By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Eastern Phoebe, Berkeley, West Virginia, United States.”Temperature 8C. Habitat: mixed deciduous woods. Distance to sound source: 12-16 meters. Behavior and other notes: Male Eastern Phoebe singing from high perch near the house at dawn. Elevation 156 meters. ID’d by sight and sound; ID confidence 100%.”
In Case You Might Miss…
(1) Judge Merchan instructs the jury and deliberations begin.
(3) Covid and immune dysregulation.
(4) The world’s oldest living being is a tree.
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
2024
Less than a half a year to go!
Not a good week for Team Trump, with most of the Swing States (more here) Brownian-motioning themselves toward Biden. Not, however, Michigan, to which Trump paid a visit, nor crucial Pennsylvania. Of course, it goes without saying that these are all state polls, therefore bad, and most of the results are within the margin of error. Now, if either candidate starts breaking away in points, instead of tenths of a point…. NOTE I changed the notation: Up and down arrows for increases or decreases over last week, circles for no change. Red = Trump. Blue would be Biden if he were leading anywhere, but he isn’t.
* * * Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “Trump hush-money-trial jury gets its charges from judge and begins deliberations” (Associated Press). ” Jury deliberations in Donald Trump ‘s criminal hush money trial began Wednesday after the panel received instructions from the judge on the law governing the case and what they can take into account in evaluating the former president’s guilt or innocence…. After jurors left the courtroom to begin deliberations, Judge Juan M. Merchan told Donald Trump and his lawyers that they were required to remain in the courthouse. ‘You cannot leave the building. We need you to be able to get here quickly if we do receive a note,’ Merchan said.”
Lambert here: There’s much too much to cover in detail so, very unfairly, I won’t be able to look at the Prosecutions four hour summation at all. In a doomed effort at taking control, I’ll lookd at Judge Merchan’s instructions to the jury (they ran from 10:16am to 11:28am) on the following issues: Business records falsification, and FECA, election interference, with reporting taken from four live blogs: Associated Press, Lawfare, Jonathan Turley, and Inner City Press; my thought was to pick four sources to create a sort of quatro-nocular vision of facts and interpretation, but they are all in one way or another radically truncated! (There are many more issues — like Cohen as an accomplice, accessorial liability, and “limiting instructions” — but these are the issues that seem salient to me. Legal practitioners are free to suggest different topics and approaches!)
Election interference
Merchan went over New York’s law against “conspiracy to promote or prevent election,” a statute that’s important to the case. That’s because prosecutors claim that Trump falsified business records in order to cover up alleged violations of the election conspiracy law. The alleged violations, prosecutors say, were hush money payments that really amounted to illegal campaign contributions.
Under New York law, it’s a misdemeanor for two or more people to conspire to promote or prevent a candidate’s election “by unlawful means” if at least one of the conspirators takes action to carry out the plot.
The law also requires that a defendant have the intent unlawfully to prevent or promote the candidate’s election — not just that a defendant knows about the conspiracy or be present when it’s discussed.
In the defense’s closing argument Tuesday, Trump attorney Todd Blanche urged jurors to reject prosecutors’ election conspiracy assertions, insisting that “every campaign in this country is a conspiracy to promote a candidate.”
This is the only aspect of Merchan’s instructions that AP covers in detail (!).
Jonathan Turley
Theory of the case
Lawfare
Jonathan Turley
Inner City Press
Nothing from Inner City Press on the other topics.
FECA
Lawfare
Justice Merchan reads instructions on the Federal Election Campaign Act. Notably, he *includes* the “wilfully” language requested by the defense. (He omits the sentence requested by the defense regarding limits on a candidate using personal funds in 2015 and 2016.) pic.twitter.com/i4srW7HgFH
— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) May 29, 2024
Note (1). Read footnote 9, in the red box, carefully. Surely the Biden Administration/Campaign’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story right before election 2020 would qualify. So would the 2016 Clinton campaign’s funding, IIRC through Democrat election integrity lawyer Marc Elias, the Steele Report (subsequently used to support the false filing to the FISA court that enabled the organs of state security to ingest the Trump campaign. Yet those offenses were never charged. Odd.
Lambert here: Holy moley, the art of live blogging is dead. Everyone present in the court picks out a few aspects of the case (though Lawfare has gotten a copy of the proposed instructions; no doubt their flex-net was examining them carefully). I suspect, however, that this is a result not of technical incompetence but the scope, complexity, and deviousness of the prosecutions case (which, again, took four hours to explain). Presumably, at some point in the near future, I can pull on my yellow waders and make more sense of all this (lambert hangs head in shame).
* * * Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “The Cat Is Out of the Bragg” (Andrew McCarthy, National Review). On Bragg’s FECA material: “It is impossible to draw any conclusion other than that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg knew that, as a state prosecutor, his enforcement of federal law would be incredibly controversial since he has no such authority; the federal agencies that do have such authority investigated Trump and opted not to prosecute; and to get this prosecution done, Bragg is simply making up his own version of federal law. Bragg had the collusion of Judge Merchan, who allowed the state to get away with not putting the “other crime” in the indictment, and rejected defense attempts to force him to provide explicit disclosure pretrial. Prosecutors hid in the tall grass until summation and are now emphatically describing Trump as having blatantly violated federal campaign law.” • Quite right. Prosecution sandbagging the defense has been one thing that has made this case so confusing (and by design, I am sure. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that clarification comes from the bench, not the prosecution; it’s almost as if they’re working together).
Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “Was D.A. Bragg Right to Bring the New York Charges Against Trump?” (Lawfare). “Weighing this evidence in the context of the many civil frauds Trump has been adjudicated to have committed, and the many crimes of which his closely held corporation and most essential business colleagues, Weisselberg and Michael Cohen, have been convicted, I have been persuaded. District Attorney Bragg was right to bring this case.” • “A” case, perhaps. But this case? Bragg has opened the door to bring criminal charges for fraud against practitioners of ordinary campaign tactics!
Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan: “Elise Stefanik Demands Investigation into Assignment of Judge Merchan to Trump Case” (National Review). Besides the ethical violation of Merchan’s family potentially profiting from the case, given that his daughter is a Democrat consulant, Stefanik makes this point: “‘If justices were indeed being randomly assigned in the Criminal Term, the probability of two specific criminal cases being assigned to the same justice is quite low, and the probability of three specific criminal cases being assigned to the same justice is infinitesimally small. And yet, we see Acting Justice Merchan on all three cases,’ the complaint reads. ‘The simple answer to why Acting Justice Merchan has been assigned to these cases would seem to be that whoever made the assignment intentionally selected Acting Justice Merchan to handle them to increase the chance that Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, and Steven Bannon would ultimately be convicted,’ the complaint adds.” • Hmm.
Syndemics
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Airborne Transmission
“Yes, but China can’t innovate”:
A video of AirFanta 4Lite filtrating smokes. 😎 pic.twitter.com/oEeHhig6w5
— Adam Wong (@Engineer_Wong) March 21, 2024
The use case:
To unmask and eat on plane is not that safe even there is strong ventilation system. But if the filght is really long, we don’t have much choice.
AirFanta 4Lite will make the quick snack a lot safer. It blows filtrated air directly to the face for breath. And it is laminar flow,… https://t.co/HUsbDwnzVq— Adam Wong (@Engineer_Wong) May 28, 2024
Maskstravaganza
“The Risk of Aircraft-Acquired SARS-CoV-2 Transmission during Commercial Flights: A Systematic Review” (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health). PRISMA-based systematic review. N = 50. From the Discussion: “flight duration strongly predicts case incidence. We also found that when masking is unenforced, each additional hour of flight duration is associated with 1.53-fold increase in the transmission incidence rate ratio. We speculate that short flights may be safer due to a shorter total duration of exposure to aerosol particles. Also, short flights often do not serve meals, so fewer aerosol particles and droplets are expelled. Interestingly, our findings also suggest that aircraft-acquired transmission is not inevitable if masking is strictly enforced. On long haul-type flights where enforced masking took place and meals were served, there were no reported aircraft-acquired cases during contact tracing and follow-up. Enforced masking may have encouraged passengers to eat as quickly as possible on these long flights. Furthermore, airline staff can actually enforce masking, similar to how staff are able to enforce safety checks such as correct table-up and seat up-and-back positions by walking down the aisles, checking each seat, and correcting behaviors during take-off and landing…. Beyond our formal analysis, we observed as a point of interest that the proximity to the index case(s) was not the best predictor of aircraft-acquired transmission (i.e., droplet dogma is a crock, if further evidence were needed). For example, on a 2 h flight, one passenger seated five rows away acquired COVID; on a 5 h flight, a passenger seated six rows away acquired COVID; and on a 7.5 h flight and a 10 h flight, four passengers and one passenger who sat greater than 2 m (6 ft) away acquired COVID, respectively…. Flight policies regarding masking based on travel duration may become important for air travel safety in future epidemics or pandemics, particularly before effective vaccines or medications are made available.” • But what about my freedom to infect innocents by breathing a pathogen into shared air?
