By Lambert Strether.
Readers, the fundraiser for my very nearly gold retirement watch + all my Water Cooler work done in 2024 is ongoing. The goal is 400 donors; as of this writing, we have 275, or 68% of goal. Good progress! Thank you. I hope we can close this out Friday, tomorrow, my last day. Any amount helps! If you can give a little, give a little. If you can give a lot, give a lot! Thank you all so much! –lambert IMPORTANT Donors who have monthly subscriptions to Water Cooler in PayPal should cancel them next month, so you are not paying me for work I am no longer doing!
Bird Song of the Day
American Robin, 138 Captains Dr, West Babylon, Suffolk, New York, United States. “American Robin singing from the top of a building before dawn.” I’ve always wondered why Babylon and not, say, “Gomorrah.” Here is the story.
* * *
In Case You Might Miss…
Executive Order details DOGE’s Bolshevikl-style structure.
Cuomo floats Presidential trial balloon.
Employment figures warn of a souring economy.
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
* * *
Trump Administration
Caution, supergenius at work:
There is a shortage of top notch air traffic controllers. If you have retired, but are open to returning to work, please consider doing so.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 27, 2025
“Trump administration struggles to rehire fired bird flu employees” [Politico]. “The Trump administration touted a nearly $1 billion plan Wednesday to combat the spread of avian flu and mitigate skyrocketing egg prices as the outbreak rips through poultry flocks across the United States. But the measures come as the Agriculture Department is struggling to rehire key employees working on the virus outbreak who were fired as part of the administration’s sweeping purge of government workers. Roughly a quarter of employees in a critical office testing for the disease were cut, as well as scientists and inspectors. The dismissals have already helped trigger a partial shutdown at one of the department’s research facilities, according to two USDA employees, interrupting some workers’ efforts to fight bird flu and help livestock recover from illness. Now, agency officials are running into logistical challenges in reinstating its bird flu staff — and convincing them to return to jobs while the president repeatedly attempts to squeeze government workers.” • BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!! And now people are responding to high egg prices by raising backyard chickens. Nothing to worry abot there!
“Musk’s Ex-Twitter Workers Win Severance Over ‘Fork in the Road’ Email” [Bloomberg]. “Four ex-Twitter workers have prevailed in a recent series of closed-door arbitration proceedings over claims they were illegally denied severance, according to a memo seen by Bloomberg News. More than two years ago, Musk asked Twitter employees in an email with the subject line ‘A Fork in the Road’ to either commit to an ‘extremely hardcore’ work environment or leave the company. Musk’s cost-cutting strategies have been thrust into the national spotlight with a similar hardline approach to thin out the federal workforce — which included recently sending more than two million federal workers an email with the same “Fork in the Road” subject line. The email gave employees the option to resign but be paid through the end of September, while warning them of upcoming downsizing.
The email was sent as Musk began his new role spearheading a federal cost-cutting effort as a key adviser to the Department of Government Efficiency under President Donald Trump. At Twitter, now known as X, the four workers argued successfully that although they didn’t respond to the email, they did not resign and were instead terminated, meaning they were entitled to severance promised by the company before Musk bought it.The victories for the four employees haven’t previously been reported. The similar emails sent to federal workers are now the subject of several lawsuits. Musk and representatives of X didn’t respond to requests for comment.” • No doubt!
–>
DOGE
“IMPLEMENTING THE PRESIDENT’S “DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY” COST EFFICIENCY INITIATIVE” [The White House].
This is an implementation of the Bolshevik-style party structure parallel to govenment agencies we have previously seen. Nominally, the agency heads are in charge (see the highlights), but in practice that might change, if the “DOGEbag Team Lead” is a slithering weasel named “Big Bag,” whose trump card, at any show of resistance or disagreement, is “Do I need to call Elon?” The structure implies that the DOGE teams are there to help governement function better. That assumes facts not in evidence. And needless to say, this will need to be ripped out by the roots when DOGE’s time is up — if that ever happens — because otherwise we have a permanent change to the constitutiona order that nobody asked for or voted on.
* * *
Democrats en déshabillé
“Andrew Cuomo seen as possible White House candidate by some Democrats” [The Hill]. “Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) is days away from potentially entering the New York City mayor’s race. But even before Cuomo is set to make that announcement, some Democrats are already tossing around his name for a bigger race: the 2028 presidential campaign. Since their loss in November, Democrats have been anxious to find a voice not only to lead them out of the wilderness but also to stand up to President Trump and the slew of actions he’s taken in his second term. Cuomo, with his brash, in-your-face style, they say, could shape up to be a dark horse candidate in what is set to be a wide-open race.” • Cuomo never was held responsible for slaughtering thousands of elders in nursing homes during the first wave of Covid, so the only remaining problem is the sex scandal!
