This is a common cat’s eye, but really, is there anything common about a cat’s eyes? In any case, there are 130 species of this flower in North America, and if anyone wants to take a crack at figuring out which one this is they’re welcome to have a go at it.

Just how much mask-wearing do we need? That depends on how good our masks are. If they’re highly efficient, we can get by with fewer people wearing masks. If they’re not so great, we need a lot more people wearing them. Alan Kot has deployed a vast flotilla of Greek letters to come up with a theoretical model that produces this chart:

Each of these curves represents a disease with a particular value of R₀ and shows what it would take to get R₀ down to 1.0. COVID-19, for example, has an R₀ of about 2.5, so take a look at that curve. On the bottom right, it shows that you can get this down to 1.0 with 100 percent of the population wearing masks that are about 35 percent efficient. At the top of the curve, you can achieve the same result with 60 percent of the population wearing masks that are 100 percent efficient. Anyplace else along the curve also works.

Fine. So how efficient are the cloth masks that we’re all wearing these days? I’m glad you asked:

The obvious problem with some of these is that, efficient or not, you’d barely be able to breathe through them. But how about silk or chiffon? They look to be about 50-60 percent efficient and are probably breathable. If we could get 80 percent adoption of masks like this, Kot says, that would be enough to get R₀ below one and extinguish the the pandemic entirely.

Wear a mask! With the exception of 80 thread-per-inch quilter’s cotton, they’re all effective enough to make a difference.

UPDATE: I originally misinterpreted Kot’s chart. It’s corrected now.

Sorry folks, but I made a big mistake yesterday in my post about regional differences in the spread of the coronavirus. I mislabeled the lines, making it look like the South was increasing. In fact, the South has been declining since early May. It’s the Mountain West that’s been on the rise for the past month. Here’s a corrected chart:

Dumb, dumb, dumb. So very dumb:

More than 1,200 pastors have vowed to hold in-person services on May 31, Pentecost Sunday, defying a state moratorium on religious gatherings that Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

….By Wednesday, many counties in California had received approval to reopen establishments — retail business, office buildings, restaurants, shopping centers — as permitted in the second phase of Newsom’s plan to restart the state economy. Churches are not allowed to reopen until the plan’s third phase.

Maybe we really don’t deserve to recover from this pandemic. I mean, if it were one or two pastors, fine. There’s a few in every crowd. But 1,200? Just how strongly does God have to tell them that large gatherings are not a good idea right now?

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through May 20. Germany declined to 0.5 deaths per million, just a day after Switzerland. Close race! The bad news is that nobody else is even close. The numbers are going down everywhere, but they’re going down very slowly. Be careful out there.

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

Who should Joe Biden pick as his running mate? I propose two (2) criteria:

• It should be someone he knows and respects.
• It should be someone who would be a good president if he dies while in office.

That’s it. Simple!

“The Downfall of America, #458 in a Series.”

Chase Tralka crunched some number from New York City and came up with this:

There are some technical issues with using zip codes as a proxy for the income of individuals, but this is still striking. Those who are well off can isolate themselves pretty easily and avoid the worst effects of COVID-19. Those who aren’t well off, and have jobs that require their physical presence, are a lot more vulnerable.

This is also a partial explanation for the high infection rate among African Americans. Aside from everything else, they have much lower median household incomes than whites ($40,000 vs. $70,000). All by itself that makes a big difference, and outside of New York City it makes an even bigger difference than this chart suggests.

Neal Waters/ZUMA

More threats from our hydroxychloroquine-addled commander-in-chief:

President Trump escalated his criticism of voting by mail, threatening to withhold federal funding from Michigan after the state announced plans to send applications for absentee ballots to all registered voters ahead of primary and general elections due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly complained about voting by mail, tweeted Wednesday: “This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path!” He also inaccurately said the state was sending out absentee ballots, rather than applications.

….Mr. Trump has often threatened to withhold funds from cities or states over policy differences without following through. It wasn’t immediately clear what funds he could hold up. The recent stimulus funding designed to provide states with coronavirus support is already law.

The weird thing about all this is that vote-by-mail doesn’t really favor either party. Republicans are petrified at the thought of all-mail elections, but it’s not clear why. Just tradition, I guess, since Republicans are always opposed to anything that might make voting easier. If they were smart, they’d get on the vote-by-mail bandwagon and then put some of their impressive voter suppression brainpower to work on how to use this to their advantage. There’s gotta be a way, right?

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through May 19. France apparently had some kind of data reporting problem over the past couple of days and corrected it by reporting negative deaths today. So their recent upward blip was just a counting mistake. Sweden is looking a little odd: the official figures (gray line) have diverged considerably from the Johns Hopkins figures (blue/yellow dots). The official figures are based on actual date of death, so it’s no surprise they’re a little different from the JH figures, which are based on the day the death is reported. But now they’re a lot different. Maybe everything will catch up over the next few days.

And Switzerland made a big leap downward to 0.4 deaths per million while Germany was treading water at 0.6 deaths per million. So Switzerland is the first country to finally get its death rate below 0.5 per million. Ausgezeichnet!

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