COVID cases still up. in Wisconsin, but rate slowing down, and more are vaxxing

Here's another update on Wisconsin's COVID figures, now that the weekend numbers have come in.

Not surprisingly, the number of new cases went up again, this time to the highest levels in 6 months. The only positive in this is that the rate of increase is slowing down, only 50% higher after doubling (and then some) in each of the last 2 weeks.

But unlike what we were seeing in February, COVID death totals are staying low in Wisconsin. That number is staying below 10 a week, despite the fact that the spike in new cases started in mid-July.

Given the 4-6 week lag between new cases and deaths, we'll have to wait until at least Labor Day to see just how much the vaccine is reducing the chances that someone dies of COVID. But the early trend is encouraging, which would lessen the need for lockdowns and cutbacks in economic activity.

The recent jump in cases has also led to more Wisconsinites getting their dose of the vaccine. There were 50,000 vaccinations in Wisconsin over first 7 days in August, the first time that's happened since the end of June (when many in the initial group of eligible Wisconsinites were finishing up their 2nd round of shots).

So at least some people are being sparked into action, even if it's a few months later than it should have been. Now the key is to make those new cases plateau and then fall, hopefully by the time school starts in 4 weeks. But the race is on, and it can go either way either.

When you're WisGOP, and all you have is Big Lies, you keep getting dumber

When you're a typical WisGOP politician, and you've invested in Big Lies and non-thinking opposition to stuff because "the lib'ruls" are in favor, you tend to make a fool of yourself. 2 examples from yesterday.

The first is from State Sen. Chris Kapenga, aka the Delafield Dumbass.

As health care systems throughout WI start mandating COVID-19 vaccines for employees, Senate President @SenatorKapenga urges workers who oppose it to "lead the way."
"Based on what I am seeing, it will be impossible for the hospital systems to function without you." pic.twitter.com/xyfRTnEIxF

— Jessie Opoien (@jessieopie) August 6, 2021

In addition to supporting the ability of anti-vax medical workers putting both patients and co-workers at risk, Kapenga is also seeming to call for those workers take some kind of collective action, in order to make their employers suffer for not listening to their grievances.

This is better known as a STRIKE! Quite the change of position for Sen. Kapenga, who voted for Act 10, right-to-work, and every other anti-worker provision put in during the Age of Fitzwalkerstan. But welcome to the party, pal!

The other idiociy is from another Waukesha County GOP, Rep. Janel Brantjen of Menomonee Falls. Because Robbin' Vos put this dingbat in charge of the Assembly's Elections Committee, and because she apparently lives in a Bubble World where AM1130 and Bradley Foundation GOPperganda are the only news sources allowed, she's still intent on wasting taxpayer dollars to keep the Big Lie alive.

"I am issuing these subpoenas as the first step towards a full, cyber-forensic audit of tabulators and inspection of the physical ballots from the November 2020 fall election."

— Molly Beck (@MollyBeck) August 6, 2021

And take a guess where MLM exec Brandtjen came up with that idea.

One image is from the fake subpoena issued by the national embarrassment WI GOP Assembly, the other image is from the AZ Cyber Ninja audit subpoena.

They literally copied and pasted it and left in signature match checking, a thing we don’t even do in Wisconsin! pic.twitter.com/CltmNOPFPT

— Devin Remiker (@remiker_devin) August 6, 2021

Hey, ALEC bills are cut-and-pasted all the time, why not do the same for another waste of tax dollars!

Interesting that she chooses Milwaukee and Brown Counties, which had some of the LOWEST increases in turnout and shifts toward Dems compared to 2016 (likely because Brandtjen thinks "MARKZUCKERBERGSMONEYMUSTHAVERIGGEDIT, AHHHHHHHHH!!!"). If Brandtjen was remotely serious, you'd think she care more about the fact that her home of Waukesha County (along with Ozaukee County) had a decisive shift toward Dems last November, and would want to verify that.

Southwest counties that jumped to Trump in 2016 gave him still larger margin this time

North was entirely shifting reder from 12-16 now is a bit more mixed in change from 16-20.

(Old 2012-16 change map-- different scales. Sorry.)

WOW bluer 12-16 and again 16-20.

2/n pic.twitter.com/cvkY1jKeKQ

— Charles Franklin (@PollsAndVotes) November 9, 2020

But that would require use of data over fee-fees, and going beyond fee-fees and adjusting to reality is just too much effort for WisGOPs these days. So they continue to say and do dumber and more desperate BS, and those of us who aren't weak-minded whiners just shake our heads and wait for enough people in the rest of the state to say "ENOUGH!"

