tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63168610354800746682024-02-10T23:13:02.305-08:00A Guy About ClevelandA music crazed biologist's perspectives on life, love, and lossJeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.comBlogger146125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-12895446971803126722023-12-30T22:49:00.000-08:002023-12-30T22:49:15.181-08:00The Weather Station's Toronto residency: an emotional musical journey<p>When Erin and I walked into the Great Hall concert venue in Toronto on Monday, December 11 for the first night of a three night residency by Canadian indie folk/rock outfit the Weather Station, I was immediately struck by the familiarity of the room. But I didn't quite believe it at first - how had I not recognized the name of the venue when the concert was announced and when I bought tickets? Sitting in the balcony, the familiarity sunk in more and more and a quick Google search during intermission confirmed that just over ten years ago, in September 2013, I had attended one of the most memorable and powerful shows of my life, <a href="https://guyaboutcleveland.blogspot.com/2013/09/ohbijous-farewell-show.html">Ohbijou's farewell concert</a>, at this same venue.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkrTw30F5exqP-vISH381EpJvITo_xaCpwVHxPOnbMHje8jF1OUroNG_NgKL-yasfu6eVYBAo0_IxXbIZaTcuZvNPywmt303G0BRka9H94Jv60SQi119HkAcCQwwBFefN1IQ-WaV_x1hfPtAUon7VUQPW0y342uxcFOZf2YcAO4e8dlCuVrtXPO_E0Sy9y/s2578/great%20hall%201.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1906" data-original-width="2578" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkrTw30F5exqP-vISH381EpJvITo_xaCpwVHxPOnbMHje8jF1OUroNG_NgKL-yasfu6eVYBAo0_IxXbIZaTcuZvNPywmt303G0BRka9H94Jv60SQi119HkAcCQwwBFefN1IQ-WaV_x1hfPtAUon7VUQPW0y342uxcFOZf2YcAO4e8dlCuVrtXPO_E0Sy9y/w541-h400/great%20hall%201.jpg" width="541" /></a><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9UO7aeTYDP7zQqg5sYRYIkHyf0_aT6EnF2gQwQUGftXtHVVxpaT-vEvnja5keWC8xPSyQ4xfQcUEdk01qD_ypf84ETsM3hY4xMsNxaTPOTswg1UTrr9LHWa4A5Yob7aYYS5mx_76P6nAex45HeLbYsYTzOYwdmPD7ztuFU4ULyAvup1Fn4IndJzQDw__M/s2578/great%20hall%202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1968" data-original-width="2578" height="414" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9UO7aeTYDP7zQqg5sYRYIkHyf0_aT6EnF2gQwQUGftXtHVVxpaT-vEvnja5keWC8xPSyQ4xfQcUEdk01qD_ypf84ETsM3hY4xMsNxaTPOTswg1UTrr9LHWa4A5Yob7aYYS5mx_76P6nAex45HeLbYsYTzOYwdmPD7ztuFU4ULyAvup1Fn4IndJzQDw__M/w542-h414/great%20hall%202.jpg" width="542" /></a></div></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>The Great Hall viewed from the back balcony. Top: September 2013. Bottom: December 2023.<br /></i></div><p></p><p>The juxtaposition of events in my life that had been recent the first time I'd been at the Great Hall and recent events in my life now upon my second visit was utterly staggering. This juxtaposition added considerable emotional weight to what would already have been an emotional three nights of music. That's not what this post is about, though, so I won't go into it here, but as any post on my blog is in part a record of a moment in my life, I'd be remiss not to mention it.</p><p>Oddly enough, I see (from my last.fm history) that September 2013 was also when I first started listening to the music of Tamara Lindeman, aka the Weather Station. I was really only a casual fan, though, all the way up until 2021 when her brilliant album <i>Ignorance </i>took hold of me in a way few albums have. Since then, I've gained additional appreciation for her whole body of work, and when she announced earlier this year a three night Great Hall residency playing two different albums each night to chronicle her whole career to this point, I decided it was an event I didn't want to miss.</p><p>I'd never before seen an artist do anything like this. In being a whole career retrospective, the concept bears some similarity to the hot music event of this year, Taylor Swift's Eras tour (which Lindeman referenced at one point, saying that her and her band's costume changes were far less elaborate). Here, though, the Weather Station residency was a three night event, and each album was played in full (in contrast to Swift's epic one night shows containing selections from each album). I thought it sounded like such a cool idea, and it definitely lived up to my expectations! Seeing the evolution of Lindeman's work from sparse folk to richly orchestrated art-rock was a fantastic experience, and hearing her narrate this journey made the experience all the more compelling.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYoPePwnp1qMMRfZRs52TH1UT-vhBIAUunbZ1pTC9DTxH0DKJh5yf84lm8ij5XgONg4cE2gDrh_FBOFLNRGgyRYZ3VXLKh2GIqp7_P797RHfWZFhLrbkTGunXjFboDl-YUkRux9FwmQwaqqNhF-D7nB0me8YrlCR-LqEMohZ4A0GchvJv298vmWHPzqiU_/s3000/IMG_5635.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2086" data-original-width="3000" height="446" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYoPePwnp1qMMRfZRs52TH1UT-vhBIAUunbZ1pTC9DTxH0DKJh5yf84lm8ij5XgONg4cE2gDrh_FBOFLNRGgyRYZ3VXLKh2GIqp7_P797RHfWZFhLrbkTGunXjFboDl-YUkRux9FwmQwaqqNhF-D7nB0me8YrlCR-LqEMohZ4A0GchvJv298vmWHPzqiU_/w640-h446/IMG_5635.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p>Night one featured 2011 album <i>All of It Was Mine </i>and 2014 EP <i>What Am I Going to Do with Everything I Know. </i>(2009 Weather Station album <i>The Line </i>was not included and if I recall correctly Lindeman described <i>All of It Was Mine </i>as her debut album so I guess she must not consider <i>The Line </i>as essential to her career, but it's a really good listen too.) Although the three nights collectively covered her career in order, it was only night two's albums that were played in the order they were released. On each of the three nights it seemed the larger of the two releases got headline status; thus, on night one the EP was the first set and the earlier LP was played second.</p><p>Both <i>All of It Was Mine </i>and <i>What Am I Going to Do... </i>are made up of really pretty, sparsely instrumented folk music, Lindeman's distinctive voice and introspective, evocative lyrics complemented well by delicate acoustic guitar and banjo parts with occasional flourishes from other folk instruments and well-timed vocal harmonies. The intimate small venue setting with a crowd who were all there to enthusiastically listen to and appreciate the performance (no chatty concert crowd here, thank goodness!) was perfect for this gorgeous music. During the first set, Lindeman said that the six songs of the EP weren't enough for a full set and so she and her band included several unreleased songs from the same era, a welcome addition.</p><p>Unlike most shows I've seen where a band plays all the songs from an album, here the setlists did not follow the album tracklists. Often the tracks that might most be considered standouts were placed near the ends of sets. On <i>All of It Was Mine, </i>what I and I'd guess many other listeners would consider the most outstanding track is stunning album opener "Everything I Saw," which was pushed back in the setlist - but only by one song, to second. So when Lindeman stumbled over the banjo part and had to stop shortly into the song, she said it was a mistake to have put it so early! None of her albums since have had her playing such an intricate banjo part, so she'd been out of practice. She mentioned having considered the possibility of slowing the song down but that that wouldn't have felt right. After starting over, she played wonderfully, to the delight of the audience. It was a great, human moment that you can only get in a live concert setting.</p><p>I really loved every moment when Lindeman spoke about her songs, her feelings about her songs, the process behind the making of the songs, her life as it related to the songs, etc. Getting to hear these insights from a musician about their music that I love is always such a treat. During the <i>All of It Was Mine </i>set she mentioned that she considers "Traveller" one of the best songs she's written and I flashed back to seeing her live in 2021 and how emotional the performance of that song was. The lyrics paint an astoundingly good and heartrending picture of the moments in time in the aftermath of a loved one's death.</p><p>After the two sets comprising the songs from the two featured albums, each night also featured an encore. Night one's was highlighted by a rousing cover of recently deceased (at a tragically young age) Canadian folk artist Richard Laviolette's "Snuck Right Up."</p><p>Night two brought performances of 2015's <i>Loyalty </i>and 2017's <i>The Weather Station</i>. <i>Loyalty </i>was described by Lindeman as a transitional album, which can be seen in both the lyrics and the music, still mostly delicate folk music but starting to get bigger in sound compared to the previous night's albums. It was really interesting to me to hear her talk about how she looked back at the songs she'd written in the past and how she'd had a tendency to not express things as clearly or directly as she might later in her career. This is apparent to me, looking back over her albums - her lyrics have always been so thoughtful and so beautiful, but the lyrics of her most recent albums often have this wonderfully piercing quality where in the past the meanings of her words were often more obscured.</p><p>Before playing "Tapes," Lindeman explained that the song was about her finding and listening to tapes that someone close to her had made of himself singing while walking around the city, after he had passed away. And after hearing this explanation, the simple lyrics of the song, lyrics I'd not fully comprehended before, were just so powerful, and Lindeman's vocals as she "sang 'Oh'" were absolutely haunting. I got chills.<br /></p><p>The self-titled album that was the second to be performed on the second night is one of those albums where if you've listened to an artist's previous catalog and then you get to that album you think, <i>Whoa, where did <b>this </b>come from?? </i>The Weather Station's sound suddenly transforms from delicate, folksy singer-songwriter type stuff (albeit with more complexity than that phrasing implies) to big, full band alt-country stylings and some of the songs actually <i>rock </i>in a way that was barely hinted at on the previous three records. "Thirty" in particular is such a great song and it was fittingly saved for last before the encore, moved back from its also very fitting track two position on the recorded album. <br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5dk3bxD1gKq-5sYLMphEkRPNW6aS4eKf4FX9Bxsqen4gRDRynRvovK8AKhUMuPCZZTfdRFZE26DkFf3FZC73QgFoqjW88QNgQl3Jhsn3C_H61g_GD9utgo4N9-X80H1JDqzzAqh5oupjgZZ4OeFzSFuGtc_5I_nnqlbmw07rwKrgfQcatdrwpF9mws1lC/s3200/IMG_5657.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2133" data-original-width="3200" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5dk3bxD1gKq-5sYLMphEkRPNW6aS4eKf4FX9Bxsqen4gRDRynRvovK8AKhUMuPCZZTfdRFZE26DkFf3FZC73QgFoqjW88QNgQl3Jhsn3C_H61g_GD9utgo4N9-X80H1JDqzzAqh5oupjgZZ4OeFzSFuGtc_5I_nnqlbmw07rwKrgfQcatdrwpF9mws1lC/w640-h426/IMG_5657.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <p></p><p>Another highlight of<i> </i>the set was Lindeman's musings about the song "Power" - how she'd looked back at her old lyrics and felt she mostly still agreed with things she'd said in the past but on this song she'd felt repulsed by her expressing a desire for <i>power</i>. Because wanting <i>power </i>over other people is a fucked up thing, she said. But then she'd thought about it more in the context of the full lyrics and had realized that when she'd said she wanted power, what she had really been hoping for was to simply have respect. (Like Aretha Franklin, she said!) And thus she was able to make peace with herself about her old song.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO6lP65POsI94xYzU-_KAHSWUMCQ4rkF_C-bPjTKDGppkZtAaqko588rf3IH6nr-ywLuW3tx7GlJbVvuvcfbNxT3ZN3oXGfKXftHhUgaLnGc22Op6ziYbBl98XjE-yaL-_4mly1-KzfBn_dmsT3b8FKEb5G2QF1I0qjN9SCE1MgW_cPWzNPhT1GkGbtwZo/s3200/IMG_5658.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2254" data-original-width="3200" height="450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO6lP65POsI94xYzU-_KAHSWUMCQ4rkF_C-bPjTKDGppkZtAaqko588rf3IH6nr-ywLuW3tx7GlJbVvuvcfbNxT3ZN3oXGfKXftHhUgaLnGc22Op6ziYbBl98XjE-yaL-_4mly1-KzfBn_dmsT3b8FKEb5G2QF1I0qjN9SCE1MgW_cPWzNPhT1GkGbtwZo/w640-h450/IMG_5658.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <p></p><p>At times, it felt like the performance was a kind of therapy session for Lindeman - and I mean this in the absolute best way! It was a joy to watch and listen to her work her way through all those years of her life via her music.</p><p>Night three was the night I'd been most anticipating, featuring 2021's <i>Ignorance</i>, one of my favorite albums of all time, and 2022's <i>How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars</i>, something of a companion album to <i>Ignorance. </i>What I said about the self-titled being an album that makes you think, <i>Whoa, where did <b>this </b>come from?? </i>That applies doubly to <i>Ignorance</i>, an album that I never would have imagined Lindeman making based on her previous body of work. It's recognizably a Weather Station album with Lindeman's voice and lyrics and strong sense of melody, but the lush orchestration and complex, jazzy arrangements and the intense, propulsive (two drummers for this live performance!) rock sound are so unlike any of her previous records. And it all works <i>so </i>well.</p><p><i>How Is It... </i>then took things in yet another totally new direction sonically as an album of piano ballads, thematically related to the songs on <i>Ignorance </i>and written at the same time but very different in sound. And stunning in its own way, more than I would have imagined an album of piano ballads could be. The songs took more time to grow on me than those of <i>Ignorance </i>but grow on me they did, with a couple that I'd consider among Lindeman's finest work. This beautifully understated set of songs made up the first part of night three's show and the intimate setting was perfect for experiencing the first ever live performance of most of them.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiGsOKzMlDG60J1OM-uph9lHou-hCoCfMucKPAnIrGtV0D1PLVRj8HxhSSgJgDOoENbgtZGmEjL19gXTSvN0pnxUGd5EE1HgNNT676yfLeBfUPtCqa7mk2-jMxIKY8nOWf_aDmpE9O8iVB-e5KVoRRc1CKDReaQj72I92HknoJF254jFWZQuUj_pFK-vOS/s3000/IMG_5669.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2118" data-original-width="3000" height="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiGsOKzMlDG60J1OM-uph9lHou-hCoCfMucKPAnIrGtV0D1PLVRj8HxhSSgJgDOoENbgtZGmEjL19gXTSvN0pnxUGd5EE1HgNNT676yfLeBfUPtCqa7mk2-jMxIKY8nOWf_aDmpE9O8iVB-e5KVoRRc1CKDReaQj72I92HknoJF254jFWZQuUj_pFK-vOS/w640-h452/IMG_5669.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <p></p><p>I do vividly remember seeing my favorite song from the album, "Stars," from which the album's title comes, performed live in 2021. At the time, I'd never heard the song before. I was instantly captivated by it and hoped fervently that it would be released on an album in the future. During the performance of the song at the Great Hall, Lindeman had to stop partway through to drink some water (all the singing and talking had done a number on her voice, apparently). She took the opportunity to tell the story of the song, of how when she was a child, her mother always took her out to see the Perseids meteor shower every August, and how she'd been so awed by the beauty, but now it was hard for her to appreciate that beauty because it made her think of all the beauty on <i>our </i>unique and wonderful planet and the devastation the human race is wreaking upon it.</p><p>"But how should I look at the stars tonight?/At a million suns? None of them mine/Nowhere up there is a place like this/Not one waterfall, no river mist" is, to me, just such a beautiful expression of this sentiment.</p><p>It was fitting, Lindeman said, that the night of the show was the night of the Geminids meteor shower. As someone who has loved watching meteor showers since childhood, I especially enjoyed hearing this backstory. The song plus Lindeman's narration of it did get the tear ducts going a bit, I have to say.</p><p>Unlike the five previous sets, the performance of the songs from <i>Ignorance </i>went straight through with no narration from Lindeman, just a high energy rock set of great song after great song. I got the sense that the albums that were further back in time gave Lindeman more to talk about because she was revisiting her past in rehearsing and playing them, whereas this was not so much the case with <i>Ignorance</i>.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcak6M2l6Yw0jOyT4tQkcwx7FkmwNzp1Zuee7_kOHnGz9HzisONXgQB7J0xYmSBeM3ogCVwtnMr-pqncYCh1jmsflEvmDdNHDF3_6-Q3yoIjJ3h3_nJtuqyNDvETXIE-b1KM-Od2F0FlFVsAQlQHVZiDV_V0TRH8HDQRHWUt_JTuZFULCxNKqj5HBkhOGU/s3200/IMG_5693.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2133" data-original-width="3200" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcak6M2l6Yw0jOyT4tQkcwx7FkmwNzp1Zuee7_kOHnGz9HzisONXgQB7J0xYmSBeM3ogCVwtnMr-pqncYCh1jmsflEvmDdNHDF3_6-Q3yoIjJ3h3_nJtuqyNDvETXIE-b1KM-Od2F0FlFVsAQlQHVZiDV_V0TRH8HDQRHWUt_JTuZFULCxNKqj5HBkhOGU/w640-h426/IMG_5693.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p>Lindeman's band (with some repeat and some different members across the various albums) was great throughout the residency but especially got to strut their stuff on this last set. A sax solo on one song brought the crowd to raucous applause.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcIQfbP7Hmh3m6nykdOOJPyZ9QFe0h1STggu6nJMwbKve8yXLHWzNvxjSDQ9yQrrToPdzM2VTDtKK4fyzcqlaVBHlgiZtckoT_b1S2zss7hc-2gW0CDLOigzbNP-TOt5-QW7_eZ2e7_n1uh4x6HrVwzdflPwer_DVDOXQJ59_F1nEOHHFIcmHCv88thOg2/s3200/IMG_5704.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2342" data-original-width="3200" height="468" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcIQfbP7Hmh3m6nykdOOJPyZ9QFe0h1STggu6nJMwbKve8yXLHWzNvxjSDQ9yQrrToPdzM2VTDtKK4fyzcqlaVBHlgiZtckoT_b1S2zss7hc-2gW0CDLOigzbNP-TOt5-QW7_eZ2e7_n1uh4x6HrVwzdflPwer_DVDOXQJ59_F1nEOHHFIcmHCv88thOg2/w640-h468/IMG_5704.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <p></p><p>I've already written a lot about <i>Ignorance </i>on my blog so suffice to say, the live performance easily lived up to my high expectations. A rousing encore rendition of "Better Now" from <i>Ignorance</i>'s deluxe version (amusingly introduced by Lindeman as hopefully the last song she'll write about writing songs, something she's done a lot but that she does really well so I don't mind!) was a fitting conclusion to the three nights of music.</p><p>At the end of the performance, Lindeman remarked that after playing through those 60+ songs over the course of three nights, she felt in a way complete. It was a really touching statement. A reminder of the powerful way that music accompanies us on the journey of life. Lindeman was grateful we the audience had joined her on that journey. I'm grateful she gave us the opportunity, and I'd love it if other favorite artists of mine would do similar career-spanning performances. It really was a magical experience.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXptJ0q6RS3aLpN4xqVysJkNrdfhXVcSZKrCqh2y-x5-ZpBZxNHSfYYLklMSsQdvSqc5WtoO9iN1islYIOhHTO_vDil21ZJV9vVCXpflANR9QrRcYVnIFuziFCwRy-psSe5pE11_GQLyvvLyw8K3rLFwVgl2Fn4svqbP4_yVX2i7_sDOyaj06Cc0aRdXAu/s3200/IMG_5711.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2341" data-original-width="3200" height="468" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXptJ0q6RS3aLpN4xqVysJkNrdfhXVcSZKrCqh2y-x5-ZpBZxNHSfYYLklMSsQdvSqc5WtoO9iN1islYIOhHTO_vDil21ZJV9vVCXpflANR9QrRcYVnIFuziFCwRy-psSe5pE11_GQLyvvLyw8K3rLFwVgl2Fn4svqbP4_yVX2i7_sDOyaj06Cc0aRdXAu/w640-h468/IMG_5711.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-53205861036840984282023-10-01T20:28:00.000-07:002023-10-01T20:28:01.142-07:00boygenius, Bartees, bikes<p>I've been to hundreds of concerts in my life. Just about any time I get to witness a musician I really like performing live, it's a special experience, but after so many years and so many shows, it's rare that I come away from a concert thinking that it was truly unlike anything I'd ever previously seen. The boygenius show at Riis Park in Chicago on June 24 was one of those rare occasions. How so? I'll get to that in a bit.<br /></p><p>I first became aware of the indie rock supergroup, made up of the trio of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus, after they released their debut self-titled EP in 2018. I was already a huge fan of Julien Baker and had been ever since I went to see Daughter at Mr. Smalls near Pittsburgh in the summer of 2016 and this tiny young woman I'd never heard of before took the stage to open the night and proceeded to blow me away with her powerful voice and haunting melodies and lyrics. Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, however, had flown under my radar until 2018. In October of that year Dacus happened to headline Studio-a-rama, the annual festival put on by WRUW, the radio station of my alma mater and now employer Case Western Reserve University. I went and really enjoyed her performance. I remember seeing news about boygenius and how the trio were touring together the next month, each playing solo sets and also playing the songs from their EP together. The nearest show to me was in Detroit; unfortunately I hadn't yet gotten around to listening to Bridgers or boygenius and therefore didn't consider it worth the trip. That's something I've regretted for a long time and now regret even more.</p><p>That winter I have two specific memories of hearing specific songs on the radio in my car. The first was "Funeral" by Bridgers. I remember that I was driving to Ray's Indoor Bike Park after work and that this song came on the radio and I was just so stunned by the sad beauty of it. The second was "Me and My Dog," a standout boygenius track that I remember hearing while in the parking garage at work and staying in my car until the song ended. I quickly recognized the voice of Bridgers as the same voice that had captivated me on "Funeral." Right away I had to look up the band and I soon got their EP and fell in love with it.</p><p>Ever since, I'd hoped the band would release more material and tour again. A tantalizing hint at the possibility happened when Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus each released fantastic albums in the 2020-`21 pandemic era and each of the albums included a song on which all three boygenius members contributed vocals. The songs, it was revealed, had all been recorded on the same day. It was some time longer, though, before the March 2023 release of <i>the record </i>was announced, instantly launching the debut boygenius full-length and the tour that would come with it to the top of my anticipated music events list for the year.</p><p>Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus are all amazing solo artists. (Especially Baker, to me, but I'd respect any ranking or lack thereof.) The three of them together, though? They're just something else. The more I listen to <i>the record </i>the more I love it. So I couldn't wait to finally see the three of them together live (having already seen Baker five times, Dacus twice, and Bridgers once). The initial announcement of boygenius shows for 2023 came as part of the Re:SET concert series, an odd sort-of festival series that was "conceived as an artist and fan friendly alternative to the standard summer concert experience" according to the promoters. Each weekend of June saw three four-artist lineups rotating between three cities in a region across the three days. Boygenius headlined at shows also featuring Clairo, Dijon, and Bartees Strange, and I decided that traveling to Chicago to see them on Saturday the 24th was more appealing than going to Columbus on Friday the 23rd despite being a farther trip, so Erin and I made the drive from Cleveland after work on the 23rd and checked in late to an Airbnb in the Logan Square area.</p><p>The most notable aspect of our trip, other than the concert itself, was that we took our bicycles with us and made great use of them while in Chicago. The concert started in the late afternoon of the Saturday so earlier in the day we headed out on our bikes to explore. The Airbnb was very conveniently located right next to the Bloomingdale Trail, an elevated multi-use trail running for several miles above the streets of Chicago on what used to be a rail line. Riding on this trail was a revelation. Being able to ride a bike through a city, on an elevated path and therefore able to cross over streets without having to worry about cars or stopping at traffic lights, was amazing - I wish there could be trails like this everywhere!</p><p>After reaching the end of the trail we continued along surface roads to Lake Michigan. There were bike lanes nearly the whole way and we soon found ourselves in a sort of impromptu convoy of cyclists, which was another very fun experience. There's just something about being on a bike. When you're driving a car on a city street and a lot of other cars are going the same way, you get annoyed because the other cars are slowing you down and getting in your way. On a bicycle it's the opposite - the other cyclists aren't obstacles or enemies but allies and comrades and there's a sense of joy at using your own legs to propel yourselves through the city, feeling the wind on your face, and being around other people doing the same thing. In the last year I've come to appreciate much more the pleasures of just being on a bicycle. It used to be I tried to ride fast on almost all my bike rides. That's currently not something that would be healthy for me, which I'm definitely not happy about, but I think this experience has helped me see cycling at a moderate pace in a new light. Cycling is just such a wonderful mode of transportation whether you're going close to 20 miles per hour (like I almost always tried to do in the past) or little more than half that speed. It's been great, with Erin, to go on adventures where we can explore places together on our bikes.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJJTNjSPG6wSCpbLa4yRMLsoxeNDPeddbQQIv2Buhsk_Zdhh5d8LMZJ24fIzPpK7Nn8yKHaGAoGWUy6IBySje3pEc5kwLGIFcNfcx9VcY4bqeqt2ZkB2FF_B6Jz2XUnAnN5MDnrHdJSxuMmhW0lHZuQVKv61hRcVZRkBlMFE-2xrwbCwUqofmN7YL_LZfH/s4608/IMG_20230624_143156206.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJJTNjSPG6wSCpbLa4yRMLsoxeNDPeddbQQIv2Buhsk_Zdhh5d8LMZJ24fIzPpK7Nn8yKHaGAoGWUy6IBySje3pEc5kwLGIFcNfcx9VcY4bqeqt2ZkB2FF_B6Jz2XUnAnN5MDnrHdJSxuMmhW0lHZuQVKv61hRcVZRkBlMFE-2xrwbCwUqofmN7YL_LZfH/w640-h480/IMG_20230624_143156206.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <p></p><p>We checked out the lakefront a bit and then headed back to the Airbnb to get ready for the concert - which we also rode bikes to (about 4.5 miles each way, partly on the aforementioned Bloomingdale Trail and mostly on bike lanes thereafter). On the way, we purchased large bottles of water in preparation for the frankly infuriating show policy that each guest could bring one sealed bottle of water <i>and no refill stations were available</i>. This was a terrible decision for a long, hot day, and predictably at least three concertgoers needed medical attention during the boygenius set after passing out. All in all, I can't say I have much if any praise for the Re:SET organizers, but the musicians made attending the event more than worth it.</p><p>We entered the festival grounds, a large grassy field with a few trees here and there, a stage at one end, and various booths around most of the sides, to find the completely unshaded pit area already packed. We had no interest in standing in the sweltering heat of the sun for hours so we found a spot near a large tree where some others had already gathered. I had seen headlining shows by each of Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus in the fall of 2021. All were great, but I enjoyed the Bridgers show at a large outdoor venue less than the Baker and Dacus shows in more intimate settings. This was partly because of being much more removed from the action and partly because some members of the Bridgers audience were annoyingly chatty. Although I was very hyped to see boygenius, I was worried that similarly annoying audience members might dampen the experience. I'd read complaints on a boygenius Facebook group about poorly behaved audiences with people theorizing that Gen Z kids never learned concert etiquette because of the pandemic.