Benford’s Law and Election Fraud Detection

12 Thursday Nov 2020

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Like many others, I strongly suspect widespread ballot fraud in the presidential election, as well as miscounting due to software problems in certain jurisdictions. I therefore fully support the legal challenges and recounts now getting underway. However, there is one indicator of fraud, now widely cited by Republicans, in which I have no confidence as applied. It’s a statistical tool based on Benford’s Law, which can serve as a signal of voter fraud. I mentioned it briefly in my last post. At the risk of getting ahead of myself, here’s what I said then:

“… Benford’s Law … is a “forensic” test of fraud based on statistical theory, but I do not trust the form in which it’s been invoked thus far. Violations have been cited in several counties over the past few days. However, a violation of this law obviously doesn’t constitute direct evidence of fraud, and the test is a reliable indicator only when the number of voters in different precincts vary by orders of magnitude (there must be a mix of [numbers in the] 10s, 100s, 1,000s, 10,000s). With precinct sizes, that is often not the case. There is a more reliable form of Bedford’s law, but I have not seen its application to any results in this election.“

The last link above is to a paper by Walter Mebane of the University of Michigan. I’ll refer to his work below, including some post-election tests he’s conducted.

First Digits

Benford’s Law holds that many collections of numbers encountered in nature or human affairs (populations of ant colonies, accounting data) will have a large proportion of leading digits that are low numbers. For example, the number 1 will tend to appear as the leading digit about 30% of the time; the number 2 will be the leading digit about 18% of the time, while the number 9 will be the leading digit less than 5% of the time. The broader the range of the numbers, the more accurately they will conform to Benford’s Law. As I stated above, a range of numbers covering several orders of magnitude will approximate Benford’s Law fairly well, while a range confined to a single order of magnitude generally won’t conform unless its distribution is extremely skewed toward the low end of the range.

What does that have to do with election fraud? If the number of votes across different voting precincts cover several orders of magnitude (for example, single digits, 10s, 100s, and 1,000s), they should conform to Benford’s Law. The distribution of first digits across precincts should look a lot like the chart above. If they don’t conform, it’s an indication that votes may have been altered or added. That’s because Benford’s Law tends to break down when an independent process leads to additive changes to the original numbers (rather than multiplicative changes, such as population growth).

So again, there have been claims that several cities had presidential voting patterns suggesting violations of Benford’s Law for Joe Biden, but not for Donald Trump and other candidates. These were Milwaukee, WI, Chicago, IL, and Allegheny County, PA. Subsequently I saw similar claims about other cities and counties, such as Fulton County, GA.

The chart below shows the results for Milwaukee. I show only three of the candidates’ distributions of first digits, but the other candidates, who garnered relatively few votes, look much like the one on the far right. The chart shows that Joe Biden’s distribution looks nothing like Benford’s Law would suggest, while Trump’s does. The assertion is that Biden’s pattern is a sign of fraudulent voting.

The problem with these claims is that the size of the precincts and variations in votes across wards might not support the validity of Benford’s Law. I looked at the 327 election wards in the City of Milwaukee, which range in size from just a few voters to several thousand, but most have less than 1,000 voters. The average turnout of registered voters across wards was over 78%, and the average number of ballots cast per ward was 757. Biden received almost 80% of the votes in Milwaukee, or about 595 per ward; Trump received an average of 148.

(I should note that in seven wards there were controversial, post-election upward adjustments in the number of registered voters, where voter turnout had originally been calculated as greater than 100%. Needless to say, that is rather suspicious. However, I disclose now that the data were collected after these adjustments were made.)

What’s important in the application of Benford’s Law is the distribution of votes across wards. Biden’s distribution of votes across wards in Milwaukee was concentrated between 186 and 1,196 (the middle 90% of his distribution of ward votes), and again, centered at 595. For Trump, 90% of his ward vote totals were between 14 and 412. It should be no surprise that a large share of Biden’s vote totals would have leading digits of 4, 5, and 6, while Trump had lower leading digits. So the charts of leading digits for Milwaukee are really artifacts of the narrow distributions of ward votes for these candidates. Broader distributions covering several orders of magnitude would provide first-digit analysis more capable of indicating fraud, if it occurred.

Second Digits

The other Benford-type test of fraud mentioned above is based on the second digit of vote totals, and it is not sensitive to the width of the vote distributions. The typical pattern of second digits is much less pronounced than first digits, but there is still a smooth decline from smaller to larger second digits. I found the two charts below on the Golden Age of Gaia site, of all places. They contrast the frequency of second digits from the Biden and Trump vote totals by precinct for ballots in Allegheny County, PA. The usual pattern of second digits is plotted along the orange line, but whoever prepared these charts mislabelled the horizontal axes (they should run from zero to nine).

Joe Biden’s frequencies are irregular, with significant differences for some values of the second digit. Trump’s pattern is more typical. However, I learned today that Walter Mebane had performed a few second-digit tests on Allegheny County and Milwaukee. He calculates an overall test statistic for the full set of second-digit values and finds the statistics for those counties to be within a certain reasonable range, or at least he felt they could be explained by other factors.

Visually, however, there is a sharp contrast between the Biden and Trump charts. And the data has been in flux, so it’s not clear that the charts correspond to exactly the same data tested by Mebane.

In the end, these tests offer no real guidance in this case. All tests of this kind offer circumstantial evidence, at best, and they are invalid under some circumstances. As Mebane said in his 2006 paper:

“… to prevent election fraud, appropriate practices need to be used while the election is being conducted. Insecure or opaque voting technology or election administration procedures should not be used. The election environment should not foment chaos and confusion. Not only should elections be secure and fair, but everyone should know they are secure and fair.“

Chaos and confusion…. yes, that sounds about like the 2020 election environment. Mebane is obviously aware of the limitations of the statistics in which he specializes. Nevertheless, these tests are broadly used in a variety of applications. Crazy results raise suspicions, but sometimes they are not the best leads in pursuing claims of election fraud. There are plenty of other red flags in the present case. The states now in dispute are close, and most of those votes will be subject to recount anyway.

Ballot Bamboozles, Enablers, and Trust

10 Tuesday Nov 2020

Posted by in Election Fraud

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Since Saturday I’ve heard people in the media refer to “President-Elect Biden”, and I heard “President Biden” in one instance. He is neither, at least not yet. If and when the results of the election are certified in enough states to give Biden 270+ electoral votes, my attitude will be “Que Sera, Sera“. We can then move on to other challenges. But we aren’t there yet. Much remains to be settled in several states, and whether there is a change in the outcome of the presidential election might not be as important as cleaning up the mess that’s become of our election system.