I just wish there was some way for "ENOUGH" to hit before November 2022.

Biden Jobs Boom was still in effect in (1st half of) July

Given that mid-July had shutdowns in auto plants in many parts of America, I was worried that we’d see a significant drop in job growth from June’s great numbers. Instead, today’s job report showed that the Biden Boom was as strong as ever in July.

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released Friday morning showed 943,000 non-farm payroll gains last month, with the unemployment rate falling to 5.4%.

The economy continues to inch closer to pre-pandemic shape. In the depths of the economic shutdown, employment levels dropped by as much as 22.4 million. As of July 2021, the economy appeared to recover almost 17 million of those lost jobs.

The central bank is still intent on maintaining its easy money policies as millions remain sidelined, but the strong July numbers may give some policymakers reason to start paring back its asset purchase program later this year.

The looming end of the easy money was likely why the stock market didn’t jump big-time on such a great report, with the DOW only up 0.4%0 and the NASDAQ falling by 0.4%. But in the real world, things are very good, and the previous 2 months also saw their jobs revised up by a total of 119,000, meaning that nearly 2.5 million jobs have been added since April.

If you go inside the jobs report, you’ll see that there’s good news all around.

On the payrolls side, there was strong evidence that bars, restaurants and hotels were continuing to hire up to meet the added demand that was happening through mid-July – before we knew the Delta variant was going to get this bad.

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 943,000 in July, following a similar increase in June (+938,000). Nonfarm payroll employment in July is up by 16.7 million since April 2020 but is down by 5.7 million, or 3.7 percent, from its pre-pandemic level in February 2020.

In July, notable job gains occurred in leisure and hospitality, in local government education, and in professional and business services. (See table B-1. See the box note on page 6 for more information about how the establishment survey and its measures were affected by the coronavirus pandemic.) In July, employment in leisure and hospitality increased by 380,000. Two-thirds of the job gain was in food services and drinking places (+253,000). Employment also continued to increase in accommodation (+74,000) and in arts, entertainment, and recreation (+53,000). Despite recent growth, employment in leisure and hospitality is down by 1.7 million, or 10.3 percent, from its level in February 2020….

It wasn't just those industries that went up, either.

Big job gains across the board in July:

Restaurants: +253,000
Education (public): +221,000
Hotels: +74,000
Biz services: +60,000
Entertainment: +53,000
Warehouse/transport: +50,000 (19k in transit!)
Education (private) +40,000
Health: +37,000
Manufacture: +27,000
Laundry: 15,000

— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) August 6, 2021

Employers were also paying more last month to get those new employees.

In July, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 11 cents to $30.54, following increases in the prior 3 months. Average hourly earnings for private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees also rose by 11 cents in July to $25.83. The data for recent months suggest that the rising demand for labor associated with the recovery from the pandemic may have put upward pressure on wages. However, because average hourly earnings vary widely across industries, the large employment fluctuations since February 2020 complicate the analysis of recent trends in average hourly earnings.

The household survey also had plenty of great news, beyond the decline in the unemployment rate from 5.9% to 5.4%. In particular, long-term unemployment dropped by quite a bit in July.

Among the unemployed, the number of persons on temporary layoff fell by 572,000 to 1.2 million in July. This measure is down considerably from the high of 18.0 million in April 2020 but is 489,000 above the February 2020 level. The number of permanent job losers declined by 257,000 to 2.9 million in July but is 1.6 million higher than in February 2020. (See table A-11.)

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) decreased by 560,000 in July to 3.4 million but is 2.3 million higher than in February 2020. These long-term unemployed accounted for 39.3 percent of the total unemployed in July. The number of persons jobless less than 5 weeks increased by 276,000 to 2.3 million.

The only concern I’d have comes from that last number, as the number of people newly laid off went up, going along with a jump in unemployment claims that happened in parts of June and in early July. But that also has good news behind it, as claims have gone back down since then, even with auto plant shutdowns and COVID resurging.

In the 3 weeks since the jobs report was surveyed, we’ve seen daily COVID infections in America go from 22,000 to more than 100,000. But we also haven’t seen many shutdowns or much of an appetite for people to change their going-out behaviors from earlier in the Summer (I’m as guilty as the rest of you, although I haven’t been dining/drinking indoors anyway). So I can’t see August as having the severe slowdowns in hiring that the COVID spike months of November, December and January had.

But I also figure the big COVID numbers will create some kind of jobs headwind soon – too many people are affected for it not to. The question is how big that slowdown eventually is, and whether the momentum of stimulus-fueled spending and a possible infrastructure package overrides it for August and the remaining months of 2021.