</p><p>The first act of the day was Bartees Strange, who I'd previously seen open for Dacus. The crowd was indeed quite chatty during his performance, although that's never been uncommon for openers at large shows. It was too bad, because he put on a great set which I did still enjoy a lot. I hadn't listened to his latest album so almost all the songs were unfamiliar to me, but I really liked what I heard. The highlight, though, was an excellent cover of a song I do know well, "About Today" by the National.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSINjZk_-9VTUZ9c7yjtderd0U_sei0nsC9Bvb3sJloBmt2loM64_qSt-OzWl851hhVJMOB3LZhOBwR6BObCZtsy9xLfxlXQlrFgurZEgxnbkKUrB7MxuyQXLiAYYlmt7xQn_zZTMos7fdyacs7AySQA3enFjnRkKazrxWhbZRuqIa2WqGvz-iJmJDdZA9/s4608/IMG_20230624_163605245.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSINjZk_-9VTUZ9c7yjtderd0U_sei0nsC9Bvb3sJloBmt2loM64_qSt-OzWl851hhVJMOB3LZhOBwR6BObCZtsy9xLfxlXQlrFgurZEgxnbkKUrB7MxuyQXLiAYYlmt7xQn_zZTMos7fdyacs7AySQA3enFjnRkKazrxWhbZRuqIa2WqGvz-iJmJDdZA9/w640-h480/IMG_20230624_163605245.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <p></p><p>Next up was Dijon, an artist who I knew basically nothing about before the show. I feel this was a mistake on my part - he was fantastic! His music had some great grooves and I really dug the interesting soundscapes created by his band, with the unexpected combo of synths and slide guitar meshing nicely. Unfortunately much of the crowd again didn't seem very appreciative and chatted through his set.</p><p>I guess the next artist Clairo has garnered a good following among the Gen Z set because the crowd quieted down considerably for her performance. She was also very good, with some nice retro vibes to her indie pop/rock songs. Although I question a lot of the show organizers' decisions, they did well in putting a good lineup together.</p><p>The first three artists were all good, but boygenius were who we'd all been waiting to see. It was great fun for Erin and me to just observe all the diehard fans filling the venue. Most of them were much younger than us, and many had dressed for the occasion, some in boygenius-related costumes or homemade shirts with favorite lyrics like "Not Strong Enough" or "Always an Angel, Never a God" emblazoned across them. Another fun sighting was a little group of friends made up of male/female couples, the guys wearing shirts that said "boy" and the girls wearing shirts that said "genius." There was the sense that this wasn't just a show. It was an Event. It was probably a landmark moment in a lot of those kids' lives. And heck, by the end of the night I came away thinking it was a landmark moment in my life too.</p><p>What made this show unique among all the shows I've ever seen in my life? Boygenius are very early in their career as a band - they've released one EP and one LP. Therefore, a boygenius setlist could contain every song they've ever released (although at this show "Bite the Hand" was omitted in favor of new, unreleased track "Boyfriends"). I've seen shows like that before, but they've always been in fairly small venues. I'd never seen a band play almost their entire catalog in front of a crowd nearly this <i>huge </i>and when it comes to the type of music I generally listen to, that's something that basically never happens. It requires a band to dramatically explode in popularity in a way and to an order of magnitude that just doesn't tend to happen for an indie band that's only released one album. And clearly boygenius being a supergroup with one member, Bridgers, having previously shot to stardom is a unique factor here, but there was something else about this show, something that wasn't present when I saw Bridgers play in 2021.<br /><br />The crowd for the Phoebe Bridgers show was definitely full of huge Phoebe Bridgers fans, but there were also a lot of kids who seemed to be there to hang out with their friends and as a result the crowd was, as I mentioned before, annoyingly chatty at times. This crowd was different. In this crowd, it seemed, <i>everyone </i>was a huge boygenius fan. And not just a huge fan. A lot of these kids <i>worship </i>boygenius. Which made the show something like a religious experience. And like a good religious experience, the proceedings truly held the rapt attention of everyone present. After grumbling about chatty audiences and other irritating audience behavior at most other large shows I've attended recently, I think back to that boygenius show and marvel more and more at the fact that at no point during boygenius's set did anyone in range of my ears do or say anything to detract from everyone's enjoyment of the beautiful music coming from the stage.</p><p></p><p>To summarize what made this show so unique and special in my concertgoing experience: it's the only time I've ever seen a band I love (or any band, for that matter) play very nearly every song they've ever released in front of a crowd of thousands of people. And to make it even more special, it seemed most everyone there was just as captivated by the music as I was.<br /><br />It truly is a magical experience when you're at a great concert in a crowd of people who are all there <i>for the music, </i>and the music (perhaps with audience members joining in) is the only sound entering your ears. It's like being under a wonderful spell. A spell that can sadly be broken by a single inconsiderate jerk, which is maybe why it's so much rarer to experience at really big shows. And this was a crowd of mostly Gen Z kids who, as mentioned before, probably had their social development hindered by a pandemic. Just for being able to so fully command their attention, boygenius deserve enormous praise.<br /><br />"The boys," as fans like to call the trio, were appropriately introduced by "The Boys Are Back In Town" playing over the speakers, then kicked off their set backstage, with live video projected on a large screen behind the stage, the three of them huddled together and serenading the crowd with the beautiful harmonies of <i>the record</i>'s opening track "Without You Without Them." Then they took the stage to raucous applause and proceeded to play one of the best series of 20 songs that I've ever seen live. I realized during the show that not only do boygenius have no bad songs, they also have no songs that are merely "good" - <i>every song </i>on both their EP and their LP falls somewhere on the continuum from great to superlative.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG3FENAXE_P_El6UYXYkSnezswjeQpUTANY_FZ6RfCMFt2FeFI1pIvzH1CTs987cnD7RNXjxVu-goDFu_hw_qELTTlWynLAhugQemaSvfSg4Xt-aLdNkRC0o79P7ywZn-PSkJwVXyHe3avZQ6ISeQ7MfdNUKLbFjl6f0LHrqvbl8UHU9IVK-fJOb0ynocW/s2354/IMG_20230624_205219445~2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2354" data-original-width="1916" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG3FENAXE_P_El6UYXYkSnezswjeQpUTANY_FZ6RfCMFt2FeFI1pIvzH1CTs987cnD7RNXjxVu-goDFu_hw_qELTTlWynLAhugQemaSvfSg4Xt-aLdNkRC0o79P7ywZn-PSkJwVXyHe3avZQ6ISeQ7MfdNUKLbFjl6f0LHrqvbl8UHU9IVK-fJOb0ynocW/w520-h640/IMG_20230624_205219445~2.jpg" width="520" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This is a band that truly is more than the sum of its parts, and that's saying a lot because "the sum of its parts" would already be pretty damn good. Listening to boygenius truly does feel like taking the best parts of what makes each of these three young women's music so great and mixing them together in the most perfect way. What makes seeing them live even more special is how clear it is that not only do they meld so well as musicians, they do so perhaps even more <i>as human beings</i>. The friendship the three clearly have with each other is a beautiful thing. They seem so much happier on stage together than they do when performing as individuals. The sheer joy emanating from Baker in particular is delightful to behold. That friendship is a theme that comes across clearly on <i>the record </i>and its accompanying music videos. Although each of the three is known for making "sad music," when they join forces their output is, at times, downright uplifting. With a healthy dose of sadness still there for good measure, but that makes the uplifting parts extra cathartic.<br /><br />Nearly every part of the concert could be described as a highlight, but one of the biggest highlights was when that trio of songs from their most recent albums - Dacus's "Please Stay" (the one song during the set that got me to "cry with the teenagers," to quote an iconic boygenius lyric), Baker's "Favor," and Bridgers's "Dreamland Too" - was played in order. Each of the songs is just stunningly beautiful. The lyrics, the music, the incredible harmonies. And the way the songs go together, the progression from the devastating "Please Stay" to the hopeful "Dreamland Too," it was all just sublime and gave me chills.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx0UPymrmsTxj8lh1hl95tVMIAD2K-dXLgs-lqnKImvyeNdT-Cl8Y5eiFtgPFVRcL_A88WTkew-rexWJdsxZym0h6Wo-UDa4gskHBBNU_2fpShnNFza6kJRsdc-GJN28jj3JvCcnzbmJwnGqkdhplehJIhm7KbSHuTsZ55lcJjnsLKHJfEWqCg0g5GbK7n/s1425/IMG_20230624_210225514~2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="1425" height="614" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx0UPymrmsTxj8lh1hl95tVMIAD2K-dXLgs-lqnKImvyeNdT-Cl8Y5eiFtgPFVRcL_A88WTkew-rexWJdsxZym0h6Wo-UDa4gskHBBNU_2fpShnNFza6kJRsdc-GJN28jj3JvCcnzbmJwnGqkdhplehJIhm7KbSHuTsZ55lcJjnsLKHJfEWqCg0g5GbK7n/w640-h614/IMG_20230624_210225514~2.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br />The main set concluded, not surprisingly, with "Not Strong Enough." "Not Strong Enough" is my favorite boygenius song, my favorite song of 2023, and perhaps my favorite song in quite a bit longer than that. Also, the moment where the repeated "Always an angel, never a god" harmonies of the bridge build to a raw scream and then Dacus's voice comes in above it with an exuberantly sung "I don't know why I am, the way I am" has to be one of my favorite <i>moments </i>in a song ever.<br /><br />It's a song that for much of this year has felt like my theme song, with that "I don't know why I am the way I am" chorus and me wondering why <i>I </i>am the way I am and trying to stop myself from "<span>spinning out about things that haven't happened." And then I think, that must be a challenge for most of the young people who have come of age during the last few years. No wonder boygenius have such a hold over that demographic. They're a band truly fit for this moment in time - and yet also somehow timeless.<br /><br />Being in a huge crowd of people all joyfully singing along to this anthem was one of those moments that makes one really feel alive. I think that's the best way to summarize the feeling.<br /><br />After a two song encore, the show was over, and it started to sink in that I really had just experienced something unlike any concert I'd attended in my life, and also that it was one of the best concerts I'd ever seen. With that realization, I told Erin that I needed to buy a shirt to commemorate the experience, and I did, and then we joined the throng of exhilarated concertgoers exiting the festival grounds and made our way back to our bikes. As we rode in the direction of the Airbnb (in fact, a little ways beyond it at first for a late night drink at a cocktail bar), it struck me that here Erin and I were, riding our bikes through the streets of Chicago at night after having attended such a monumental show, and this, I thought, was one of the coolest experiences I'd ever had.</span></p><p><span></span></p><p><span>The next day brought more bike riding and sightseeing along Chicago's lakefront before we headed home. It was a wonderful weekend.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig8zVdsimlTh51_jkvEH02SO1QyYxpTFMjSRMkdnUipyLljSSoYd8rkBSiJpRM6UjpZVrT_1WUQQiUKTrmSoVcQv9TWF0rgI1mQSVDpe9BxlG_TqLSKOq627k5BAPwdh5kXm0ALGxE4J0nw_6qJ941eNvryTiUzbfV7vbh_4bUbjEnoC0srm9Ulgv_n98p/s2304/IMG_20230625_122011520_HDR.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1728" data-original-width="2304" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig8zVdsimlTh51_jkvEH02SO1QyYxpTFMjSRMkdnUipyLljSSoYd8rkBSiJpRM6UjpZVrT_1WUQQiUKTrmSoVcQv9TWF0rgI1mQSVDpe9BxlG_TqLSKOq627k5BAPwdh5kXm0ALGxE4J0nw_6qJ941eNvryTiUzbfV7vbh_4bUbjEnoC0srm9Ulgv_n98p/w640-h480/IMG_20230625_122011520_HDR.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><span><br />I started writing this post almost two months ago. It's been an extremely busy time in our lives. I have another post that I started much, much longer ago and still have to finish. In the time between my starting this post and now, Erin and I went to another music festival for which we also stayed at an Airbnb and rode bikes to the show (and also another festival at which Bartees Strange played), the National's Homecoming in Cincinnati, and it was also great. </span><span>Live music and bicycling are two of my favorite things in the
world. Combining the two? Well, that's hard to beat. And how great to
have someone to do that with me.</span></p>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-90384110521043322562023-01-08T10:50:00.000-08:002023-01-08T10:50:33.704-08:00We are the only friends we have<p>There was a point in time, fifteen years ago, when there was no band I had seen live more times than Piebald.</p><p>This is funny, because the first time I went to see Piebald live, my liking of their music was really a secondary reason for me going.</p><p>That show happened in October 2005, and was not only the first time I saw Piebald, but also the first time I went to the Grog Shop in Cleveland Heights (the Cleveland suburb where I now live), one of my favorite music venues and one where I've seen so many fantastic shows over the years. The main reason that I went to that show was that I secretly hoped to get inside info about the rumors on the Internet that my favorite band Ozma would be reuniting, and I knew that members of Piebald and Ozma were friends with each other. I hardly knew any of Piebald's music at the time, just a few songs I'd downloaded from their website.</p><p>I went to the show wearing an Ozma t-shirt, which did indeed lead to me getting inside info, as more than one member of Piebald complimented my shirt and then told me about Ozma's plans to reunite, information that thrilled me to a fairly ridiculous degree. But the show itself was also a revelation. I hadn't been to a whole lot of concerts yet at that point in my life, and I don't know if there had been any that were just as much pure <i>fun </i>as that one. I vividly remember standing in front of the stage by the large speaker at the right side of the room and enthusiastically banging my head to the heavy guitar chords of Piebald's emo-tinged rock music.</p><p>After the show, I was hanging out by the bar with a couple friends and a Grog Shop employee asked if we'd like a promotional poster from the show. I gladly took one, a memento of a very memorable night, and 17 years later it's hanging in my bedroom.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU7sOCBIRVHyAajWkwIhDz8Mj_u0gAlMaUYMtXt0wfkyioPIWeFWo3sKm2f--K_eLSR2bfdUthW6xRYria9PiUyHWNENHZWCFzZw0EKt6k3FKJJEx6MygwYvZbKyGi7DfQ8m1gNaG6ZG3O-HgHRIdsz5s5TaBMV1iW7rN5i2Z2lsO89URN1X7bB726mw/s4608/IMG_20230108_125432313.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4608" data-original-width="3456" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU7sOCBIRVHyAajWkwIhDz8Mj_u0gAlMaUYMtXt0wfkyioPIWeFWo3sKm2f--K_eLSR2bfdUthW6xRYria9PiUyHWNENHZWCFzZw0EKt6k3FKJJEx6MygwYvZbKyGi7DfQ8m1gNaG6ZG3O-HgHRIdsz5s5TaBMV1iW7rN5i2Z2lsO89URN1X7bB726mw/w480-h640/IMG_20230108_125432313.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br /><p>I saw Piebald twice more at the Grog Shop before, in 2007, they announced they were breaking up, and so I saw them one last time at the Agora, bringing my total number of Piebald shows to four. There they were one of the opening acts for the Format, a band I wasn't particularly into, and I didn't stay until the end of the show. The Piebald set was very fun, but also sad, because I thought I'd never get to see them again.</p><p>It turned out I was wrong! They got back together and toured again starting in 2016, and another Grog Shop show in July 2017 was again one of the most fun shows I've ever been to. I <a href="https://guyaboutcleveland.blogspot.com/2017/07/life-is-what-happens-while-were-making.html">wrote about</a> this show along with Okkervil River and Andrew Bird shows I saw the same week. Wow, what a week of shows that was, and also, wow, what a different place my life was at, and what a crazy unfolding of events has proceeded to happen in the years since.</p><p>Piebald's album <i>We Are the Only Friends We Have </i>is one of my all-time favorites. It's just such a <i>fun </i>album from front to back. I was completely obsessed with it for a period of time after I bought the album. It also holds a special place in my heart as the pump up music of choice for both Cara and me on early morning drives to cycling events I went to with her and later by myself. A few months ago Piebald announced they'd be playing a few end of 2022 shows for the 20th anniversary of the album. I immediately began to consider going.</p><p>There's another Ozma connection here. In December 2019 I took a trip to California to see 20th anniversary shows for Ozma's <i>Rock and Roll Part Three</i>, an amazing trip and my favorite shows I've ever attended. That experience definitely made me think taking a similar trip for Piebald would be worth doing.</p><p>It ended up being something of a last minute decision to go, however, due in large part to the turbulent mental health I've been experiencing of late. But a week before the December 30 show at the Market Hotel in Brooklyn, I did pull the trigger on purchasing a ticket to the show and a plane ticket to New York.</p><p>It ended up being a very good decision. There's a lesson here. There have been a number of times when I've questioned whether I really wanted to go on a trip due to how I was feeling or things going on in my life. Every single time that I've made the decision to go, I've ended up being glad that I did. So I think that's some good data to have collected and to inform future decision making.</p><p>Going on a trip centered around seeing a favorite band live but that also involves spending time in a fun destination is one of my absolute favorite things to do. This was another such trip, a fairly short one, but a very good one. I got into town the day before the show and went on a great walk from my Manhattan hotel, including walking through Central Park, and thinking about previous times I'd been there (a topic for another planned blog post).</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYt5d-EKKO_e8W86A-Nc7WDt1wf3cEviGkYHTbGg56k1GqIRBSO5BZJJLAYVGxb0hbgFX0cb_fTXBcDMdgrMJQPUNDi344MQ8zPiN7kIQK4sJYIP2WGJ095jpSroUtLmuqhp5aXMMET-JyqoqAb1wyXANdBQ-Y_2k62zfSeJem8znwrzTZjqBJXe5W1w/s4608/IMG_20221229_163501996.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYt5d-EKKO_e8W86A-Nc7WDt1wf3cEviGkYHTbGg56k1GqIRBSO5BZJJLAYVGxb0hbgFX0cb_fTXBcDMdgrMJQPUNDi344MQ8zPiN7kIQK4sJYIP2WGJ095jpSroUtLmuqhp5aXMMET-JyqoqAb1wyXANdBQ-Y_2k62zfSeJem8znwrzTZjqBJXe5W1w/w640-h480/IMG_20221229_163501996.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>I also went to one of my favorite restaurants, Coppelia, and later that night to a very cool speakeasy called Patent Pending that is located in the building where Nikola Tesla once lived and worked.</p><p>I love visiting New York. There's so much to do and see and so much amazing food. I also love how easy it is to get around the city without a car. It really stands above any other American city in that regard.</p><p>The 30th was another fun day, and with great weather. I got a delicious bagel sandwich with smoked trout, walked the High Line, and checked out a cool bookstore. The main event, of course, was coming up that evening in Brooklyn. Before making my way to the concert venue, I also got a delicious pizza dinner at Roberta's, a restaurant my former Brooklyn resident sister had suggested.</p><p>I was surprised when I got to the concert venue shortly after the door time, 7, and not only were doors not open but also there was hardly anyone there waiting. It was a sparse crowd at first, but filled out well by the time Piebald played. All three openers - Rites of Springfield, Rebuilder, and Phony, put on energetic, fun sets. And then it was time for Piebald to take the stage.</p><p>There's a feeling of excitement I get about seeing one of my most favorite bands live that little else can compare to. That feeling was definitely present that night. Seeing a favorite album performed from front to back live is a rare and special thing to experience. And <i>We Are the Only Friends We Have </i>is an especially good album to experience that way.</p><p>When the familiar opening notes of "King of the Road" filled the room, the crowd went wild. The first four songs of <i>Friends - </i>"King of the Road," "Just a Simple Plan," "American Hearts," and "Long Nights," comprise one of the best opening quartets of any album I know. Seeing them performed in order live? That was something else.</p><p>Being in a crowded room, seeing a band you love play music you love, and surrounded by other people who love that music, is one of life's most special experiences. I'm always grateful whenever I get to have that experience. And this was definitely one of the top such experiences I've had since the pandemic temporarily made such experiences forbidden.</p><p>At times lead singer Travis Shettel wandered out into the crowd, holding the mic out in front of the faces of delighted fans. There was plenty of dancing, banging of heads, and pumping of fists. There was a little moshing (I could have used more, but that's okay). And there was a room full of people singing and screaming out the familiar lyrics of those twelve great songs. Album closer "Sex Sells and (Unfortunately) I'm Buying" features horn parts that were (unfortunately) not part of the live show, but some audience members did a nice job singing those parts instead.</p><p>Market Hotel is a cool venue. Nothing fancy, just a small-to-medium size room with an elevated stage at one end and a bar at the back. What more do you need? The unusual feature that makes it stand out is this - the room is upstairs in the building where it resides, and directly behind the stage is a window that looks out onto an elevated subway platform. Seeing trains pass behind the stage throughout the show was just such a cool visual that enhanced an already great setting!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIsEQhxEkZwh2zSvz9VQIWQ_SUqHiKtMy_OSLJMTe4mBYbceReyoW8WC2LV7z6jIkaoGPsQx1GCeLFn_9VotFqvP9sDIxpTi83t0qJTnBbUP0cCQ6wD_E79ms669ED2exKhFfTprz3TeWouyI7Md0wbCo8zGuzbZ7QzTCzRLExPrdHRvPYaHNLaeijgw/s3226/IMG_20221230_215936478~2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3118" data-original-width="3226" height="618" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIsEQhxEkZwh2zSvz9VQIWQ_SUqHiKtMy_OSLJMTe4mBYbceReyoW8WC2LV7z6jIkaoGPsQx1GCeLFn_9VotFqvP9sDIxpTi83t0qJTnBbUP0cCQ6wD_E79ms669ED2exKhFfTprz3TeWouyI7Md0wbCo8zGuzbZ7QzTCzRLExPrdHRvPYaHNLaeijgw/w640-h618/IMG_20221230_215936478~2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>After the show, waiting for the train back to Manhattan, it was also cool to see that window from the other side and think about the great time I'd just had inside that room. It felt like a very New York thing, something I'd be unlikely to experience anywhere else, at least not in this country.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBgoWEPCjl8rabHejca8Rtp6jKDv3uxqcuYKL_7vs67KpDH0FIMlc-85cJehbcXvcZIqnFwiHzsea9o0UuN2qxjt7HAkB0TEwYE88rWkhI94zl2wrh0eKjL-UJkZ8oZ-1OrVwhZGCkYATVgztPrdsRbq1nlIdRVUbpja73mSieUb8PQ_LCDuGcUi9kWg/s4608/IMG_20221230_231826521.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4608" data-original-width="3456" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBgoWEPCjl8rabHejca8Rtp6jKDv3uxqcuYKL_7vs67KpDH0FIMlc-85cJehbcXvcZIqnFwiHzsea9o0UuN2qxjt7HAkB0TEwYE88rWkhI94zl2wrh0eKjL-UJkZ8oZ-1OrVwhZGCkYATVgztPrdsRbq1nlIdRVUbpja73mSieUb8PQ_LCDuGcUi9kWg/w480-h640/IMG_20221230_231826521.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br /><p>Several times during the show Travis expressed great gratitude at the fact that we were all there to see them. It was amazing, he remarked, that music they had made twenty years ago was still loved so much by people today. At one point he asked if anyone there had seen them in the '90s (the band actually got their start at very young ages way back in 1994) and I was surprised by the number of cheers from the audience. That was long, long before my concertgoing days.</p><p>I definitely thought back to that night in October 2005 and to how much younger the members of the band had looked back then, and how much less young they look today. Which of course speaks to the same about me. But that's life. Where did those 17 years go?</p><p>After playing the twelve songs of <i>Friends, </i>the band took a quick break without leaving the stage and then continued to thrill the audience with some additional songs from other albums (mostly from 1999's <i>If It Weren't for Venetian Blinds, It Would Be Curtains for Us All</i>, another classic album and also one of my favorite album titles). I was especially glad when they kicked off the extra material with "Grace Kelly With Wings," one of the handful of songs I'd downloaded when I first checked out the band and therefore one of the few songs I recognized the first time I saw them, and a favorite ever since.</p><p>The show seemed to be over after five more songs were played, as the house music started up. The crowd continued to applaud, and then chants of "one more song" started up, and then I laughed when I looked over and realized the chants were being led by Piebald guitarist Aaron Stuart, who had descended from the stage and was standing in front of it and acting like he was an audience member! After two more songs, the show was over, and what a great show it was. Sneaking in before the deadline as a contender for my favorite concert of 2022.</p><p>After I took the train back to Manhattan, I stopped at a bar by my hotel for a drink. The bartender asked how my night was. I told him about how I was in town from Cleveland and had just seen a 20th anniversary concert for one of my favorite albums. He asked what the name of the band and album were. When I told him the album title, <i>We Are the Only Friends We Have</i>, he said, "That just broke my heart a little."</p><p>I reassured him that it wasn't sad music (not that I'm not also a fan of sad music), it's actually a really fun album, and he said he hadn't meant that as a bad thing. I mean, not that I had taken it as one. He said there was an old Irish saying, and I forget exactly what it was he said, but it was something to the effect of, does life have meaning without heartbreak?</p><p>My Google search failed to find the saying he quoted. When I searched for "Irish saying about heartbreak," the closest result was, "Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal." Which, yeah, I can relate to. Who knows whether the bartender was quoting an obscure saying I couldn't find in my search, or whether he was misremembering, or whether he was making it up?</p><p>Anyway, I can appreciate the sentiment. The Jeff of five or so years ago might have taken the opportunity to launch into an account of all the heartbreak I've already experienced. The Jeff of today didn't feel the need to do that. I could definitely use a little less heartbreak going forward, but I'm ever hopeful.