Immune Dysregulation
Diverse immunological dysregulation, chronic inflammation, and impaired erythropoiesis in long COVID patients with chronic fatigue syndrome” (Journal of Autoimmunity). From the Abstract: “A substantial number of patients recovering from acute SARS-CoV-2 infection present serious lingering symptoms, often referred to as long COVID (LC). However, a subset of these patients exhibits the most debilitating symptoms characterized by ongoing myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). We specifically identified and studied ME/CFS patients from two independent LC cohorts, at least 12 months post the onset of acute disease, and compared them to the recovered group (R). ME/CFS patients had relatively increased neutrophils and monocytes but reduced lymphocytes. Selective T cell exhaustion with reduced naïve but increased terminal effector T cells was observed in these patients…. Intriguingly, we found that the frequency of 2B4+CD160+ and TIM3+CD160+ CD8+ T cells completely separated LC patients from the (Recovered (R)) group.” • Hat tip, Anthony J. Leonardi?
“Gene Regulatory Network Analysis of Post-Mortem Lungs Unveils Novel Insights into COVID-19 Pathogenesis” (Viruses). From the Discussion: “Taken together, our findings highlight the crucial role of immune dysregulation in the pathogenesis of severe COVID-19 infection in lungs and provide valuable insights into potential therapeutic targets for mitigating the deleterious effects of COVID-19.” • Hat tip, Anthony J. Leonardi!
Variants: H5N1
“Technical Update: Summary Analysis of the Genetic Sequence of a Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A(H5N1) Virus Identified in a Human in Michigan” (CDC). From May 24: “The genome of the human virus from Michigan did not have the PB2 E627K change detected in the virus from the Texas case, but , and which has been detected in 99% of dairy cow sequences but only sporadically in birds. This change has been identified as resulting in enhancement of virus replication and disease severity in mice during studies with avian influenza A(H10N7) viruses. The remainder of the genome of A/Michigan/90/2024 was closely related to sequences detected in infected dairy cows and strongly suggests direct cow-to-human transmission. Further, there are no markers known to be associated with influenza antiviral resistance found in the virus sequences from the Michigan specimen and the virus is very closely related to two existing HPAI A(H5N1) candidate vaccine viruses that are already available to manufacturers, and which could be used to make vaccine if needed. Overall, the genetic analysis of the HPAI A(H5N1) virus detected in a human in Michigan supports CDC’s conclusion that the human health risk currently remains low.” • Commentary:
Infection
“Severe Avian Influenza A H5N1 Clade 2.3.4.4b Virus Infection in a Human with Continuation of SARS-CoV-2 Viral RNAs” (Transboundary and Emerging Diseases). Case report from China. From the Discussion: “We report a human case infection with the clade 2.3.4.4b avian influenza A H5N1 virus. This patient was an old female farmer with multiple comorbidities. The patient was also SARS-CoV-2 positive after having COVID-19 on December 20, 2022. Our study provides insights into the significance of surveillance for increased risk of H5N1 viruses infection among people with post-COVID-19 condition…. Prior infection with SARS-CoV-2 might lead to the patient in a non-full competent immune state, which might play a role in increasing her susceptibility to avian influenza virus…. In the post-COVID-19 pandemic era, sporadic human cases with avian influenza A H5N1 virus are possible to occur, especially among the population who professional or occasional contact with birds or poultry. Active surveillance of individuals following a high-risk exposure to the virus without any PPE protection is strongly recommended.” • Sounds the dairy farms should be doing some testing…..
Sequelae: Covid
“Neurodevelopmental delay in children exposed to maternal SARS-CoV-2 in-utero” (Nature). From the Abstract: “Children exposed to antenatal COVID-19 have a tenfold higher frequency of (Developmental delay (DD)) as compared to controls and should be offered neurodevelopmental follow-up.” • I’m sure the pro-natalists will get right on this.
Elite Maleficence
Who said prevention is better than cure?
Was this the plan?
Let COVID rip around the world and then privatize every major national healthcare system (UK, Australia, Canada)?
— Valerie Jay (@ValerieJay16) May 29, 2024
I don’t know if this was “the” “plan.” It certainly was a happy outcome, and a ripe opportunity for rental extraction (see Moderna moving in on drugs for Long Covid).
Lambert here: Patient readers, I’m going to have to rethink this beautifully formatted table. Biobot data is gone, CDC variant data functions, ER visits are dead, CDC stopped mandatory hospital data collection, New York Times death data has stopped. (Note that the two metrics the hospital-centric CDC cared about, hospitalization and deaths, have both gone dark). Ideally I would replace hospitalization and death data, but I’m not sure how. I might also expand the wastewater section to include (yech) Verily data, H5N1 if I can get it. Suggestions and sources welcome. UPDATE I replaced the Times death data with CDC data. Amusingly, the URL doesn’t include parameters to construct the tables; one must reconstruct then manually each time. Caltrops abound.
TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts
LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
(1) (Biobot) Dead.
(2) (Biobot) Dead.
(3) (CDC Variants) FWIW, given that the model completely missed KP.2.
