Our pals at Imperial College have released a state-level model showing which states have reduced their R₀ below one. Without further ado:

For those of you who prefer a more visual approach, here’s a map:

Roughly speaking, any state that’s a shade of purple shouldn’t even be thinking about reopening yet. This mainly includes the South and the Great Lakes region, precisely the places that are most aggressively reopening right now. This does not bode well.

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through May 22. Spain suddenly reported 688 deaths on Friday, causing a big spike in their death toll. France, conversely, reported zero deaths. I’m not sure what’s going on here. All the other countries are mostly on track, and even the two sets of numbers for Sweden are starting to look similar (with an expected lag of a few days). The United States has dropped below four deaths per million, which surprises me. This either means that the lockdown protocols have been more effective than I guessed, or that the lockdown protocols didn’t really matter at all. My money remains on the former.

The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here. The Public Health Agency of Sweden is here.

Tia Dufour/White House/Planet Pix via ZUMA

Let’s take a look back over the past week:

Monday: Trump announces that he is taking hydroxychloroquine. “I was just waiting to see your eyes light up when I said this,” he tells the assembled reporters. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happens.

Tuesday: Trump goes on a Twitter rampage over Obamagate.

Wednesday: Trump says that he will “ask” to withhold federal funds from states that adopt mail-in ballots, even though he has no authority to do this and everyone knows it. Many thumbsuckers follow.

Thursday: Trump plays coy about wearing a mask in a Ford factory he’s visiting. “I wore one in the back area,” Trump tells reporters, “but I didn’t want the press to get the pleasure of seeing it.” The press can’t resist chasing after him anyway.

Friday: In an effort to prove that they can be as stupid as Trump, liberals go ballistic over a lame joke that Joe Biden told on air. Republicans join in, naturally, which makes it a “bipartisan condemnation.” This is catnip for the press.

Writing about Monday’s revelation, media critic Jack Shafer says the press needs to stop playing along with this nonsense:

I’d like to think that calling attention to Trump’s decoy move might reduce its effectiveness. But I’d be wrong. In Trump’s book, any mention—neutral, praiseful or critical—is a win because it takes our eye off of what really matters. When it comes to obvious Trump provocations like self-dosing of hydroxychloroquine, the only way to blunt such media manipulation is to ignore him as much as possible. Do your part. Flush Trump’s crap from public mention.

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times responds:

Oh no not you too @jackshafer https://t.co/437djbTH4X

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 19, 2020

Yep, even Jack. The key thing here is that no one is suggesting the Times not cover this at all. Everything a president does gets covered. But stuff likes this needs to be a blurb on A17. On TV it needs to be a 15-second segment at the end of the news block. Online it should be a throwaway mention or less.

After three years, we should all know that it’s pointless to demonstrate that Trump is stupid. The people who care already know it, and the people who don’t care won’t be swayed. So just give his shiny objects the coverage they truly deserve. In most cases, that’s almost nothing since they’re obviously substance-free and designed solely to play the media. Why go along with Trump’s almost contemptuous—and quite public—strategy of “flooding the zone with shit” as a way of keeping the press under control?

A mourning dove flew onto one of our trees earlier this week. Hilbert was interested, but Hopper was ON IT:

Hopper spent the next ten minutes salivating over the bird, which was never closer than about ten feet and completely safe from her carnivorous instincts. Still, you never know, do you? Fortune favors the bold.

This is . . . oh hell. I don’t know:

Be sure to read the question carefully. It literally asks people if they think Bill Gates wants to implant microchips in everyone.

But before we get too smug, I wonder what this poll would look like if instead of Bill Gates, the villain were Peter Thiel or Elon Musk or . . . Donald Trump. Maybe progressives wouldn’t look so good. After all, even with the saintly Bill Gates in the question, only half of Democrats are sure he has no plans to microchip people.

This whole thing is nuts. Anti-vaxxers make up only a few percent of the population, but somehow a huge number of people seem to have become deeply suspicious that the search for a COVID-19 vaccine is just a front for the Trilateral Commission or something. What makes it all especially bizarre is that Donald Trump doesn’t support this notion. In fact, he’s a big vaccine fan. Somehow, though, that’s not enough. In the same way that the Republican Party paved the way for Trump and now can’t control him, maybe Trump has paved the way for conspiracy theories even more bizarre than the ones he himself retails. Soon, perhaps, his supporters will abandon him in favor of Alex Jones or someone similar. If Trump can’t deliver the conspiracy goods, they’ll just find someone who can.

POSTSCRIPT: By the way, if Bill Gates did want to track you, do you really think he’d use something as primitive as microchips? Please. Microchips are for pet cats. He’d use nanobots in the vaccine, which would allow him to control your mind as well as to track your every move. Come on, sheeple.