</p>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-21896289375933611752022-07-13T18:10:00.001-07:002022-07-13T21:24:06.206-07:00Post-truth America<p>On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States. Leading up to the event, Trump boasted about the enormous crowds he was certain his inauguration would draw. This led many in the media to point out, after the inauguration, that it had in fact not drawn as large a crowd as either of Barack Obama's inaugurations.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiufuyvlJpC4skUwthejX1S9engoOncjfyMki_4oT__WTjMDtgoedEQ96TMfBvspcBvBIHCgmDxHf-rwkG689Mw2j4ZBXDhxFGHJq8_-OcgrqZhDw9XVxHE6tRsmzS347bPZt9-nrixv9wDGWfjD_tPXUlZVCAkQ8d1HOwMdI4YUnsmPkIa4oz4rnB0jA/s800/inauguration%20crowds.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiufuyvlJpC4skUwthejX1S9engoOncjfyMki_4oT__WTjMDtgoedEQ96TMfBvspcBvBIHCgmDxHf-rwkG689Mw2j4ZBXDhxFGHJq8_-OcgrqZhDw9XVxHE6tRsmzS347bPZt9-nrixv9wDGWfjD_tPXUlZVCAkQ8d1HOwMdI4YUnsmPkIa4oz4rnB0jA/w640-h426/inauguration%20crowds.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><i>Crowds from Barack Obama's first inauguration (left) and Donald Trump's inauguration (right). Emily Barnes—Getty Images; Lucas Jackson—Reuters</i><br /><p>The next day, at White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's first press briefing in his new job, he attacked the media and falsely claimed that Trump's inauguration had drawn the "largest audience to ever witness an inauguration – period – both in person and around the globe."</p><p>Later, high-ranking Trump staff member Kellyanne Conway defended Spicer's lie by claiming that Spicer was merely giving "alternative facts," and I feel like this infamous statement was a preview of so much that has happened in the five-plus years since. I feel like we are living in a country where more and more, everyone has their own alternative facts and it's getting increasingly difficult to bridge the divides they create.</p><p>I wrote a <a href="https://guyaboutcleveland.blogspot.com/2021/09/thoughts-on-sharing-country-with-cult.html">post</a> last year in which I outlined the reasons that I characterize the modern Republican Party as akin to a cult. The reasons I focused on were two very prominent false beliefs around which the Republican Party had come to organize itself - one, that COVID vaccines are bad, and two, that Trump won the 2020 election. The first of those false beliefs has led to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths. The second of those false beliefs led to a violent mob assault on the US Capitol and continues to threaten to tear apart our democracy.</p><p>These are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to alternative facts popular on the right. The epidemic of mass shootings and gun violence in this country gets worse and worse and nothing gets done because one of our two major political parties has concluded against all evidence that the solution is more "good guys with guns." Abortion bans are now going into effect in many states, the proponents of which ignore many inconvenient facts such as (to name just one) that ectopic pregnancies are never viable and the only safe course of action is abortion. Laws targeting LGBT people or targeting the accurate teaching of the role of racism in American history continue to be pushed forward based on total fantasies about non-existent harm to children, and instead cause very real harm to ordinary people who are just trying to live their lives.</p><p>I recently attended a birthday party for a relative and saw a number of other relatives who I hadn't seen in quite some time. I was reminded of how nice and enjoyable it can be to just spend time with people in person. But also of how there are certain topics that you just can't talk about because you're inhabiting two different worlds. Avoid those topics, and it's a perfectly lovely day with perfectly lovely people. Get into those topics, and you'll just get a headache as the alternative facts fly.</p><p>I've written a lot about the falsehoods that are popular on the American right. I'm also becoming more and more aware that different sets of alternative facts are becoming increasingly popular among many on the left. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the two are equivalent to each other - the American right is waging an active campaign to end democracy based on lies, and no one in a position of real power or influence on the left is doing the same. Nonetheless, it's all bad and I feel it's all contributing to the fracturing of society.</p><p>With the recent disastrous rulings by the Supreme Court, a lot of people have pointed out that these things wouldn't be happening if Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 election, as a way of highlighting the importance of voting. Other people, many of whom in 2016 were diminishing the importance of voting for the Democratic nominee, have gotten angry at these statements.</p><p>Look, I get their frustration at the many failures of the Democratic Party, but that doesn't make it less true that the Supreme Court would not be making these rulings if not for Donald Trump, rather than Hillary Clinton, getting to appoint three new justices. That's a fact. The idea that voting doesn't matter is an alternative fact.</p><p>(I think we should take a "yes, and" approach in discussions of who is to blame for the current fiasco instead of a "no, but" approach. So if someone says that more people should have voted for Hillary, you can respond, "This is true, and at the same time, the Democratic Party should have done x, y, and z," instead of saying, "No, the Democratic Party should have done x, y, and z, so it's their fault, not people who didn't vote." There are so many things that could have been done differently to avert this nightmare, and I'm not pinning all the blame on not enough people turning out to vote for Hillary Clinton, just using that as an example.)</p><p>One issue where I'm becoming increasingly aware of alternative facts becoming popular in some circles on the left is COVID. Obviously, as I've written about before, COVID misinformation on the right has taken a horrible toll. I don't want to minimize that at all. But I also see a lot of people on the side who say we should "follow the science" who... aren't following the science.</p><p>For a couple of specific examples, here are things I've seen people say on Twitter recently that were racking up huge numbers of likes and that I think represent pretty common sentiments among certain groups of people. Yes, I'm sure these views are over-represented on Twitter compared to society as a whole, but I'm also pretty sure there are a lot of people out there who think similarly.</p><p>One was a person posting the weekly case averages for the state of Virginia at this time in 2020 (608 cases/week), 2021 (200 cases/week), and 2022 (2,695 cases/week). "The biggest changes? No more mask requirements and a governor who refuses to acknowledge this multi-organ damaging virus is an issue," they wrote.</p><p>No. The biggest change, or at least by far the most important, is that the version of COVID circulating today spreads much more easily and is much more immune evasive than the versions circulating in 2020 and 2021. To an absolutely ridiculous extent. These numbers say literally nothing about the effectiveness of mask requirements or guidance from the government. Yet many people out there very confidently hold the incorrect belief that the much higher case numbers now vs. one year ago are because of mask mandates going away.</p><p>My other example is someone who said this:</p><p><i>Every time I tell a friend their in-person social activities prolong the pandemic & prolong my isolation, 9 times out of 10 they say, "I need SOMETHING to give me release/a break."</i></p><p><i>And I say, "So do I, but your actions mean it'll be longer until I can."</i></p><p><i>Many of them are still friends because we have conversations about why their actions are ableist & they change their behavior.</i></p><p><i>The ones who don't are no longer friends.</i></p><p>The person who said this has some sort of condition (I'm not sure what it is) that puts them at higher risk from COVID. I have a huge amount of sympathy for people like this. I hate that this is the new reality of the world. It has to be unbearably awful to feel that you have to isolate yourself for an unknown duration because even in spite of being vaccinated, your level of vulnerability to a COVID infection is still too high to risk getting infected. (I think there are some people who are correct in feeling this way and some people who are overestimating their risk, but I don't know which category this person falls into and I'm not criticizing their personal risk assessment.)</p><p>The harsh reality, though, is that the idea that people engaging in in-person social activities are "prolonging the pandemic" is not an idea grounded in evidence.</p><p>Imagine that somehow we could make everyone stop their in-person social activities for some amount of time. (We can't, without being a totalitarian state, but imagine we could.) The number of cases would go down, but the virus wouldn't be eradicated because it's too widespread (even in many non-human animals!) and a functional society requires some contact between people and other people. Also, lots of bad side effects would happen - people's mental health would suffer; businesses like restaurants and music venues would have to close, etc. Eventually, after whatever amount of time, social activities would resume... and the case numbers would go right back up. Stopping in-person social activities would have accomplished nothing toward the goal of ending the pandemic.</p><p>To be fair, I said similar things about people "prolonging the pandemic" in 2020 and early 2021, and I can see now that I was wrong. I now think that once the virus started to spread globally, it was essentially inevitable that we would eventually reach a situation like our current one. But in my past self's defense, back then, we didn't yet know that the virus would evolve to a form where reaching herd immunity would be impossible even with very good vaccines. Also, in 2020 there was a very clear goal - by limiting in-person social activities to reduce the number of people infected until vaccines were available, we could clearly save a lot of lives. And it was a goal with an end point. Now there's no clear goal and no end point.</p><p>I want to also say that there is a lot of very justified frustration about people pretending the pandemic is over and the government not doing more about it! There are a lot of things we should still be doing - namely, pouring huge amounts of funding into improving indoor air quality and into research on better vaccines, as well as mandating paid sick leave, and better accommodations such as remote options for vulnerable people. All of these would have huge benefits both in the near term and for the foreseeable future. But I don't think there's anything that anyone could realistically do right now that would change the reality of a virus still running rampant.</p><p>The people who think there is seem to also be ignoring that, with the much more easily transmissible and immune evasive omicron variants, case numbers continue to surge even in countries that had largely suppressed the virus through the pandemic's first year-plus. This is no longer a situation where America is screwing up and we can look to a lot of other countries that are doing a lot better. We can just all be grateful that the surges in case numbers are becoming decoupled from surges in deaths.</p><p>Why is this such a big problem? These alternative COVID facts on the left aren't directly causing a bunch of people to die the way the alternative COVID facts on the right have. So what's the harm?</p><p>Well, let's look at what the second person I quoted said. "Many of them are still friends because we have conversations... & they change their behavior. <b>The ones who don't are no longer friends</b>."</p><p>So what we have, really, is someone telling their friends to do something based on ideas that aren't well supported by evidence. And then cutting people out of their lives who don't do that. They certainly have a right to make that decision, yes. But it's pretty bad, I think, especially if it's happening on a large scale! I think people everywhere are building up a huge amount of resentment toward other people because they don't subscribe to the same alternative facts. And it's all contributing to the fracturing of society.</p><p>Specifically, regarding alternative facts on the left, I think that with the growing threat of fascism from the right, anything that leads to a fracturing of the different groups of people who should be united to oppose fascism is a big problem.</p><p>I realize as I write this that I might sound like I think I'm above all the other people with their alternative facts and I'm some ultimate arbiter of truth. I'm not. I'm sure there are things I believe that aren't true. I just try to be really careful about believing too strongly in things that aren't really well supported by evidence.</p><p>So a big question about all of this is, are things really different now from how they've been at various other times in human history? I mean, people everywhere have always believed things that aren't true.</p><p>I'm not sure of the answer to this question. But one thing I think might make this moment actually different is the Internet. In the pre-Internet days, everyone everywhere believed some things that weren't true, but they just had their own untrue beliefs, or the untrue beliefs shared by relatively small (at a societal or global level) groups. They didn't have the ability to instantly connect with lots of other people around the world who have similar untrue beliefs, leading to increasing reinforcement of those untrue beliefs. During the flu pandemic of a century ago, someone could tell their friends an alternative fact about the flu. But they couldn't send that alternative fact out into the world and instantly be rewarded with hundreds of little hearts and the resulting little dopamine hits.</p><p>People have always to some degree self-segregated themselves based on beliefs they hold. But it seems like the extent to which that is happening today, to which people are organizing their whole lives around certain sets of alternative facts and then organizing themselves into social groupings based on belief in those alternative facts, is unusual. Perhaps even unprecedented.</p><p>It feels like we've entered a post-truth America, a place and time where the truth largely just doesn't matter. Where different groups of people all live in their own alternate realities. From my perspective, it seems like the alternate reality that is shared by the most people, and that is the most threatening to society, is that inhabited by many on the right. And that it's imperative that everyone else recognize that threat and work to stop it, but instead different groups on the left and center are drifting off into their own alternate realities. But maybe that's just what it looks like from my perspective.</p><p>Anyway, it's all pretty scary!</p><p>I don't know what the answer is. I guess I'll keep trying to do my own little part to encourage people to look at the evidence on things and not just accept at face value whatever so-called facts are popular in their in-group. As well as to encourage people to regard other human beings and their life situations with empathy and decency. It often seems futile, but I'll try.</p>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-10591669344489949532022-05-16T20:32:00.000-07:002022-05-16T20:32:24.017-07:00I paid 25 cents to light a little white candle<p>For the last few months, I've felt like I've been seeing the number 424 unusually often. The number 424, or the time 4:24, or the date 4/24, or a 4 and a 24 next to each other. Some of you reading this already know why that number would have meaning to me. For anyone reading who doesn't know, it's because my wife Cara passed away on 4/24 - April 24, 2015. I was already feeling like I was seeing this combination of digits with uncanny frequency prior to the events I'll describe in this post. That's important background for the events I'll describe.</p><p>This year, on April 24, I traveled to Detroit to see a concert by one of my all time favorite bands, Typhoon. They're a band whose music, with lyrics grappling with mortality, was my own personal soundtrack to Cara's battle with lung cancer, so the date of the show was eerily fitting. It was even more weird to consider that the most recent previous Typhoon concert I attended had taken place on June 12, 2018 - that is, my and Cara's wedding anniversary. Significant concerts taking place on significant dates - a long running theme of my life and my blog!</p><p>It was really great to see Typhoon again for the first time in years. The band's lead singer Kyle Morton is an amazing person who I've befriended through conversations at previous Typhoon shows; unfortunately, I did not get a chance to catch up with him this time due to the band's very understandable COVID precautions. During the show he talked about how weird it was to be back out on the road playing in front of people but also how important it was, how there's such a big essential part of life that was missing when we couldn't have those in person gatherings. He also thanked people for wearing masks during the show - he has had some very serious health issues and is a kidney transplant recipient, so trying to avoid COVID is more important for him than for most people in our age bracket.</p><p>The show, along with visiting some very close friends in Ann Arbor earlier the same day, was a great way to mark an April 24. It was also not the first time I saw an important concert on April 24.</p><p>On April 24, 2018, I saw the Decemberists at Cleveland's Agora. They were a band Cara and I both loved and whose music had had some significance to our relationship. One of the highlights of that show was the performance of "Grace Cathedral Hill," a beautiful song from the Decemberists' debut album <i>Castaways and Cutouts</i>. I remember muttering "wow" upon my recognition that they were playing the song, because I was so happily surprised.</p><p>This has all been a prelude to what happened to me last week. I traveled to San Francisco last Wednesday to attend a meeting on Thursday and Friday where I'd discuss my research into asthma with other asthma researchers. That was what was supposed to happen, anyway. But then, on Wednesday, I realized I was feeling sick, with a sore throat and other symptoms of a respiratory infection. I took a COVID test and it was negative. On Thursday I took another COVID test and it was again negative. But I was still feeling sick. Apparently I'd come down with a cold. My symptoms had definitely made me wonder if I had COVID, even though I'm triple vaccinated and had an omicron infection at Christmas. It wouldn't be impossible. Despite apparently not having COVID this time, I still didn't want to expose all the other people at the meeting to my illness, especially considering that if they caught it, not only would they get sick, but they would have the added stress of wondering if they had COVID.</p><p>So I told the conference organizers what was going on, and then ended up with a bunch of time to kill in San Francisco, while feeling sick enough to not want to attend a meeting but not sick enough to be utterly incapacitated. I ate a lot of takeout meals. I watched a lot of playoff basketball on TV. I wandered around a lot on Wednesday, at first not realizing quite how sick I was feeling. I wore a KN95 mask whenever I was in an indoor space and tried to keep close contact with other people to a minimum. Thursday I mostly spent relaxing at my hotel, hoping I'd feel no longer sick by Friday morning, but this didn't happen. On Friday I again wandered around a lot, since at that point I was clearly missing all of the meeting and there was nothing else to do. The weather, thankfully, was beautiful the whole time I was there.</p><p>It was very disappointing to have traveled out there for the meeting and not get to participate in it, but on Friday I really managed to take advantage of my free time, and by the end of the day I came away from it thinking, oddly, that perhaps my illness had been... fortuitous?</p><p>I noticed that the famous "Painted Ladies" houses that are across the street from Alamo Square Park, as seen in the opening credits of <i>Full House</i>, were a couple miles' walk from my hotel, so I went there, and it was really nice just hanging out in that park for a while and taking in the sights and sounds and sun.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipdFAIL7zEm1iq6SWfGneQYluvqda2Uz1mzUyFFQTZ_6AUXoNc2TiPV0y4meu-d1lfwzEr_9dnp-2zxQy62cufR0CJeyuIuM8u6EieeketwAgTkc3xeYO5UQkxKfVbGl1AkDd6ZxwyXYtTQaZrsZP38cnG2-bgCg8PxMuC8YbrUpLbJ_SpUteKzEfqBg/s4608/IMG_20220513_134610285.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipdFAIL7zEm1iq6SWfGneQYluvqda2Uz1mzUyFFQTZ_6AUXoNc2TiPV0y4meu-d1lfwzEr_9dnp-2zxQy62cufR0CJeyuIuM8u6EieeketwAgTkc3xeYO5UQkxKfVbGl1AkDd6ZxwyXYtTQaZrsZP38cnG2-bgCg8PxMuC8YbrUpLbJ_SpUteKzEfqBg/w640-h480/IMG_20220513_134610285.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>Heading back, I picked up some food, ate it in the park across from city hall, and then was looking at my phone trying to see if there was anything else interesting that wouldn't be a huge amount of extra walking, and I saw this:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4L3gyAW4G-3jF9MvDwvmCA_NWk4Sr42ZcK2BMj_Ro2u2Xhi_VYqpCfDxZ6-RaTDRd7cxlDUwfE5_8JDkjr2wTZW-y95m3I68Cy3J_Qd9rKqD7RfoTmm2QswcYK6g_484ur1SZ8f0wIXMiMecp3muo1lGQKjw24XmehqZSF3_2NkDoDC6EJEYkOfCBgw/s463/grace%20cathedral.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="354" data-original-width="463" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4L3gyAW4G-3jF9MvDwvmCA_NWk4Sr42ZcK2BMj_Ro2u2Xhi_VYqpCfDxZ6-RaTDRd7cxlDUwfE5_8JDkjr2wTZW-y95m3I68Cy3J_Qd9rKqD7RfoTmm2QswcYK6g_484ur1SZ8f0wIXMiMecp3muo1lGQKjw24XmehqZSF3_2NkDoDC6EJEYkOfCBgw/s16000/grace%20cathedral.png" /></a></div><br /><p><i>Oh! Grace Cathedral, like in the Decemberists song! Well, I pretty much have to go, </i>was my thought process, and then I scrolled through the music on my iPod, selected <i>Castaways and Cutouts</i>, hit play, and set out toward the cathedral.</p><p>I've always had a thing for cathedrals. The National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. is one of my favorite buildings anywhere. Grace Cathedral is another really nice one.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikLjqyFkth_ik1dlT9cRwC41bC9abtS-qHq5SAP6cDCXlYvF1SPkT_W_IsHgiSwV5j25hGKgy_MfTUnWcfw5MfdPo7lRz5Iwlk9BDQPpITyrxV9Rt5m0h1pjOeW04k6JOiTozt-6otuWQwPbaAhY1aAucXcTtLEpjPexeFraP4lKjkc8sua0BnvSfYFA/s4608/IMG_20220513_155900331.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4608" data-original-width="3456" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikLjqyFkth_ik1dlT9cRwC41bC9abtS-qHq5SAP6cDCXlYvF1SPkT_W_IsHgiSwV5j25hGKgy_MfTUnWcfw5MfdPo7lRz5Iwlk9BDQPpITyrxV9Rt5m0h1pjOeW04k6JOiTozt-6otuWQwPbaAhY1aAucXcTtLEpjPexeFraP4lKjkc8sua0BnvSfYFA/w480-h640/IMG_20220513_155900331.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEOlnmUeoRmW_qzWrOJR-VgNFjzfm3TDwkoQQb5f1kQm46TbmsBNzGBRoyXMEQrlfoA4N2KazOqHCS5QFGmP9vgUQxlCT4DDyYXMS9LAS4SX_b-rNgA_5gZQAyZVHD8Qept5pTs0K0w0mropnH9Jhl0DPD8qIKc_9i00lmPi_YrjDmRx81Sw-HdTNe9g/s4608/IMG_20220513_155822964.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEOlnmUeoRmW_qzWrOJR-VgNFjzfm3TDwkoQQb5f1kQm46TbmsBNzGBRoyXMEQrlfoA4N2KazOqHCS5QFGmP9vgUQxlCT4DDyYXMS9LAS4SX_b-rNgA_5gZQAyZVHD8Qept5pTs0K0w0mropnH9Jhl0DPD8qIKc_9i00lmPi_YrjDmRx81Sw-HdTNe9g/w640-h480/IMG_20220513_155822964.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>There's a line in the song that goes, "I paid 25 cents to light a little white candle," and because I'm a huge freaking nerd I of course decided, <i>I </i>should pay 25 cents to light a little white candle while in Grace Cathedral. (This was in addition to a $12 admission fee for visitors that I did not realize I'd have to pay until I was inside, but I decided, why not.) I first did some wandering around the inside of the cathedral, admiring the beautiful architecture and artwork and stained glass.</p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-FknH6J_afOWPpHDty19VqlZQ-QRBvrNMC2DFkbZXoXZ8BgyRvJG5I8PVL6brnMvHcDxHwFmx5iCcSge0h2ht3pTC3_QOB4JF6MkFFqflILd80_oHClO7NGLpIMvwOkAM9OUbzKRTs5cbc3RIFy7E78Gkho3n9plPTJUSzbs-JzyV-tF4A7zWKiAMyg/s3600/IMG_5182.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2400" data-original-width="3600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-FknH6J_afOWPpHDty19VqlZQ-QRBvrNMC2DFkbZXoXZ8BgyRvJG5I8PVL6brnMvHcDxHwFmx5iCcSge0h2ht3pTC3_QOB4JF6MkFFqflILd80_oHClO7NGLpIMvwOkAM9OUbzKRTs5cbc3RIFy7E78Gkho3n9plPTJUSzbs-JzyV-tF4A7zWKiAMyg/w640-h426/IMG_5182.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4JIaqmhIqdshHLZJ55jY2n8S8V-tGZ7g378uJOH4DRSNcFbn2fidmbUUXrCY4nT_Y8mPb9xuvexsgaDeEidCzju-26hK41Uad5P3cOfhxQ_iozWDv3-sLf6yXUAPBWLcGrke7XUVP0c2uW5kNKU6pMbLmlwRgMrT_3B0eGrVBunhqfYrIGT2LrRVh_Q/s3600/IMG_5176.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2400" data-original-width="3600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4JIaqmhIqdshHLZJ55jY2n8S8V-tGZ7g378uJOH4DRSNcFbn2fidmbUUXrCY4nT_Y8mPb9xuvexsgaDeEidCzju-26hK41Uad5P3cOfhxQ_iozWDv3-sLf6yXUAPBWLcGrke7XUVP0c2uW5kNKU6pMbLmlwRgMrT_3B0eGrVBunhqfYrIGT2LrRVh_Q/w640-h426/IMG_5176.jpg" width="640" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>The whole time I was there, I was thinking of the song and of that Decemberists show that had taken place on 4/24. Eventually I decided I was ready to go and pay 25 cents to light a little white candle. I headed over toward a candle lighting station. While doing so I glanced at my watch.<div><br /></div><div><b><i>The time was 4:24.</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div>Long time readers of my blog might remember that I have a thing for noticing and pointing out weird coincidences. By now it's happened so much that things I would have once viewed as astounding coincidences, like the Typhoon show being on 4/24, I now kind of shrug my shoulders and laugh about. But this, especially in light of my already feeling like I was seeing those digits strangely often - this was a special one.</div><div><br /></div><div>So I went, and I put a quarter in a donation box, and I lit a little white candle.<br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzA50onulkl0twLzIeseCRoj18L5PKiApiUJltpMR8T_WVFh507WGpYHNP93M8UAKUTppvJ112rmVQji9G2l0b92T3HUDMhUAK6xZe8mdMzeisB-9hb8AYYMkQXSlmlF2bwsDsQnpHahvxSRLOhpKxUy99ex_NBxfPb9KH1J9cYUh5Kp2m-mbd0N-EqQ/s3600/IMG_5158.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2400" data-original-width="3600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzA50onulkl0twLzIeseCRoj18L5PKiApiUJltpMR8T_WVFh507WGpYHNP93M8UAKUTppvJ112rmVQji9G2l0b92T3HUDMhUAK6xZe8mdMzeisB-9hb8AYYMkQXSlmlF2bwsDsQnpHahvxSRLOhpKxUy99ex_NBxfPb9KH1J9cYUh5Kp2m-mbd0N-EqQ/w640-h426/IMG_5158.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>And then I stood there for a minute and talked to Cara. It's not something I do often, at least not in a direct way. But in this moment it felt like I was supposed to. I'm glad that I did.</p><p>After leaving the cathedral, I resumed my wandering, and resumed listening to the Decemberists on my iPod. The song "Grace Cathedral Hill" had not yet come up prior to my arrival at the cathedral but came on shortly after my departure. I stopped walking while listening to the song and just admired this view:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1C2n2hJSVnW7sG3ABLZb29n3GK3SJnrv_BcWF4U6W6DqY5UuurxhUpadiChigK0o0Ge5jVUAwFyt2FDMkOHQz0x1yhWEY9z6JEoy4FIolGXcFQRrxZyLFgTJlejddmhYaxiEFmtfzBzbwyJAaLVKbMofDUVTbuTk1dpsjraNYbHnXsQQfvEU7GTivAA/s4608/IMG_20220513_170735729.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1C2n2hJSVnW7sG3ABLZb29n3GK3SJnrv_BcWF4U6W6DqY5UuurxhUpadiChigK0o0Ge5jVUAwFyt2FDMkOHQz0x1yhWEY9z6JEoy4FIolGXcFQRrxZyLFgTJlejddmhYaxiEFmtfzBzbwyJAaLVKbMofDUVTbuTk1dpsjraNYbHnXsQQfvEU7GTivAA/w640-h480/IMG_20220513_170735729.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>It gave me a very peaceful feeling, something I haven't had a whole lot of recently.