Feb 13, 2025
Feb 12, 2025
Sicknesses
Measles in Texas (not a lot of cases, but 2 counties now), and TB in Kansas (mostly KC).
KU Medical Center experts work to control tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas
Faculty at KU Medical Center are working with state and local health departments to contain the spread of the disease.
In January, Kansas made headlines across the country for experiencing the largest outbreak of tuberculosis in the United States since the country began tracking TB cases in the 1950s. Since then, that claim has been downgraded to the largest incidence of the disease over the span of one year.
But that doesn’t mean the TB outbreak hasn’t held the attention of public health officials in the two Kansas City-area counties, Wyandotte and Johnson, where the outbreak is located. Those include faculty at the University of Kansas Medical Center who are working with Kansas state and county health departments to identify those at risk, treat people infected and mitigate the spread of the disease.
The United States has an overall low incidence of TB. Why is Kansas experiencing this outbreak?
“I don’t think there’s necessarily anything unique about Kansas, any secret sauce, so to speak,” said Erin Corriveau, M.D., MPH, associate professor in the departments of Family Medicine and Community Health and Population Health at KU Medical Center. Corriveau also serves as medical director of the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment and was the deputy health officer and medical director of the TB division in Wyandotte County until July 2024.
An age-old disease once known as “consumption” because of the weight loss and apparent wasting-away of its victims, TB is caused by a bacteria that most often affects the lungs but can also infect other organs including the brain, skin, spine and kidneys. It is spread through the air when people with TB sneeze, cough or spit. Initial symptoms typically include cough, fever, weight loss and night sweats.
Corriveau cited social factors as potential facilitators of the outbreak in Kansas. “The area has industries and workplaces where people work in close proximity, as well as multigenerational large households,” she said. “And there are many people living with chronic conditions, which may not even be diagnosed, that make them more vulnerable to infectious diseases, including TB. And a lot of people don’t have access to care.” Access to care enables early detection and treatment that can prevent the disease from spreading.
As of February 7, 2025, there have been 67 active cases of TB associated with the outbreak, and 79 latent (inactive) infections diagnosed, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE). People with latent infections do not have symptoms and are considered not contagious. But without treatment, their infections can develop into active TB weeks or even years after exposure.
So what's the over/under for when we see more than a few more cases because of the Super Bowl?
Or will we? Here's hoping all those fuckin' anti-vax morons dodge the bullets.
Faculty at KU Medical Center are working with state and local health departments to contain the spread of the disease.
In January, Kansas made headlines across the country for experiencing the largest outbreak of tuberculosis in the United States since the country began tracking TB cases in the 1950s. Since then, that claim has been downgraded to the largest incidence of the disease over the span of one year.
But that doesn’t mean the TB outbreak hasn’t held the attention of public health officials in the two Kansas City-area counties, Wyandotte and Johnson, where the outbreak is located. Those include faculty at the University of Kansas Medical Center who are working with Kansas state and county health departments to identify those at risk, treat people infected and mitigate the spread of the disease.
The United States has an overall low incidence of TB. Why is Kansas experiencing this outbreak?
“I don’t think there’s necessarily anything unique about Kansas, any secret sauce, so to speak,” said Erin Corriveau, M.D., MPH, associate professor in the departments of Family Medicine and Community Health and Population Health at KU Medical Center. Corriveau also serves as medical director of the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment and was the deputy health officer and medical director of the TB division in Wyandotte County until July 2024.
An age-old disease once known as “consumption” because of the weight loss and apparent wasting-away of its victims, TB is caused by a bacteria that most often affects the lungs but can also infect other organs including the brain, skin, spine and kidneys. It is spread through the air when people with TB sneeze, cough or spit. Initial symptoms typically include cough, fever, weight loss and night sweats.
Corriveau cited social factors as potential facilitators of the outbreak in Kansas. “The area has industries and workplaces where people work in close proximity, as well as multigenerational large households,” she said. “And there are many people living with chronic conditions, which may not even be diagnosed, that make them more vulnerable to infectious diseases, including TB. And a lot of people don’t have access to care.” Access to care enables early detection and treatment that can prevent the disease from spreading.
As of February 7, 2025, there have been 67 active cases of TB associated with the outbreak, and 79 latent (inactive) infections diagnosed, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE). People with latent infections do not have symptoms and are considered not contagious. But without treatment, their infections can develop into active TB weeks or even years after exposure.
Today's Quote
 |
| Bill Burr |
Are we really gonna
fuck this whole thing up
just because Elon Musk
couldn't get any pussy
in high school?
What It Is
The level of misunderstanding that Republicans can count on where their constituents are concerned is monumental.
Ask almost any MAGArube about US military aid for Ukraine, and he'll probably tell you we've given billions of dollars directly to the government in Kyiv.