(4) (ER) CDC seems to have killed this off, since the link is broken, I think in favor of this thing. I will try to confirm. UPDATE Yes, leave it to CDC to kill a page, and then announce it was archived a day later. And heaven forfend CDC should explain where to go to get equivalent data, if any. I liked the ER data, because it seemed really hard to game.
(5) (Hospitalization: NY) Still going up, though fortunately no sign of geometric increase. he New York city area has form; in 2020, as the home of two international airports (JFK and EWR) it was an important entry point for the virus into the country (and from thence up the Hudson River valley, as the rich sought to escape, and around the country through air travel)
(6) (Hospitalization: CDC).
(7) (Walgreens) Going up.
(8) (Cleveland) Going up.
(9) (Travelers: Positivity) Up and down.
(10) (Travelers: Variants) KP.2 enters the chat, as does B.1.1.529 (with backward revision).
(11) Deaths low, but positivity up.
(12) Deaths low, ED not up.
Stats Watch
Manufacturing: “United States Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index” (Trading Economics). “The composite manufacturing index in the US Fifth District increased to 0 in May 2024, the highest in seven months, from -7 in April, and compared to forecasts of -2.”
Tech: “Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman’s brief ousting” (Business Insider). “In an interview with Bilawal Sidhu on ‘The TED AI Show‘ that aired Tuesday, Toner said Altman lied to the board ‘multiple’ times. One example Toner cited was that OpenAI’s board learned about the release of ChatGPT on Twitter. She said Altman was ‘withholding information’ and ‘misrepresenting things that were happening in the company’ for years. Toner — one of the board members who voted to kick Altman out — alleged that Altman also lied to the board by keeping them in the dark about the company’s ownership structure. ‘Sam didn’t inform the board that he owned the OpenAI startup fund, even though he constantly was claiming to be an independent board member with no financial interest in the company,’ she said.” • You say “lied” like that’s a bad thing.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 54 Neutral (previous close: 53 Neutral) (CNN). One week ago: 60 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated May 28 at 12:33:39 PM ET.
Class Warfare
“Ranking the Best And Worst Jobs at Disney” (BBN Times). “In a new study, Disney travel planning experts MagicGuides analyzed Glassdoor data by assigning each Disney job role a score out of 100 based on reviews from the site…. mechanics are the least satisfied with their jobs. Their jobs at Disney are often dangerous when fixing the rides, especially with rides like ‘it’s a small world’ where water is involved. Mechanics, on average, rated working with Disney as 3.76 out of five. Scoring just 23.79 out of 100, mechanics are the least happy on average working for Disney. Those working in Disney’s costume departments are the second least happy with their jobs. They have the lowest approval of the Disney CEO and how Disney is currently managed. The study revealed that on average working in the costume department scored 23.91 out of 100 for working at Disney. Scoring 28.67 out of 100, construction workers are the third least happy when working with Disney; they are the least likely to see themselves working with Disney for a long time. Interestingly, many of Disney’s guest-facing roles rank in the bottom half of the list, indicating that employees in these roles may strive to ensure that guests have a positive experience even if they themselves are not happy in their roles.” • Sounds about right; Disney is a smile Nazis paradise.
News of the Wired
“The oldest tree in the world: Meet ‘Methuselah,’ a literal hidden gem” (USA Today). “According to Guinness World Records, the oldest tree species in the world are the bristlecone pines, found in the White Mountains in California. Their scientific name is ‘Pinus Longaeva.’ The world’s oldest living tree is ‘Methuselah.’ The tree’s exact age is unknown, but experts believe it has been alive for close to 5,000 years, the U.S. Forest Service told USA TODAY in an email. Dendrochronologist Edmund Schulman found and named the tree in 1957. This bristlecone pine is named after a biblical figure who legend says lived over 900 years. Before that, a geographer in 1964 cut down another ancient tree, dubbed ‘Prometheus,’ with permission from the Forest Service. It wasn’t until after the tree was cut down that they realized it was an estimated 4,900 years old. Bristlecone pines are known to scientists as ‘extremeophiles‘ because they are slow-growing and can endure harsh environmental conditions, including cold temperatures, high winds, dry soils and short growing seasons, according to the USDA. They also have adapted to use ‘sectored architecture,’ which means their roots only feed the part of the tree above them. When one root dies, only that section dies. The rest of the tree keeps growing around the skeletal parts, according to the National Park Service. … Yes, Methuselah is alive as of May 2024. According to National Geographic, scientists believe this is the planet’s oldest single living thing. It’s in the Inyo National Forest between the Sierra Nevada range in California and the Nevada border. The U.S. Forest Service keeps its exact location under wraps to protect the tree from damage or vandalism, the department confirmed to USA TODAY in an email.”
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