</p><p>That night I caught a red eye flight from San Francisco to Washington DC before connecting back to Cleveland. I managed to sleep for most of the flight. Upon landing in DC, I was dismayed to receive a text message that my flight to Cleveland was cancelled and I'd have to select another flight. But this turned out to not be a problem because the flight had been replaced by another flight at the identical time. So the cancellation turned out to have no effect on my day, except for one thing, which is that I was issued a new boarding pass with an interesting combination of numbers on it:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhtFf9H6I3x4I3_ILt2dQ6mEr7LArh0fcBNnP68NcXiknom_adIuyJp4OfjxTiQUFuSG6Wj8ohj9ane56tAxXKe6CSsvQdFxqkPdAjQlb1H4zOFZ3IArFn-juuDZSRP3m_VB61VnD0piYSEJqsJRGK9skau9c9f-G9ILXzeocdR_fRDvKVfm5VpR-EyA/s1826/Screenshot_20220514-072539_3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1826" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhtFf9H6I3x4I3_ILt2dQ6mEr7LArh0fcBNnP68NcXiknom_adIuyJp4OfjxTiQUFuSG6Wj8ohj9ane56tAxXKe6CSsvQdFxqkPdAjQlb1H4zOFZ3IArFn-juuDZSRP3m_VB61VnD0piYSEJqsJRGK9skau9c9f-G9ILXzeocdR_fRDvKVfm5VpR-EyA/w378-h640/Screenshot_20220514-072539_3.png" width="378" /></a></div><p>Then, after I arrived in Cleveland, got to my car, and started driving home, I laughed when I noticed that the first gas station sign I saw showed a price of, you guessed it, $4.24.</p><p>Signs from Cara? Who knows, but it's nice to think that maybe they could be.</p></div>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-82621051680710845142022-03-09T09:03:00.000-08:002022-03-09T09:03:22.560-08:00I listen to a lot of music from Canada (and other exciting observations about my music listening history)<p>If you know me well you know that I like numbers and graphs. You may have seen me post a lot of graphs and interpretation that I made about COVID. Here are some numbers and graphs about a more fun topic.</p><p>Every year at the beginning of December I see lots of people post their "Spotify Wrapped" on social media. It's always interesting to me to see what music other people listened to the most in the year. But for me personally, I want more than that. So this is kind of like a much nerdier and more detailed version of a Spotify Wrapped. And not just for a year, but for most of my adult life.</p><p>Since 2005, I've used the website <a href="https://www.last.fm/">last.fm</a> to keep track of all the music I listen to (on a computer or iPod, at least; it can also track music you listen to on streaming services on your phone but I very rarely stream music on my phone). The popularity of Spotify Wrapped makes it clear that a lot of people enjoy being able to see stats about the music they listen to, so I recommend the website if you want more of that! If you go to <a href="https://www.last.fm/user/Jeff42">my profile</a> and scroll down, you can see my top eight artists (all time) displayed, kind of like a Spotify Wrapped:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjNmk945rtQRbW8pa2sL6yDihj3QsFW5RTyJNGZ-XrbWOMSCu6HwpBULkbuFLX6tln-WHPIgWMh9S_mCoSPdcD1nCNumqAYPW0BSzLydLXF3ouZpl3W8yQTFdrNgba3i3TXo1wnuCjr6sKnZK-8plzil3CuHckNLOdZg7v6MV8rImi1XL3LT63LR79ahQ=s1069" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="674" data-original-width="1069" height="404" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjNmk945rtQRbW8pa2sL6yDihj3QsFW5RTyJNGZ-XrbWOMSCu6HwpBULkbuFLX6tln-WHPIgWMh9S_mCoSPdcD1nCNumqAYPW0BSzLydLXF3ouZpl3W8yQTFdrNgba3i3TXo1wnuCjr6sKnZK-8plzil3CuHckNLOdZg7v6MV8rImi1XL3LT63LR79ahQ=w640-h404" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>Definitely a big lead for Okkervil River in first place. If you click around you can see breakdowns by artist, by song, by album, over different periods of time. But because I'm such a data nerd, that wasn't enough for me. Luckily, a kind person made a website that <a href="https://benjaminbenben.com/lastfm-to-csv/">exports your entire listening history</a> as a CSV file you can download. So after doing this, I used the programming language <a href="https://www.r-project.org/">R</a> (running under <a href="https://www.rstudio.com/">RStudio</a>) to play around with the data.</p><p>Here are some of the results I found interesting. Will anyone else find them interesting? Maybe? But lots of people post their Spotify Wrapped every year, so I'm going to post this.</p><p><b>Top artists by year</b></p><p>Here's a scatter plot of my top five artists for each year by year and number of plays. There's a lot of information here so apologies for the small text. Click to open and zoom in if you care to.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhkKkh0_2eJjkzHEwoJgXb0_s3Lqj8zgu9ANwnZagflEc_nM24hVg_56UvfydK1kjIH9qMpdnqBH_sI-44dv8zBizQ4u5nQ9TdTzQ6mwBQ5Jfkcdukqbcnr6HTC1_w0MRsZgxhaXdJiNEye9fSyJgY95MjtVwbdAYISTcB7RNYHTDlLRI3z3EuGAhdd-g=s1175" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="823" data-original-width="1175" height="448" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhkKkh0_2eJjkzHEwoJgXb0_s3Lqj8zgu9ANwnZagflEc_nM24hVg_56UvfydK1kjIH9qMpdnqBH_sI-44dv8zBizQ4u5nQ9TdTzQ6mwBQ5Jfkcdukqbcnr6HTC1_w0MRsZgxhaXdJiNEye9fSyJgY95MjtVwbdAYISTcB7RNYHTDlLRI3z3EuGAhdd-g=w640-h448" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>Observations:</p><p>-For 2005 the data only cover the last five months of the year, hence the second through fifth place artists having low numbers. Still, I listened to songs by Ozma over 1400 times. I was <i>super obsessed </i>with Ozma when I started using last.fm.</p><p>-Okkervil River has by far the most appearances in my yearly top five with ten. Next is Typhoon with six. </p><p>-The top seven yearly totals are all either Ozma, Okkervil River, or Woodpigeon.</p><p>-The highest yearly totals are all in the earlier years. In more recent years my music listening has become more spread out over a larger number of artists.</p><p>-The Weather Station in 2021 recorded my highest yearly total for one artist in nearly ten years.</p><p><b>Top single months for artists</b></p><p>These are the top fifteen totals recorded by artists for single months:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjuolGyQlhLVRTSRItf043K8AEPYS-E7kuWASrkhFnITR_b4xtn0fuQD0iw922LLlubd1A2F3zXg0SVr1-oOVZnBwWnzXE6g5X66blsEIv9gsLpMQOL9O478IuNhYdZlZc4yc5uokBg0zDst9Q9ERNkaao3rO9admKAK0L0KZWZ4MvdykDe2uNSlPlV0g=s679" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="407" data-original-width="679" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjuolGyQlhLVRTSRItf043K8AEPYS-E7kuWASrkhFnITR_b4xtn0fuQD0iw922LLlubd1A2F3zXg0SVr1-oOVZnBwWnzXE6g5X66blsEIv9gsLpMQOL9O478IuNhYdZlZc4yc5uokBg0zDst9Q9ERNkaao3rO9admKAK0L0KZWZ4MvdykDe2uNSlPlV0g=w640-h384" width="640" /></a></div><p>Woodpigeon comes in with three of the top five. Like Ozma, I was also <i>super obsessed </i>with Woodpigeon for a time. I like the story of how I discovered Woodpigeon. When Cara and I saw <a href="https://guyaboutcleveland.blogspot.com/2010/01/northern-choruss-final-show-and-power.html">A Northern Chorus's farewell show</a> in Hamilton, Ontario, in 2008, the next day we went to a music store there and each picked out one used CD to buy (knowing nothing about the music except for what we could see in the artwork and liner notes; it was a thing we often enjoyed doing). Woodpigeon's <i>Songbook</i> was Cara's pick. If you're an indie pop fan, I highly recommend checking out that album and even more so their subsequent album <i>Treasury Library Canada</i>. Sadly, Woodpigeon is the only artist in my top twenty overall artists that I've never seen live.</p><p>The way that my music has become more spread out over a larger number of artists and less concentrated on single artists is also evident here as the National's October 2019 tally is the only one on this list more recent than 2013.</p><p>Looking at this list, it's fun to think back on what was happening in my life and why I was listening to those particular bands so much in those years and months. Which is a good segue into...</p><p><b>I listen to an awful lot of Sufjan Stevens in December</b></p><p>Sufjan Stevens came in fourth on the above list with his December 2012 tally. That was the month after the release of his second five-disc box set of Christmas music. Yes, he has released ten discs' worth of Christmas music (a mix of traditional and original songs). And I love all of it. To me, Sufjan Stevens' music basically <i>is </i>the Christmas season. December 2012 was also when Cara and I saw Sufjan's <a href="https://guyaboutcleveland.blogspot.com/2012/12/sufjan-stevens-at-beachland-ballroom.html">spectacular Christmas show</a> at the Beachland Ballroom. Definitely one of the best shows I've ever attended. So December 2012 stands out the most, but every single December, I'm putting all that Sufjan Christmas music in heavy rotation. And so if you take each of my top nine artists overall and sum up how much I've listened to them by month of the year for the entire 2005-2021 period, you get this:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhFcxgWHlXL_WYN8LZMGuZgD9sqZr4iRWUfX2_2NTdMnmGzgJeaYIr1xFZNGgoLV_qMd0EqfhcTKkIgjatut9CZ5cTA57rWFFyKI6cshdl9dA8nWtem6mQ9Wxj4aNm4bcENvlkSUzuAQvbGo9GnnoCgSaov9TDTd9a7answbVKXxfzq-pk98qtl7hJclg=s1196" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="867" data-original-width="1196" height="464" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhFcxgWHlXL_WYN8LZMGuZgD9sqZr4iRWUfX2_2NTdMnmGzgJeaYIr1xFZNGgoLV_qMd0EqfhcTKkIgjatut9CZ5cTA57rWFFyKI6cshdl9dA8nWtem6mQ9Wxj4aNm4bcENvlkSUzuAQvbGo9GnnoCgSaov9TDTd9a7answbVKXxfzq-pk98qtl7hJclg=w640-h464" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>There's one month for one artist that is a really huge outlier here! Everything else is fairly random, although I enjoy the nice oscillatory pattern on the Okkervil River graph.</p><p>Now let's move on to...</p><p><b>My music listening habits by geography (or, I listen to a lot of music from Canada)</b></p><p>I took every artist for whom I've recorded at least 100 total plays and manually annotated their nations of origin (as well as state or province for American and Canadian bands). First, here's a graph showing all the nations that appeared in my history, with the total number of listens for each:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgkK8vrKKan4ZNhCY54IYp1ATojJN4lDPaPjS1V4dBKl-5ijT1kWuEVJDBn8mHCPgs01vplnXaRO-9WmtfsJJYlfmA5Qgj7tDG1J6koKe1EO2vqmqZv77ENPPd6VrKMLI826VKKWpwQdnqFhV5wiJWuvYs7eKpeX3GKS5vTGf2swJnXraXdBxNoXg3Yyg=s1174" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="819" data-original-width="1174" height="446" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgkK8vrKKan4ZNhCY54IYp1ATojJN4lDPaPjS1V4dBKl-5ijT1kWuEVJDBn8mHCPgs01vplnXaRO-9WmtfsJJYlfmA5Qgj7tDG1J6koKe1EO2vqmqZv77ENPPd6VrKMLI826VKKWpwQdnqFhV5wiJWuvYs7eKpeX3GKS5vTGf2swJnXraXdBxNoXg3Yyg=w640-h446" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>The USA has the most by far, which is obviously not surprising. But the USA also has a much larger population than any of the other countries on here. What happens if we adjust the numbers to make them a ratio of the number of plays to the national population? Then we get this:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh0K7pb6JRuUv51KTeuKy-QeBJkmM7xAQVXVXpuLR2d5T-48v62AumSyyOV_B-58Gjniz56BBwnHaESJTXX4mdhqtOxmPcrcQlTXMKpr2Lwzm1yt8pzwdvJ3Iw-0iPhyvZnzS70MDYrjUWMv0kS3-HZS0Pg0asZyY6dERkVOmMHmjtr51CLGZ5UpnH-DA=s1178" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="821" data-original-width="1178" height="446" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh0K7pb6JRuUv51KTeuKy-QeBJkmM7xAQVXVXpuLR2d5T-48v62AumSyyOV_B-58Gjniz56BBwnHaESJTXX4mdhqtOxmPcrcQlTXMKpr2Lwzm1yt8pzwdvJ3Iw-0iPhyvZnzS70MDYrjUWMv0kS3-HZS0Pg0asZyY6dERkVOmMHmjtr51CLGZ5UpnH-DA=w640-h446" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>Canada surges into the lead! Interestingly, Iceland is second. Iceland's population of 366,000 is slightly smaller than the city proper population of Cleveland, Ohio. The USA is now third. I've noticed for quite a while that there's a disproportionate amount of music that I listen to from Canada considering how much smaller a population it has than the US. There's just something about those Canadians, man.</p><p>And here's a similar analysis but in list form for the top states and provinces of my music listening history. First ranked by raw number of plays:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjRlEaOwL8YIUFiJAOqc_29eKotxXh3tehc3I5fR7soa9j9U33cxMAVz2FbeBEn6YToa3THcWyXnQcH9ANCbm6YqyeDix_JeXOpGz7lQy3K-gdUAZWWaQwipRQyzzN2zlbR4A6JoFv_ycgFmgg_naOOzJWpFZ5xVSfy5BPepiOZQsN46g-ah0sQ_C5jEw=s532" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="389" data-original-width="532" height="468" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjRlEaOwL8YIUFiJAOqc_29eKotxXh3tehc3I5fR7soa9j9U33cxMAVz2FbeBEn6YToa3THcWyXnQcH9ANCbm6YqyeDix_JeXOpGz7lQy3K-gdUAZWWaQwipRQyzzN2zlbR4A6JoFv_ycgFmgg_naOOzJWpFZ5xVSfy5BPepiOZQsN46g-ah0sQ_C5jEw=w640-h468" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div>No surprise that California comes in first considering its huge population and sizeable music scene, but it just barely edges out Ontario. Now to reorder the list by the population-adjusted numbers:<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh47syXxFQLnk89D8dWPZnT6R-hSoq4F6FSl96gBHGyDA8bybMglEnot5Ia6yIIM-kNEOl7j4ixRPffv1Qy9LnQU7VSU7N9yOjSf77SrXpmOXUpQe4Nt_c9daSjIWPQw_Nl_TAIHeyIgvQDM2lbhCAXqS1bBT9hId9kKoDIA8gn4xvuXRkV4DsjEwgmgA=s531" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="398" data-original-width="531" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh47syXxFQLnk89D8dWPZnT6R-hSoq4F6FSl96gBHGyDA8bybMglEnot5Ia6yIIM-kNEOl7j4ixRPffv1Qy9LnQU7VSU7N9yOjSf77SrXpmOXUpQe4Nt_c9daSjIWPQw_Nl_TAIHeyIgvQDM2lbhCAXqS1bBT9hId9kKoDIA8gn4xvuXRkV4DsjEwgmgA=w640-h480" width="640" /></a></div><div><p>I think the fact that the top eight states and provinces on this list consist of four Canadian provinces along with the states of Oregon, Washington, Maine, and Ohio is easily the most "on brand" thing for me in this post.</p><p>And last, what I consider by far the most interesting result from the analysis I did:</p><p><b>Trends in my music listening by vocalist gender</b></p><p>Similar to the geographical annotation, I also manually annotated by lead vocals: male, female, both, or none (none meaning music without vocals or with extremely minimal vocals). I didn't really have strictly defined criteria for the categorization but just went with what felt right, so Arcade Fire counted as "male" because Win Butler does lead on a large majority of the songs with just the occasional Régine Chassagne song, whereas the New Pornographers counted as "both" because even though most of the songs do have male lead vocals, there are a substantial number of songs throughout their catalog with Neko Case or occasionally another female vocalist taking lead.</p><p>I then excluded the "both" and "none" artists (a small fraction of the total), calculated the fraction of what remained that fell under "male" vs. "female" for each year, and got this graph:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiEoNj4tXlRaE22y6jIbbTRuhZK7cihPgWl9B7l_KNJoUaRUZvACpF_3Cj6QYhe-c-qs_jUqWa8uJPqABoVQhadcWstU5_G9h0VHFD67bQDUjE8J-SYKxCbBi40DZfoUs9DZatX4TawpV9VQ10McMujHdTcnKjCc6OnO7GMp5Tz8PYF0SEM9mhQshX8hw=s1171" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="823" data-original-width="1171" height="450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiEoNj4tXlRaE22y6jIbbTRuhZK7cihPgWl9B7l_KNJoUaRUZvACpF_3Cj6QYhe-c-qs_jUqWa8uJPqABoVQhadcWstU5_G9h0VHFD67bQDUjE8J-SYKxCbBi40DZfoUs9DZatX4TawpV9VQ10McMujHdTcnKjCc6OnO7GMp5Tz8PYF0SEM9mhQshX8hw=w640-h450" width="640" /></a></div><p>It's just such a striking trend! When I first started using last.fm in 2005, I listened to almost no music with female lead vocals. This had been true for as long as I listened to mostly music of my own choosing, going back to adolescence. 2005 was when I first started to really expand my taste in music. And going forward, there was a steady increase in how much music with female lead vocals I listened to. Finally, in 2020 and 2021, I reached very close to a 50/50 balance. It's just such an interesting trend to me. If you're a stats nerd, you might appreciate that a linear regression of fraction (either female or male) against year has a whopping <b>0.86 </b>R-squared value (p = 5.1 x 10^-8).</p><p>I think it says something about how boys are socialized to avoid "girly" things. I don't remember ever having an active <i>dislike </i>for music with female vocals. But I still tended not to choose to listen to it. Then, as an adult, as I explored more and more music, and started to just listen to whatever I enjoyed listening to, this eventually led to a near perfect balance of vocals by gender. Funny how that worked out.</p><p>So that includes my super nerdy analysis of my music listening history. I hope someone else found it entertaining, but at the very least I did! It's a more cheery topic for graphs than how many people have died from COVID, so at least there's that.</p></div>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-63574003734544857202022-01-27T20:48:00.002-08:002022-01-28T12:25:44.893-08:00"3895 people died of COVID in this country yesterday" (why that's misleading, what the numbers really mean, and implications for omicron's severity)<p>I want to say up front, because if I didn't I think this could be easily misconstrued, that my purpose here is not to question the seriousness of what's been happening with the COVID pandemic. It's a horrific situation. And I'm also not questioning whether all those deaths were really caused by COVID. There's no reason to doubt that they were.</p><p>Also, I'm not trying to call out people who make this error, because I find it very understandable why people who haven't directly engaged with the data might make this mistake.</p><p>I also want to say up front that the most important thing to know about COVID is that everyone who's eligible should get vaccinated and boosted. People who are unvaccinated have a roughly 68x chance of dying from COVID as people who are vaccinated and boosted according to the <a href="https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status">latest numbers</a>. We are incredibly lucky to be able to receive, for free, such an effective intervention against a deadly disease.</p><p>Anyway, I just want to talk about a thing that I see all the time that isn't accurate and that bugs me, and try to educate people a little. Because it's important to me to try to understand what's going on in the world, and I like trying to share that knowledge.</p><p>I guess I've always been someone who is a stickler for accuracy. I have a strong tendency to "well, <i>actually</i>" people. When I see someone make a blatant error, it's like something is triggered in my brain and I have a strong urge to correct the error. Literally, when I was in second grade I frequently corrected my teacher's spelling mistakes in front of the class. So this tendency has been around for a long time!</p><p>I very often see people on social media say "[x number of] people died yesterday from COVID" to complain about how other people aren't taking the pandemic seriously enough. (And yes, certainly, people not taking the pandemic seriously enough has been a problem since the very beginning of the pandemic.) The most recent example being "3895 people died of COVID yesterday," talking about the numbers (for the United States) that have come out in the past day as I write this post.</p><p>It is not accurate to say 3895 people died of COVID yesterday. In fact, it's impossible to say how many people died of COVID yesterday, because the vast majority of those deaths have not yet been officially recorded as COVID deaths.</p><p>Here's a graph, from the New York Times, showing where this number came from.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjTYnHDXd1LyqO1XPasSRpx8TcZzRJooBveCduaBkrBKMhR5pVvBS6ZZQC4kmGfRhThnMkcqrxxSMXo11cEE4qS4nnPt6J0-seDEaZmbBn5KhinsL_56sZzg5NxqQ0iO37hsulaUfeI8knfjMhSpvJijZs71KC3TrYw2c_ZZ8YwG2o52R0BKUG2YfYMog=s769" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="453" data-original-width="769" height="378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjTYnHDXd1LyqO1XPasSRpx8TcZzRJooBveCduaBkrBKMhR5pVvBS6ZZQC4kmGfRhThnMkcqrxxSMXo11cEE4qS4nnPt6J0-seDEaZmbBn5KhinsL_56sZzg5NxqQ0iO37hsulaUfeI8knfjMhSpvJijZs71KC3TrYw2c_ZZ8YwG2o52R0BKUG2YfYMog=w640-h378" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>So, a couple things to immediately notice. One is that it's a graph of "new reported deaths by day," meaning that the deaths were reported on that day, which says nothing about when the deaths occurred. (I wrote <a href="https://guyaboutcleveland.blogspot.com/2020/06/a-deeper-dive-into-covid-data-what-do.html">a post</a> in June 2020 - yeah, this has really been going on for almost two years, sigh - with a lengthy explainer on this very topic. It's been very frustrating to me seeing people continuing to make this mistake over and over for almost two years, but again, I don't really blame people who haven't directly engaged with the data for not understanding this.) The second thing is that the daily average for the last week is 2466, meaning that 3895 is a big outlier. If you're in a period of time where about 2500 people are dying each day from a disease, it's extraordinarily unlikely that suddenly nearly 4000 would die in one day. That's just not how these things work. And I notice the "[x number of] people died yesterday of COVID" trope usually comes up when there's a big outlier like this.</p><p>Why is there such a big outlier? It's because sometimes a big backlog of previously unreported deaths will be cleared in a single day.</p><p>But when did the deaths <i>actually </i>occur?</p><p>Well, right now I find this particularly interesting, because it relates to the issue of how big of a toll the omicron wave will end up taking.</p><p>Lately, when I see this trope about so and so many people died of COVID yesterday, I sometimes see someone add something like, "at least they were mild deaths." A snarky reference to the news stories saying the omicron variant is milder than previous forms of COVID.</p><p>The implication here is that 3895 people died yesterday of COVID, and because we're in the omicron wave those 3895 people died from omicron, and therefore omicron can't be that mild. But did those people really die from omicron?</p><p>Let's try to figure that out.</p><p>I took a look at the data reported by the state of Ohio and identified the dates of death for all the COVID deaths that Ohio reported in the one week period from January 20 to January 26, 2022. Here's a graph of those deaths showing the number that occurred on each day (there's also a handful that occurred on earlier dates that I left off the graph):</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjO4YKvysODawACX-KBB_WeO1q94IiGBQWH9s5WOTPc36fBzLMh1j_etXLtrcdBUfo3hIhYO2EZscoI7VPripHUx0nAAd7gYypeQv33IM8lOW8uROpFhhZ278ZmnmgeAatYjOanklXhnpmBK7fSq3yl1GwiOs_FFqqHW7i4Ki4TuX6lAdogKNL_q48d8A=s987" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="732" data-original-width="987" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjO4YKvysODawACX-KBB_WeO1q94IiGBQWH9s5WOTPc36fBzLMh1j_etXLtrcdBUfo3hIhYO2EZscoI7VPripHUx0nAAd7gYypeQv33IM8lOW8uROpFhhZ278ZmnmgeAatYjOanklXhnpmBK7fSq3yl1GwiOs_FFqqHW7i4Ki4TuX6lAdogKNL_q48d8A=w640-h474" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>What this tells us is that more than half of the deaths that Ohio reported in the last week occurred on or before January 3; in other words, most of the deaths occurred several weeks ago. (Certainly not "yesterday.")</p><p>Incidentally, when I analyzed this for that post in June 2020, the median delay from date of death to report date was 5 days, so the delay has become much longer. I can't say what the typical delay is in other states. I'm sure that substantial delays are quite common, but <i>as </i>substantial as those in Ohio? I don't know. Perhaps yes in some states and no in some others.</p><p>That graph shows us when the recently reported deaths occurred. The next piece of the puzzle is, when did those people get COVID?</p><p>It's been <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html">reported that</a> the median duration from symptom onset date to date of death, for people who get COVID and then die from it, is roughly 17 days. (I don't know if it's exactly the same for the delta and/or omicron variants, but I expect it's at least fairly similar.) So for a quick and dirty estimate of the case onset dates (which, it should also be noted, would be a few days after the infection dates), let's send everything back 17 days:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhsXJ_UIJjUDw3_jCPv-Ti-6TQAQS88d9Y5BB-QMa_gf630FqwsOKz58yFkwXNKP6ctedGjBkSMBC3ktPaAJH6vsUACVC03McOJYx8JlDwrlIlFq5dTiDdqbbZYwGxMRr-UayKJSSbH0gPNCQz8WSC6PFsJY0-ozKCTSDs30nyZCj7xLo9Q_ci5ZjVikA=s980" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="727" data-original-width="980" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhsXJ_UIJjUDw3_jCPv-Ti-6TQAQS88d9Y5BB-QMa_gf630FqwsOKz58yFkwXNKP6ctedGjBkSMBC3ktPaAJH6vsUACVC03McOJYx8JlDwrlIlFq5dTiDdqbbZYwGxMRr-UayKJSSbH0gPNCQz8WSC6PFsJY0-ozKCTSDs30nyZCj7xLo9Q_ci5ZjVikA=w640-h474" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>More than half of the deaths reported by Ohio in the last week would be people whose cases started on or before December 17. At that point in time, what was the prevalence of the omicron variant?</p><p>It turns out, for the week ending December 18, about 62% of the cases in the US were still the delta variant, and about 38% were the omicron variant (from the <a href="https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions">CDC's variant tracker</a>):</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhq7LX9Lmq72I_hdtwfpgJDR4nrTlWcEO7lIDj4cFFe8CaMcusHSi7YR_07xmShKwe0Ln-kDHr7IJ0-dcMTVHN9CPYS9WuzlZZabiPe1T668FTnDxy1Nj372cODMMuMUD9of2sPVBcr72eZuCQmoxsXaVfn72jlqdxkutz2a78asN0kerGq9DOP0a63Hw=s1293" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="895" data-original-width="1293" height="444" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhq7LX9Lmq72I_hdtwfpgJDR4nrTlWcEO7lIDj4cFFe8CaMcusHSi7YR_07xmShKwe0Ln-kDHr7IJ0-dcMTVHN9CPYS9WuzlZZabiPe1T668FTnDxy1Nj372cODMMuMUD9of2sPVBcr72eZuCQmoxsXaVfn72jlqdxkutz2a78asN0kerGq9DOP0a63Hw=w640-h444" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>I will note that, at that point in time, omicron had already reached a higher prevalence in Northeast Ohio, where I live. Still, delta hadn't been wiped out, and the rest of the state probably had numbers comparable to the country as a whole.</p><p>So we have several pieces of data from which we can extrapolate.</p><p>1. About half of the COVID deaths reported in Ohio in the last week were likely the result of cases that began in mid-December or sooner.</p><p>2. In mid-December, the majority of cases were still delta, not omicron.</p><p>3. Delta has a higher infection fatality rate than omicron. There is now an abundant amount of evidence showing this, although we don't know exactly how much higher, but it's probably at least several times higher.</p><p>Taken together, this implies that the majority, and perhaps even a large majority, of COVID deaths reported in Ohio in the last week were caused by the delta variant, not the omicron variant. This might also be true for the country as a whole, but I'm not sure because I don't have an easy way to see deaths by date of death for all the other states.</p><p>We've seen that a lot of other countries have had massive surges of cases from omicron without anywhere near as dramatic of increases in deaths as what we're seeing in the US now. This has been attributed to the poor vaccination rate in the US. And this is indeed true, but an important point that is being missed when interpreting the current death numbers is the poor vaccination rate in the US <i>also means that the omicron wave is happening on top of an already large baseline of delta cases. </i>Therefore, it's hard to say right now how much of the latest wave of deaths is the direct result of omicron.