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Wenn wir im Tempo der letzten 3 Wochen weiter impfen (55,166 im Durchschnitt), dann sind wir in Deutschland schon Ende 2023 damit fertig*. Hoffen wir mal lieber das bis dahin keine wirklich fiesen Mutationen auftreten. Allgemein heisst es ja, dass Mutationen (ganz im Virusinteresse) eher weniger schädlich für den Wirt sind. Aber verlassen möchte ich mich darauf nicht. Solange vor seinem aus dem Verkehr ziehen der Wirt genug Übertragungen stattfinden lies ist es dem Virus schnurz wie viele davon überleben.

*Der Einfachhalt halber von 70% Herdenimunität ausgegangen. Und so getan als ob eine Impfung ausreicht.

Unlike other people in her family FLOTUS still has her Twitter. So she would like to let us know just how wonderful her Be Best campaign has been. If her twitter attention goes over well with her husband, who got recently deprived from such perks, can only be guessed.

The video she had created is 3:30 long. It is long. It feels long. Just because you can operate editing software does not make you an editor. Just as there is (was?) the happy ukulele selling us tech stuff and services there is the happy piano, Einaudi reduced to the meaninglessness of Clayderman, that wants to give us an upbeat vibe.

But no, the video is not for us. It is a memento for Melania. That is probably why it is so long: It shows her in PR events. I would not be surprised if it would be a complete chronic of her time as a First Lady. She has staff that does this kind of thing. So having a summary in the end of the project is just what you do.

In light of the previous causes that started innocent enough with the renovation of the White House by Jacqueline Be Best is pretty dismal. Sure, Nancy Reagan didn’t get rid of drugs either. Turns out just saying no somehow was not enough. As it turned out drugs seemingly don’t adhere to “no means no” either.

The problem with Be Best is that is PR only. It does not even make an attempt to suggest how cyber bullying could be reduced for the youth. Just like with Nancy it starts with language: Just ask somebody who is younger then lets say 35 what “Cyber” means. Most people will think of Elons truck. Maybe Melanie is against electrical vehicles being part of Americas must cultured event: Trucks getting dirty.

Or maybe she somehow and magically and inconclusively succeeded behind the scenes: Was it maybe her campaign that got her husband banned from Twitter? Kids bully kids. That is horrible. It was. Middle school is hell for most people. Various reasons. Other pupils are a big part of it. Schools and society mostly ignore that problem. They leave people in between childhood and adulthood alone.

Historically that wasn’t always the case. Definitions of child / adult vary. Most traditional cultures have initiation rites. Groups of people often have in general. If group means overall population then coming of age is the event that triggers acceptance in society. The gauntlet to be passed makes belonging binary. Bad for handicapped humans, or others that might not pass muster. Good for those that do: Usually it is not easy to loose social acceptance at a whim. Middle School is not that caring. Nobody is ever hip enough. Very few go without fear day in day out into the maelstrom of other hormonally confused homo sapiens.

Modern society does not have much to offer here: The market will make you happy? Just grow up and you get to consume a shitload of stuff, then you will be happy? Or: Do as your elders have done. Have values based on a world when people cared about what an oxen was and what it could do for you and yours. Just have ‘traditional values’. Which ones? From which time?

Be that as it may: Be Best didn’t help. It do jack shit. But much like its figure head we all stop caring a long time ago.

By far the biggest ‘export’ that leaves Long Beach bound to China last you year, was, well nothing. 2020 was a tumultuous year for logistics. Numbers for Americas largest pacific port were no exception. A total of 3,998,340 TEUs arrived, while 1,475,888 TEUs set sail towards the middle kingdom.

In other words just 37% of all containers going to China had something in them. The others were as useful as returning your empty bottles to the recycling station.

Farmers still can’t get their American grown stuff over to the other side. It seems that it is not worth the wait for the food exports to be put into the (large) cans. It appears to be more lucrative to send the empty boxes back asap.

In the same time the Trump administration directed government agencies to minimize procurements from China yesterday. It is the chips in things that makes them nervous. My guess is that a certain level of the administration has been working on things like this for a while, planning to put them into action in the usual orchestrated fashion. But they rather dump them into the public sphere now then to hand them over.