Here’s a little primer on the signs of election fraud from the BBC. Several of those signs appear very much like what we see now. The list of red flags arising from the results of this election is long, and the denials from authorities in charge of the process in various jurisdictions look increasingly suspicious. We have turnout greater than the number of registered voters in several areas, dead voters, out-of-state voters, poll observers who were refused entry or held at impractical distances, late-night suspension of counts resuming after observers departed, ballot arrivals with no chain of custody, a huge number of Biden ballots with no votes for down-ballot candidates and few cases of the same for Trump. If you hadn’t guessed, the down-ballot discrepancy smacks of vote manufacturing. The sheer volume of last day “provisional” ballots is suggestive of ballot harvesting activity. And there are a number of other irregularities. A retired auditor/blogger compiled a nice list of red flags several days ago. This update is even better.)

As Jonathan Turley notes, as Americans we should welcome reviews of close elections. It would be a travesty to ignore these strong indications of fraud. Doing so would disenfranchise millions of voters, destroy confidence in our democratic system, and reward aberrant behavior. And for readers of this blog who might be aghast that we’re unwilling to simply absolve election authorities and other helpers who managed to produce or allow these red flags, the simple fact of the matter is we don’t trust them, and we don’t trust you either!

No, we do not trust authorities who tell us to ignore the kinds of obvious red flags that have arisen in this election. Election fraud has a long history in many of the jurisdictions now in dispute. This is just one form of the corruption endemic to one-party rule in many of these localities. No one is accountable and rules can be broken with the support of the local party machine. These are mini-swamps, and they should be drained.

The media is of course a giant swamp of its own, refusing to acknowledge or report on the very real warning signs of fraud. This is not journalism, and sadly, those who would contemplate violating the code are victims of intimidation. The very act of pronouncing Joe Biden the “President-Elect” at this stage is bad enough as an assertion of power. In addition, we have social media platforms censoring those who would call attention to obvious signs of fraud. This is an authoritarian play. It goes without saying that we do not trust the media, who are doing their best to game these challenges out of existence. Not gonna happen.

And neither do we trust those who would burn our cities, or forgive those who do; who would keep lists of those with whom they disagree and suggest reeducation; who would engage in eliminationist rhetoric; who would unfairly accuse opponents of racism, despite the racism and anti-semitism in their own ranks; who for years years would parrot false claims of Russian collusion, attempting to invalidate the last election; who would ignore the Biden family history of influence peddling and lies! And who would insist that the media’s proclamation of a winner in this election is beyond question. If that’s who you are, you are in the swamp. You’re either naive or evil. No, we don’t trust you.

The recent changes in election rules, ostensibly due to COVID, produced a chaotic situation many foresaw. I view the overwhelming support for these changes on the Left as wholly opportunistic. It created ample opportunities for fraud, and not only in the mini-swamps. Now, the presumed outcome, no matter how likely or how much you might like it, is no excuse for failing to adjudicate very real disputes, investigate or audit irregularities, and recount votes where state law or the courts demand it.

One reservation I have about the claims of fraud has to do with so-called violations of Benford’s Law. It is a “forensic” test of fraud based on statistical theory, but I do not trust the form in which it’s been invoked thus far. Violations have been cited in several counties over the past few days. However, a violation of this law obviously doesn’t constitute direct evidence of fraud, and the test is a reliable indicator only when the number of voters in different precincts vary by order of magnitude (there must be a mix of 10s, 100s, 1,000s, 10,000s). With precinct sizes, that is often not the case. There is a more reliable form of Bedford’s law, but I have not seen its application to any results in this election.

One last point that might be of interest: a reasonable scenario would leave the electoral college tied at 269. This would involve Trump taking NC and AK, while AZ, GA, and WI flip to Trump with MI and PA remaining in Biden’s column. The election would then be decided in the House of Representatives. However, the outcome there is not based on a straight vote. Instead, there is a single vote for each state delegation. As it turns out, Republicans hold the advantage there, despite their minority membership in the House.

Predicted November COVID Deaths

08 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by in Pandemic, Public Health

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Reported COVID deaths do not reflect deaths that actually occurred in the reporting day or week, as I’ve noted several times. Here is a nice chart from @tlowdon on Twitter showing the difference between reported deaths and actual deaths for corresponding weeks. The blue bars are weekly deaths reported by the COVID Tracking Project. The solid orange bars are the CDC’s “provisional” deaths by actual week of death, which is less than complete for recent weeks because of lags in reporting. Still, it’s easy to see that reported deaths have overstated actual deaths each week since late August.

I should note that the orange bars represent deaths that involved COVID-19, though a COVID infection might not have actually killed them. This CDC report, updated on November 4th, shows the importance of co-morbidities, which in many cases are the actual cause of death according to pre-COVID, CDC guidance on death certificates.

Leading Indicators

Researchers have studied several measures in an effort to find leading indicators of COVID deaths. The list includes new cases diagnosed (PCR positivity) and the percentage of emergency room visits presenting symptoms of COVID-like illness (%CLI). These indicators are usually evaluated after shifting them in time by a few weeks in order to observe correlations with COVID deaths a few weeks later. Interestingly, @tlowdon reports that the best single predictor of actual COVID deaths over the course of a few weeks is the sum of the %CLI and the percentage of ER patients presenting symptoms of influenza-like illness (%ILI). Perhaps adding %ILI to %CLI strengthens the correlation because the symptoms of the flu and COVID are often mistaken for one another.

The chart below reproduces the orange bars from above representing deaths at actual dates of death. Also plotted are the %Positivity from COVID tests (shifted forward 2 weeks), %CLI (3 weeks), the %ILI (3 weeks), and the sum of %CLI and %ILI (3 weeks, the solid blue line). My guess is that %ILI contributes to the correlation with deaths mainly because %ILI’s early peak (which occurred in March) led the peak in deaths in April. Otherwise, there is very little variation in %ILI. That might change with the current onset of the flu season, but as I noted in my last post, the flu has been very subdued since last winter.

What About November?

So where does that leave us? The chart above ends with our leading indicator, CLI + ILI, brought forward from the first half of October. What’s happened to CLI + ILI since then? And what does that tell us to expect in November? The chart below is from the CDC’s web site. The red line is %CLI and the yellow line is %ILI. The sum of the two isn’t shown. However, there is no denying the upward trend in CLI, though the slope of CLI + ILI would be more moderate.

