Kevin Drum 🕸

The GAO published a report today about maternal mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the nickel version is pretty simple: it got even worse from an already high base. You can read the whole report here. But you might be interested in taking a look at maternal mortality pre-COVID. Here's the growth rate from 2007-2019:¹ ...continue reading "Maternal mortality in the US just keeps getting worse and worse"

Candles at the Église Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois in Paris.

That is, it's my 64th birthday. Only one year to go until Medicare!

Are you curious about how much of our pharmaceutical supply is sourced from China? Me neither. But I was given this as a homework assignment, so here's the answer: This is from 2019, when the total US market for pharmaceuticals was about $500 billion and we imported $150 billion of that. It includes everything: prescription ...continue reading "Raw data: Here’s where our drugs come from"

After Robert Mueller finished his investigation of Donald Trump's ties to Russia back in 2019, Trump pressed his attorney general, William Barr, to open a counter-investigation of the FBI's investigation. Barr appointed John Durham, the US Attorney for Connecticut, to lead the revenge-a-thon. Durham accomplished nothing. He got a guilty plea from one minor player ...continue reading "Yet another Durham case goes up in flames"

Yesterday was Palomar Day, the day when the setting sun lines up perfectly with the runway at McClellan-Palomar Airport. I set out in the late afternoon to get the picture, and after a picturesque drive down Interstate 5 I headed for a spot I had been to before that offered a perfect view of the ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, real wages have gone down for practically every occupation over the past year (Q3 to Q3). Here are the numbers for full-time workers: But wages have not gone down for every race and sex: Overall, wages for full-time workers have gone down about 1.4% over the past year.

COVID-19 has entered a new stage of super aggressive evolution: The pace of evolution is so fast that many scientists depend on Twitter to keep up. A month ago, scientists were worried about BA.2.75, a variant that took off in South Asia and spawned a cloud of other concerning sublineages. In the United States, BA.4.6 ...continue reading "We are awash in new COVID-19 variants"

Today is the 8th anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. And I'm still alive! Hooray for modern medicine! Seriously. My doctors have all been fine and I appreciate everything they do. But I'm alive because medical research has produced a sea change in treatments for multiple myeloma over the past decade, and if I'm lucky I'll ...continue reading "Today is my 8th anniversary"

When I was at the French Open I spent some time snapping pictures on the practice courts. The upside of this is that you can get really close to the players down at eye level. The downside is that you don't necessarily know who the players are. Like this one. Is she someone famous? Or ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Did the Biden stimulus package produce our current inflation? Over at Vox, Madeleine Ngo says the evidence is against it: Some economists say that recent research and new data have reaffirmed their belief that the stimulus package did not significantly fuel inflation. ....Dean Baker, a senior economist and co-founder of the liberal-leaning Center for Economic ...continue reading "Is the Biden stimulus responsible for inflation? Or is it remote work?"

Things must be going downhill in China: China, the world’s second-largest economy, announced without explanation on Monday that it was delaying indefinitely the release of economic data that had been scheduled for Tuesday morning, including closely watched numbers for economic growth from July through September, which had been expected to show continued lackluster performance. ....In ...continue reading "China’s economy must be worse than we thought"

Larry Summers thinks the world is headed toward economic crisis and he's unhappy about the lack of action so far: “The fire department is still in the station. Somebody should be proposing something somewhere,” Summers said. “I’m very disappointed in the response.” "Somebody" should be doing "something somewhere"? That strikes me as a little vague ...continue reading "Larry Summers on what needs to be done: “Something somewhere”"

A piping new Harvard/Harris poll is out, and it has lots of fascinating stuff on a whole bunch of different levels. Let's dig in. For starters, it turns out that of all the institutions they surveyed, Americans trust Amazon more than almost anything: Hell, I don't even blame people for this. Amazon's service isn't as ...continue reading "Here’s what the American public is thinking these days"

From the Washington Post's print edition today: After some reader complaints, the Post agreed to make their headline a wee bit more accurate:It was too late to make this change in the print edition, but I suppose online is better than nothing. A more prominent placement would also have been nice, but again, I suppose ...continue reading "Who you calling racist, WaPo?"

The New York Times says that a rent revolution is coming, and not just to expensive coastal cities: Kansas City, Mo., is a leading example. With a population of 500,000, where the avenues are lined with brick buildings and side streets have modest homes with raised porches, the city offers little to suggest a renters’ ...continue reading "Incomes are too damn low in Kansas City"

Taking your private company public in the normal way is a pain in the ass. There are lots of fiddly little transparency rules that the SEC insists you follow. You have to publicly reveal how much money you make, what your assets are worth, what your debt structure looks like—and you have to do it ...continue reading "SPAC mergers were great for a while—for some people"

This is Hilbert on our dining room table staring out the window. In the background, Charlie is placidly photobombing his brother, who probably doesn't even know it's happening. How would a cat know about photobombing, after all?

Social Security recipients are due for a whopping 8.7% increase in January, and since I'm currently a Social Security recipient that makes me very happy. But how has Social Security been doing over the years? The BLS tracks a research version of CPI called CPI-E (for elderly) that measures CPI specifically for the basket of ...continue reading "Social Security recipients are getting a big raise next year, but is it enough?"

According to Politico, South Dakota's upcoming approval of Medicaid expansion is likely to be the last one for quite a while. So this is the Medicaid map we're going to have for at least the next few years: The Black population makes up 14.2% of the entire United States. You will be unsurprised to learn ...continue reading "Medicaid expansion is about to grind to a halt"