Ja. Gerade gestern verstarb ein Mensch eine Stunde nach einer Corona Impfung. Bis gestern wurden in Deutschland 207.992 Menschen geimpft weil sie über 80 Jahre alt waren. Wenn man die Altersterblichkeit im Kontext der Bevölkerungszusammensetzung dann kann man rechnen das die Chance zu versterben bei 4000 zu 1 liegt wenn man dann erstmal 80 oder älter ist. Corona und seinen Einfluss lassen wir da jetzt einmal weg. (2008 waren 34% der 395.000 verstorbenen Männer und 64% der 450.000 verstorbenen Frauen octogenarian, also ca. 422.000). Gestern wurden 78.116 Menschen geimpft. Ca 40.000 nach alters indikation. Statistisch würde man mit 10 Toten rechnen. Aber der Tot kommt meist ja nicht so unverhofft.

Auch wenn sich das viele wohl wünschen …

Mit B.1.1.7 ist genauso wenig zu spaßen wie mit B.1.351. Egal ob das Virus nun in England oder Südafrika mutierte: Es erzeugt eine neue Dynamik deren genaues Ausmass niemand wirklich vorhersagen kann. Erst Anfang April 2020 begannen die Zahlen in Deutschland zurückzugehen. Wieviel dabei dem Lockdown und wieviel dem Wetter geschuldet werden kann ist nicht klar. Die täglichen Infektionszahlen scheinen um 20.000 herum zu schweben. Es wird stetig betont dass diese “wegen der Feiertage” nicht belastbar seien. Mitte Januar ist dieses Argument ein bisschen wie der letzte Partygast der für sich und den Gastgeber den Plattenspieler um 5 Uhr bedient, während die anderen Gäste um 3 Uhr gingen.

Schon Ende letzten Jahres wurde viel Aufhebens um die Impfung gemacht. Es wurde immer wieder betont dass es ja ein Unternehmen in Mainz war dass das schnellste Vakzin erfunden habe. Biontech wurde mit 375 Millionen von der Bundesregierung gefördert. In den USA wurden 1.25 million Dosen an einem Tag verimpft. In Deutschland waren es 60858. Für jede deutsche Impfungen macht man also in Amerika ungefähr 20. Wenn man die 4 mal größere Bevölkerungszahl auf der anderen Seite des Atlantiks in Betracht sieht, dann sind wir hier immer noch 5 mal so langsam.

Das ist schon ein ganz anderes Bild als im Sommer letzten Jahres. Deutschland dachte damals, man habe das schon im Griff. Hochmut kommt vor dem Fall. Aktuell meint man in der niedersächischen Impfhotline das man dann am 1. February vielleicht Termine machen können.

Both the Big Tech and China are widely being hated. With varying degrees of intensity. Changing over time, and in different levels from person to person.

Neither on a direct personal level nor via any indicators I came across any signs that people themselves would change their ways of doing things based on their feelings towards Google, Xi and everything around them.

People spend more time than ever on their phones (assembled in China, running on services provided by Big Tech).

The “Trade War” that Trump attempted left China with a growing economy and global influence.

There is lip service by politicians around the globe. All the while Bezzos and Musk jockey for the pole position of riches.

And people do, what they do. Giving their money and attention to China and Big Tech. While being upset about it in the same time. And hardly anybody notices.

Seems that the US is making great headway. They did well by buying lots of Biontech/Pfizer last July. Right now some populists do really well if it comes to vaccinations: Trump, Johnson and Netanyahu all lead the pack. A diverse set of reasons. But still worth noticing. Also interesting how it does not want to fit into the narrative that “those guys” (for the record: I am not fond of any of them either) are more like science-ignoring idiots. Well, they knew how to pick a winner if it comes to vaccinations. RNA vaccines – even though conceptually sound – were not proven. They had no track record.

One could speculate to find reasons. None of these could be conclusively proven or disproven. It could be that the populists fucked up spring so badly that they were in the most dire need for a miracle. They could think that social measures would further the other side of the aisle, so they would try to avoid them at all costs. Or they don’t have ‘experts’ around them that are just mid level people. Those that could not imagine that RNA based vaccines would work.

Who knows.

It is great that Israel, the UK and the US do so well in terms of vaccinations. Acquiring immunity via an actual infection is rather risky. Cov-parties never became a think like Pox-parties. For good reasons.

Wednesday news spread quickly that a rioter got shot in the Capital building. A couple hours later the ‘death count’ was increased to four. In the info tsunami that those couple of hours kicked off information about the three people was not easy to come by.