As of 10/31, CLI + ILI has increased by almost 40% since it’s low in early October. If the previous relationship holds up, that implies an increase of almost 40% in actual weekly COVID deaths from about 4,000 per week to about 5,500 per week by November 21 (a little less than 800 per day).

FiveThirtyEight has a compilation of 13 different forecast models with projections of deaths by the end of November. The estimate of 5,500 per week by November 21, or perhaps slightly less per week over the full month of November, would put total COVID deaths at the top of the range of the MIT, UCLA, Iowa State, and University of Texas models, but below or near the low end of ranges for eight other models. However, those models are based on reported deaths, so the comparison is not strictly valid. Reported deaths are still likely to exceed actual deaths by the end of November, and the actual death prediction would be squarely in the range of multiple reported death predictions. That reinforces the expectation an upward trend in actual deaths.

Third Wave States

States in the upper Midwest and upper Mountain regions have had the largest increases in cases per capita over the past few weeks. Using state abbreviations, the top ten are ND, SD, WI, IA, MT, NE, WY, UT, IL, and MN, with ID at #11 (according to the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker). One factor that might mediate the increase in cases, and ultimately deaths, is the possibility of early herd immunity: in the earlier COVID waves, the increase in infections abated once seroprevalence (the share of the population with antibodies from exposure) reached a level of 15% to 25%.

Unfortunately, estimates of seroprevalence by state are very imprecise. Thus far, reliable samples have been limited to states and metro areas that had heavy infections in the first and second waves. One rule of thumb, however, is that seroprevalence is probably less than 10x the cumulative share of a population having tested positive. To be very conservative, let’s assume a seroprevalence of four times cumulative cases. On that basis, half the states in the “top ten” listed above would already have seroprevalence above 15%. Those states are ND, SD, WI, IA, and NE. The others are mostly in a range of 12% to 15%, with MI coming in the lowest at about 9%.

This gives some cause for optimism that the wave in these states and others will abate fairly soon, but there are a number of uncertainties: first, the estimates of seroprevalence above, while conservative, are very imprecise, as noted above; second, the point at which herd immunity might cause the increase in new cases to begin declining is real guesswork (though we might have confirmation in a few states before long); third, we are now well into the fall season, with lower temperatures, lower humidity, less direct sunlight, and diminishing vitamin D levels. We do not have experience with COVID at this time of year, so we don’t know whether the patterns observed earlier in the year will be repeated. If so, new cases might begin to abate in some areas in November, but that probably wouldn’t be reflected in deaths until sometime in December. And if the flu comes back with a corresponding increase in CLI + ILI, then we’d expect further increases in actual deaths attributed to COVID. That is only a possibility given the weakness in flu numbers in 2020, however.

Closing Thoughts

I was excessively optimistic about the course of the pandemic in the U.S. in the spring. While this post has been moderately pessimistic, I believe there are reasons to expect fewer deaths than previous relationships would predict. We are far better at treating COVID now, and the vulnerable are taking precautions that have reduced their incidence of infections relative to younger and healthier cohorts. So if anything, I think the forecasts above will err on the high side.

COVID Trends and Flu Cases

05 Thursday Nov 2020

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Writing about COVID as a respite from election madness is very cold comfort, but here goes….

COVID deaths in the U.S. still haven’t shown the kind of upward trend this fall that many had feared. It could happen, but it hasn’t yet. In the chart above, new cases are shown in brown (along with the rolling seven-day average), while deaths (on the right axis) are shown in blue. It’s been over six weeks since new case counts began to rise, but deaths have risen for about two weeks, and it’s been gradual relative to the first two waves. Either the average lag between diagnosis and death is much longer than earlier in the year, or the current “casedemic” is much less deadly, or perhaps both. It could change. And granted, this is national data; states in the midwest have had the strongest trends in cases, especially the upper midwest, as well as stronger trends in hospitalizations and deaths. Most of those areas had milder experiences with the virus in the spring and summer.

Lagged Reporting

What’s tricky about this is that both case reports and death reports in the chart above are significantly lagged. A COVID test might not take place until several days after infection (if at all), and sometimes not until hospitalization or death. Then the test result might not be known for several days. However, the greater availability of tests and faster turnaround time have almost certainly shortened that lag.

Deaths are reported with an even a greater delay, though you wouldn’t know it from listening to the media or some of the organizations that track these statistics, such as Johns Hopkins University and the COVID Tracking Project. Thus far, they only tell you what’s reported on a given day. This article from Rational Ground does a good job of explaining the issue and the distortion it causes in discerning trends.

Deaths by actual date-of-death

I’ve reported on the issue of lagged COVID deaths myself. The following graph from Justin Hart is a clear presentation of the reporting delays.

Reported deaths for the most recent week (10/24) are shown in dark blue, and those deaths were spread over a number of prior weeks. Actual deaths in a given week are represented by a “stack” of deaths reported later, in subsequent weeks. One word of caution: actual deaths in the most recent weeks are “provisional”, and more will be added in subsequent reporting weeks. Hence the steep drop off for the 10/17 and 10/24 reporting weeks.

Going back three or four weeks, it’s clear that actual deaths continued to decline into October. Unfortunately, that doesn’t tell us much about the recent trend or whether actual deaths have started to rise given the increase in new cases. I have seen a new weekly update with the deaths by actual date of death, but it is not “stacked” by reporting week. However, it does show a slight increase in the week of 10/10, the first weekly increase since the end of June. So perhaps we’ll see an uptick more in-line with the earlier lags between diagnosis and death, but that’s far from certain.

Another important point is that the number of deaths each week, and each day, are not as high as reported by the media and the popular tracking sites. How often have you heard “more than 1,000 people a day are dying”. That’s high even for weekly averages of reported deaths. As of three weeks ago, actual daily deaths were running at about 560. That’s still very high, but based on seroprevalence estimates (the actual number of infections from the presence of antibodies), the infection fatality keeps dropping toward levels that are comparable to the flu at ages less than 65.

Where is the flu?

Speaking of the flu, this chart from the World Health Organization is revealing: the flu appears to have virtually disappeared in 2020:

It’s still very early in the northern flu season, but the case count was very light this summer in the Southern Hemisphere. There are several possible explanations. One favored by the “lockdown crowd” is that mitigation efforts, including masks and social distancing, have curtailed the flu bug. Not just curtailed … quashed! If that’s true, it’s more than a little odd because the same measures have been so unsuccessful in curtailing COVID, which is transmitted the same way! Also, these measures vary widely around the globe, which weakens the explanation.

