the northwest part of the state which skews that total for the state as a whole.*

As for New Mexico, our number of tests has gone up, from something over 4,000 per day to something over 6,000 a day.  As a result, although our numbers have gone up disturbingly, our positivty rate has gone up only slightly.  (Daily positivity rates are too noisy to allow any conclusion).  The overall pattern has changed.  Positives are starting to fall in the Navajo counties of San Juan and McKinley (San Juan more than McKinley).  The prison outbreak also appears to have spent itself.  The main outbreaks now are in the major population centers of Albuquerque and Las Cruces.  Santa Fe is also seeing an increase, but not as bad.  Once it was shocking to see San Juan and McKinley counties, with much smaller populations than Bernalillo County, exceed it in numbers of cases.  Bernalillo County is now fast catching up to San Juan. 

Is this the result of reopening?  Or of the protests?  Or is it backwash from our neighbors on both sides?  It is hard to sort out the first two, but I do not think this is incoming from Arizona or Texas.  Our counties bordering those states do not seem hard hit.  The problem is mostly in Albuquerque and Las Cruces.

Finally, both hospitalization and death rates started falling at the same time as the increase in numbers.  Hospitalizations, after holding steady at about 17% of all infections, have now fallen below 16% and are just over 15%.  The mortality rate, after holding steady around 4.5%, has now fallen below 4%.  This may be a good sign -- that a younger cohort is catching the disease and is less affected, or that we are getting better at treatment.  But I am not convinced.  Hospitalization and death are both lagging indicators.  That both rates are falling may just mean that statistics are being overloaded with new cases, some of which will lead to hospitalization or death later on. 

After all, another lagging indicator is the percentage of people who have recovered.  That, too, is falling.

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*And I don't know, but it would not surprise me if Arizona had high numbers even before the latest outbreak, that was primarily in the Navajo areas as well.  By now, the outbreak has spread well beyond that.