Wednesday , February 26 2025
Home / The Angry Bear (page 569)

The Angry Bear

COVID-19, Moderna Therapeutics mRNA Vaccine, and Crichton

I understood how some combinations of drugs work in attacking Covid-19 with one drug acting as an ionophore allowing another drug to enter a cell and attach to Covid RNA stopping its replication. I found this nice chart on National Geographic offering up an educational semi -medical and microbiologist depiction of how Moderna’s new vaccine mRNA gives the human body the ability to attack Covid.  I duplicated the chart with the original wording on Power...

Read More »

The Combination of Things

What about all the forest fires in the West? The most proximate cause of these fires is high temperatures along with associated lightning and high winds; both of which, directly or indirectly, can easily ignite a fire in tinder dry forests. Beyond beyond being dry, many western forest are far from being healthy. There are large areas in the southern Sierra Nevada Range where the forest are dead and gone; they were the first to go. There is less damage to...

Read More »

Real retail sales gains join industrial production in sharp deceleration

Real retail sales gains join industrial production in sharp deceleration Two days ago we saw that gains in industrial production had decelerated sharply in August. This morning we saw the same thing with real retail sales, one of my favorite indicators. Nominal retail sales were up +0.6% in August. Meanwhile, July’s reading was revised downward by -0.3%. Since in July and August consumer inflation was up +0.6% and +0.4%, respectively, that means revised...

Read More »

Jones v USPS

In Jones v USPS, the Postal Service provided weekly service performance data since the beginning of the year. This is the most complete picture of on-time performance that we’ve seen since the mail delays became an issue earlier this summer. The data set is discussed in this post. There was also a hearing today in the Jones case. We hope to have more on that later. In the Washington case, an amicus brief was filed by the County of Santa Clara, the City of...

Read More »

Industrial production improves in August, but with sharp deceleration

Industrial production improves in August, but with sharp deceleration If the jobs report is the Queen of Coincident Indicators, industrial production is the King. It, more than any other metric, is found at the turning points where recessions both begin and end. This morning’s report of industrial production for August shows that the recovery from the bottom of the coronavirus recession has come close to stalling out. Overall industrial production grew...

Read More »

The Seven-Percent Solution: The Not-So-Secret Plan to Downsize the Postal Service

Steve Hutkins authors Save the Post Office on issues affecting the Post Office. First, a disclaimer. The following analysis is largely speculative. It’s not based on insider information. The evidence comes from news articles, government reports, legal filings, and a few leaked internal USPS documents that were published on postal news sites. The analysis could be totally wrong. The hypothesis is simply this: The Postal Service has embarked on a plan to...

Read More »

Is Mail Delivery Taking Longer?

Is U.S. mail delivery becoming slower for First Class mail? A New York Times analysis of more than 28 million pieces of mail found that on-time delivery declined noticeably in July and August. This comes after PMG Louis DeJoy put cost-cutting measures in place. Delivery has sped up slightly since the summer but remains slower than earlier this year. Twenty-eight million pieces of first-class letters were tracked by SnailWorks. The results of the analysis...

Read More »

Coronavirus dashboard for September 14: cases in the Midwest surge; the Northeast still lags Canada

Coronavirus dashboard for September 14: cases in the Midwest surge; the Northeast still lags Canada Total US cases: 6,519,573 Average cases last 7 days: 34,744 Total US deaths: 194,071 Average deaths last 7 days: 733  Source: COVID Tracking Project I continue to expect the pandemic to wax and wane in relative terms at least until next January 20, as the public reaction in various States varies between panic and complacency. Let’s start by comparing...

Read More »

The 2020 Presidential and Senate nowcast: the races congeal

The 2020 Presidential and Senate nowcast: the races congeal Here is my weekly update on the 2020 elections, based on State rather than national polling in the past 30 days, since that directly reflects what is likely to happen in the Electoral College. Remember that polls are really only nowcasts, not forecasts. They are snapshots of the present; there is no guarantee they will be identical or nearly identical in early November. Let’s begin with Trump’s...

Read More »