There are other, more likely explanations: perhaps the flu is being undercounted because COVID is being overcounted. False positive COVID tests might override the reporting of a few flu cases, but not all diagnoses are made via testing. Other respiratory diseases can be mistaken for the flu and vice versus, and they are now more likely to be diagnosed as COVID absent a test — and as the joke goes, the flu is now illegal! And another partial explanation: it is rare to be infected with two viruses at once. Thus, COVID is said to be “crowding out” the flu.

Waiting for data

There is other good news about transmission, treatment, and immunity, but I’ll devote another post to that, and I’ll wait for more data. For now, the “third wave” appears to be geographically distinct from the first two, as was the second wave from the first. This suggests a sort of herd immunity in areas that were hit more severely in earlier waves. But the best news is that COVID deaths, thus far this fall, are not showing much if any upward movement, and estimates of infection fatality rates continue to fall.

Biden Brainstorm: Nationwide Lockdown, Mask Mandate

01 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by in Liberty, Pandemic, Tyranny

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Ah, so Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, one of garbling Joe Biden’s campaign surrogates, says Biden will indeed consider a national lockdown if elected. Oh, fine. And Biden accused Trump of destroying the economy? These dumb-asses must think people have memory spans of about a second.

There are several gigantic problems with foggy Joe’s idea: first, it’s not within a president’s power to impose a nationwide lockdown, as the chorus of experts reminded us last spring when Trump mentioned it. Second, the evidence suggests that lockdowns don’t work to eliminate the virus; they delay its spread at best. Third, as we’ve witnessed, lockdowns themselves have enormous public health consequences, leading to a variety of severe maladies, despondency, and excess non-COVID deaths. That’s simply unacceptable. Finally, the economic damage imposed by lockdowns is horrific and often permanent. We’re talking about destroying the independent livelihoods of people. Permanently! Lockdowns are especially hard on those at the bottom of the economic ladder, who are disproportionately minorities. That’s so obvious, and yet very difficult for elites to gather in.

Here’s another one: today Biden said he would impose a “national mandate” on masks and social distancing on Day One of his presidency. Like lockdowns, evidence is accumulating that masks do not work to contain the virus, and in fact they might be counter-productive (also see here, here, here, and here). Biden’s people will probably also insist on a mandating a government-approved contact-tracing app on your cell phone. Not if I can help it! But don’t get me wrong… I wear a mask in public buildings as an act of voluntary cooperation and to be polite. I also hold out some hope that it will keep the viral load minimal should anything float my way, but whatever lands on the mask might stick with it … and me!

Measures like those Biden contemplates are major assaults on our liberty. And the thing is, if any of it comes to pass, the restrictions might never go away. We’ll be asked to do this every flu season, or perhaps permanently to protect each other from “germs”. This is an authoritarian move, one that we should all resist, even if you’re freaked out by the virus. The best way to resist right now is to vote for Donald Trump.

And please, don’t give me any bullshit about our “responsibility” to lock down, and how mandatory masks are necessary to protect the vulnerable. Is poverty now a “responsibility”? The most highly vulnerable can be protected without masks, and maybe better. Beyond that, people must be free to determine their own level of risk tolerance, just as they have for millennia with respect to a broad spectrum of serious risks, pathogens or otherwise. That’s a dimension of freedom about which no one should be so cavalier.

The Biden Family Influence Racket

31 Saturday Oct 2020

Posted by in Corruption, Politics

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If you’ve heard the Biden family’s long-time influence peddling racket is “fake news”, and you believe it, you’ve been manipulated. It’s certainly not a new story, in and of itself. There are certain mainstream media outlets that wouldn’t dream of reporting it now that not long ago were calling out the Bidens over this issue. It’s easy to be suspicious, given Hunter Biden’s lucrative association with the scandal-plagued Ukrainian energy firm Burisma. His contract with Burisma was executed around the time his dad Joe, the Vice President at the time, became heavily involved in President Obama’s diplomatic efforts in the Ukraine. Joe actually bragged publicly that he’d threatened to withhold U.S. loan guarantees unless a certain prosecutor was fired, a man who just happened to be investigating Burisma!

Then there were Hunter Biden’s manuevers in China, another country in which father Joe had been assigned as point man for the Obama Administration’s diplomatic efforts. The father and son travelled together, and it was well known that Hunter made a very profitable business deal with a billionaire owner of a Chinese energy firm, one with important connections to the Chinese Communist Part (CCP). Suspicious, to be sure.

But let’s review what’s happened more recently:

  • Earlier this month, the New York Post reported that the owner of a computer repair shop in Delaware came forward with a copy of a hard drive from a laptop. The owner claimed the laptop had been left with him by a besotted Hunter Biden in April 2019. Biden never picked it up, even after a reminder, so ownership of the laptop reverted to the shop. The owner said it contained compromising material on the Bidens.
  • The owner had turned over the laptop to the FBI almost a year ago because he feared that its possession might expose him to danger, given its contents. Apparently, the FBI did not follow up with him. This motivated the shop owner to go public with the help of Rudy Guiliani.
  • As disturbing as that may be, the larger story involves the trove of emails and texts on the laptop between Hunter Biden and his business associates. The messages indicate that Hunter Biden and his uncle, Jim Biden, were involved in a heavy influence peddling operation.
  • The materials offer fairly strong evidence that Joe Biden was a financial beneficiary of the deals cut by Hunter and his team. These are deals that would have compromised Joe Biden in his dealings with foreign nations, and in particular the Ukraine and China.
  • Subsequently, two of Hunter Biden’s business associates confirmed the authenticity of the controversial communications made public. One of them, an investor and ex-naval officer named Tony Bobulinski, was brought in by the Bidens as CEO of their partnership with the Chinese. Bobulinski says he met with Joe Biden twice regarding the Chinese business deal for which Hunter solicited his support, and he calls Joe Biden a liar. Bubolinsky has been interviewed by the FBI and has provided documents to the Senate Homeland Security Committee and the Senate Finance Committee.
  • Until a few days ago, no one in the Biden family, nor the Biden campaign, had denied that the laptop belonged to Hunter. But Joe Biden gave a blunt denial this week, saying of the whole story: “There is no controversy about my son. That’s a hell of a lie! That’s a flat lie because the president has nothing else to run on.” Alright Joe, so this whole thing is politically motivated. You might be right about the timing, but that certainly doesn’t vindicate your family of the corruption evident in these messages and the accounts offered by your son’s associates.
  • Now, there is documented proof of an earlier favor bestowed on the Chinese by Hunter Biden, his associates, and members of the Obama Administration, including Joe Biden. This was in 2011, when a group called the China Entrepreneur Club (CEC) arranged through Hunter’s associates to tour the White House and meet with Joe Biden and other officials. The group included CCP and Chinese government officials as well as influential Chinese businessmen. It also resulted in some lucrative deals for Hunter Biden and his partners. The purpose of the meetings was put thusly by a Hunter Biden contact who helped arrange it, as quoted at the last link: “… CEC’s ‘mandate’ was ‘to let the U.S. know that the Chinese “private sector” [scare quotes in original] is ready and willing to invest in America.’ He thus observed the opportunity to leverage government policy and lucrative business: Cultivating the CEC would be ‘a soft diplomacy play that could be very effective.’” Specific deals for Hunter Biden’s team were also discussed by the partners in connection with the CEC visit.