</p><p>Really, to be able to tell what the impact of the omicron wave is on the US's death rates, we'll have to wait at least a few more weeks. That's not the most satisfying answer, but it's the most honest answer. Additionally, teasing out the impact of omicron vs. delta on death numbers is likely going to require a more rigorous level of analysis than what is being done by most people who are commenting on COVID death numbers.</p><p>We are actually incredibly lucky that omicron does cause considerably less severe disease and death per case than all previous versions of COVID. It's horrific to contemplate how things might look right now if that weren't the case.</p><p>I hope this was informative. My purpose here was simply to try to educate people. I'm not trying to tell anyone what to do with this information. At this point, almost two years in and with no real way to know what's going to happen in the future, I hesitate to try to tell anyone what they should do in regard to COVID matters. With one definite exception, which is that everyone who's eligible should get vaccinated and boosted, and that we collectively have to increase our efforts to vaccinate people both in this country and around the world. I don't know how many people are going to end up dying from omicron vs. delta, but it's going to be a lot either way, and it continues to be true that the vast majority of those deaths could have been prevented by vaccination.</p>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-26472221448986576392021-12-18T09:31:00.000-08:002021-12-18T09:31:57.979-08:00Music for the apocalypse: the albums of 2021<p>I was thinking recently about the albums that have touched my life over the past year and I realized that 2021 has been an incredibly strong year for new music. I count a whopping four different albums this year that, had they been released in 2020, would have been my favorite album of that year. It's been a long time since there was a year with so many albums that I loved so much. I think the pandemic that had many of us staying home for much of 2020 and that put live music on hold for more than a year is a big reason why so much great new music came into the world. With no touring, many musicians seem to have focused extra hard on honing their craft at home and in the studio. And the distressing reality of the modern world - with not only a still raging global pandemic, but also an ever worsening climate catastrophe, and the growing threat of American democracy collapsing - has certainly provided plenty of inspiration for great music. I don't know if it's appropriate to say this is a "good thing" that came from the awful pandemic era, but I'm definitely grateful for all that music.</p><p>This isn't an attempt to make a "best albums" list for 2021, because there are lots of undoubtedly great albums that I didn't get around to listening to. Rather, it's just a list of my personal favorite albums of the year. I'll give a little blurb for each of those four albums that stood out the most to me, counting down to my most favorite. Also, honorable mentions to Lucy Dacus's <i>Home Video </i>(incredible songwriting and so evocative of high school nostalgia) and Olivia Rodrigo's <i>SOUR </i>(if I had to name a favorite song of the year, the ridiculously infectious "good 4 u" would be a contender).</p><p>And now my favorite albums of 2021.</p><p><b>Weakened Friends - <i>Quitter</i></b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgIUjbvLb30sy8pMnV7oXHv1yaR02Dvi5C8WvuXEK9QoNLf9dLwXEJba3hWWs5FFRthtJ_QNGDjus4zRENvoVLq20Uzt_W3dFKU9vxlzPeLVlH1vD4I5vTRUIuMJmS67fGlbYJTFrigCkDMTyd04bJqJ-VuhYAo0FBB1LSUFAYegN84TPZMNHs_R0Lnlw=s1200" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgIUjbvLb30sy8pMnV7oXHv1yaR02Dvi5C8WvuXEK9QoNLf9dLwXEJba3hWWs5FFRthtJ_QNGDjus4zRENvoVLq20Uzt_W3dFKU9vxlzPeLVlH1vD4I5vTRUIuMJmS67fGlbYJTFrigCkDMTyd04bJqJ-VuhYAo0FBB1LSUFAYegN84TPZMNHs_R0Lnlw=w400-h400" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This is a late addition, coming out just last month, but it quickly zoomed up my list. I realized recently that <i>Quitter </i>brings to mind for me Piebald's 2002 classic <i>We Are the Only Friends We Have</i>, which coming from me is incredibly high praise. I'm not saying the two bands sound alike, just that both albums are packed from front to back with incredibly fun to listen to emotional rock songs full of crunchy guitars, catchy hooks, and memorable lyrics, and the high quality of the songs is so consistent that I'd be hard pressed to name a weak track. Also that both albums feature noticeably higher production values over their respective bands' also excellent previous albums. And hey, both albums also feature horn parts on the closing tracks!</div><p></p><p>As usual with Weakened Friends, a trio from Portland, Maine, there's great musicianship all around, but Sonia Sturino's distinctive vocals are what really set them apart from the crowd. I think she speaks for most of us with the caustic way she spits out lines like "World's a fucking mess, spin me round, I feel nauseous now" on "Tunnels."</p><p>Essential tracks: "Everything is Better," "Tunnels," "Spew," "Haunted House"</p><p>(Note for other Weakened Friends fans: I also got really into Sturino's old band The Box Tiger this year and I highly recommend them as well; a distinctly different sound but arguably just as great or close to it.)</p><p><b>Typhoon - <i>Sympathetic Magic</i></b></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="font-weight: bold; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi3gzxhbwK8gwV-jh8nGlIWrRpxexMfLyyXMFSDb4SuCc5TtvuObQrOhJiHfnzXFb9Bc4Wp1yQ1WqhPnTrM_OUHhTJ2Umtq2eaJq1cbDS8HaIGUwR7W1cvFsCDPNd63Cb8yL_yxkcHQdC2UW3796M0ni7JxM2eQ-XiNn2UP_w_2fc563i72SjwJw8bEQA=s1200" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi3gzxhbwK8gwV-jh8nGlIWrRpxexMfLyyXMFSDb4SuCc5TtvuObQrOhJiHfnzXFb9Bc4Wp1yQ1WqhPnTrM_OUHhTJ2Umtq2eaJq1cbDS8HaIGUwR7W1cvFsCDPNd63Cb8yL_yxkcHQdC2UW3796M0ni7JxM2eQ-XiNn2UP_w_2fc563i72SjwJw8bEQA=w400-h400" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><br />We cross the country to the other Portland (Oregon) for the next entry on my list. The release of the digital version of <i>Sympathetic Magic </i>in January came totally by surprise and it was a wonderful surprise at a time I really needed it. Typhoon's music has touched me personally in a way that very few artists have. After grappling with mortality in such a beautiful way on 2013's <i>White Lighter</i>, a contender for my favorite album of all time, Kyle Morton began to move toward themes more inspired by events of the modern world in certain tracks on 2018's <i>Offerings </i>and has moved further in that direction on the band's latest brilliant release. The band's orchestral indie folk rock sound is somewhat understated here compared to previous releases, fitting for the subject matter.<p></p><p>Second track "Empire Builder," a narrative centered around a cross country train ride, begins with the lines, "The apocalypse is incoming, only moving slow and unevenly" and that really does capture this moment in time. I do also really like the not-totally-giving-up-on-hope closing lines: "Everybody's angry/Everybody's lonely/Maybe it's hopeless/And maybe love is not enough/But let's not rule out the possibility." And some of the lyrics from subsequent track "Motion and Thought" are so evocative to me of the strange feeling of the early pandemic days: "Told you you could call me/Anytime you want/It's not as if I've got anything going on."</p><p>Essential tracks: "Empire Builder," "Motion and Thought, "We're In It," "Welcome to the Endgame"</p><p><b>Julien Baker - <i>Little Oblivions</i></b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjTjdhnkaT0t05ZgNhZKSrwM_kXT6CMotu43U7BOX8j2sYn1_sBprdkfKcfb27odYLnz3uoKm-Imzq-wyD2cHpkkTiv1VIGktWxMfsqy0Uqs2IpgJK_zWInYHkpAAVppK05UG7SZ9YvXxWIQUX1P19CNNQDon6-INn4Xhrc1QLt3LPV0Z93NoCrIlqrUw=s1200" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjTjdhnkaT0t05ZgNhZKSrwM_kXT6CMotu43U7BOX8j2sYn1_sBprdkfKcfb27odYLnz3uoKm-Imzq-wyD2cHpkkTiv1VIGktWxMfsqy0Uqs2IpgJK_zWInYHkpAAVppK05UG7SZ9YvXxWIQUX1P19CNNQDon6-INn4Xhrc1QLt3LPV0Z93NoCrIlqrUw=w400-h400" width="400" /></a></div><p>This album continues an incredible run for the amazingly accomplished young artist whose debut <i>Sprained Ankle </i>would be a career highlight for many musicians, but who proceeded to take her music to another level with <i>Turn Out the Lights </i>and has now pushed even farther with the stunning <i>Little Oblivions. </i>Baker toured with a full band backing her for the first time this year, and the bigger sound is evident on the album, and it works really, really well. Listening to her first album, you might not have guessed she would make music that rocks this hard, but clearly you'd have been wrong. Baker's astonishing voice still stands out above the great textures of guitar and synth sounds.</p><p>Baker's music has always been extremely personal, her struggles with mental health so beautifully testified to in her lyrics, and it's something I think more and more of us can relate to as the world seems to come apart around us. On closing track "Ziptie," she asks, "Good God, when're you gonna call it off, climb down off the cross, and change your mind?" It's a timely question! I also have to mention that any time Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus, the three members of boygenius, come together on a song, it's one that you aren't going to want to miss. Apparently, vocals for "Favor" from <i>Little Oblivions </i>were recorded on the same day as those for "Please Stay" on Dacus's <i>Home Video </i>and for "Graceland Too" on Bridgers's 2020 album <i>Punisher</i>, and all three tracks are among the most gorgeous you'll hear in a while.</p><p>Essential tracks: "Faith Healer," "Ringside," "Favor," "Ziptie"</p><p><b>The Weather Station - <i>Ignorance</i></b></p><p><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj0ivc5luoyxLs1mKoEd4RrUCf0SgdbEc1ST4p5W-EusPczUvfDU63BjKd1VQ6OlP1e2ntnwyA9WW3WcwVuyaUi0WWKBBLo-H7xo5ZiOSt6BjAmVWmMOxr0du71M4tkEfpjV-GPWwqq10cyGK39QuR6IFo2aoD4C8s4EjqSq1FkFI_K-idVoSiPghPOIA=s1200" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj0ivc5luoyxLs1mKoEd4RrUCf0SgdbEc1ST4p5W-EusPczUvfDU63BjKd1VQ6OlP1e2ntnwyA9WW3WcwVuyaUi0WWKBBLo-H7xo5ZiOSt6BjAmVWmMOxr0du71M4tkEfpjV-GPWwqq10cyGK39QuR6IFo2aoD4C8s4EjqSq1FkFI_K-idVoSiPghPOIA=w400-h400" width="400" /></a></b></div><br />I've already written <a href="https://guyaboutcleveland.blogspot.com/2021/09/this-is-what-songs-are-for.html">at great length</a> about my love for this album, which has truly become one of my all time favorites. It's a staggering achievement by the Canadian band (a project of singer-songwriter Tamara Lindeman) who had previously released a string of very good albums but nothing that came close to, or would have led one to anticipate, the masterpiece that is <i>Ignorance</i>. The propulsive, jazzy rock sound is a surprising change from the folk leanings of the band's previous releases, and it works wonderfully. Lindeman has always had a knack for piercingly insightful lyrics but she takes her lyrics game to the next level on these ten tracks pondering a human being's place in a world beset by catastrophe.<p></p><div>This album is, to me, a distillate of the experience of being human in 2021. The anxiety and the grief and still the wonder of it all. Marveling at the beauty of the natural world ("My god, what a sunset; blood red floods the Atlantic") while unable to escape "all this dying" in the headlines. Taking a moment to watch a bird in a parking lot. Remembering that "everywhere we go there is an outside, over all of these ceilings hangs a sky." "Always reeling, through long midnights of feeling" but at the same time being unable to conceal love, love for this troubled world and for other people inhabiting it with us. Years from now, I'll look back on this year, and this album will be the soundtrack of my memories.</div><div><br /></div><div>Essential tracks: "Atlantic," "Parking Lot," "Heart," "Subdivisions"</div><div><br /></div><div>And in conclusion, thank you, musicians, for making this sucky time suck a little less. It's hard to imagine life without you.</div>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-28319553800757678442021-11-04T18:57:00.001-07:002021-11-04T18:57:44.943-07:00"Everyone here has anxiety" (the boygenius concert trilogy)<p>After one and a half years with almost no in person live music - one and a half years that somehow felt both like an eternity and like almost no time at all had passed - suddenly it seemed like everyone and their brother had scheduled tours for September and October of 2021. When these tours were originally announced, it looked like the pandemic would be largely behind us by the time the shows happened. The delta variant changed things. The shows went on, with vaccine and sometimes mask requirements, musicians and fans adapting the best we could to this strange new reality. In a time of many difficult questions and no clear good answers, we try to choose the least bad answer and make the most of it.</p><p>For me, a magical <a href="https://guyaboutcleveland.blogspot.com/2021/09/this-is-what-songs-are-for.html">Weather Station show</a> on September 9 in Detroit kicked off a period more densely packed with exciting concerts than any I can ever remember, a period that has made me realize oh, how I've missed live music so, so much - and not only that, but how I've missed simply <i>being around people </i>so, so much.</p><p>Among the numerous shows over the past two months, Megan and I managed to catch all three members of fabulous indie rock supergroup <a href="https://xboygeniusx.bandcamp.com/album/boygenius">boygenius</a> - Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus - in separate live appearances. If you'd told me prior to COVID that I'd have an opportunity to see separate shows by each of the three in a period of less than a month, I'd have been astounded. These are very strange times indeed.</p><p>This post is about all three of the shows.</p><p>The first, by Bridgers, was on September 18 at EXPRESS LIVE! (yes, that is really the name of the venue - barf) in Columbus. Megan and I drove down from Cleveland, found unfortunately expensive garage parking (thanks to a simultaneous arena concert also in downtown Columbus that night), made our way over toward the venue, and quickly noticed there were just so many kids. <i>So many </i>kids.</p><p>I had not been in such a large crowd of people in a very long time. (An outdoor crowd, it's worth mentioning for COVID concerns - Bridgers scheduled all her shows on the tour at outdoor locations.) And so many of those people were so young. It was an interesting experience. I remembered attending an Arcade Fire show in 2007 at the same venue with Cara and my dad, and my dad looking around for people in his age bracket. This was almost like that for Megan and me.</p><p>It made me think about what a weird time this must be to grow up in. Especially now, because of COVID. But then, even before COVID. And I guess it's nice to see that some things stay the same. Young people find music that speaks to them and their concerns in whatever era they live in. With everything going on right now, it's not surprising that so many connect with what Bridgers is doing.</p><p>When Megan and I were waiting in a very long line to enter the venue prior to the show, someone drove up the side street along which the line stretched, stupidly in too much of a hurry, and loudly honked their horn right next to us at some people who were walking up the street to get to the end of the line that occupied most of the sidewalk. We and everyone around us flinched, startled, and shot a glance at the passing car. A young woman in front of us in line quickly let forth the best line of the night: "Everyone here has anxiety!" A witty and timely complaint directed at the already gone driver.</p><p>Megan and I laughed in agreement. Yes, the audience of a Phoebe Bridgers concert, or a Julien Baker or Lucy Dacus concert for that matter, is definitely enriched for people who "have anxiety." (Although how could anyone not have anxiety in the year 2021? If there are people who don't, although a part of me is envious, another part feels sorry for them because they must be really out of touch with reality.) The music of these amazing young women provides at least something of a balm for that anxiety.</p><p>After entering the venue, we took our places on the lawn and settled in amongst a crowd of people mostly at least fifteen years our juniors, and it struck me that for some of those kids, this must be the first big concert they'd ever attended, and some of them must have spent the last year and a half waiting for such an opportunity. What an experience it must have been for someone in that position.</p><p>Indie pop band Muna opened with a great, energetic set, but one that was marred by the extreme chattiness of numerous audience members. Megan said that being annoyed by that was a sign of getting old. I pointed out that I found it just as annoying when I was in my twenties as I do today.</p><p>The audience was more attentive during Bridgers's headline set, although still not as much as we'd have liked. But it was a great performance. And wow, it was just so good to be experiencing something like that after so much time without it!</p><p>It was a very warm day, with temperatures dropping only a little as the sun went down, and on two separate occasions the show was paused because someone in the pit had passed out. At a Phoebe Bridgers show! So there was a lot of excitement for sure.</p><p>One weird aspect of COVID is that despite us having been together for two years, this show was the first time that Megan and I got to see live performances of songs that were already meaningful to our relationship prior to the show. This included Bridgers's haunting song "Funeral," which Megan loves to point out was a hilariously dark choice for the first song I ever sent to her when we were texting and just starting to get to know each other. Lyrics excerpt:</p><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 12px;"><i><span jsname="YS01Ge">I'm singing at a funeral tomorrow</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">For a kid a year older than me</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And I've been talking to his dad, it makes me so sad</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">When I think too much about it I can't breathe</span></i></div><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 12px;"><i><span jsname="YS01Ge">And I have this dream where I'm screaming underwater</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">While my friends are all waving from the shore</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And I don't need you to tell me what that means</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">I don't believe in that stuff anymore</span></i></div><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 12px;"><i><span jsname="YS01Ge">Jesus Christ, I'm so blue all the time</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And that's just how I feel</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Always have and I always will</span></i></div><p>After she pointed out how strange and funny it was that this was the first song I ever sent her, I obviously had to admit she was right. The thing is, "Jesus Christ, I'm so blue all the time" was not, like, a representation of my feelings about life. Okay, sometimes things seem like that, but not most of the time. I just really connect to music that gets at that sort of emotional state, that leans into the sorrow that's an inherent part of life. It's also just a beautiful song, and was a definite highlight of the concert.</p><p>An even bigger highlight was a solo performance of boygenius track "Me & My Dog," one that I was not expecting, another song meaningful to Megan and me and just an astonishingly good song. (Indeed, we "cried at [the] show with the teenagers.")</p><p>The great music was accompanied by striking visuals, something that was true of all three shows in this trilogy, the Bridgers show on a larger scale than the other two. During most of the songs, a large screen behind the stage displayed beautiful artwork matching the content of the song.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaE-4QOBgHJX5Y1VDblR7s4gS7jGSB9iaHoSetKL7EWXRFnoXc9Xk_Y_8qK4lA_qgc9nEvZNRHLdny2x83Rq9fMfyHFf-tUXgJIx7QcBj0R8lZYXn_6Utoy6iNWyzJnqC8XVERufkr0AJc/s1534/IMG_20210918_212855696%257E3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1534" data-original-width="1520" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaE-4QOBgHJX5Y1VDblR7s4gS7jGSB9iaHoSetKL7EWXRFnoXc9Xk_Y_8qK4lA_qgc9nEvZNRHLdny2x83Rq9fMfyHFf-tUXgJIx7QcBj0R8lZYXn_6Utoy6iNWyzJnqC8XVERufkr0AJc/w634-h640/IMG_20210918_212855696%257E3.jpg" width="634" /></a></div><br /><p>Bridgers's band was great, with the trumpet player in particular earning appreciative chants from the audience on more than one occasion. And watching those musicians on that big stage, I thought, wow, they're all so <i>young</i>. I thought that too at the Baker and Dacus shows. And another thing I thought, they all just seem like such <i>good people.</i> Not that you can know for sure. But I think you can kind of tell when you watch them interact with each other and with the audiences. It's really nice to see. The kids are all right, you know?</p><p>It was a great show. But it was just the beginning of a trilogy that would get even better.</p><p>At last year's Grammy awards, Phoebe Bridgers was nominated for four awards, including Best Alternative Music Album for <i>Punisher. </i>It's an excellent album, so I'm not criticizing it at all but rather praising the works of her boygenius bandmates when I say that among the most recent albums by all three, <i>Punisher </i>would come in third place in my rankings.</p><p>I'm glad that Phoebe Bridgers has achieved such well earned success and that so many people have connected with her music. Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus have also achieved a lot of success, but as of now, at least, don't draw nearly as large crowds, and honestly? That results in a better experience from the perspective of an audience member. Megan and I got to see both Baker and Dacus up close in two of my very favorite venues and with audiences that were totally there for the music and not to chat with their friends!</p><p>The Julien Baker show was the second of the trilogy and it took place on September 29 at Mr. Smalls Theatre in Millvale, PA, just outside of Pittsburgh. Again, Megan and I made a late afternoon drive out of Cleveland. A nice thing about living in Cleveland is that when artists schedule tours that don't hit Cleveland, there's a good chance that they'll at least hit one of Pittsburgh, Columbus, or Detroit, all very doable drives.</p><p>Our trip to see Julien Baker was marked by a remarkable amount of serendipity. This started when we missed a highway exit and ended up taking back roads through the Conneaut area, which led to us seeing a hand-painted sign next to the road advertising the amazing website <a href="https://forkin.net/">ForKin.net</a>, which led to even more amazing discoveries that I won't go into here! We marvel at the fact that we would never have known about any of it if we hadn't missed that exit. The serendipity continued as we were waiting in line to enter the venue and heard the two people behind us, a young man and a young woman, talking about the fact that the woman had offered up what she had thought was an extra ticket to the show, then after having found a buyer in the man with her, had discovered she had actually bought just one ticket to the sold out show, not two. And was therefore planning to leave rather than attend the show herself. The serendipitous part was that Megan had accidentally purchased <i>three </i>tickets to the show, and thus we found someone to use that extra ticket.</p><p>This was my fourth time seeing Julien Baker live. She never fails to blow me away. It was the first time I'd seen her headline a show, and she lived up to my expectations.</p><p>She is a tiny person. As illustrated in this picture of me and her taken at the 2018 Homecoming festival in Cincinnati:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEP02kXZzVYSJ7UKn6Yt6xiWYIkCE43rPuUIo7Ls-aBlro0ucmRVA1CC-12un6Q1crHGwvXVxM-UPFhYK4k7OJSRri6XvwSDDP-kiq36gGrzGq8CDYo9A39G1PNQD_Q5ZATCnWHPM0Rc-8/s1280/31454116_10215035575778896_3461678000590815232_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEP02kXZzVYSJ7UKn6Yt6xiWYIkCE43rPuUIo7Ls-aBlro0ucmRVA1CC-12un6Q1crHGwvXVxM-UPFhYK4k7OJSRri6XvwSDDP-kiq36gGrzGq8CDYo9A39G1PNQD_Q5ZATCnWHPM0Rc-8/w480-h640/31454116_10215035575778896_3461678000590815232_n.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>When you watch her perform live, you wonder, <i>where does that voice come from? </i>And <i>that voice</i> is something truly astounding.</p><p>During the show, Baker mentioned the first time she had performed at Mr. Smalls, opening for the band Daughter in 2016. As it happened, that show was also the first time I went to Mr. Smalls, and the first time I saw Baker live. It was an unforgettable experience. I went into that show knowing nothing about her music. I left it a big fan for life.</p><p>I remember well watching her, so petite, so young (she was twenty at the time), come out on stage by herself and then just marveling at the power of her performance. She's come a long way since then; her performances now are just as powerful but in a decidedly different way. Whereas I would describe her 2016 performance as stripped down, rawly emotional indie folk, in 2021 she's a bona fide rock star with a full band and light show. Whereas many of Phoebe Bridgers's songs felt like they would better fit a more intimate venue, in Julien Baker's show the crashing, post-rock-ish guitar chords of the live arrangements of songs like "Turn Out the Lights" and "Ziptie" would have easily filled a much larger room. So I felt very lucky to be able to experience the performance in the beautiful intimate setting of Mr. Smalls, a building that was once a church, fitting because seeing Julien Baker live borders on a religious experience.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDE5lG0JNMMbtdvbKhSKBJliCXtOTnGoXWM01YzOj6AgRdmziadug-7iBJmWfE_BqOKDIHJ0xHckIjFSPMX2khTjxrY_dNrLMl8NW7PWdfUjFK-XSqZLNi9raf8wBIC5cO2oB8k-IOCqq1/s4608/IMG_20210929_213920454%257E2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4608" data-original-width="3456" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDE5lG0JNMMbtdvbKhSKBJliCXtOTnGoXWM01YzOj6AgRdmziadug-7iBJmWfE_BqOKDIHJ0xHckIjFSPMX2khTjxrY_dNrLMl8NW7PWdfUjFK-XSqZLNi9raf8wBIC5cO2oB8k-IOCqq1/w480-h640/IMG_20210929_213920454%257E2.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br /><p>A mid-set solo interlude including some songs from debut album <i>Sprained Ankle </i>took me back to that evening in July 2016 in a wonderful way. When Baker's band returned to the stage, I quickly noticed that each member was wearing a shirt I'd appreciated at the merch table on the way in - a shirt emblazoned with a large picture of Baker's face.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitxAJ3KF81WoRB1DFpw7lNGCwlV325HBC459srmduI4kvR5xl_17bCMM_UPbdEljubVbVrsnVbqahr7CmtieecHd1uz9iITCKdz_4QhwsIjuvtH-q_iLue8x9ms07TbVte6nsRVirAXEpH/s864/JB_Shirt_Portrait_MockUp_1024x1024%25402x.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="864" data-original-width="864" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitxAJ3KF81WoRB1DFpw7lNGCwlV325HBC459srmduI4kvR5xl_17bCMM_UPbdEljubVbVrsnVbqahr7CmtieecHd1uz9iITCKdz_4QhwsIjuvtH-q_iLue8x9ms07TbVte6nsRVirAXEpH/w400-h400/JB_Shirt_Portrait_MockUp_1024x1024%25402x.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>It was hilarious, even more so when Baker turned to her band to introduce them to the crowd, and it dawned on her that one of them was wearing that shirt, and then she had to have it pointed out to her that they were <i>all </i>wearing that shirt. It was her birthday, so that was how they'd decided to honor her! And as a result of this, I had to buy the shirt for myself after the show. It's such a delightful shirt, and a delightful memory - how could I not?