lev.lafayette's blog

A few days prior, over a work-related video conference, an engineer based in India opened to those present their feelings on the state of their country. It was a depressing story, of death and many more infections on the campus (some of which must result in more deaths). He mentioned the incredible sadness that is affecting so many in their country, the frustration at the lack of resources the country has as the pandemic's infections and fatality rates continue their accelerating and upwards trend.

Today, April 16 AEST, the global casualty rate for SARS-CoV-2 reached three million dead, and around one-hundred and forty million aggregate cases. It is, of course, nowhere near the scale of WWII, where something in the order of 70-85 million people died when the world population was an estimated 2.3 billion, compared to the 7.7 billion of today. But of course, this is just year one.

Today is Bramble Cay Melomys Memorial Day, dedicated to Australian wildlife and especially those that have become exitinct due to human (in)action. The Bramble Cay Melomys is the first mammal to become extinct due to climate change. A rescue plan was organised, but it was too little, too late.

The Guardian cartoonist, First Dog on the Moon, has provided a series of cartoons on these events.

The following is the first of several short articles on the relationship between public finances, economic growth, and economic welfare. In this case two variables are considered, the Gini Coefficient of Income and the Total Tax Revenue as a percentage of GDP for OECD countries. In both cases the data is from c2018, the "circa" indicating that in some cases the data is a year or two older.

Donald Trump is now seriously arguing that the FDA deliberately withheld trial data from their COVID-19 vaccine until after the election.

"The @US_FDA and the Democrats didn’t want to have me get a Vaccine WIN, prior to the election, so instead it came out five days later – As I’ve said all along!"
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1325962203346972678

The real story is:

Global COVID-19 cases hit 50 million; 1.25 million dead.

The rate is now over 600K new infections per day, and 9K dead per day.

On September 17 I pointed out that global cases of the coronavirus-19 pandemic had reached 30 million.
https://www.facebook.com/lev.lafayette/posts/10159396674065955

On August 10 we had hit 20,000,000 cases.
https://www.facebook.com/lev.lafayette/posts/10159291022025955

It has to be said that Victoria, AU, has managed something quite impressive.

Neil Mitchell believes: "Because despite meeting the targets, our Premier has decided to delay any further reopening in the metropolitan area, and make restricted changes in regional Victoria... The targets were met. People did the right thing despite the pain. And having been promised likely relief, they got none."

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/now-we-are-crushed-daniel-an...

As a dual-citizen and member of the Labo(u)r Party in both countries, this a delicious result. Especially after the ludicrous character assassination attempts by the Murdoch-Tory media in AU, and the attempted dumb-populism politics of Judith Collins.

National Party will be in the wilderness for a while. The libertarian-propertarian wing will find themselves heading to ACT, the conservative uglies maybe towards the New Conservative Party. Whilst will be left will be a corporatist shell, with most of the middle-class already in the left-leaning big tent of Labour.

With a month to go, this is how I think it will play out on current predictions and trends.

Keep an eye on Georgia, especially. Not a critical state (that's Penn, Wisc, etc, the "rust belt"), but rather a litmus on how much Trump will lose by.

I remember in the 2008 election contacting a US Dem pollster and suggesting that was winnable in the longer term. They didn't think it was quite ready, yet.

If I were the Dems, I'd be looking hungrily at Texas in the future as well.