It’s no surprise that Joe Biden is a liar: his history as a plagiarist is well known. He also falsely claimed the truck driver involved in the accident that killed his first wife was driving drunk. But these recent revelations are pretty damning. As president, any dealings Joe Biden might have with the Chinese would be severely compromised. He sold out his country to build his family’s wealth. It’s also been disturbing to witness the media’s effort to provide cover for the Bidens. This is not the work of journalists; it’s the work of propagandists in the tank for a candidate.

Four More Years to MAGAA

28 Wednesday Oct 2020

Posted by in Big Government, Liberty, Politics

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As a “practical” libertarian, my primary test for any candidate for public office is whether he or she supports less government dominance over private decisions than the status quo. When it comes to Joe Biden and his pack of ventriloquists, the answer is a resounding NO! That should clinch it, right? Probably, but Donald Trump is more complicated….

I’ve always viewed Trump as a corporatist at heart, one who, as a private businessman, didn’t give a thought to free market integrity when he saw rent-seeking opportunities. Now, as a public servant, his laudable desire to “get things done” can also manifest to the advantage of cronyists, which he probably thinks is no big deal. Unfortunately, that is often the way of government, as the Biden family knows all too well. On balance, however, Trump generally stands against big government, as some of the points below will demonstrate.

Trump’s spoken “stream of consciousness” can be maddening. He tends to be inarticulate in discussing policy issues, but at times I enjoy hearing him wonder aloud about policy; at other times, it sounds like an exercise in self-rationalization. He seldom prevaricates when his mind is made up, however.

Not that Biden is such a great orator. He needs cheat sheets, and his cadence and pitch often sound like a weak, repeating loop. In fairness, however, he manages to break it up a bit with an occasional “C’mon, man!”, or “Here’s the deal.”

I have mixed feelings about Trump’s bumptiousness. For example, his verbal treatment of leftists is usually well-deserved and entertaining. Then there are his jokes and sarcasm, for which one apparently must have an ear. He can amuse me, but then he can grate on me. There are times when he’s far too defensive. He tweets just a bit too much. But he talks like a tough, New York working man, which is basically in his DNA. He keeps an insane schedule, and I believe this is true: nobody works harder.

With that mixed bag, I’ll now get on to policy:

Deregulation: Trump has sought to reduce federal regulation and has succeeded to an impressive extent, eliminating about five old regulations for every new federal rule-making. This ranges from rolling back the EPA’s authority to regulate certain “waters” under the Clean Water Act, to liberalized future mileage standards on car manufacturers, to ending destructive efforts to enforce so-called net neutrality. By minimizing opportunities for over-reach by federal regulators, resources can be conserved and managed more efficiently, paving the way for greater productivity and lower costs.

And now, look! Trump has signed a new executive order making federal workers employees-at-will! Yes, let’s “deconstruct the administrative state”. And another new executive order prohibits critical race theory training both in the federal bureaucracy and by federal contractors. End the ridiculous struggle sessions!

Judicial Appointments: Bravo! Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and over 200 federal judges have been placed on the bench by Trump in a single term. I like constitutional originalism and I believe a “living constitution” is a corrupt judicial philosophy. The founding document is as relevant today as it was at its original drafting and at the time of every amendment. I think Trump understands this.

Corporate Taxes: Trump’s reductions in corporate tax rates have promoted economic growth and higher labor income. In 2017, I noted that labor shares the burden of the corporate income tax, so a reversal of those cuts would be counterproductive for labor and capital.

At the same time, the 2017 tax package was a mixed blessing for many so-called “pass-through” businesses (proprietors, partnerships, and S corporations). It wasn’t exactly a simplification, nor was it uniformly a tax cut.

Individual Income Taxes: Rates were reduced for many taxpayers, but not for all, and taxes were certainly not simplified in a meaningful way. The link in the last paragraph provides a few more details.

I am not a big fan of Trump’s proposed payroll tax cut. Such a temporary move will not be of any direct help to those who are unemployed, and it’s unlikely to stimulate much spending from those who are employed. Moreover, without significant reform, payroll tax cuts will directly accelerate the coming insolvency of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds.

Nonetheless, I believe permanent tax cuts are stimulative to the economy in ways that increased government spending is not: they improve incentives for effort, capital investment, and innovation, thus increasing the nation’s productive capacity. Trump seems to agree.

Upward Mobility: Here’s Joel Kotkin on the gains enjoyed by minorities under the Trump Administration. The credit goes to strong private economic growth, pre-pandemic, as opposed to government aid programs.

Foreign Policy: Peace in the Middle East is shaping up as a real possibility under the Abraham Accords. While the issue of coexisting, sovereign Palestinian and Zionist homelands remains unsettled, it now seems achievable. Progress like this has eluded diplomatic efforts for well over five decades, and Trump deserves a peace prize for getting this far with it.

Iran is a thorn, and the regime is a terrorist actor. I support a tough approach with respect to the ayatollahs, which a Trump has delivered. He’s also pushed for troop withdrawals in various parts of the world. He has moved U.S. troops out of Germany and into Poland, where they represent a greater deterrent to Russian expansionism. Trump has pushed our NATO allies to take responsibility for more of their own defense needs, all to the better. Trump has successfully managed North Korean intransigence, though it is an ongoing problem. We are at odds with the leadership in mainland China, but the regime is adversarial, expansionist, and genocidal, so I believe it’s best to take a tough approach with them. At the UN, some of our international “partners” have successfully manipulated the organization in ways that make continued participation by the U.S. of questionable value. Like me, Trump is no fan of UN governance as it is currently practiced.