Syndemics
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
* * *
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Airborne Transmission
“An integrated airborne transmission risk assessment model for respiratory viruses: short- and long-range contributions” [Journal of the Royal Society]. From the Abstract: “This study presents an advanced airborne transmission risk assessment model that integrates both short- and long-range routes in the spread of respiratory viruses, building upon the CERN Airborne Model for Indoor Risk Assessment (CAiMIRA) and aligned with the new World Health Organization (WHO) terminology. Thanks to a two-stage exhaled jet approach, the model accurately simulates short-range exposures, thereby improving infection risk predictions across diverse indoor settings. Key findings reveal that in patient wards, the short-range viral dose is 10-fold higher than the long-range component, highlighting the critical role of close proximity interactions. Implementation of FFP2 respirators resulted in a remarkable 13-fold reduction in viral dose, underscoring the effectiveness of personal protective equipment (PPE). Additionally, the model demonstrated that an 8 h exposure in a poorly ventilated office can equate to the risk of a 15 min face-to-face, mask-less interaction, emphasizing the importance of physical distancing and source control.” • Worth a careful read. Commentary:
What this means, is that airborne disease transmission is exceedingly more complicated than what we can predict based solely on the Wells-Riley model. What is clever in the current work is that they are differentiating between short and long distance transmission.
This is key
— Al Haddrell (@ukhadds) February 26, 2025
In the Wells-Riley model, the main assumption was that the air within the room was well mixed. Obviously not so.
* * *
TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts
Wastewater
This week[1] CDC February 17
Last week[2] CDC (until next week):
Variants [3] CDC February 15
Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC February 15
Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data February 25:
National [6] CDC February 20:
Positivity
National[7] Walgreens February 24:
Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic February 15:
Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC February 3:
Variants[10] CDC February 3
Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 25:
Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 25:
LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) Down, nothing new at major hubs.
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.
[4] (ED) A little uptick.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Weird plateau without exponential growrht
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.
[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.
[8] (Cleveland)
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Uptick.
[10] (Travelers: Variants). Don’t know what the dominance of XEC is all about,
[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.
[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.
Stats Watch
Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “Initial jobless claims in the US soared by 22,000 from the previous week to 242,000 on the third week of February, the most in over two months and well above market expectations that they would remain stable at 221,000.” • I wonder why. ‘Tis a mystery!
GDP: “United States GDP Growth Rate” [Trading Economics]. “The US economy expanded an annualized 2.3% in Q4 2024, the slowest growth in three quarters, down from 3.1% in Q3 and in line with the advance estimate.”
Manufacturing: “United States Durable Goods Orders” [Trading Economics]. “New orders for manufactured durable goods in the US rose 3.1% month-over-month to $282.3 billion in January 2025, the most in six months and above market expectations of a 2% increase. It follows a downwardly revised 1.8% drop in December. The rebound was driven by transportation equipment, which surged 9.8%, particularly nondefense aircraft and parts (93.9%).”
Manufacturing: “United States Kansas Fed Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Kansas City Fed’s Manufacturing Production Index fell to -13 in February 2025, the lowest in five months. The declines were driven more by nondurable manufacturing, particularly food, chemical, and paper manufacturing.”
* * *
The Economy: “Economists are starting to worry about a serious Trump recession” [Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph]. “Donald Trump’s assault on the US federal government and the world’s interlinked manufacturing system have together reached an economic tipping point. ‘It seems almost unavoidable that we are headed for a deep, deep recession,” said Jesse Rothstein, Berkeley professor and former chief economist at the US labour department. Once the pace of job losses crosses a critical line, the multiplier effects can snowball suddenly. Prof Rothstein said monthly non-farm payrolls – the barometer of US economic health watched closely by markets – could turn viciously negative by late spring, contracting at rates surpassed only during the worst months of Covid and the Lehman crisis in 2008. ‘I think we’re going to see historically large drops. Losses of 400,000 a month are not implausible because people are getting nervous out there. It is not just the federal employees being fired: it’s all the other people worried they could be next, so they are cutting back too,’ he told The Telegraph. Torsten Slok, of Apollo Global, said layoffs could approach 1m after factoring in the likely chain reaction through contractors. ‘We are starting to worry about the downside risks to the economy and markets,’ he said. Mr Slok said it is a mystery as to why credit spreads and equities are still so well-behaved when the US Economic Policy Uncertainty Index was now higher than at any time during the great recession. Prof Rothstein said the damage would not show up immediately due to lag effects. The ugly months will be in April and May, but by then secondary shocks will have spread far and wide.”