CBO says the "hard" infrastructure will add to the deficit? So what!

Thursday afternoon, the Congressional Budget Office came back with their score on the "bipartisan" infrastructure package that is scheduled to debated and voted on in the US Senate in the coming days.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that over the 2021-2031 period, enacting Senate Amendment 2137 to H.R. 3684 would decrease direct spending by $110 billion, increase revenues by $50 billion, and increase discretionary spending by $415 billion. On net, the legislation would add $256 billion to projected deficits over that period.

The legislation would provide $382.9 billion in contract authority (a form of mandatory budget authority) for a variety of transportation programs over the 2022-2026 period. Under the rules governing baseline projections that are specified in the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, this estimate incorporates an assumption that the contract authority of about $79.9 billion that would be provided in 2026 (the final year of the authorization) would also be provided in each subsequent year. CBO therefore estimates that an additional $399.6 billion in contract authority would be available over the 2027-2031 period, for a total of $782.5 billion over the 10-year period. Over the 2022-2031 period, that total would be $196.5 billion more that the amount in CBO’s July 2021 baseline.

So basically a jump in the deficit of $25 billion a year - or less than 1% of the $3 trillion deficit that we are slated to have in the 2021 Fiscal Year. THE HORROR!

By the way, that extra authority for highway projects starting in 2026 means the plans to spend that amount are set aside, but the money needs to be formally allowed to be spent. Likely because this is basically folded into a new highway/transit bill that sets the rules and base funding levels for the next 5 years. But as you can see, even if that $79.9 billion a year is continued, that's not even $20 billion a year of extra authorized highway spending.

When calculating the deficit numbers, CBO neglected to look into the effects of the main benefit of the infrastructure package - more jobs

Enacting this legislation would create macroeconomic effects that in turn would cause budgetary feedback. CBO has not estimated those effects or their budgetary consequences for this legislation.

So the CBO says the deficit will grow due to more spending, but they're not accounting for the deficit reduction that will come from more/better jobs and less poverty. Seems like quite a big oversight, isn't it?

You can bet dishonest GOPs who added nearly $2 trillion in deficits for their GOP Tax Scam will be crying crocodile tears about how we can't afford $256 billion for actual work that improves our economy. Well, there is a best option for improving our economy and reducing the deficit at the same time - reverse the Tax Scam's giveaways to the rich and corporate.

When GOPs refuse to do that, laugh them out of the Capitol. Then pass the small infrastructure bill anyway, and get to work on the real change in our priorities with the bigger bill.

COVID keeps rising all over Wisconsin. Now at 1,000 cases a day

None of the COVID news is good in Wisconsin, as new cases per day have risen every day for the last month, and we hit a bad milestone today.

Here is the today's snapshot of #COVID19 activity in Wisconsin. Remember, #YouStopTheSpread, so get vaccinated, wear a mask, and follow all the other precautions to avoid catching or spreading the virus. https://t.co/ygfKeqtYJS #COVID19_WI pic.twitter.com/oZGuPe5cch

— WIDeptHealthServices (@DHSWI) August 5, 2021

That's the first time in 6 months that our 7-day average has hit 1,000 new cases. And it helps explain why workplace mask requirements and related mitigation measures are coming back in parts of the state.

It's forced me to restart my monitoring of weekly numbers by county, to see who is getting the worst of the pandemic at this time (and who is not). You can see that Milwaukee County continues to have the most widespread breakout of cases, to the point that the Wisconsin Department of Health Services said Milwaukee County was the only one in the state that has now reached "Very High" levels, with more than 3 in 10 new cases coming from there.

I run those figures based on Monday's totals, and most places have been seeing an unnerving climb in the last month, starting with Milwaukee, but certainly not limited to them. And it is often exceedinge levels of the mini-surge in March and April.

The one positive note on COVID in Wisconsin is that the latest breakout is pushing more people to get vaccinated. The Wisconsin DHS reports that last week had the most vaccinations since the 3rd week of June, and we will likely end up near or above 50,000 shots in arms for this week.

That's too late for many, and we sure could have used that increased attentiveness to getting vaxxed a couple of months ago. But let's hope that the sudden jump in cases allows for Wisconsinites to get smarter, and start reversing the growth in cases while Summer is still going on. Or else a lot of people are going to decide they can't afford to make the most of the good weather any more.

UW should tell WisGOPs to take a flying leap, and mask up anyway

I’ve had a day to get my eyes unrolled from this idiocy (and other f*ckery in the world), after a group of Wisconsin Republicans decided not to come to their senses on Tuesday.