Gun Rights: Trump is far more likely to stand for Second Amendment rights than Joe Biden. Especially now, given the riots in many cities and calls to “defund police”, it is vitally important that people have a means of self-defense. See this excellent piece by David E. Bernstein on that point.

National Defense: a pure public good; I’m sympathetic to the argument that much of our “defense capital” has deteriorated. Therefore, Trump’s effort to rebuild was overdue. The improved deterrent value of these assets reduces the chance they will ever have to be used against adversaries. Of course, this investment makes budget balance a much more difficult proposition, but a strong national defense is a priority, as long as we avoid the role of the world’s policeman.

Energy Policy: The Trump Administration has made efforts to encourage U.S. energy independence with a series of deregulatory moves. This has succeeded to the extent the U.S. is now a net energy exporter. At the same time, Trump has sought to eliminate subsidies for wasteful renewable energy projects. Unfortunately, ethanol is still favored by energy policy, which might reflect Trump’s desire to assuage the farm lobby.

Climate Policy: Trump kept us out of the costly Paris Climate Accord, which would have cost the U.S. trillions of dollars in lost GDP and subsidies to other nations. Trump saw through the accord as a scam under which leading carbon-emitting nations (such as China) face few real obligations. Meanwhile, the U.S. has led the world in reductions in carbon emissions during Trump’s term, even pre-pandemic. That’s partly a consequence of increased reliance on natural gas relative to other fossil fuels. Trump has also supported efforts to develop more nuclear energy capacity, which is the ultimate green fuel.

COVID-19 Response: As I’ve written several times, in the midst of a distracting and fraudulent impeachment attempt, Trump took swift action to halt inbound flights from China. He marshaled resources to obtain PPE, equipment, and extra hospital space in hot spots, and he kick-started the rapid development of vaccines. He followed the advice of his sometimes fickle medical experts early in the pandemic, which was not always a good thing. In general, his policy stance honored federalist principles by allowing lower levels of government to address local pandemic conditions on appropriate terms. If the pandemic has you in economic straits, you probably have your governor or local officials to thank. As for the most recent efforts to pass federal COVID relief, Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats have insisted on loading up the legislation with non-COVID spending provisions. They have otherwise refused to negotiate pre-election, as if to blame the delay on Trump.

Immigration: My libertarian leanings often put me at odds with nationalists, but I do believe in national sovereignty and the obligation of the federal government to control our borders. Trump is obviously on board with that. My qualms with the border wall are its cost and the availability of cheaper alternatives leveraging technological surveillance. I might differ with Trump in my belief in liberalizing legal immigration. I more strongly differ with his opposition to granting permanent legal residency to so-called Dreamers, individuals who arrived in the U.S. as minors with parents who entered illegally. However, Trump did offer a legal path to citizenship for Dreamers in exchange for funding of the border wall, a deal refused by congressional Democrats.

Health Care: No more penalty (tax?) to enforce the individual mandate, and the mandate itself is likely to be struck down by the Supreme Court as beyond legislative intent. Trump also oversaw a liberalization of insurance offerings and competition by authorizing short-term coverage of up to a year and enabling small businesses to pool their employees with others in order to obtain better rates, among other reforms. Trump seems to have deferred work on a full-fledged plan to replace the Affordable Care Act because there’s been little chance of an acceptable deal with congressional Democrats. That’s unfortunate, but I count it as a concession to political reality.

Foreign Trade: I’m generally a free-trader, so I’m not wholeheartedly behind Trump’s approach to trade. However, our trade deals of the past have hardly constituted “free trade” in action, so tough negotiation has its place. It’s also true that foreign governments regularly apply tariffs and subsidize their home industries to place them at a competitive advantage vis-a-vis the U.S. As the COVID pandemic has shown, there are valid national security arguments to be made for protecting domestic industries. But make no mistake: ultimately consumers pay the price of tariffs and quotas on foreign goods. I cut Trump some slack here, but this is an area about which I have concerns.

Executive Action: Barack Obama boasted that he had a pen and a phone, his euphemism for exercising authority over the executive branch within the scope of existing law. Trump is taking full advantage of his authority when he deems it necessary. It’s unfortunate that legislation must be so general as to allow significant leeway for executive-branch interpretation and rule-making. But there are times when the proper boundaries for these executive actions are debatable.

Presidents have increasingly pressed their authority to extremes over the years, and sometimes Trump seems eager to push the limits. Part of this is born out of his frustration with the legislative process, but I’m uncomfortable with the notion of unchecked executive authority.

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Of course I’ll vote for Trump! I had greater misgivings about voting for him in 2016, when I couldn’t be sure what we’d get once he took office. After all, his politics had been all over the map over preceding decades. But in many ways I’ve been pleasantly surprised. I’m much more confident now that he is our best presidential bet for peace, prosperity, and liberty.

Portents of Harris-Biden Nation

22 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by in Politics

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Joe Biden is a weak figurehead, a one-time moderate faltering over a coalition of leftists. If you wonder why Nancy Pelosi floated legislation to establish a committee on “presidential capacity,” don’t think so much about her loathing for Donald Trump; think about poor Joe Biden. He might be shunted aside just as soon as the power grab isn’t too obvious. They know well how Barack Obama famously said, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f*ck things up.” But whether Joe Biden is in control of anything, think about who he stands with:

The Violent Left: Marxist Antifa and Marxist BLM; opposed to law and order; burning cities; spewing eliminationist rhetoric; hissing n*g**r at black cops;

Police Defunders: won’t acknowledge good policing is needed more than ever, especially in minority communities;

“Ministers of Truth”: social media platforms exerting control over what we say and what we see;

Re-Educators: democrats push for a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to address the “issue” of Trump supporters;

Critical Race Theorists: a Marxist front whereby every word and action is viewed in the context of racial bias and victimization; they want reparations; on your knees.

The Scientistic: who labor under the delusion that “science” should guide all administrative and political decisions. Or someone’s version of science. The very idea is antithetical to the scientific domain, which deals only with falsifiable hypotheses. Few matters of value can be addressed using the tools of science exclusively, nor can they address matters of ethics.