Likewise, ask them about SNAP and WIC and school lunches, and some of them will still launch into the bullshit about "young bucks buying champaign and lobsters with their food stamps", or Welfare Queens driving Cadillacs around Chicago. Or black moms actively trying to get knocked up again so they can up the amount on their monthly checks.
The amount of shit that's been poured into people's heads over the last 45 years should qualify some folks' brains as Superfund sites.
Anyway, here's an explainer from Parkrose Permaculture.
New Guy
I'm not unsympathetic, but I really don't understand how you look at the good things the Biden gang was doing for you, and then turn your back and vote for a guy who's never told anybody the truth in his whole miserable fucking life. Especially, when the whole Republican party has spent decades bitchin' about "over-spending", and how they intend to "starve the beast" and then "drown it in the bathtub".
What the fuck doesn't click for these people?
So I don't know how this guy intends to bring anybody around by talking nice and being all un-judge-y and shit. But hope springs eternal, and maybe we can look forward to a shift back towards reality.
IDK. Conventional wisdom says Democrats "lost" rural America by turning their attention to the problems of the population centers, leaving an opening for a Nixon to swoop in and grab up the American south by playing on their phobias.
Maybe that's kinda run its course, and getting the "people of the land" to come back to their senses is how we make the turn and approach resolution.
8 minutes on "The Fourth Turning" by Straus and Howe
Today's Belle
Today, we are pleased to present a guest contribution written by Lydia Cox (Harvard University) and Kadee Russ (University of California, Davis), both formerly on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers.
A study released in December by Aaron Flaaen and Justin Pierce, two highly respected experts in trade and labor markets, was widely covered in the press. “Trump Tariffs led to job losses, higher prices for businesses,” was the most succinct and comprehensive among the article titles.
Some of the coverage noted the statistic in Footnote 10 on page 19 of the Flaaen and Pierce study: By mid-2019, manufacturing employment ended up 1.4 percent lower than would have been the case without the tariffs levied in 2018-2019, likely due to a combination of increased costs of production and retaliatory tariffs. Yet it was hard to find in the articles an articulation of how many jobs this represents in level terms.
Exactly how many jobs is 1.4 percent of pre-trade-war manufacturing employment? Take 1.4 percent of 12.5 million, the number of manufacturing jobs at the end of January 2017, the month before the trade war began. The answer is 175,000 manufacturing jobs missing by mid-2019. Flaaen and Pierce’s study suggests that increased costs for imported inputs account for about two thirds of the total reduction in manufacturing employment. Retaliatory tariffs account for the remaining third.
In fact, more than 175,000 jobs disappeared: this figure nets out the roughly 40,000 jobs that may have been added or protected in industries benefitting from tariff protection. Furthermore, the estimate captures the decline in manufacturing employment only through mid-2019, but the tariffs have remained in place for a year since that time, likely leading to additional losses.
Digging a little deeper, we see evidence in Figure B5a that within this number, about 75,000 of these missing manufacturing jobs (about 0.6 percent of manufacturing employment, once we weight by the average cost share of steel) are associated with the Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum that went into effect in March 2018. A potential positive impact on employment from import protection is much smaller and not significantly different from zero. The steel and aluminum tariffs plausibly may have led to an increase of 1,000 jobs in these industries and kept a few thousand more from disappearing. See our Econofact memo for more on this.
Flaaen and Pierce’s study design filters out effects of macroeconomic conditions like variation in the value of the dollar and changes in economic growth overseas. By doing so it can plausibly be seen as a conservative estimate if the escalating tariff war led to the dollar strengthening against some currencies or dampened global growth, as downward revisions in growth forecasts by the IMF and OECD have suggested. Moreover, the estimate of 175,000 missing manufacturing jobs does not include adverse effects on employment that may have occurred due to the way that trade policy uncertainty dampened investment and industrial production during that period across many countries, according to macroeconomists Dario Caldara, Matteo Iacoviello, Patrick Molligo, Andrea Prestipino, and Andrea Raffo.
In addition to job losses, tariffs create a burden on households in the form of higher prices on goods and the inconvenience of having to substitute away from goods targeted by tariffs. Estimates assess the costs of the trade war from January 2018 to June 2019 at about $800 per household. Considering the macroeconomic effects of the trade policy uncertainty more than doubles this figure. The study by Caldara, Iacoviello, Molligo, Prestipino, and Raffo captures the overall impact of the trade war during that period, including trade policy uncertainty and attendant effects on national output through its adverse impact on investment and industrial production. They estimate that the trade war caused the U.S. economy be 1 percent smaller in 2020 than it would have been without the tariffs, equating to an average cost of $1700 per household. See this Econofact memo for a comparison and discussion of overall costs of the trade war, or more on the macroeconomic impacts of unilateralism here.