Manufacturing: “Airbus has not taken full advantage of Boeing’s weakness” [The Economist]. “Even if Boeing can restore its reputation and ramp up production, Airbus will maintain its lead in narrow-body jets for some time. The American firm hopes to raise the rate of 737 max production to around 38 planes a month later this year. Airbus already makes around 50 a month of its competing a320 family, and hopes to increase that to around 75 by 2027. Yet both firms are weighed down by supply chains struggling to recover after severe cutbacks during the pandemic. And Airbus’s lead in narrow-body jets is not mirrored in wide-body ones. In 2024 Boeing delivered 83 twin-aisle planes, only six fewer than Airbus. The A220, a smaller passenger jet, remains unprofitable and A320 production hardly grew at all in 2024. Both firms may also be distracted by difficulties in other divisions. Boeing’s defence-and-space arm has lost money for three years. Airbus’s space business took charges of €1.3bn last year amid troubles at its satellite unit.
With the duopoly’s combined backlog now up to 14,000 orders, would-be competitors are looking to cut in. One is COMAC, China’s state-owned planemaker. Its C919 narrow-body jet will not constitute much of a threat for some time—just 30 deliveries are planned for 2025—but could eventually take market share in China and elsewhere. Rumours that Embraer, a Brazilian maker of smaller regional jets, is considering taking on the Airbus-Boeing duopoly are growing louder.” • Assuming the upper atmosphere remains stable, of course.
Tech: “Tracking You from a Thousand Miles Away! Turning a Bluetooth Device into an Apple AirTag Without Root Privileges” [nroottag]. “Apple’s Find My network, leveraging over a billion active Apple devices, is the world’s largest device-locating network. We investigate the potential misuse of this network to maliciously track Bluetooth devices. We present nRootTag, a novel attack method that transforms computers into trackable “AirTags” without requiring root privileges. The attack achieves a success rate of over 90% within minutes at a cost of only a few US dollars. Or, a rainbow table can be built to search keys instantly. Subsequently, it can locate a computer in minutes, posing a substantial risk to user privacy and safety. The attack is effective on Linux, Windows, and Android systems, and can be employed to track desktops, laptops, smartphones, and IoT devices. Our comprehensive evaluation demonstrates nRootTag’s effectiveness and efficiency across various scenarios.” • Yikes!
* * *
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 23 Extreme Fear (previous close: 22 Extreme Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 46 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 26 at 1:44:02 PM ET.
Musical Interlude
One reader asked for a railroad tune:
“I’d probably move it just a little farther down the line.”
Gallery
I wanted to make a joke about aptronyms and “Whistler,” but unfortunately this painting turns out to be by Turner:
William Turner : Rain, Steam and Speed (detail) pic.twitter.com/5ouX1rmNBr
— Olga Tuleninova 🦋 (@olgatuleninova) May 29, 2019
Class Warfare
“ILA Members Ratify 6-Year Contract with Accommodations for Technology” [Maritime Executive]. “The membership of the International Longshoremen’s’ Association officially ratified the new 6-year contract on Tuesday, February 25, bringing to close one of the most contentious contract negotiations in decades. The ILA is calling the new contract the ‘gold standard’ for dockworker unions globally while saying with the ratification there would be ‘labor peace’ and that the ILA would be working in partnership with USMX to help all ILA ports grow and flourish…. [ILA President Harold Daggett] is publicly declaring a key win saying it is the greatest contract in ILA history. He reports it provides ‘full protections against automation,’ without providing details on the contract terms. The ILA had firmly declared it would not accept automation or semi-automation for any port operations. In December 2024, then President-elect Donald Trump met with the union leaders. He also issued a strong statement against port automation.” • Hmm.
News of the Wired
“Winners of the $10,000 ISBN visualization bounty” [Anna’s Blog]. “Ultimately we wanted to answer the following questions: which books exist in the world, how many have we archived already, and which books should we focus on next? It’s great to see so many people care about these questions.” • Very neat, and also… books! On Anna’s Archive.
* * *
Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From AM:
AM writes: “Roses in July 2021 at a rental house in Devon, England.”
* * *
Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. Material here is Lambert’s, and does not express the views of the Naked Capitalism site. If you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for three or four days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:
Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated:
If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!