Fear Mongers: would rule by precaution; risks are always worth exaggerating to existential proportions;

Lockdown Tyrants: refuse to acknowledge the steep public health costs of lockdowns; stripping individual liberties indefinitely, including the right to contract, free practice of religion, and assembly;

Insurrectionists: who fabricated a Russian collusion hoax to subvert the 2016 election, and later to overthrow a sitting president;

Gun Confiscators: they will if we let them;

Abortionists: would use federal tax dollars to fund the murder of millions of babies late into pregnancy, primarily black babies;

Fluid-Genderists: insist that children should be encouraged to explore transgenderism;

Taxers: won’t stop with punitive taxes on the wealthy and employers; it’s just not easy to milk high earners in a way that’s sufficient to pay for the fiscal debauchery demanded by the Biden-Harris constituency. Joe says he will raise taxes by $3.4 trillion.

Spenders: $2 trillion of new federal education outlays, including universal pre-K and free community college; the Green New Deal (see below). After all, the democrats are the party that can’t tell the difference between a cut in spending and a reduction in spending growth. If you think Trump is a big spender, their plans are astonishing;

Green New Dealers: would spend trillions to restrict energy choices, transfer U.S. wealth overseas in the name of international carbon reduction, and reduce our standard of living;

Redistributionists: would tax job creators not simply for the benefit of supporting the needy, but for anyone regardless of need (see UBI); this extends to plans to bail out blue states and cities with insolvent public employee pension funds;

Interventionists: would regulate all phases of life, including straws, sugary drinks, and your fireplace; they will burden private initiative; create artificial, politically-favored winners skilled at manipulating regulatory rules for competitive reasons; and create losers who are typically too small to handle the burden;

Medical Socialists: will strip your private health insurance, dictate the care you may receive, fix prices, and regulate physicians and other providers. You’ll love the care abroad, if you can afford to get out when your sick.

Public School Monopolists: poorly performing, beholden to teachers’ unions, unresponsive to taxpayers and often parents; they would happily revoke school choice;

Federal Suburb Rezoners: demanding low-income housing in every community;

Court Packers: to destroy the independent judiciary;

Iran Apologists: give them cash on the tarmac, let them develop their “peaceful” nuclear program; alienate the rest of the Middle East;

Grifters: marketing their influence as public servants for private gain; never exclusive to one side of the aisle, but the Biden family has certainly traded on Joe to enrich themselves;

Smear Merchants: fabricated allegations against Brett Kavanaugh; impugned Amy Coney Barrett’s religious faith;

Perverts: Harvey Weinstein, Anthony Weiner, Jeffrey Toobin, Hunter Biden, and Bill Clinton, to name just a few; even Joe has his #MeToo accusers;

I could go on and on, but Harris-Biden voters should get a strong taste of their compatriots from the list above. It reflects the overriding prescriptive, bullying, and sometimes violent nature of the Left. They’d have you think all material goods can be free. Presto! They presume to have the knowledge and wisdom to plan the economy and your life better than you, Better than free markets and free people. What they’ll need is a lot of magic, or it won’t go well. You’ll get poverty and tears. I’m not sure Joe has the desire or the wherewithal to rein in his coalition of idiots.

The Favored Cause of Death

19 Monday Oct 2020

Posted by in Coronavirus, Public Health

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The CDC changed its guidelines on completion of death certificates on April 5th of this year, and only for COVID-19 (C19), just as infections and presumed C19 deaths were ramping up. The substance of the change was to broaden the definition under which death should be attributed to C19. This ran counter to CDC guidelines followed over the previous 17 years, and the change not only makes the C19 death counts suspect: it also makes comparisons of C19 deaths to other causes of death unreliable, since only C19 is subject to the new CDC guidance. That’s true for concurrent and historical comparisons. The distortions are especially bad relative to other respiratory diseases, but also relative to other conditions that are common in mortality data.

The change in the CDC guidelines was noted in a recent report prepared for the Florida House of Representatives. It was brought to my attention by a retweet by Justin Hart linked to this piece on Andrew Bostom’s site. Death certificates are divided into two parts: Part 1 provides four lines in which causes of death are listed in reverse clinical order of events leading to death. Thus, the first line is the final clinical condition precipitating death. Prior clinical events are to be listed below that. The example shown above indicates that an auto accident, listed on the fourth line, initiated the sequence of events. Part 2 of the certificate is available for physicians or examiners to list contributing factors that might have played a role in the death that were not part of the sequence of clinical events leading to death.

The CDC’s change in guidelines for C19, and C19 only, made the criteria for inclusion in Part 1 less specific, and it essentially eliminated the distinction between Parts 1 and 2. The following appears under “Vital Records Criteria”:

“A death certificate that lists COVID-19 disease or SARS-CoV-2 as a cause of death or a significant condition contributing to death.”

How much difference does this make? For one thing, it opens the door to C19-attributed deaths in cases of false-positive PCR tests. When large cohorts are subject to testing — for example, all patients admitted to hospitals — there will always be a significant number of false positives even when test specificity is as high as 98 – 99%.

The elimination of any distinction between Parts 1 and 2 causes other distortions. A review of the Florida report is illustrative. The House staff reviewed almost 14,000 certificates for C19-19 attributed deaths. Over 9% of those did not list C19 among the clinical conditions leading to death. Instead, in those cases, C19 was listed as a contributing factor. Under the CDC’s previous guidelines, those would not have been counted as C19 deaths. The Florida House report is conservative in concluding that the new CDC guidelines inflated C19 deaths by only those 9% of the records examined.

There are reasons to think that the exaggeration was much greater, however. First, the Florida House report noted that nearly 60% of the certificates contained information “recorded in a manner inconsistent with state and national guidance”. In addition, almost another 10% of the fatalities were among patients already in hospice! Do we really believe the deaths of all those patients whose diseases had reached such an advanced stage should be classified as C19 fatalities? And another 1-2% listed non-C19 conditions as the immediate and underlying causes.

Finally, more than 20% of the certificates listed C19 alone as a cause of death despite a range of other contributing conditions or co-morbidities. This in itself may have been prompted by the change in the CDC’s guidelines, as the normal standards often involve a “comorbidity” as the initial reason for hospitalization — in that case a clinical event ordinarily listed in Part 1. The high rate of errors and the fact that roughly two-thirds of the deaths reviewed occurred in the hospital, where patients are all tested and often multiple times, raises the specter that up to 20% more of the C19 deaths were either erroneous and/or misclassified due to false positives.