But we have still have Flotus. She states:

Most recently, my heart goes out to: Air Force Veteran, Ashli Babbit, Benjamin Philips, Kevin Greeson, Rosanne Boyland, and Capitol Police Officers, Brian Sicknick and Howard Liebengood. I pray for their families comfort and strength during this difficult time.

Melania Trump, January 11th

An interesting order: First the Mob then the Law Enforcement. Those people who are so dear and close to her husband. That you can get killed by a gunshot if you forcefully enter the Capitol is a real possibility. Likewise if a protester (who probably calls himself a patriot) rams a fire extinguisher in the back of your head. We do not know why Mr Liebengood took his own life. The entire Trump line is strange, so nothing really surprises.

This leaves us with three medical emergencies among the Trumpmob. What else was it, if not that? If you ask Doug Sweet then he will tell you that it was Antifa. He was there. Has an arrest warrant to proof it, and yet he claims it was ‘the other guys’. I guess the nice thing about delusion is that it can basically explain everything in ways that please you.

Benjamin Philips, 50 died of a stroke.

Kevin Greeson, 55 died of a heart attack.

Rosanne Boyland, 34 got trampled to death

It has often been said that Mr Trumps core support is made out of middle aged white men from average aka lower social status.

I am aware that statistics based on an n of two are highly speculative. Your odds to die 2019 as a 45-54 American 883 per 100,000 for the entire year. So if you take the 2 fatalities and assume normal mortality you end up with a crowd size of 41,493.

Depicting people one had essentially two methods: Making a three dimensional replica, or mapping what we believe to see on to a surface. These days, with glowing rectangles pretty much 99% of where our attention goes, most of what we see if the later kind.

Historically it was not the case. Comparing both methods in antique times it is obvious that sculpture is way more skilled and truthful that wood panels or frescos of the time:

400 years difference, but everything else that I could find as an example for a flat depiction was so bad that I felt it would over stress my point.

Once the dark ages were behind us it seemed that painting had caught up:

Again: there are countless painters that would have made my point better than van Honthorst. But even if with him we can clearly see that painting catches up.

Why? Or why did the skills of antique artisans did not flow as unencumbered into flat works?

One could conjecture that glas coverings for windows had a significant influence. During antique times wood panels and frescos where the main means of depictions. A fresco you can hardly sell or steal. Wood panels back then were small, and would ago not very well. Only when canvas became available a large flat pane became available to painters. These would also scale up very nicely. And a canvas was an instant object. Heck: you could even roll it up for easier transport and storage.

Humidity control is an important factor in the conservation of canvas and wood panels alike. A hygrothermograph in the corner of a room is usually a good indication that you might see something interesting and or of value on it walls.

Before there were glas panes covering windows it would also mean that you would let weather in together with sunlight. If it should snow in Rome then you see flakes descending the dome of the Partenon.

Having a closed room with a fire in it is a crude but possible solution, but you lack the light that you would need to appreciate a painting. So, only once people have rooms that were bright(ish) and dry(ish) would it make sense to invest allot of efforts to make movable pretty things that you put on your walls.

The US is a large and diverse country. Sociologically and geographically. There are many maps as graphical representations available. They are worth comparing. Here we see the recent NY Times Covid map next to other data sets that could have an impact on the epidemic. Like income level:

Blue collar jobs yield lower incomes, and they can not be as easily socially distanced and white collar ones. But California, Oregon and Main break the hypoythesis of “poor counties have more covid”.

Mask attitudes and acceptance of other social distancing patterns correlate with political leanings. California does not fit this narrative. Colorado vs Oklahoma could support it, but then the pattern of cases in New Mexico suggest the opposite.

Clearly: if you people live closer together then this make virus spread easier. Actually: For the virus to spread you only seem to need a 7/11. People live socially everywhere. Yes, in NYC you see easily thousands of people each day, but it appears that you can’t catch Covid from that attractive person on the other side of the street that you noticed while going to work.

This is our first winter with Covid. Of course everybody hopes it will be the last one two. Both Fauci and Drosten already talked in the beginning of 2020 about it. They both strongly suggest that this would be a hard time. So one could surmise that cold is good for team-virus. It seems that it also can be too cold for Covid to spread. The northern plains have much less of a problem now that it is really cold up there than those states in tempered climate.

It snowed in Spain in the last days. It would be interesting to follow their cases in the next weeks. If they go down then that will be very interesting.