</p><p>2021 release <i>Little Oblivions, </i>almost every song of which was played in the show, is an astoundingly good album. Baker's previous effort, 2017's <i>Turn Out the Lights</i>, is also an astoundingly good album. <i>Sprained Ankle</i> is an amazing debut. She has easily become one of my very favorite artists of the last few years, and one that I will never miss seeing live when the opportunity arises. And in this particular show, there was something really special about watching her perform. There was so much joy in her performance. There were so many beaming smiles. There was so much gratitude at being able to be on that stage after the dreadful last 18 months. Gratitude at the opportunity and gratitude to all her fans who got vaccinated and wore masks and came out to appreciate her music. It was gratitude that was shared by me and by most other members of the audience, I have no doubt.</p><p>Another thing I have to mention from this trip - the next morning before heading back to Cleveland we made a stop at <a href="https://www.atticrecordstoreinc.com/">Attic Records</a> and it was the most amazing record store I've ever been to with a vast collection including the most random stuff that I could have spent all day browsing! We'll have to return some day to spend more time there.</p><p>The final show in the trilogy did not involve an out of town trip. Lucy Dacus made a late addition to her tour with an October 14 Cleveland date after having had to cancel a Toronto appearance. Unfortunate for her fans in Toronto, but very lucky for us here. Of the three shows covered in this post, it was the one that Megan and I had the least expectations for, but it was also the one that easily shot past both of our expectations. Dacus has put out some great music - I'm currently in love with her recent album <i>Home Video</i> - but she also really elevates that music in the live setting. I'd seen her once before, three years ago, but I'd forgotten just how outstanding she is live.</p><p>There was more serendipity after our arrival to this show. I was (of course) wearing my recently acquired Julien Baker t-shirt, and after Megan and I entered the ballroom and found a spot near the stage, one of a pair of women near us complimented me on the shirt. I mentioned having seen her in Pittsburgh and it turned out they had also been at that show! They were from Pittsburgh, so whereas we had traveled from Cleveland to Pittsburgh for the Baker show, they'd traveled from Pittsburgh to Cleveland for the Dacus show. They, too, had seen Bridgers recently - in Pittsburgh, the night before her Columbus show. One of them said something like, "these shows are my only source of serotonin right now," and, yeah. Yeah.</p><p>Things are so weird and hard and overwhelming right now, for just about everyone, everyone in their own way, for some more than for others, but I think we can all say, this is not the life we ever imagined we'd be living. And in a lot of ways it sucks. A lot. Thank goodness for live music. It's one of the best kinds of medicine there is. And thank goodness for vaccines for making these shows possible.</p><p>The Beachland Ballroom is one of my favorite places in the whole world. I've seen so many amazing shows there. Prior to the Lucy Dacus show, I hadn't been there in more than <i>twenty months</i>. That had definitely never happened before, and it was <i>so good </i>to be back. It felt like a homecoming of sorts. We took our place toward the front of the room on the left side and I remembered previous memorable shows I'd experienced from roughly the same spot, like Nada Surf in October 2005 (one of the very best shows of my early concert going days) and Sufjan Stevens in December 2012 (a truly magical holiday extravaganza). In a lot of ways I think this most recent show will go down as being just as memorable for me.</p><p>Bartees Strange opened the night with a great set. He originally gained recognition for an album of National covers, a couple of which he included in his live set, and which he introduced by asking the audience, "Does anyone here like the National?"</p><p>I laughed and looked over at Megan, who gave an enthusiastic "woo!" I laughed because, you see, Megan is obsessed with the National, and in fact one of the main reasons I originally swiped on her Bumble profile was that it included the fact that she listens to the National a lot. I asked her whether she had ever before been somewhere where someone asked if anyone liked the National, and she, not surprisingly, said no.</p><p>Lucy Dacus completed our boygenius concert trilogy in a perfect way. She played most of the songs from her fantastic new album, one I think I'm especially connecting to right now because it leans heavily on memories of high school and I recently attended my twenty year high school reunion, and also sprinkled in a few older songs, new unreleased songs, and covers. Like at the Phoebe Bridgers show, a (smaller) screen at the back of the stage displayed some lovely artwork matching the content of certain songs, like this for "Christine":</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijlh8-Kh4gD7CVPCMZYR5NdlKtUCKTow58cEw-4JGhQNnOW-ql2SL_Z4SeYR5DZ5u8BmYQfe_WzwtzrehtqrtlkbqJqAANnNN0QRI0lAtBfQilJHn_01n8AuFv_LmL0p45ZNfcBVwNAS3K/s3044/IMG_20211014_214038547%257E2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3044" data-original-width="2312" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijlh8-Kh4gD7CVPCMZYR5NdlKtUCKTow58cEw-4JGhQNnOW-ql2SL_Z4SeYR5DZ5u8BmYQfe_WzwtzrehtqrtlkbqJqAANnNN0QRI0lAtBfQilJHn_01n8AuFv_LmL0p45ZNfcBVwNAS3K/w486-h640/IMG_20211014_214038547%257E2.jpg" width="486" /></a></div><br /><p>Dacus has an incredibly charming stage presence. She's also very adept at going between quieter songs that tug at the emotions of everyone in the room ("Please Stay" might be the most heartbreaking song I've ever heard) and louder songs that get the crowd moving. The last three songs of the main set demonstrated this nicely. From the devastating "Thumbs," with Dacus's voice over understated backing music just captivating the whole room, she then introduced the next song as a cover and launched into Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark," which I was just as thrilled to hear as Megan had been for Bartees Strange's National covers. Strange then came out on stage to play guitar on "Night Shift" and that song in particular was one of those sublime experiences that can only happen when a musician is in a room full of their devoted fans.</p><p>As the song reached its climax, the whole crowd bellowing out the words to the chorus, perhaps even louder than usual to get past our masks, I got chills. It felt like a release of all the emotions of the last year and a half. It was such a great communal experience. It was easily the best singalong I've experienced since before COVID. It was what live music is all about. I think most people in that room felt similarly.</p><p>It's a feeling I'll try to hold on to as we enter another dark winter.</p>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-30922149982356816002021-10-27T15:37:00.001-07:002021-10-27T15:37:20.167-07:00Watching superstitions and rituals emerge in real time<p>Do you ever stop and think about the things that people do in their day-to-day lives because it's taken for granted that doing the thing will serve a certain purpose, but the reality is there's no connection between doing the thing and the intended purpose? I've thought about that a lot this year.</p><p>I recently wrote about some false beliefs that a lot of people in society hold due to their having been propagandized to hold those beliefs. This is about a different sort of false belief. False beliefs that didn't become widespread through malicious disinformation campaigns, but rather because some people thought something was true even though evidence was inconclusive or had been misinterpreted, the belief became widespread, and then when evidence emerged to show it was wrong, it was too late - the belief had already become entrenched in society.</p><p>The COVID pandemic has really been quite the object lesson here.</p><p>I strongly suspect that, years from now, if you polled people on what were the important things to do to stay safe during the pandemic, two of the top responses would be "wash your hands" and "stay at least six feet away from other people." To be clear, these are absolutely not two of the most important ways to stay safe from COVID.</p><p>Public health messaging at the start of the pandemic was based on a misunderstanding about how respiratory viruses spread. It was thought that spread happened mainly through virus-laden droplets emitted from people's respiratory tracts, droplets that would fall to the ground in short order and travel less than six feet from the infected person. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzu4rxQPVmD8LlLlvR37Qy5yEqeURwOHqUh3Ij79C8RhC_hGfn53Hq5zVhmCuOw9NRaLzFoiEV5YEYoJdP_yCjRUKrBTcC8TgHQzi91SSEExne-eOQjGztH8vXiZJCbA2H8FLOQ47bBH3G/s2627/science.abd9149-fa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1197" data-original-width="2627" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzu4rxQPVmD8LlLlvR37Qy5yEqeURwOHqUh3Ij79C8RhC_hGfn53Hq5zVhmCuOw9NRaLzFoiEV5YEYoJdP_yCjRUKrBTcC8TgHQzi91SSEExne-eOQjGztH8vXiZJCbA2H8FLOQ47bBH3G/w640-h292/science.abd9149-fa.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Graphic from a <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abd9149">nice writeup in the journal Science</a> about airborne spread of respiratory viruses.</i></div><p>This model of transmission was based on misinterpretations of data going back many years. It had already been challenged by some scientists but it wasn't until COVID that we got a really large scale and obvious demonstration that this model was wrong. Transmission in fact occurs through aerosols (blue-green in the figure) that linger in the air and can travel much farther than six feet due to air currents.</p><p>With the droplet model (gray in the figure), if you are six feet away from an infected person, no virus will directly reach you. But droplets could end up on surfaces you might touch, so washing your hands frequently and avoiding touching your face with potentially contaminated hands would be important. Frequent sanitization of commonly touched surfaces, like everyone was going crazy about early in the pandemic, would also be important.</p><p>There have been 244 million reported COVID cases worldwide, a huge underestimate of the actual number of people who have been infected, and from what I have gathered, there has never been confirmation of COVID spreading through a contaminated surface. This doesn't prove that it's completely impossible for COVID to spread through a contaminated surface, but it does very strongly suggest that it's extraordinarily unlikely to happen. Frequent sanitization of surfaces to protect against COVID? It's a ritual, one that isn't actually doing anything to protect against COVID. It's also a big waste of time and resources and a distraction from effective safety measures and therefore does more harm than good when businesses and organizations promote it.</p><p>This has sunk in for a lot of people by now, although I see a depressingly large number of places still talk about how they're sanitizing surfaces to keep you safe. What seems to have sunk in less is what seems to me like the obvious next step. If COVID doesn't spread through surfaces, then washing your hands also isn't doing much of anything to protect you from COVID. (I often see people online say things like "We're still masking, distancing, and washing our hands" to show their continued commitment to pandemic safety.) <i>I'm not saying washing your hands isn't a good idea. It is, for other reasons. </i>But not for COVID safety. For COVID safety, it's another ritual. The ubiquitous hand sanitizer we still see everywhere? Also a ritual, and a distraction from actual effective safety measures.</p><p>How about six feet of distance? That's a little more complicated. Because virus-laden aerosols will tend to be more concentrated in the immediate vicinity of an infected person, having people be more spread out from each other rather than packed together does help reduce the chances of spread. But there's nothing special about six feet. The important factors are concentration of virus in the air and duration of exposure. Passing close by an infected person for a few seconds and then going your separate ways is not going to be as dangerous as being twenty feet away from an infected person in the same poorly ventilated room for an hour. Thinking that six feet of distance is a protective barrier is a superstition.</p><p>The aerosol model of transmission tells us that some of the most important ways to slow spread (other than vaccines, which since their widespread availability are the most important in allowing a return to normal activities) are recognition that outdoors is orders of magnitude safer than indoors, ventilation and filtration of indoor air, and use of good quality and properly worn masks indoors. A lot of people are aware of these things now, but the superstitions and rituals persist. Another one? Those plexiglass dividers that seem just as ubiquitous as hand sanitizer. Their use is also based on the droplet model and there's no evidence they protect against COVID. I wouldn't be surprised if twenty years from now, a lot of the plexiglass dividers will still be there and there will be people who won't even know why.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTFzvNLLnPL1BZVy0dWtOZ73ZVoHxFtEATA6_pBlrl5pWGjq_5xheZQ82uqQ8Treuql0Y5nnNpQcLZreZnmHpp5Ls9YNRoWpZ7dCid-5hhSQ7uPiCRELXhPZyaM0RD3u1j9zWpwjMlJ6B4/s780/201012083800-01-plexiglass-divider-coronavirus-0820-exlarge-169.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="438" data-original-width="780" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTFzvNLLnPL1BZVy0dWtOZ73ZVoHxFtEATA6_pBlrl5pWGjq_5xheZQ82uqQ8Treuql0Y5nnNpQcLZreZnmHpp5Ls9YNRoWpZ7dCid-5hhSQ7uPiCRELXhPZyaM0RD3u1j9zWpwjMlJ6B4/w640-h360/201012083800-01-plexiglass-divider-coronavirus-0820-exlarge-169.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>It strikes me that, since COVID is not going away, and other respiratory viruses also harm and kill many people, and there will be future pandemics, one of the very most important things we should be doing is a large scale effort to improve the quality of indoor air through ventilation and filtration. People want to be able to live their normal lives. Vaccines help make this a lot safer, but aren't 100% effective, and won't stop the next pandemic. Masks help enable some semblance of normal life but also aren't 100% effective, and mask wearing does have real drawbacks so we should strive to make it unnecessary. Social distancing (in the "avoid gathering with other people" sense, not the "six feet of distance" sense) definitely slows the spread but also goes against human nature and in a long-term scenario is harmful in many ways, so we should ideally get to a place where it's a last resort, not a primary pandemic control measure. To me, vaccines and improving indoor air quality are the two things that best enable safe enjoyment of normal life and should be used in tandem - improving indoor air quality could be the second most important big infrastructure program of our time (the most important is definitely tackling climate change) and could create so many jobs in addition to improving people's health and saving lives! We should do this!</p><p>But instead, so many organizations and people are sticking to the superstitions and rituals that don't do much, if anything, to protect against COVID. (And maybe, contrary to what I said at the start about these beliefs not being the product of disinformation campaigns, there is some element of bad acting here, in that organizations are incentivized to promote the easier, ineffective methods over the more difficult but actually effective steps toward improvement of indoor air quality.) It's sad, but it's also been a fascinating experience to watch in real time as these new belief structures have emerged. And it makes me wonder how many other superstitions and rituals there are that most people take for granted as serving some real function when they really don't. I'm sure there are a lot. I'm also aware that this sort of thinking, of always questioning the conventional wisdom, can be taken much too far and can lead to nonsense like the Flat Earth movement, 9/11 truthers, and most harmfully right now, anti-vaxxers. So be careful with this. But it's an interesting thing to think about! Do you have any other good examples? If you do, I wonder what their origins were.</p>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-40573719566154200262021-09-19T16:57:00.000-07:002021-09-19T16:57:08.379-07:00Thoughts on sharing a country with a cult<p>When I was in grad school, I spent several years as a teaching assistant for my PhD advisor's class. I remember well something that he liked to say to me and the other TAs about teaching.</p><p>If a handful of students did poorly on a particular assignment, those individual students could be blamed for their poor performances. But if a large number of students did poorly on an assignment, we shouldn't blame the individual students as much as we should blame ourselves.</p><p>I think there was a lot of wisdom in that. It was our responsibility to impart to the students the information they would need to complete the assignment successfully. If so many of the students were unable to succeed in the assignment, the instructors had failed. It wasn't just a failure of individual students, it was a systemic problem within the class, and therefore the responsibility of the people in charge of the class.</p><p>Right now in the United States of America, there is a simple assignment being given to people, an assignment with very clear right and wrong answers, and millions upon millions of people are failing that assignment.</p><p>Over the course of the COVID pandemic, people have had to make a lot of difficult decisions, decisions where the right and wrong answers haven't always been clear. I think a lot of liberal discourse on COVID has failed to acknowledge some of these complexities. That's not to say there haven't been a lot of people on the clearly wrong side of certain issues - but, for example, the "stay home and save lives" mantra, although well intentioned, can come across as awfully dismissive of people who, because of their jobs, never had the option to stay home. And there are a lot of other examples.</p><p>With the arrival of the vaccines, though? Now we have a decision that, if you are operating with the correct information, should be the opposite of difficult for the vast, vast majority of people. A decision where there is a very clear right answer (get the free, safe, and effective vaccine) and a very clear wrong answer (don't get the vaccine, thereby dramatically increasing your own chances of contracting COVID and developing severe illness, hampering efforts to get the pandemic under control, contributing to devastating strain on our health care systems and workers, harming local businesses that are struggling because of the pandemic, etc., etc., etc.).</p><p>Depressingly large numbers of people are continuing to go with the wrong answer. After getting off to one of the fastest starts thanks to our early access to large supplies of vaccine doses, something for which we are incredibly privileged, vaccination efforts in the US are stalling at levels well below those in most peer nations.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgqpmK6teK5iLKT7x-h2oZyVoDay6GKcSgDvVlGcY3C2Vkdpcb_Wk9g2eNz6cl6J-CJvdNQw1-dIc72-DnGBAugdIaD0SrCGSeZ4VT1OVW3CClWxw1lKobyu-28R2PdYiSd5OkInrwBTc1/s1162/vaccines+by+country.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="616" data-original-width="1162" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgqpmK6teK5iLKT7x-h2oZyVoDay6GKcSgDvVlGcY3C2Vkdpcb_Wk9g2eNz6cl6J-CJvdNQw1-dIc72-DnGBAugdIaD0SrCGSeZ4VT1OVW3CClWxw1lKobyu-28R2PdYiSd5OkInrwBTc1/w640-h340/vaccines+by+country.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>Now I want to be clear, the disinformation campaigns that are the focus of this post are not the only reasons for people not getting vaccinated. There are people who, for instance, haven't gotten vaccinated because they are worried about having heavy side effects (a real thing, I can say from my own experience) and not being able to take a sick day from work. There are people who are members of communities that have long histories that continue to the present day of being mistreated by the medical establishment, and therefore have valid reasons to distrust the medical establishment which translate into vaccine hesitancy - an understandable reason for questioning whether to get the shot, even if in this particular case it's not a <i>good </i>reason to <i>not get</i> the shot. There is a lot more that could have been done and could still be done to get past such reasons for hesitancy and increase vaccine uptake.</p><p>But there's vaccine hesitancy, and then there's outright vaccine refusal.</p><p>It's become very clear that the people most likely to fall into the latter category are people with right wing political leanings. And now we see not only people refusing to take a proven effective and safe vaccine, but also trying to fight the disease that the vaccine protects against with quack "cures" that have no evidence of efficacy and are much riskier in terms of side effects than the vaccine is!</p><p>It's bewildering. Why is this happening?</p><p>I can't help but think of my PhD advisor's words. When this many people are failing an assignment, the fault doesn't lie primarily with the individual people. The problem is with the information the people are receiving. But whereas in the example at the beginning of this post, the problem was that the instructors were trying but failing to clearly convey the correct information, here the problem is that the "instructors" are <i>succeeding </i>in conveying <i>bad </i>information.</p><p>Right wing media personalities and Republican politicians are pounding into the heads of their viewers, listeners, and followers false information about the vaccines. Many of those public figures are themselves vaccinated, but continue to spew out this vile propaganda because they think it will be to their political advantage. It's basically a crime against humanity.</p><p>I came across a <a href="https://acasignups.net/21/09/18/updated-time-check-covid-redblue-divide-again" target="_blank">nice analysis</a> recently showing the vaccination levels and COVID rates in all counties of the United States grouped by 2020 Trump voting rate. Here's the graph of county vaccination rate by Trump voting rate:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://acasignups.net/sites/default/files/styles/inline_default/public/vaxx_rate_trump_vote_091621_bar_graph.jpg?itok=0eL1wWTy" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="640" src="https://acasignups.net/sites/default/files/styles/inline_default/public/vaxx_rate_trump_vote_091621_bar_graph.jpg?itok=0eL1wWTy" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>(Note that the 0-10% and 90-100% group have relatively small sample sizes here.)</p><p>And here's the graph of rates of COVID death since the end of June 2021, which is a good cutoff point because it means that very nearly all of these deaths would have been prevented if everyone who was eligible had gotten vaccinated:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://acasignups.net/sites/default/files/styles/inline_default/public/new_death_rates_063021_091621_bar.jpg?itok=3gwzyJ0V" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="800" height="427" src="https://acasignups.net/sites/default/files/styles/inline_default/public/new_death_rates_063021_091621_bar.jpg?itok=3gwzyJ0V" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>The images pretty much speak for themselves. In a real sense, people are killing themselves and their relatives and neighbors in order to prove their loyalty to a political movement. A political movement, it's important to note, the leader of which <i>did </i>get vaccinated but refused to make any effort to promote vaccination because if more people got vaccinated it could be politically beneficial to his enemies.</p><p>I imagine most everyone who is reading this post has gotten vaccinated. And you are probably, at least to some extent, part of a community in which people encourage getting vaccinated. If you had lived your whole life in an insular bubble in which extreme right wing views are promoted and other viewpoints are shunned, would you still submit the correct answer on the "should I get vaccinated?" assignment? Can you really say?</p><p>We all, every single one of us, firmly believe in some things that aren't true. It's a fact of life. Speaking for myself, I can't say what those things are, but I know that there are some. As I <a href="https://guyaboutcleveland.blogspot.com/2021/06/ignorance-separated-by-all-things-you.html" target="_blank">wrote about not long ago</a>, we should all be more humble about the things we "think we know." For all of us, this is to some extent related to the sources from which we gather information, something that is not entirely in our control.</p><p>At the same time, some people believe more strongly in more wrong things than other people, and some wrong beliefs are much more harmful than others.</p><p>There is a big overlap between tendency to believe falsehoods about COVID vaccines and another set of false beliefs that are also doing tremendous harm to our society.</p><p>A <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/poll-two-thirds-of-republicans-still-think-the-2020-election-was-rigged-165934695.html">recent poll</a> found that a whopping 66 percent of Republicans believe, against all evidence, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump, with just 18 percent saying that President Biden is the rightful president. Such beliefs are, of course, being used as justification for attacks on our electoral system to try to enable Trump to steal the <i>next </i>election. The irony of the "rigged election" claims is that our electoral system is already effectively rigged <i>in favor of Republicans </i>thanks to gerrymandering, the Electoral College, and the makeup of the Senate (two senators per state regardless of population) all giving disproportionate power to rural white voters, thus enabling Republicans to control the government despite having far fewer people vote for them.</p><p>Again, when so many people are failing an assignment, we can't just blame the people as individuals; we have to blame the sources of information pertinent to the assignment. Again, Fox News, talk radio, Republican politicians, etc., are all spewing constant disinformation about our elections. This is not a new problem, but it's been getting worse and worse. At this point the Republican Party has essentially abandoned the concept of representative democracy. That isn't an exaggeration.</p><p>I have an older relative who I had always considered a really lovely person. The last few years have severely strained that perception. Recently I saw him post this on Facebook:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh65wa2hMnl7ySthpkujHlokh9gfJ00uUFllPOG7ajc7AtA2Xd0MqVXEep-yrfomzUjSN7UkTfYN8QaYMNARyHBNYIUl-HYsrXxDIQLvwpyXBSCfN_59Wd_0KER_dmBmYxE0ivDMxdUIZgX/s802/4590575c4481755646ed0341ef0abfa8.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="802" data-original-width="539" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh65wa2hMnl7ySthpkujHlokh9gfJ00uUFllPOG7ajc7AtA2Xd0MqVXEep-yrfomzUjSN7UkTfYN8QaYMNARyHBNYIUl-HYsrXxDIQLvwpyXBSCfN_59Wd_0KER_dmBmYxE0ivDMxdUIZgX/w269-h400/4590575c4481755646ed0341ef0abfa8.jpg" width="269" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Let's not mince words. This (especially taken in context of other things my relative has posted) is some straight up fascist shit.