(An exception may have occurred in New York, where an order issued in March by Governor Andrew Cuomo to return C19-positive residents of nursing homes (including suspected C19 cases) back to those homes, The order was made before the change in CDC guidelines and wasn’t rescinded until later in April. There is reason to believe that some of the C19 deaths among nursing home residents in New York were undercounted.)

All told, in the Florida data we have potential misclassification of deaths of 9% + 9% + 2% + 20% = 40%, or inflation relative to actual C19 deaths of up to 40%/60% = 67%! I strongly doubt it’s that high, but I would not consider a range of 25% – 50% exaggeration to be unreasonable.

We know that reports of C19 deaths lag actual dates of death by anywhere from 1 to 8 weeks, sometimes even more. This is misleading when no effort is made to explain that difference, which I’ve never heard out of a single journalist. We also know that false positive tests inflate C19 deaths. The Florida report gives us a sense of how large that exaggeration might be. In addition, the Florida data show that the CDC guidelines inflate C19 deaths in other ways: as a mere contributing factor, it can now be listed as the cause of death, unlike the treatment of pneumonia as a contributing factor, for instance. The same kind of distortion occurs when patients contract C19 (or have a false positive test) while in hospice.

There is no doubt that C19 led to “excess deaths” relative to all-cause mortality. However, many of these fatalities are misclassified, and it’s likely that a large share were and are lockdown deaths as opposed to C19 deaths. That’s tragic. The CDC has done the country a massive disservice by creating “special rules” for attributing cause-of-death to C19. If reported C19 fatality rates reflected the same rules applied to other conditions, our approach to managing the pandemic surely would have inflicted far less damage to health and economic well being.

Fall Coronavirus Season

16 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by in Coronavirus, Pandemic, Uncategorized

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We’ve known for some times that COVID-19 (C19) follows seasonal patterns typical of the flu, though without the flu’s frequent antigenic drift. Now that we’re moving well into autumn, we’ve seen a surge in new C19 case counts in Europe and in a number of U.S. states, especially along the northern tier of the country.

The new case surge began in early to mid-September, depending on the state, and it’s been coincident with another surge in tests. From late July through early October, we had a near doubling in the number of tests per positive in the U.S. An increase in tests also accompanied the previous surge during the summer, which claimed far fewer lives than the initial wave in the early spring. In the summer, infections were much more prevalent among younger people than in the spring. Vitamin D levels were almost certainly higher during the summer months, our ability to treat the virus had also improved, and immunities imparted by prior infections left fewer susceptible individuals in the population. We have many of those advantages now, but D levels will fade as the fall progresses.

As for the new surge in cases, another qualification is that false positives are still a major testing problem; they inflate both case counts and C19-attributed deaths. In the absence of any improvement in test specificity, of which there is no evidence, the exaggeration caused by false positives grows larger as testing increases and positivity rates fall. So take all the numbers with that as a caveat.

How deadly will the virus be this fall? So far in Europe, the trends look very promising. Kyle Lamb provided the following charts from WHO on Twitter yesterday. (We should all be grateful that Twitter hasn’t censored Kyle yet, because he’s been a force in exposing alarmism in the mainstream media and among the public health establishment.) Take a look at these charts, and note particularly the lag between the first wave of infections and deaths, as well as the low counts of deaths now:

If the lag between diagnosis and death is similar now to the spring, Europe should have seen a strong upward trend in deaths by now, yet it’s hardly discernible in most of those countries. The fatality rates are low as well:

As Lamb notes, the IFRs in the last column look about like the flu, though again, the reporting of deaths and their causes are often subject to lags.

What about the U.S.? Nationwide, C19 cases and attributed death reports declined after July. See the chart below. More recently, reported deaths have stabilized at under 700 per day. Note again the relatively short lags between turns in cases and deaths in both the spring and summer waves.

Clearly, there has been no acceleration in C19 deaths corresponding to the recent trend in new cases. Northeastern states that had elevated death rates in the spring saw no resurgence in the summer; southern states that experienced a surge in the summer have now enjoyed taperings of both cases and deaths. But with each season, the virus seems to roll to regions that have been relatively unscathed to that point. Now, cases are surging in the upper Midwest and upper mountain states, though some of these states are lightly populated and their data are thin.

A few state charts are shown below, but trends in deaths are very difficult to tease out in some cases. First, here are new cases and reported deaths in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. There is a clear uptrend in cases in these states along with a very slight rise in deaths, but reported deaths are very low.

Next are Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. A slight uptrend in cases began as early as August. Idaho and Montana have had few deaths, so they are not plotted in the second chart. The Dakotas have had days with higher reported deaths, and while the data are thin and volatile, the visual impression is definitely of an uptrend in deaths.

The following states are somewhat more central in latitude: Colorado, Illinois, and Ohio. There is a slight upward trend in new cases, but not deaths. Illinois is experiencing its own second wave in cases.

Out of curiosity, I also plotted Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, all of which suffered in the first wave during the spring. They are now experiencing uptrends in cases, especially Massachusetts, but deaths have been restrained thus far.

The upshot is that states having little previous exposure to the virus are seeing an uptrend in deaths this fall. The same does not seem to be happening in states with significant prior exposure, at least not yet.

There are major questions about the reasons for the lingering death counts in the U.S.. But consider the following: first, the infection fatality rate (IFR) keeps falling, despite the stubborn level of daily reported deaths. Second, deaths reported have increasingly been pulled forward from deaths that actually occurred in the more distant past. This sort of “laundering” lends the appearance of greater persistence in deaths than is real. Third, again, false positives exaggerate not just cases, but also C19 deaths. Hospitals test everyone admitted, and patients who test positive for C19 are reimbursed at higher rates under the CARES Act; Medicare reimburses at a higher rates for C19 patients as well.

We’re definitely seeing a seasonal upswing in C19 infections in the US., now going on five weeks. In Europe, the surge in cases began slightly earlier. However, in both Europe and the U.S., these new cases have not yet been associated with a meaningful surge in deaths. The exceptions in the U.S. are the low-density upper mountain states, which have had little prior exposure to the virus. The lag between cases and deaths in the spring and summer was just two to three weeks, and while it’s too early to draw conclusions, the absence of a surge in deaths thus far bodes well for the IFR going forward. If we’re so fortunate, we can thank a combination of factors: a younger set of infecteds, earlier detection, better treatment and therapeutics, lower viral loads, and a subset of individuals who have already gained immunity.