Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, July 18, 2021
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40 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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This is a very informative thread, about 25 tweets long:
https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1414358182982557697
Key points:
Delta is not merely more infections, delta infections are much more likely severe (hospitalization, ICU etc.).
Asymptomatic infections of vaccinated people are common.
Asymptomatic vaccinated people are infectious, can infect other people.
(Need to click “show this thread” a few tweets down).
My prediction:
Within 4 months or so, in maybe 30 or so of the reddest states, most unvaccinated people will have a history of prior COVID infection.
@charon:
What do you mean 30 of the reddest? How many red states do you think there are?! Trump won only 25 states in 2020, and there’re only 23 (source: Ballotpedia) with fully R state governments.
@Kylopod:
“reddist” to include “less blue.” Is that really so hard?
Not perfect correlation anyway, just apparent trend.
@charon:
To say roughly the same thing slightly differently: Everywhere (with a few exceptions) that is not both north pf the Potomac or Ohio river and easy of Indiana.
I suspect that international companies looking to build a plant in the US are going to be more skeptical of the Trump states. Sure, state governments will actively collude with the companies to keep wages low, but what kind of manager or executive wants to relocate to, say, Missouri. Not just incompetent but actually hostile to public health.
I would guess we’re about three months away from the first stories of techies, especially women and foreigners, refusing to move to Texas for work.
I linked some time ago to the Bloomberg report showing California’s continuing dominance over Texas in basically every economic measure. Add universal concealed carry and abortion restrictions to that and Abbott will have ended Texas’ overhyped rise. Anyone who can afford to stay in California will stay in California. Texas will get the B Team. Still.
Barry Ritholtz: Facebook/Biden
@Michael Reynolds:
Yes agree – as long as the water holds out. I live in the Sierra foothills east of Sacramento and water supplies in the reservoirs are pretty low. Worry if we don’t get a good rainfall this coming winter. Don’t know why Newsom and others aren’t proposing building desalination plants for LA and San Diego at the very least.
@Michael Reynolds:
Texan incompetence is already costing them.
@SteveCanyon:
It’s agriculture that will lose in the California water wars. We have plenty of water for the cities, we don’t have enough water to grow almond trees and table grapes in a desert. Ag sucks up 70-80% of the water.
@SteveCanyon:
It will be worse: Can the Southwest Survive With Less Water?
The northeast is facing the opposite problem, it won’t stop raining. Wet, cool summers are a 50% probability for the northeast as a result of global warming.
@Sleeping Dog:
I’m just south of you, and we’ve had two heat waves already, but mostly it’s been fairly cool and rainy. The sun may re-emerge briefly this coming Tuesday, and then again on Thursday.
I’ve seen the traffic lines to get to Salisbury, Hampton, and Rye beaches on the rare sunny day. I gave up counting after a 4-mile traffic jam headed north on 95. Happily we were headed south.
I’ve also given up counting how many flash flood watches we’ve had. Daily would be a good guess.
@CSK:
We were traveling in June so we missed that heat, except for a couple of days early in the month. Walked along the beach during the week and the parking lots were empty. Hard to get excited about the beach when it is overcast and in the 60’s. I’d like a few sunny days, even if the temps went to the 90’s.
@Sleeping Dog:
Too much water in the northeast and too little in the southwest sounds like two problems with a single solution. Liquids move pretty well through pipes. If scarcity drives the price of water up in some parts pipelines might seem viable.
@Michael Reynolds:
I could do a Rodney Dangerfield here:
“Take our rain–please.“
@CSK: Isn’t that Henny Youngman?
Henny Youngman
TRIGGER WARNING! Too many to count!
@Kylopod:
Yes, it is. I was thinking of “I don’t get no respect.”
Joan Rivers told a good story about that. Apparently Dangerfield overheard a low-level Mafioso fighting with a woman. The guy finally stomped off, muttering “Jesus Christ, even with hookers I don’t get no respect.” Dangerfield loved the line, and the rest is history.