Some Ws
A few short posts:
BREAKING: Fox News host Jessica Tarlov just announced she is already hearing from college students who voted for Trump who are now regretting their vote. Trump lied his way through the campaign and Americans are now recognizing his failures. pic.twitter.com/kZwIHnjPu5
— Democratic Wins Media (@DemocraticWins) February 12, 2025
BREAKING: In a stunning moment, Fox News just acknowledged that rising prices of eggs and groceries are troubling signs for Donald Trump’s efforts to fight inflation. Trump is failing badly. pic.twitter.com/4mVPs87XpD
— Democratic Wins Media (@DemocraticWins) February 12, 2025
BREAKING: In a stunning moment, Rep. Dan Goldman just demolished Elon Musk for claiming all Democrats are corrupt when Musk has taken in billions from government contracts. Democrats are starting to fiercely push back against Musk. pic.twitter.com/BAeYkczrnY
— Democratic Wins Media (@DemocraticWins) February 11, 2025
BREAKING: In a stunning moment, Rep. Dan Goldman just demolished Elon Musk for claiming all Democrats are corrupt when Musk has taken in billions from government contracts. Democrats are starting to fiercely push back against Musk. pic.twitter.com/BAeYkczrnY
— Democratic Wins Media (@DemocraticWins) February 11, 2025
"I'll Stop Inflation On Day One"
US consumer prices post largest increase in nearly 1-1/2 years in January
Summary
- Consumer prices increase 0.5% in January
- Shelter, food, gasoline lead broad rise in prices
- Consumer price index rises 3.0% year-on-year
- Core CPI gains 0.4%; advances 3.3% year-on-year
WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) - U.S. consumer prices increased by the most in nearly 1-1/2 years in January, with Americans facing higher costs for housing and food, reinforcing the Federal Reserve's message that it was in no rush to resume cutting interest rates amid growing uncertainty over the economy.
The hotter-than-expected inflation reported by the Labor Department on Wednesday was likely partly due to businesses raising prices at the start of the year. However, the surge in prices offered a cautionary note to President Donald Trump's push for tariffs on imported goods, which have been panned by economists as inflationary.
Trump was elected on promises to lower prices for inflation-weary consumers. High inflation could imperil the Trump administration's agenda, including tax cuts, which could overstimulate a healthy economy, and mass deportations of undocumented immigrants that are seen causing labor shortages and raising costs such as wages for businesses.
"With President Trump threatening to impose wide-ranging inflationary tariffs, the Fed won't resume cutting interest rates this year," said Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist at Capital Economics.
The consumer price index jumped 0.5% last month, the biggest gain since August 2023, after rising 0.4% in December, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said. Shelter, which includes rents, increased 0.4% and accounted for nearly 30% of the rise in the CPI. That followed two straight monthly gains of 0.3%.
Food prices rose 0.4% after increasing 0.3% in December. Grocery store prices surged 0.5%, with the cost of eggs soaring 15.2%, the largest increase since June 2015. That accounted for about two-thirds of the rise in prices at the supermarket. An avian flu outbreak has caused a shortage of eggs, driving up prices.
The details are still vague, but corporate America is nervous about who's next after duties on steel and aluminium
Prices also rose for meats, poultry and fish as well as for nonalcoholic beverages and dairy products. Gasoline prices rose 1.8% while natural gas cost 1.8% more, but electricity prices were unchanged.
In the 12 months through January, the CPI increased 3.0% after advancing 2.9% in December. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the CPI gaining 0.3% and rising 2.9% year-on-year.
The BLS updated weights and seasonal adjustment factors, the model that the government uses to strip out seasonal fluctuations from the data to reflect price movements in 2024.
Some of the rise in the CPI last month probably reflected businesses pushing through price increases at the start of the year. Businesses could also have preemptively raised prices in anticipation of higher and broad tariffs on imported goods.
Trump early this month suspended a highly telegraphed 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico until March. But a 10% additional tariff on Chinese goods went into effect this month. Economists expect that those tariffs, when they are eventually enforced, will lift inflation.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell told lawmakers on Tuesday that "inflation moderated a little further last year," adding that "recent progress has been bumpy."
Inflation remains above the U.S. central bank's 2% target.
The dollar gained versus a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury yields rose.
A line chart titled "Annual change in US Consumer Price Index" that compares two key inflation metrics over the past five years.
A line chart titled "Annual change in US Consumer Price Index" that compares two key inflation metrics over the past five years.
RATE CUT HOPES DIMINISHING
Consumers' one-year inflation expectations surged to a 15-month high in early February as households perceived that "it may be too late to avoid the negative impact of tariff policy," a University of Michigan survey of consumers showed last week.
Combined with a stable labor market, Bank of America Securities continues to believe that the Fed policy easing cycle is over. The central bank left its benchmark overnight interest rate unchanged in the 4.25%-4.50% range in January, having reduced it by 100 basis points since September, when it embarked on its policy easing cycle.
