Favorites December 19th 2021

'Weird Alex' Pareene @pareene

nearly everything about the pandemic has shown that direct state or federal provision of essential public health services works better than routing it through the private sector but two years of this shit is not powerful enough to dislodge the ideology behind this.

Eric Stanley @Eric_A_Stanley

San Francisco shut down all of its large testing and vaccine spaces. Now all that federal money is flowing through CVS and Walgreens with 3-4 week wait times. 👀

Not sure if you've been following the interaction of policy and epidemiology here, but uh... that’s too slow.

Josh Wingrove @josh_wingrove

CDC data is overcounting shots as "first doses," when they're instead boosters or 2nds. It means more people are fully vaccinated & boosted, but also more are fully unvaccinated. Signals are the overcount is in the millions. No one knows. Scoop &🧵: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

bloomberg.comBloomberg - Are you a robot?

Although it's worth noting that there's always room for improvement in government services as well. This is a long thread explaining details of why the data on rates of vaccine boosters is such a mess.

O Little Tom of Bethlehem 🎄🎅⛄️ @TomHeartsTanks

Become ungovernable

Real dedication to the craft there.

Jim Acosta @Acosta

Goldman Sachs cuts US economic forecast after Joe Manchin rejects Build Back Better

cnn.comGoldman Sachs cuts US economic forecast after Joe Manchin rejects Build Back BetterThe Federal Reserve will wrap up its pandemic-era stimulus program faster and expects to raise interest rates in 2022. CNN’s Matt Egan reports.

Biggest political news today. Manchin signed an agreement with Schumer back in july on what he'd be willing to accept, which seems to have been ignored, so he's saying he won't vote for it. He's also pretty clearly opposed to the fronloading budget gimmickery that was being used.

Andrew Prokop @awprokop

The White House is furious at Manchin. A very rough statement here. Doesn't sound to me like they have much hopes of reviving this if they are willing to say all this in public

So, the Biden admin attacking manchin at this point does not seem super productive. If we want to do something about climate change, we have to make Manchin happy about the legislation, or convince Susan Collins to vote for it, but that seems even harder.

Tallo @Tallocat

jesus christ dude

For reference, the Famicom had a keyboard as an available accessory.

Bloomberg Opinion @bopinion

To reverse population decline, China is contemplating some aggressive measures. Young Chinese are getting the hint

trib.alBloomberg - Are you a robot?

Limiting vasectomies now, abortions next. Looks like the US isn't going to be alone in making abortions difficult in the near future.

Just a few more days

Yea, we use plastic ornaments, but they look reasonably good while being non-shattery