<div><br /></div><div>But that doesn't mean the things about my relative that made me like him for all those years aren't still there. Have a conversation about something not related to politics, and he still seems like the same person he always was. These aren't fundamentally evil people we're talking about. These are ordinary people who have had their minds warped by misinformation and as a consequence support evil things.</div><div><br /></div><div>(This particular relative is vaccinated, by the way. But has also posted anti-vax stuff. Go figure. Cult behavior obviously doesn't have to make sense.)<br /><p>I have several relatives who are like this, and I think it's hard for me to really blame them that much for the way they are. It makes me really sad. But propaganda is effective. </p><p>It's kind of a weird balancing act for me. Recognizing that the people who are doing these things are not fundamentally horrible people, they're just very misguided, but simultaneously recognizing that by doing these things they're threatening the very foundations of our society and this has to be stopped in any way possible.</p><p>The people who I feel real animosity toward are the people who are creating and spreading the propaganda. The politicians and media figures who have filled people's heads with so much garbage that we now, literally, have people dying of a deadly virus to own the libs, and we have a still ongoing attempted insurrection trying to topple our form of elected government and replace it with white nationalist authoritarianism.</p><p>So that's the problem, as I see it. Millions upon millions of our fellow Americans have been so inundated with misinformation that they are constantly and horrifically failing the assignment of being a decent citizen of this country in multiple devastating ways. It's a cult. It really is. That's the problem.</p><p>What should we <i>do</i> about the problem? That's the hard part. I wish I knew. I'm largely at a loss. But I have a few thoughts, hopeless as it all sometimes seems.</p><p>People who are in a cult are never going to listen to someone trying to tell them that they're in a cult, with a <i>possible </i>exception if they have a close personal connection with the other person. Getting in arguments with hardcore Trump supporters and anti-vaxxers is not going to be effective.</p><p>People who <i>do </i>have close personal connections to cult members might sometimes be able to appeal to their better natures. Sometimes. I'd imagine the closer the connection, the more likely. And I'd imagine it also depends on how deeply someone is into the cult. But I'm definitely not an expert on the psychology of cult members so I'm not going to try to go into how to do this.</p><p>I think what's paramount in importance is the rest of us recognizing the threat and the urgency of acting to stop it.. Perhaps close to one-third of the people in this country are members of a cult that, if it gets its way, will destroy most of the things we love about this imperfect but still in so many ways amazing nation. But as depressingly large as the cult is, it's really not close to being a majority of the country. It can only succeed (with help, unfortunately, from the aforementioned biased-toward-rural-white-people electoral system) if enough of the non-cult-members keep their heads in the sand about what's going on.</p><p>We're all influenced by the information spheres we inhabit. And I think an important thing to realize about the information people in the United States receive is that, taken as a whole, the media today are <i>incredibly </i>biased in favor of Republicans.</p><p>"But, but, the liberal media..." you might be saying. Which if you had that reaction, is a good example of the pro-Republican bias.</p><p>We have, as I mentioned, right wing media outlets that have become just straight up propaganda factories. They aren't even attempting to accurately report what's going on. They're just trying to spin everything in whatever way is most favorable to the political right wing.</p><p>Then you have the rest of the mainstream media. They, for the most part, aren't trying to propagandize. They're trying to report the news. It's impossible to do this with no bias, and different sources have different biases. But the overriding bias of the mainstream, non-right-wing media is a bias toward <i>trying to be unbiased - </i>which manifests as a bias toward "both sides" reporting and "the truth is in the middle."</p><p>If you have two political parties, and both political parties are basically normal political parties that are both sincerely trying to engage with reality and the problems of the real world in different ways, then maybe this sort of "truth is in the middle" approach makes some sense. What we have instead is two political parties, and one of them is a basically normal political party, but the other one is an authoritarian white nationalist cult that is trying to overthrow democracy.</p><p>Thanks to all the "liberal media" accusations over the years, mainstream media outlets are terrified of being excessively friendly to Democrats and unfriendly to Republicans, so most of the time they try to be equally critical toward both parties. They portray disagreements between the two parties as normal partisan squabbling, just politics as usual. When one of the parties is an authoritarian white nationalist cult that is trying to overthrow democracy, and you treat this as all just politics as usual, you're doing a huge favor to the authoritarian white nationalist cult that is trying to overthrow democracy!</p><p>Most people don't really think about this. And I don't blame them; they have plenty of problems to worry about in their own day-to-day lives. But I think it's an important thing to recognize when considering why voters make the decisions they do.</p><p>As I mentioned, we all believe in things that aren't true. One such mistaken belief that I think is common for people who fall toward the middle of the political spectrum to hold is the belief that bipartisanship is, in and of itself, an important goal in the political process, rather than something that is sometimes a means toward achieving other worthy goals.</p><p>When the other party is actively trying to overthrow democracy, trying to work with that party is definitely not an important goal.</p><p>But people are set in their ways. So you have, for example, the situation in Maine where Joe Biden won the presidential vote but Republican Susan Collins was reelected to the Senate. A bunch of voters in Maine decided that although they didn't want the authoritarian white nationalist president to be reelected, they were cool with potentially giving the party led by an authoritarian white nationalist control of the Senate. That's not what their thought process was, of course, but that's the reality of their voting choices. And then you also have centrist Democrats in Congress who are putting President Biden's agenda in jeopardy and threatening to help the Republican plot to overthrow democracy, because they still seem to naively think that bipartisanship is a worthy goal.</p><p>Those are some of the obstacles we face.</p><p>We all have to think about what we can do to save American democracy. We have to engage the people around us, the people who aren't in the cult but also aren't as tuned in to politics, to make sure they aren't going to sit on the sidelines. We also have to be aware that a lot of people will just tune all this talk about fascism out. This is partly because people have an understandable need to just want to focus on their own issues, partly because of the impressions they get from the lazy "both sides" media, but regardless, those people have to be reached by other means. There should be reasons that just about any non cult member would not relish the chance of returning to the non-stop horror show of a Trumpist government. Find the reasons that are important to people around you and make sure they remember those reasons.</p><p>The election of 2020 was the most important of our lifetimes, but it unfortunately looks like every election for the foreseeable future could also be the most important of our lifetimes. What gives me hope? The Republican brand has been poisoned forever for a large majority of people my age and younger. Eventually, it's the people of these younger generations who will have the most say in our democracy.</p><p><i>If </i>democracy survives that long.</p><p>So we have to do everything we can to make sure it does.</p></div>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-59134338604104922562021-09-13T17:47:00.000-07:002021-09-13T17:47:59.467-07:00This is what the songs are for<p>I'm just going to gush about one of my current favorite musicians here for a bit. Is that okay? Because I would really like to do that.</p><p>I've been thinking about writing more about this artist for a while. After being extraordinarily blessed to have gotten to see them live the other day, I went from "thinking about" to "feeling compelled toward." More on that show in a bit, but first...</p><p><b>The album</b></p><p>It's a very exciting thing to me when I have the realization, after listening more and more to a newly obtained album that I really like, that said album is in fact becoming one of my favorites of all time. This has happened this year with <i>Ignorance </i>by The Weather Station.</p><p>It seems that every eight years now, an album enters my life that has lyrics that just really speak to my soul in a profound way. This is something I realized recently. It's one of those weird things that I notice because I have a weirdly heightened tendency to notice patterns. I'm really weird. Whatever, I enjoy it. Anyway, I was thinking about it, after thinking about how much I love the lyrics of <i>Ignorance</i> and pondering what other albums had lyrics that I had loved that much, and there are two other albums that were on that level.</p><p>In 2005 (not this album's release year, but the year I started listening), it was Ozma's <i>Rock and Roll Part Three</i>. Its lyrics spoke to me because I was a really shy, nerdy young adult who was into things like video games, Star Wars (there's a song about having a crush on Natalie Portman!) and punny wordplay ("an apple pie, the number pi, I studied you in math class" from the song "Apple Trees"? Classic!). Also, the lyrics lean heavily on nostalgia, something that speaks to me even more today, even as I've to some extent outgrown certain other aspects.</p><p>In 2013, eight years later, the album was Typhoon's <i>White Lighter</i>. Its lyrics, heavily influenced by the lead singer's near-death experience from Lyme disease and consequent pondering of mortality, spoke to me because I got into the band shortly after my wife was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. The album was in fact released the same week she was admitted to the hospital.</p><p>In 2021, another eight years on, it's <i>Ignorance. </i>(What will be the album of 2029, I wonder?) And as for why this album's lyrics speak to me so much? I'd say they speak to me because, well, I'm a human being living in this strange and distressing era of history.</p><p>There are reasons why the lyrics speak to me personally more than they might to the average person, but in comparison to the other two albums I cited, I think the appeal and the relatability are broader, because it's not about a specific aspect of <i>my life</i>, it's about human (and non-human!) life in general. Given that, I've decided that if I had to pick one album that I would subjectively assess as having "the best lyrics" of any album I know, this is the one.</p><p>The music is great too. Tamara Lindeman has really evolved the sound of her music from the folk stylings of her early records, which were quite good too, but this is even better. The jazzy indie rock on <i>Ignorance </i>has this consistently <i>propulsive </i>feel from the rhythm section and piano that just lends this sense of urgency that goes so well with the subject matter of the lyrics. And Lindeman has a wonderfully expressive voice. It all comes together in a great package, but to me the lyrics are just next level so I want to talk about why I love the lyrics so much.</p><p>I'm going to go through the songs of the album in order and pick out a favorite line or two and explain why they're favorites. I hope this post can properly convey the brilliance contained on this album. I think these lyrics are by far best experienced reading along with the liner notes while listening to the album front to back. But I want to talk about it, so, here goes.</p><p>1. Robber</p><p>"You never believed in the robber. You thought a robber must hate you to wanna take from you. The robber don’t hate you, you never believed in the robber but the robber never believed in you."</p><p>Okay, this song is about how the heartless capitalistic system we live in robs us all of so much (uh oh, we're getting political here!). And I think this bit expresses so nicely and succinctly how people don't even think about how so much harm is done by just a <i>system</i>, a mindless thing, that has no intent, good or bad, it's just the way things are. It doesn't have to be the way things are. But most people don't question it.</p><p>2. Atlantic</p><p>"My god, I thought, my god, what a sunset; blood red floods the Atlantic. With a wine in my hand, laid back in the grass of some stranger’s field, while shearwaters reeled overhead, thinking; I should get all this dying off my mind, I should really know better than to read the headlines, does it matter if I see? Or really, can I not just cover my eyes?"</p><p>Just incredibly evocative imagery, which Lindeman excels at, to open this song. And then the lines about all the dying in the headlines that the first time I heard I just thought, wow, this pretty much sums up how it feels to be in the world right now. (The album was released in early February of this year, when COVID deaths in the US and many other countries had just recently reached their very peak. Not that this song is specifically about COVID - I would read it as more about the ongoing and worsening climate catastrophes that heavily inform Lindeman's songwriting.)</p><p>3. Tried to Tell You</p><p>"But some days there might be nothing you encounter, to stand behind the fragile idea that anything matters."</p><p>Don't we all feel this way sometimes? The idea that "anything matters" can be a fragile idea, but it's important to remind ourselves of the things we encounter that do reinforce this idea. Also, this is the song from which the line "This is what the songs are for" that I used to title this post came from, and for me, great songs, such as those on this album, are some of the most important things to help me feel there are things that matter.</p><p>4. Parking Lot</p><p>"Waiting outside the club in a parking lot, I watched some bird fly up and land on the rooftop, then up again into the sky, in and out of sight, flying down again to land on the pavement. It felt intimate to watch it; its small chest rising and falling, as it sang the same song, over and over again, over the traffic and the noise. Is it alright if I don’t wanna sing tonight? I know you are tired of seeing tears in my eyes. But are there not good reasons to cry?"</p><p>The image of the bird, and the description of how it feels intimate to watch it - so, so good. And then the connection from the bird to how the observer - the human singer - is feeling. I'm honestly envious of Lindeman's way with words. Also from this song:</p><p>"But everywhere we go there is an outside, over all of these ceilings hangs a sky."</p><p>Something about this line blows me away in a way that's hard to articulate. But it just really makes me think about our place in the world.</p><p>Okay, and I have to mention one other line from this truly incredible song:</p><p>"I confess I don’t wanna undress this feeling, I am not poet enough to express this peeling."</p><p>I disagree with this statement. I would contend that Tamara Lindeman absolutely <i>is </i>"poet enough."</p><p>5. Loss</p><p>"You lay in bed, the sun streamed through the blinds. Sweat soaked through your shirt. You lay a hand across your eyes, every other part of you hurt. From inside the confines of the story that everything would be alright, it was only so wide you could open your eyes, you could only let in so much light. But you knew the story had never been true - loss is loss, is loss, is loss."</p><p>I think anyone who has experienced great personal loss can relate to the idea of the "story that everything would be alright" - the story that "had never been true." And again, the imagery here stuns me.</p><p>6. Separated</p><p>A few months ago, I wrote a <a href="https://guyaboutcleveland.blogspot.com/2021/06/ignorance-separated-by-all-things-you.html">whole post</a> that was largely inspired by lyrics from this song. Here's another good excerpt:</p><p>"You try again your arguments out on me, I try and tell you again; but if you wanted to understand me you could, if you wanted to hold my hand you would, but you don’t want to, you’ve committed to this wall we sleep against."</p><p>I think this is such a great description of two people in a relationship that is no longer working.</p><p>7. Wear the World</p><p>"It does not matter to the world if I embody it. It could not matter less that I wanted to be a part of it."</p><p>A very poetically stated reflection on our ultimate significance, or lack thereof.</p><p>8. Trust</p><p>"In the throes of this divorce, in this court proceedings; for some reason my mind was filled with all my softest feelings."</p><p>To me this is about how when a relationship has stopped working and it's ending or ended, at times you can still have very sentimental feelings about that person and the relationship, which I'm sure is a familiar concept but one that people often don't seem to talk about.</p><p>9. Heart</p><p>Okay, I love the lyrics of this song so much (I'd say this and "Parking Lot" are my top favorites of the album), I'm going to go through them all.</p><p>"I don’t have the heart to conceal my love, when I know it is the best of me. If I should offend you, I will show myself out, you can bury me in doubt if you need to."</p><p>Being in love, and not knowing if the other person feels the same way, and not being able to keep it inside any longer. Or it can also work if this is about, rather than love for another person, love for <i>the world </i>- being passionate about important things, and the way some people recoil at this passion. I think it works on both levels.</p><p>"I can walk out in the street, no-one need look at me, it is with my eyes I see. I guess that I am soft, but I am also angry, but I will feel all my loss, I will hold my heart inside me."</p><p>The idea of being soft but also angry is so striking and so relevant at this moment in time. I also like the "loss" callback.</p><p>"My dumb eyes turn toward beauty; turn towards sky, renewing. My dumb touch is always reaching; for green for soft for yielding."</p><p>This, to me, hearkens back to earlier songs on the album like "Atlantic" and "Parking Lot." There's this deep appreciation for the beauty of the world we inhabit. And there's doubt over whether it's worth caring so much with all the ongoing tragedy. In a way I think this song brings all the themes of the album together. I guess you could say it's the "Heart" of the album. Heh. (Still like corny wordplay!) Sorry, moving on...</p><p><i>"In the pale dim light, I am always reeling, through long midnights of feeling."</i></p><p>This is a <i>staggeringly</i> poignant and poetic description of an experience that is no doubt familiar to many.</p><p> "Of all the many things that you may ask of me, don’t ask me for indifference, don’t come to me for distance."</p><p>An excellent statement of the importance of <i>caring</i> - which again, could be about a specific other person, or about the world as a whole.</p><p>"No, I don’t have the heart to conceal my love, if it is too hard to look at me, I will show myself out, walk out in the city. You can bury me in doubt if you feel it necessary."</p><p>And returning to the opening lines, restated but slightly altered with a different final rhyme which I like because I guess it just sounds more interesting that way!</p><p>10. Subdivisions</p><p>"Got in the car, and the cold metallic scent of snow caught in my throat as I reached out to turn on the radio; the unfamiliar songs, the voices sing of love, and of wanting to dance and to sing in the rhythm of. The road was overwhelmed with snow piled high in all the ditches, I drove as though I did not understand all the divisions, the yellow signs and the painted lines, and the order they envisioned was so clear. I joined the steady line of cars on the highway, as though I was going home, but I drove the wrong way. Past the looming walls of subdivisions, out past the strip malls, white fields and gray gas stations."</p><p>There is even more incredibly vivid imagery here. Again, I'm envious. And the divisions/subdivisions thing, without even really saying it, I think so much is being said here about the way that modern society has been structured and how it divides us and all the harm it causes. I'll spare you the rant about car culture that I could easily go on here.</p><p>And that's not even close to all that the song is about. It dips back to the personal relationship themes from earlier in the album: "I left you back at home because I simply could not do it, tell you I could be with you when I could see right through it; our whole life. But what if I misjudged; in the wildest of emotion, I took this way too far?" (I enjoy the "took this way too far" double meaning here.) So the album is simultaneously about struggling with one's place in a relationship and struggling with one's place in a world that is being devastated by humanity's callous actions. And speaks beautifully on both themes.</p><p>So that's it. <a href="https://theweatherstation.bandcamp.com/album/ignorance">Check out Ignorance</a>. I implore you!</p><p>Next up...</p><p><b>The show</b></p><p>I caught The Weather Station live at the Magic Bag in Ferndale, Michigan (a Detroit suburb) on Thursday, September 9. I made the drive up from Cleveland late in the afternoon, grabbed some dinner (takeout I'd ordered ahead of time), and headed over to the venue.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhny1eCUZ1w9k0oAEmul-vSnJZrU6OAdrtu98YQzHi05bKbeEDKP3d3SoiZc6UMqXtPe5s-zYLh3ClnFyzM6ZaRPpsogBAOo4J6nduEVdr9hyphenhyphenGo8UIKOOXP2eZNAxCpebkQ_raDuOgkWGpZ/s2048/IMG_20210909_192812632.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1314" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhny1eCUZ1w9k0oAEmul-vSnJZrU6OAdrtu98YQzHi05bKbeEDKP3d3SoiZc6UMqXtPe5s-zYLh3ClnFyzM6ZaRPpsogBAOo4J6nduEVdr9hyphenhyphenGo8UIKOOXP2eZNAxCpebkQ_raDuOgkWGpZ/w410-h640/IMG_20210909_192812632.jpg" width="410" /></a></div><br /><p>It struck me as I was waiting outside that it was really nice just to be doing this. To have driven to another city for the purpose of seeing a band I really love. That's something I do all the time, normally, because music is such a huge part of my life, but it had been almost two years since the last time I'd made such a trip.</p><p>It was not the first show I've attended this year (there were some others earlier this summer in Cleveland), but it was the first at which I had to show my vaccine card to get in. I'm very glad that venues have enacted this requirement. Additionally, at the request of the artist, attendees were required to be masked at all times except when actively eating or drinking. I support this as well, due to the current situation with the delta variant - in fact I recently bought a pack of KN95 masks specifically for wearing at shows - but going into it I thought it might feel a little weird to be wearing a mask at a show.</p><p>It turned out, which I had not thought much about ahead of time, that having a show with both vaccine and mask requirements for attendees seemed to select for an audience of people who all really wanted to be there to experience the music. The crowd wasn't huge, but it was one of the best audiences I've ever shared a concert experience with, because everyone had their full attention on what was happening on stage, and there was none of the annoying audience chatter that often irritates me at shows.</p><p>If requiring masks at shows leads to people in the audience not talking during the performances, then I say let's have masks at shows forever! (I mean, I don't think this will really happen, but if it actually does cut down on audience chatter I would genuinely be glad of the change.)</p><p>I didn't realize it ahead of time, but this was the first club show The Weather Station had played since before COVID, as well as the first time since before COVID that the Canadian band had crossed the border. I felt very lucky to be there for such an occasion.</p><p>It was truly a magical experience, something that I've missed so much in this last year and a half. The band played almost all the songs from <i>Ignorance </i>as well as a few older cuts, including standout track "Thirty" from 2017's self-titled album. The band's keyboard player was not present due to a border crossing snafu, so Lindeman took on extra keyboard duties while singing, which she handled well. All the band members' performances were on point - guitar, bass, drums, and nice clarinet and saxophone flourishes from the wind musician adding some great texture to the songs.</p><p>It was easy to tell that it was a really emotional occasion for everyone, the people on stage and the people in the audience. We've all missed this. Going a year with almost no person live music has made me realize that I really do think live music is a nigh essential part of the experience of being human. Sure, that's more true for me than for the average person, but I think it applies broadly.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikIbZOE_QztKYqkS4C8IbBqIiMUZmI6ijL3Fj4kmQh5ZmxrSSpraXdFDeSIox8JPoO_CH8riYKlhTFiyum3ng7l0ClmnqvKAmE2Sk5LADDg92S19tLISkKYyjW3-p87q1eT5Rj0Lc36HYq/s2048/IMG_20210909_210617087.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1544" data-original-width="2048" height="482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikIbZOE_QztKYqkS4C8IbBqIiMUZmI6ijL3Fj4kmQh5ZmxrSSpraXdFDeSIox8JPoO_CH8riYKlhTFiyum3ng7l0ClmnqvKAmE2Sk5LADDg92S19tLISkKYyjW3-p87q1eT5Rj0Lc36HYq/w640-h482/IMG_20210909_210617087.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>After a great main set, Lindeman returned to the stage alone to begin the encore, sat at the keyboard, and played a beautiful song I'd never heard before but hope to hear again. It contained a lot of her usual evocative imagery as she described looking at the stars in the night sky as a child and then connected that to looking at the night sky as an adult and seeing fireworks on New Year's Eve as the year 2020 approached.</p><p>2020, man. Wow.</p><p>This was followed by a full band performance of "Subdivisions," a fitting closer. After the band left the stage a second time, the audience applauded enthusiastically, and some of us, me included, just kept clapping. I think we just really didn't want it to be over. In a way that is often true when you see a really excellent show, but now even more so than usual. I don't know whether Lindeman was anticipating doing a second encore, but she came out again, and treated us to a performance of "Traveler" from 2011 album <i>All of It Was Mine. </i>I've listened to that album many times, but I had never truly <i>listened to </i>the lyrics of that song in a way that their meaning sunk in the way all the lyrics of <i>Ignorance </i>have. And I found myself sitting there just stunned once more at the beautiful and emotional pictures Lindeman paints with her songs.</p><p>Most of the way through the song, though, at an instrumental part, she stopped playing and said one of the strings of her guitar was out of tune and she had to tune it. So then, while tuning, she kept talking to the audience, and kind of started rambling. And then laughed and said that before going out on tour again after all this time, she had thought about how she wanted to present herself on stage, and had decided she wanted to go out and just be serious and play the songs and not spend much time on banter. And here she was at the first show out on tour and already getting away from doing that.