The policy rate was hiked by 5.25 percentage points in 2022 and 2023 to tame inflation.
Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the CPI climbed 0.4% in January. The so-called core CPI increased 0.2% in December. The core CPI has tended to print higher in January, which economists said suggested that seasonal effects lingered in the data even after seasonal adjustment.
The hotter-than-expected inflation reported by the Labor Department on Wednesday was likely partly due to businesses raising prices at the start of the year. However, the surge in prices offered a cautionary note to President Donald Trump's push for tariffs on imported goods, which have been panned by economists as inflationary.
Trump was elected on promises to lower prices for inflation-weary consumers. High inflation could imperil the Trump administration's agenda, including tax cuts, which could overstimulate a healthy economy, and mass deportations of undocumented immigrants that are seen causing labor shortages and raising costs such as wages for businesses.
"With President Trump threatening to impose wide-ranging inflationary tariffs, the Fed won't resume cutting interest rates this year," said Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist at Capital Economics.
The consumer price index jumped 0.5% last month, the biggest gain since August 2023, after rising 0.4% in December, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said. Shelter, which includes rents, increased 0.4% and accounted for nearly 30% of the rise in the CPI. That followed two straight monthly gains of 0.3%.
Food prices rose 0.4% after increasing 0.3% in December. Grocery store prices surged 0.5%, with the cost of eggs soaring 15.2%, the largest increase since June 2015. That accounted for about two-thirds of the rise in prices at the supermarket. An avian flu outbreak has caused a shortage of eggs, driving up prices.
The details are still vague, but corporate America is nervous about who's next after duties on steel and aluminium
Prices also rose for meats, poultry and fish as well as for nonalcoholic beverages and dairy products. Gasoline prices rose 1.8% while natural gas cost 1.8% more, but electricity prices were unchanged.
In the 12 months through January, the CPI increased 3.0% after advancing 2.9% in December. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the CPI gaining 0.3% and rising 2.9% year-on-year.
The BLS updated weights and seasonal adjustment factors, the model that the government uses to strip out seasonal fluctuations from the data to reflect price movements in 2024.
Some of the rise in the CPI last month probably reflected businesses pushing through price increases at the start of the year. Businesses could also have preemptively raised prices in anticipation of higher and broad tariffs on imported goods.
Trump early this month suspended a highly telegraphed 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico until March. But a 10% additional tariff on Chinese goods went into effect this month. Economists expect that those tariffs, when they are eventually enforced, will lift inflation.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell told lawmakers on Tuesday that "inflation moderated a little further last year," adding that "recent progress has been bumpy."
Inflation remains above the U.S. central bank's 2% target.
The dollar gained versus a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury yields rose.
A line chart titled "Annual change in US Consumer Price Index" that compares two key inflation metrics over the past five years.
A line chart titled "Annual change in US Consumer Price Index" that compares two key inflation metrics over the past five years.
RATE CUT HOPES DIMINISHING
Chances of a rate cut this year are diminishing amid rising uncertainty over the economic impact of the Trump administration's trade, immigration and fiscal policies.
Consumers' one-year inflation expectations surged to a 15-month high in early February as households perceived that "it may be too late to avoid the negative impact of tariff policy," a University of Michigan survey of consumers showed last week.
Combined with a stable labor market, Bank of America Securities continues to believe that the Fed policy easing cycle is over. The central bank left its benchmark overnight interest rate unchanged in the 4.25%-4.50% range in January, having reduced it by 100 basis points since September, when it embarked on its policy easing cycle.
The policy rate was hiked by 5.25 percentage points in 2022 and 2023 to tame inflation.
Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the CPI climbed 0.4% in January. The so-called core CPI increased 0.2% in December. The core CPI has tended to print higher in January, which economists said suggested that seasonal effects lingered in the data even after seasonal adjustment.
- Shelter costs increased 0.4%, with owners' equivalent rent rising 0.3% as did rents.
- Healthcare costs climbed 0.2%, while prescription medication prices jumped 2.5% and hospital services increased 0.9%.
- The cost of motor vehicle insurance soared 2.0%.
- There were also increases in the prices of recreation, used cars and trucks, communication, airline fares and education.
- But apparel prices dropped 1.4%.
- In the 12 months through January, the core CPI rose 3.3% after advancing 3.2% in December.
Feb 11, 2025
You're The Majority?
No - you're not.
@layne.is.over.it #greenscreen I'm very torn, I'm feeling 2 or 4 months. I mean, we've seen all this before - I know MAGA doesnt like history but... bfrfr we've been here before....... #election2024 #goverment #oligarchy #democrats #trump #viralvideo ♬ original sound - Layne is Over the BS
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