@Michael Reynolds:
Oh that’s been discussed. 20-30 years ago there was fervent discussion about tapping the Great Lakes and sending it to the SW. Technically doable, financially expensive and politically impossible.
@Michael Reynolds: “Anyone who can afford to stay in California will stay in California.”
And the rest of them will move to Arizona. Although I’m not sure why we don’t see a huge wave moving into New Mexico, which is more beautiful, has better weather, and is already blue…
@wr:
Is that the meaning of Dan Quayle’s “I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix”?
@Kylopod:
Well, it’s only a six hour and eleven minute drive to L.A.
@Sleeping Dog:
Speaking of grandiose water plans…
…this was the biggest. Somewhat more doable than getting water over the Rockies, and it’s pretty much up-hill all the way from the Mississippi, but politically even more impossible. Yet when things get bad enough just about anything can become possible.
@dazedandconfused:
And like all these project, the expectation is that it would be funded through the federal budget and thereby be paid for by others that who would benefit from the water.
IIRC, the Great Lakes water fantasies included moving the water in tunnels under the Rockies. Apropos the discussion in another thread, the engineers who dream these schemes up must have received their degrees from Rube Goldberg U.
@Sleeping Dog:
Straight up illegal in most cases as there’s treaties to contend with. Everyone who goes “oh, let’s just use the Great Lakes’ water, they got a ton” tends to forget that a completely separate country shares a border with all of them and thus has equal say in what happens. US cities actually situated on the lakes have a hell of a time tapping into them because of all the red tape – Waukesha just got permission two weeks ago from the feds after trying for years and they’re only miles away from the shore. Canada would rather watch California burn then give up their main source of water and you can’t blame them.
California and the Southwest are either going to have to invest in dozens of desalinization plants or come to terms with the fact they’re going to run out of water. All of this “we’ll just take your extra” assumes (a) there’s extra to spare and (b) you’ve got the right to take someone else’s natural resources after you’ve burned through all of yours. After all, instead of reducing waste usage or understanding that maybe you can’t make the desert bloom in gardens on command they just want to continue to grow and use up what everyone else has. Nature’s telling you to pump the brakes, halt expansion and change your lifestyle or else; the solution isn’t to hit up others across the continent so you can keep living the way you want.
@Sleeping Dog:
Indeed. Any fool can see the way to do it is to carve a canal from the Mississippi to the Grand Canyon. Given enough thermonuclear ditch-diggers, a canal AND 4th of July celebration. Two birds!
A gofund.me, organized by Jazz Shaw, to help Doug’s family cover funeral expenses is online:
https://gofund.me/b53d7d7b
@mattbernius:
I saw this the other day. Indescribably sad.
(Sorry to be departing from the current topic trains, but…) Why am I just not surprised at this? Have I grown too cynical?
@MarkedMan:
It’ll become like Saudi Arabia, with a fortified “company town” that the managers never leave so they can be in Missouri without being in Missouri.
@Sleeping Dog:
You mean the “fantasies” we actually built in the 1940s?
Alva B. Adams Tunnel
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
“This site can’t be reached.”
@KM: ” All of this “we’ll just take your extra” assumes (a) there’s extra to spare and (b) you’ve got the right to take someone else’s natural resources after you’ve burned through all of yours.”
Of course they have that right. They’re California FFS! It’s in the Constitution–Article VIII AND the 28th Amendment. Look it up for yourself.
@CSK: Sorry! 🙁 Try this link from Politico. Maybe it’ll be more durable.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/18/portman-irs-enforcement-infrastructure-package-499988#:~:text=Sen.%20Rob%20Portman%20said%20Sunday%20that%20IRS%20enforcement,for%20funding%20the%20%241.2%20trillion%20bipartisan%20infrastructure%20bill.
ETA: Just tested the new link and it worked for me at least.
@KM: Well said.
A small correction: Not Lake Michigan, which is wholly within US boundaries.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Kill the rich.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
This one works fine. Thanks.