A GOP-led committee voted today to require UW System to get approval from the committee before implementing any COVID-19 vaccination rules, mandatory virus testing, mask policies https://t.co/gMOcGJkjoi via @WiStateJournal

— Mitchell Schmidt (@schmidtmitchell) August 3, 2021

Under the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules’ vote, which was carried out through the use of paper ballots and without a formal meeting or public comment, the UW System will have to submit any plans for COVID-19 policies to the committee as emergency rules within 30 days — or cease mandating any such measures.

Once rules are submitted, the committee will have the ability to vote to suspend parts or all of the measures. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has no veto power over the committee’s actions.

The measure passed 6-4, with all Republican members of the committee in favor and all Democratic members opposed.

And check out this justification from Co-Chair Adam Neylon (R-Pewaukee), who has apparently decided that performing stunts for the AM 1130 Klan is more important than the health of his many constituents in Lake Country that attend UW schools (and their parents, who end up in contact with them).

“As of now, several UW campuses are seeking masking and testing policies enacted on campuses with university police departments reserving the ability to enforce such policies. What comes next? The idea that a university chancellor has the power to unilaterally require vaccinations is an incredibly dangerous precedent to set and precisely the power they seek by circumventing the rule-making process.

“If the UW System wants to implement COVID policies on campus they should follow the process set forth in state law. I would imagine Wisconsin’s public university system would welcome that type of transparency and accountability.

“They should follow the process set forth in state law.” That “law” was the Lame Duck bullshit GOPs like Neylon rammed through after Dems swept the 2018 elections. This is what never gets pointed out to these scumbags – they created these laws out of their backsides. It’s not like it was handed down on high or written into the state constitution 170 years ago.

The UW System should proceed as-is, allowing campuses to come up with their own masking, vaccination and testing procedures, and then hand in their report to the JCRAR on Sept. 2 that says “We leave it up to the campuses and have no formal rules of our own.”

Go ahead WisGOP punks, waste more taxpayer dollars by suing to stop UW campuses from increasing safety and fighting an ongoing pandemic. I’m sure that’ll go over really well with the clear majority of the state (aka, the people that aren’t weak, whiny trailer trash).

Based on their actions, it seems that nASS and Neylon and Robbin’ Vos and LemonHead and the rest of these WisGOP dimwits following this as a model.

The problem for WisGOP is that some gerrymandered committee doesn’t have any authority to stop the UW from taking steps to keep its students and workers from catching COVID-19. They can give an up or down vote to the rules, but do you think Josh Kaul or Tony Evers would lift a finger to help them stop campus safety measures? Or that Evers would go along with any WisGOP attempts to cut the UW’s budget in retaliation?

WisGOPs are paper tigers when it comes to this stuff, and they should be treated accordingly. And their impotence and idiocy should be broadcast statewide, so low-infos can see just how petty and pathetic these WisGOPs really are.

Wisconsin joins the COVID spike. The key is whether it's annoying or crippling

While Wisconsin didn't get this Summer's COVID spike as early as other parts of the country, it's gotten here now. New cases are coming in more than 10 times faster than the end of June, with more than 5,300 reported in the last week of July.

Deaths are still rare, with 6 of the last 7 weeks having fewer than 10 COVID fatalities. But the recent jump in COVID-related hospitalizations is certainly reason for worry.

Hospitalizations are ... not great. pic.twitter.com/5C3d36mg8y

— Jay Bullock, back to school nightmare haver (@folkbum) August 2, 2021

Milwaukee is having the worst of the COVID breakouts, and SE Wisconsin in general continues to have the highest rate of infections. Which reiterates to me that there was at least one negative side effect of the Bucks' run to the title.

And now COVID is causing a bump in the road to another Milwaukee team's attempt to get into the playoffs.

Closer Josh Hader became the latest Brewers player to test positive Monday and go on the COVID-19 injured list.

https://t.co/klRsyazuUG

— JSOnline - Brewers (@js_brewers) August 2, 2021

This makes Hader the 6th Brewer in the last week to miss time after having a positive COVID test. This needs to be brought back to normal, and fast.

I'm still keeping it outside more often than not for the coming months (and with the weather we're having, why wouldn't you?), and I'll likely go back to masking up when I'm in the office (though it's not mandated as of yet). These next two weeks feel critical, both in case totals, and for the deaths and hospitalizations. If deaths aren't rising much in the next month, and cases are leveling off and heading back down, then we know the vaccinations are helping a lot.

But if they don't, and if serious illnesses are jumping in high-vaxxed areas like Madison (which hasn't happened yet), then I fear we are heading back to reduced capacities and people staying home. And no one wants that.