The more things stay the same, the more they stay the same:

Trump is not going to be happy that Fox News didn’t rig their new poll for him pic.twitter.com/e93GjPbRtG

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 21, 2020

Nothing matters. Except for an odd little blip in April, Joe Biden has been about eight points ahead of Donald Trump all year, and he still is. I don’t think this is meaningful as an actual predictor of the election, but it’s fascinating that Trump consistently polls around 40 percent no matter what and no matter when:

Two years ago Trump’s approval rating was 42 percent. Today it’s . . . 43 percent.

The Republican strategy for the rest of the year appears to be a repeat of 2016, opening up endless “investigations” into Obamagate, Ukraine, Hunter Biden, etc. etc., in hopes that a continuous dribble of manufactured leaks will draw the attention of the national press and keep Democrats on the ropes. And it might work! It all depends on whether the press learned anything from the debacle of four years ago. I’m not sure I’m willing to put money on that.

This excerpt from a Washington Post story about the Great Reopening in Georgia attracted lots of attention a few days ago:

On the sprawling green plaza, people began gathering elbow-to-elbow on blankets and lawn chairs, opening beers and bottles of wine. “I think you have to live life,” said Jeff Lampel, taking a sip of beer.

“When you start seeing where the cases are coming from and the demographics — I’m not worried,” agreed his friend Scott Friedel.

“I know what people are going to say — ‘Those selfish idiots are killing our old people!’ ” said Lampel.

Progressives immediately pounced on this, accusing Friedel of racism. But there’s no evidence for that, and his friend Lampel made clear that he, at least, was talking about the elderly. You can decide for yourself whether that’s any better, but here’s what they were most likely thinking of:

There have been, so far, only about 17,000 COVID-19 deaths among those under age 65, and the death rate is flattening out. Looking at this, it’s no big surprise that a lot of people might think like this:

• Businesses are run mostly by those under 65.
• They can all go back to work with little risk.
• None of this should affect the elderly, who are either self-isolating at home or in nursing care.

This reasoning isn’t necessarily right, but it’s certainly appealing. And as long as we jump to explain everything as a product of crude racism instead of considering alternatives—and then taking the time to explain why this age-based reasoning is wrong—there’s not much chance that it will change.

NOTE: The CDC numbers are based on actual date of death, which means they lag the total death toll and are lower than the Johns Hopkins numbers we usually see. I multiplied the CDC numbers by 1.3 to account for this.

As you may have heard, the University of California has voted to ditch standardized tests for incoming freshmen:

In a decision that could reshape the nation’s college admissions process, University of California regents unanimously voted Thursday to suspend SAT and ACT testing requirements through 2024 and eliminate them for California students by 2025.

….Some hailed the vote as a bold and visionary move to expand access and equity. But others expressed concern that dumping the tests would lead to grade inflation, admission of less-prepared students and backlash over different entry standards for different classes.

My own guess is that this will make very little difference. A simple chart from the Education Trust shows why:

Practically every state, no matter what method they use, has a hard time enrolling Black freshmen in numbers proportional to their population. California has been unusually bad in this regard ever since the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996, which eliminated the use of affirmative action. We’ve tried over and over since then to figure out ways to get Black enrollment up on UC campuses, and nothing has worked. The obvious conclusion is that it’s too late to fix the longstanding effects of racism and poverty if you wait until the senior year of high school to do it. Black kids have to keep pace from preschool forward, which requires money, commitment, and a willingness to do something about geography. None of those things have ever been available in the amount needed.

So will this latest effort work? I doubt it. But I wish them the best of luck.

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through May 21. I occasionally get a request to put all nine of the countries I’m tracking on a single chart with a single scale, which would make it easier to compare them. I finally decided to do this, mainly to explain why I don’t do it:

This is a mess. It might be useful now and again, but it’s so hard to decipher that I can’t imagine using it as my standard presentation. I think I’ll stick to separate charts for each country.

The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here. The Public Health Agency of Sweden is here.

The US Postal Service delivered my hat mask today! Check out the Sly Stallone in Rocky vibe:

Very stylish, no? It so happens that the one I got is a little small, but still wearable. It only comes in one size, however, so I might have to try a different brand if I want to get a larger one.

This is close to perfect. It’s comfortable; I can breathe just fine with it on; people can see through it; and it’s simple to clean since the mask attaches to the hat via velcro. It covers my head fully except for the bottom, and if you can get into the habit of lowering your head a few inches when you feel a cough or sneeze coming on, it almost literally prevents any droplets from escaping in any direction. And unlike a cloth mask, it most likely helps protect me as well as protecting others from me.

Is there some downside to this? If so, I’d like to hear what it is. There are outlets that sell this kind of thing in a variety of hat styles, so you can even pick multiple hats for different occasions.

UPDATE: I just took my evening walk and the hat/mask worked fine. If you breathe through your mouth it will fog up the face shield briefly, but that’s about it. And in hot weather I suspect it would get pretty warm behind the shield. I’ll check that out this weekend, when temps are supposed to be in the 80s around here.