Tag Archives: Journalism

Coronavirus dashboard: updating the 52 Petri Dishes of democracy [Note: There is no significant economic data today (Dan here…May 13)  Thursday we’ll get initial claims, and on Friday retail sales and industrial production for April, both of which will be important] Here is the update through yesterday (May 12). I will restart giving the daily increase in infections if States that have “reopened” start to increase significantly again. The preliminary...

The widely followed IHME model of coronavirus cases has been much too optimistic The IHME model by the University of Washington has gotten a lot of attention in the past month, most likely because it has always forecast a much lower number of total deaths caused by coronavirus than, for example the Imperial College of London’s model, that forecast over 1 million US deaths if no quarantine measures were put in place. But that model has come in for a lot...

Does Google’s Search Algorithm Protect the New York Times? Yesterday morning, after reading the Sunday New York Times, I posted two pieces on EconoSpeak within a few minutes of each other.  One was a short, cute little item (a visual grab from the paper) entitled “The Art of Juxtaposition”; the other was a longer, more substantial takedown of a deficit hysteria “analysis” I called “The Usual Deficit Blather from the New York Times”. As usual, I...

Reposted from Brad DeLong’s Grasping Reality: What is the Real Prevalence of Coronavirus Across States? Click on the image to enlarge Tests per million times cases per test gives you confirmed cases per million. But we want true cases per million. Tests per million are different across states because (a) the states are undertaking testing with different levels of effort and (b) the prevalence of the virus is different in different states. Confirmed...

The COVID-19 virus, as frightening as it now seems, may ultimately fail to jolt humanity out of its profligate habits. But instead of regarding the pandemic as merely another problem requiring a technical fix, the world should see it as an opportunity to rethink humanity’s relationship with the planet.LONDON – One of the few things not in short supply in the COVID-19 era is commentary on the pandemic. Understandably enough, the virus has generated a non-stop flow of news about its spread,...

the total nonsense coming out of Washington D.C.? When I wake up in the morning, I retreat down stairs to the kitchen, turn the coffee pot on, and grab an oat, oat bran, and grd flax seed muffin loaded with fiber. I make these for myself (although my wife of 49 years grabs one on occasion) to combat cholesterol and add fiber to my daily diet for other purposes. In combination with extended  walks outside or on a treadmill, I maintain. Bears eat a lot of...

CNN’s Slavish Service to Trump I had to do a double-take when I saw this news item.  First came the headline, “Pence won’t let public health officials appear on CNN unless Trump’s disinfo briefings run in full”.  I thought, this is horrible: the administration is holding Fauci and Birx hostage to force CNN to cover not only them but also Trump in his daily blatherings.  But no, it was exactly the other way around.  Pence was keeping them from being...

Vua Econospeak, hat tip commenter Ken Melvin for this example from Crooks and Liars of a BBC anchor being straight forward: [embedded content]BBC News to American Brodcasting: How to Open a News Segment

(Dan here…Best to go there for the content.  And Trump is only one of many.  One could add pipelines as an issue.  Who is coordinating this onslaught while we are pre-occupied?) Via Tom Dispatch : …the latest piece by TomDispatch regular Karen Greenberg, author most recently of Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State, on the many ways in which what may be a pandemic for the rest of us is proving to be the perfect moment for The Donald when it...

[embedded content]I have been wondering for a while, when would the media start pointing out that it’s no longer Trump. It is the Republican party. Well, finally. She asked THE question that needed to be asked: How Long are we going to let him go?  Not that his party would hear her.  Even Joe is cringing at hearing it.  Too Bad Joe!