</p><p>I, for one, really enjoy hearing the interesting things musicians talk about on stage, so I welcomed this.</p><p>Eventually she said that the end of the song was sad and after getting sidetracked on amusing banter she couldn't get back into that place so she wasn't going to finish the song. Instead she'd play a different song that was more upbeat. She started playing the song, got about one line in, then stopped and confessed she had forgotten the words to the song and broke down laughing.</p><p>That was the end of the show! Lindeman said she owed us one and promised that they'd be back, thanked the audience again, and left the stage. It was a very unusual ending but I have no complaints at all. It was such a, well, <i>human </i>moment. A moment of that special connection that happens between a musician and their audience. When musicians get in a room with people who really love their music, magic happens, magic that can't truly be replicated in any other way. It happened throughout that evening at the Magic Bag.</p><p>There was just so much joy in that room! I had almost forgotten what it felt like.</p><p>There was another thing that Lindeman said during the show that really struck me, in a sad way. She said that it was good to be back in America. She noted that the news from here is "intense" (no kidding!), but whenever she actually comes here, it's really nice. It's a nice place, she said, "and it always will be."</p><p>The way she said "and it always will be"... it was one of those things where you say something and the words you use express certainty, but you don't actually feel certain, you actually are just hoping that it will be true.</p><p>These really are scary times. And as I drove home, I was thinking about how, when I was a kid, I was told all this stuff about the USA being the greatest country in the world, and a lot of it was BS, but I do think that back then, it was at least generally the case that this country was admired by people in other countries. Nowadays, people in other countries <i>feel bad for us</i>. And for very good reasons! I've been aware of this before, but Lindeman's words really drove it home for me. And it did make me feel sad.</p><p>To quote a favorite tweet from Julien Baker (who I'm very much looking forward to seeing live in a couple weeks), though, "at least there's music am i right." The Weather Station's show on Thursday was the best reminder of that that I've had since my trip to California to see Ozma in December 2019. And it was all the more poignant now, in a way I never could have imagined back then. This truly is "what the songs are for."</p><p>That wraps up what I have to say about The Weather Station, but I also have some thoughts about...</p><p><b>Going to concerts during COVID</b></p><p>This was not the first show I've been to this year, but it was the first show I've been to since the delta surge in the US got bad (although it's currently not that bad in Michigan, at least). There was a part of me, and I know this stems to some part just from me being a generally anxious person, that was worrying, <i>am I doing something wrong by going to a concert now?</i></p><p>I know that, rationally, when you look at the way most people are living their lives at this stage of the pandemic (see, for example, crowded indoor restaurants at which people are talking and eating and obviously not wearing masks while doing so), the relative added risk of COVID spread from a concert at which both vaccines and masks are required is tiny. (Especially a concert that was not crowded, as was the case here.) I know that musicians and venues have been put in a horrible place by this pandemic, and additional economic assistance from the government is not coming, and I think that if these events can happen in a way that does a good job minimizing risk, it's a good thing to support those musicians and venues. I also think that having events with vaccine requirements will likely help increase vaccination rates, even if by a small amount, in a way that not having events at all, or having events without vaccine requirements, would not do, and therefore could very well be a net positive in the fight to end the pandemic.</p><p>Still, it was hard to shake the feeling, what if it was wrong to do this? I've seen some people on Twitter say things like, "There shouldn't be concerts right now!" Which gets to my anxious brain.</p><p>It got me thinking about how people have talked about COVID risk in general, and I realized even more something that I had already been realizing. I think that the way a lot of liberals (myself included, when I think back to earlier in the pandemic), have talked about COVID risk has been very sanctimonious, and has come across (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not), as basically trying to paint people as <i>morally wrong </i>for simply having normal human wants and needs.</p><p>I realized how essential a part of life live music is to me. And I'm sure to a lot of other people. Now, I'm fairly introverted, and although I definitely missed getting to spend time with my family, to be honest I could just as well do without social gatherings of more than, say, five or six people. (With the exception of concerts! Which are a different sort of social gathering, I suppose.) So other than the lack of concerts, the restrictions on gatherings of large groups of people weren't so much a problem for me. But I'm sure there are other people who find going to parties just as essential a part of life as I find going to concerts.</p><p>Now, look, I totally do think that the restrictions on indoor gatherings were well justified prior to vaccines being widely available. (Now, I think vaccine requirements are a better option.) But I also think it's pretty messed up that people have been shamed so much for just wanting to do things that humans, as social animals, have a natural want and <i>need </i>to do.</p><p>I remember seeing someone tweet something that was like, "If people had just done the little things like get vaccinated, wear a mask, and social distance, we wouldn't be in this mess." (I think an emerging theme here is that I spend too much time on Twitter...)</p><p>And yeah, getting vaccinated, that absolutely should be a little thing for the vast, vast majority of eligible people. It's a huge problem that a lot of those people aren't getting vaccinated, which is a topic for another post. Wearing masks? Yeah, not that big a thing generally speaking. But at the same time, it's pretty privileged for someone who is working from home and only has to wear a mask at the grocery store to say that about people who are toiling in hot kitchens all day.</p><p>But social distancing? Calling social distancing a "little thing" when this has been going on for a year and a half, to me, just betrays a fundamental misunderstanding and/or denial of human nature.</p><p>(I'm sure the counterargument would be that if everyone had just done what they were supposed to, it would have all ended a long time ago, but when you look at what has happened in numerous other countries around the world, I just don't think it's realistic that that could have ever happened in the US. <i>Especially</i> with the emergence of the delta variant. Yes, things did not have to be nearly as bad as they have been, but it wasn't going to just go away in any realistic scenario.)</p><p>Now, I find it very understandable why people have talked about COVID risk in this way. It's been a horrible time that has been hard on everyone in different ways. I'm not trying to shame people for shaming people, which would be hypocritical. I just don't think it's been productive.</p><p>I wonder how much difference it could have made if the moralizing about COVID could have been avoided and instead there had just been a focus on giving accurate information on what the risks were and what were the best ways to mitigate those risks. Of course, the bigger problem all along was all the misinformation and politicization of the pandemic coming from those on the right politically, but I think those of us on the left could have done a lot better too.</p><p>Ultimately, I think all the moralizing likely led people to react in one of three general ways. First, there are those people who were never going to take this seriously. Nothing could have ever reached them, but I think the moralizing might have made them even more eager to flout restrictions, "to trigger the libs."</p><p>Then there are the people who did want to take it seriously, but I think those people fall on a spectrum of risk tolerance. Many of those who fall more toward the "want to live as close to normal life as possible while mitigating risks" side would be likely to eventually get annoyed by the moralizing and then start tuning out all the rules and restrictions. Those who fall more toward the "want to avoid risk as much as possible" side have probably gotten complexes where we now experience unhealthy levels of stress and anxiety about doing even low risk activities. And none of this is helpful to the overall health of individual people or of society.</p><p>That was pretty rambling, but I think there's a point in there somewhere.</p><p>Anyway, major kudos to artists and venues for requiring vaccines and masks for concerts (although I still think we need more attention to ventilation and filtration of indoor air!). Please, let's all make sure everyone around us is getting vaccinated so we can all go back to enjoying in person live music and all the other things that are essential for us to fully live our lives as the social animals we are.</p>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-35971108112947641962021-08-25T21:04:00.001-07:002021-08-26T09:14:22.430-07:00Public speaking and funerals<p>Twenty years ago, in 2001, I graduated high school. As part of the graduation ceremony I had to give a speech. Believe me, I was far from thrilled to be given this assignment. I strongly disliked, and in fact had a dreadful fear of, public speaking when I was younger. I still vividly remember the heightened pulse and sweatiness of the morning before I had to give an oral presentation on the novel <i>1984 </i>in freshman English class. A few years later, I had made little progress against this fear.</p><p>Despite this fear, by all reports I did a respectable job with the graduation speech. I've thought back to that speech from time to time over the years. It's struck me that the <i>subject matter </i>of the speech was, in retrospect, eerie.</p><p>On May 11, 2001, a few weeks before I graduated high school, Douglas Adams, the author of classic sci-fi farce <i>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</i>, suddenly and unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack at the age of 49. I adored <i>Hitchhiker's Guide </i>and its sequels and was shocked and saddened by this news. Not having much idea what to talk about in my speech, I eventually keyed in on Adams's life and tragic death as a theme.</p><p>This is eerie, in retrospect, because by giving a speech about someone who had recently died, I was in a way previewing my future life.</p><p>When I graduated high school, I had never experienced the death of someone close to me. The subject of my speech, the transitory nature of life and how we should therefore make the most of it, was thus something of an abstract concept. I reread the speech for the first time in many years before writing this post, and although at some points clumsily written, parts of it certainly resonate with me to this day.</p><p>"Although this could not compare to losing a close personal friend, I was deeply saddened when I heard the news. I soon realized, however, that this event reinforces a valuable lesson. Adams may have died at just 49, but I would wager that he did more of worth in his years on this Earth than many an octogenarian. He touched millions with his special talents. And this is the lesson I would like to take from him, one that is very important on this graduation day: we should all strive to make the most of our lives, however long or short they might last," I spoke to the audience in the auditorium. I went on:</p><p>"I do not suggest that we must all become famous. There are many ways that one can make the most of his life. Earning a high school diploma is a significant part of doing just that. Work toward goals, to better yourselves and those around you. Nourish your talents, whether they are in writing, music, science, athletics, or any other area. Never dwell too long on the negative aspects of life. Most importantly, enjoy yourselves, and try to bring happiness to others.</p><p>"With these things in mind, we can go out into the world and leave a positive mark on it. Make the most of our brief stays on this planet, and whenever our time comes we will, perhaps, be able to have the “tremendous feeling of peace” that Arthur Dent, protagonist of the <i>Hitchhiker’s</i> series, does at his own end. This feeling can only come from the knowledge that our lives <i>have</i> been worthwhile."</p><p>I mean, it's really quite eerie in retrospect, because as I said, these were abstract concepts to me at the time, but have since become defining themes of my life in a way that I think is not very common for someone my age. Although I did suffer a few personal losses in years to come, most notably one of my grandmothers during my senior year of college, to be honest there was never a death that really hit me on a deep personal level... until at the age of just 31, I lost the very closest person to me in the whole world, my wife Cara, to lung cancer.</p><p>By that point in time, thanks to my very lengthy experience obtaining a PhD, I had become far more experienced and confident about public speaking than I was as a high school, or even undergrad, student. I know some people, upon losing a spouse, find it too difficult to speak themselves at the funeral, which I find very understandable, but for me there was no question that I should eulogize my beloved wife.</p><p>It was a strange thing. Because I could still remember very well my younger days of being terrified of public speaking. And here I was, giving a speech about the death of my wife, the most painful loss imaginable, and after finishing I had the realization, <i>Wow, I've gotten pretty good at this whole public speaking thing. </i>And that realization felt pretty good! In spite of the horrific circumstances. So it was a strange thing to feel.</p><p>The funeral officiant, and my parents, and I, spoke heartfelt and meaningful words about Cara. And then the officiant asked if anyone else among those gathered for the ceremony would like to share their memories or thoughts about Cara.</p><p>No one did.</p><p>I understood how awkward and difficult it could be to get up in front of a roomful of people and give a speech. And plenty of people had shared beautiful tributes to Cara online, or to me in person. So I knew very well how much Cara had meant to people. And I wasn't <i>mad </i>at people for not volunteering to speak. But honestly, it did make me sad. I did wish that someone else would have gotten up and spoken a few words about what an amazing person she was. And if one person had broken the ice, more might have followed.</p><p>In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't a huge deal. But it was something I always remembered. And I think it was because of that memory that ever since, when there has been a funeral for someone about whom I've had any meaningful thoughts to share, I've taken the opportunity to do so.</p><p>In the first 31 years of my life I spoke at zero funerals. In the last 7 years, by my count, I've spoken at six. Sometimes as part of the program, sometimes at that "if anyone else would like to share their memories" moment. Either way, it's just... felt like the right thing to do? Because I know how much it can mean, as someone who has lost a loved one, to hear someone else talk about what that person meant.</p><p>Most recently, my Aunt Ellen passed away unexpectedly earlier this year. My dad, probably having noticed that speaking at funerals had kind of become my "thing," asked if I would deliver some words during the memorial service, and of course I did, along with my dad, some of my other aunts, and one of Ellen's coworkers. It was a beautiful ceremony. I spoke about all the things Ellen (an ER pediatrician) had done for me, for her other nieces and nephews, and for all the children who entered her life.</p><p>Sometimes when someone close to you dies, you already know they were an amazing person, but the things that people say about them after they die make you realize that they were even more amazing than you ever knew. The two people I've known for whom that was most true were Cara and Ellen.</p><p>After the memorial service, one of my aunts who spoke, who is about 70 years in age, told me that it was the first time she had ever done public speaking in her life, and that she had been incredibly nervous about it. I thought she had done a great job! And I was so struck by her words about feeling nervous. Because I could remember very well that feeling myself, from when I was a teenager. When you're a teenager, it's hard to imagine that someone who has lived so many more years on this Earth might be similarly nervous about public speaking. But thinking about it now, somewhat older and wiser - why not? It makes perfect sense that people of any age could be that nervous. It's interesting that speaking in public is one of those things that so commonly inspires such fear, and I wonder why that is. Like any skill, though, public speaking is one that improves and becomes more comfortable with practice. And that's something that can happen at any age.</p><p>Losing someone really close to you is one of the hardest things in the world, and hearing other people who knew that person speak about the impact they had is a good salve for the wound. It helps give, as I alluded to in my high school graduation speech, the knowledge that their lives have been worthwhile - an important thing. So I hope people can overcome their fears, and get up there, and speak those vital words. Take it from me, it's a very worthwhile thing to do.</p><p>And there are people like Ellen and Cara, who are so amazing and impact so many other people's lives, who probably never realize just what a tremendous impact they have on all the people around them. So in addition to speaking about them after they've passed - when someone has a big impact you, don't wait; let them know about it while they're still here.</p>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-33463795429402628972021-06-03T18:25:00.002-07:002021-06-03T18:25:14.128-07:00Ignorance (separated by all the things you thought you knew)<p>Earlier this year The Weather Station, the Canadian indie folk project of Tamara Lindeman, released the album <i>Ignorance. </i>It's a brilliant album, my favorite of the year so far. I very highly recommend it. This post isn't really about the album, but was largely inspired by it.</p><p>What connotations does the word "ignorance" have for you? I think it's usually thought of in a negative sense.</p><p>With the inside album art of <i>Ignorance</i>, there is a statement about the word:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0et_0BVGI3uVA3CuSjJPte3uMtbb_OGX40sUIBf5_BFHawW9nMoC9CNQO0MZNdrPXwQDFTk7ZPoT_YOT19RQfqUJtGFDbg7s4S2F_eKNZnLsvkq89_TDcq_hPPY8OpWep6wFyB_kVsPGL/s3185/IMG_20210529_190928059.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3158" data-original-width="3185" height="636" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0et_0BVGI3uVA3CuSjJPte3uMtbb_OGX40sUIBf5_BFHawW9nMoC9CNQO0MZNdrPXwQDFTk7ZPoT_YOT19RQfqUJtGFDbg7s4S2F_eKNZnLsvkq89_TDcq_hPPY8OpWep6wFyB_kVsPGL/w640-h636/IMG_20210529_190928059.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>"Ignorance describes a state of not knowing. A word that describes the wordless, a mystery. A space that requires humility to enter. Ignorance is endless, but anywhere there is ignorance there is the possibility of knowledge, and in the state of flux between not knowing and knowing, there is immense capacity for change."</p><p>As I pondered this statement I realized I see a lot of both beauty and truth in it, and also that it's something that seems extra relevant to me after everything that has happened in the past year. A year in which so many people, people on all sides of issues pertaining to the COVID pandemic that has ravaged our world, could have used more humility, more ability to recognize they were in that state of not knowing.</p><p>Lindeman is an amazing lyricist; in fact, I don't know that I can think of any album that has lyrics from front to back that consistently grab me more strongly than those on this album. She ponders topics as wide reaching as capitalism, interpersonal relationships, and climate change, and there are so many lines where I just marvel at their power, but I won't go into all of that here. There's one lyric snippet, though, that together with the above words from the liner notes, basically summarizes the theme of what I want to talk about in this post. The song "Separated" lists many things that could separate two people from each other. One item on the list:</p><p><i>Separated by the all the things you thought you knew</i></p><p>One night not too long ago I was listening to the album and reading along with the lyrics and at this line I just thought, wow, that sums up so many of the problems we face, doesn't it?</p><p>The idea is applicable to many issues facing our society and world, not just COVID, but COVID has really brought these issues to the fore, at least in my mind.</p><p>It seems like society has splintered into different groups, and within each group, people <i>think they know </i>certain things, and reject the possibility that those things they think they know aren't actually true.</p><p>It seems like people, not everyone but far too many people, settled into a belief system about COVID within the first couple of months of the pandemic, and then stuck to that belief system going forward no matter what new evidence arose.</p><p>Obviously, you have people who think they know that COVID is just like the flu, and health orders are government tyranny, and masks don't work, and now, on top of those other misconceptions, that vaccines are bad. And those misguided beliefs have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, a tragedy the effects of which will be with all of us for the rest of our lives.</p><p>But then you also have people who, say, refuse to let their kids have even socially distanced outdoor playdates with other kids. You have cities that kept their playgrounds closed long after new evidence showed this wasn't necessary (and was likely harmful because if you take away a relatively safe outlet for people they're probably more likely to turn to riskier activities!). You have people and businesses and schools devoting ridiculous amounts of time and resources to sanitizing surfaces, because based on what was known in March 2020 they think they know that that's a good way to prevent the spread of COVID, and they never updated what they thought they knew in light of new data.</p><p>I'm not trying to "both sides" this by saying the two groups have done equal amounts of damage. If everyone was excessively cautious about COVID instead of a bunch of people being excessively cautious and a bunch of people not being cautious at all, the pandemic curve would have been crushed. Nonetheless, all of these things have done a lot of damage!</p><p>I'm a scientist. I wish I could say that scientists are mostly immune to these cognitive defects, but that's not the case. Because a bunch of scientists <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/">thought they knew</a> things about how viruses spread through the air that they didn't actually <i>know</i>, our guidance on how to stop the spread was fundamentally flawed from the start, it took far too long to fix that guidance, the effects are still with us to this day, and numerous unnecessary deaths have resulted.</p><p>What I wish people could realize is: we should all <i>always</i> be "in the state of flux between not knowing and knowing" and should have the "immense capacity for change" that comes with that.</p><p>It's impossible to ever know anything with 100% certainty; the best we can ever hope is to reach a reasonable approximation of that. But far too often we see ourselves as essentially at that 100% when we have no right to claim anywhere near that level of certainty.</p><p>There are issues with society's approach to COVID, like whether vaccinating the population is a good strategy to control the virus and reduce illness and death, where there is very little uncertainty about the correct answer (that answer, to this question, is yes, by the way). There are other issues, such as how to handle school reopenings (prior to vaccines being available), where there <i>genuinely were a whole lot of gray areas and uncertainties</i>. Going into all those complexities is beyond the scope of this post, but they are very real. Yet instead of most people being able to acknowledge, with humility, those uncertainties and their ignorance (ignorance not in a negative sense but just as the unavoidable reality of living in a world full of unknowns), you had people on one side vehemently attacking parents who were trying to take an evidence-based risk reduction approach to do what was best for their and other kids and get them back to in-person learning, and you had people on the other side vehemently attacking teachers who had legitimate concerns about whether their schools were employing adequate safety measures.</p><p>I think Twitter, and social media in general but particularly, from my experience, Twitter, amplifies these problems. People inhabit different bubbles. Within each bubble, there are certain fundamental beliefs that people think they know are true. Some of those things, to a greater or lesser extent depending on which bubble we're talking about, aren't actually true. But if you tweet something that is popularly held as true within your bubble, regardless of whether it's actually true, you'll get a bunch of likes, and if you tweet something that goes against the conventional wisdom in your bubble, you'll get a bunch of people attacking you. It's not fun to have a bunch of people attacking you, and it's not fun to get in a bunch of unproductive arguments, so people become more and more reluctant to speak up against their bubbles' conventional wisdoms. As a result, the beliefs of a bubble - the things people think they know - become further entrenched.</p><p>And you become separated from other members of your society "by all the things you thought you knew."</p><p>It's possible, of course, to take the ignorance thing too far. To act like it's impossible to ever know anything at all. "We don't really know for sure that masks work, so I'm not wearing a mask." "We don't really know for sure everything there is to know about what vaccines do, so people shouldn't get vaccinated." "We don't really know for sure how bad climate change will be, so we shouldn't bother trying to do anything about it" (yeah, I had to stick in a non-COVID example because let's face it, it's probably an even bigger crisis).</p><p>That's not helpful either. So it can be a fine line to walk. But every day people make decisions, big and small, based on imperfect knowledge - so it's important to realize that sometimes those decisions will turn out to be wrong not through any fault of the people making them but due to the reality of imperfect knowledge - just as it's important to also realize that the reality of imperfect knowledge doesn't justify taking the route of "I'm going to decide the answer is whatever is most convenient for me because no one <i>really </i>knows <i>for sure</i>."</p><p>I hope I'm explaining this in a way that makes sense?</p><p>Overall, I would urge people to realize that all knowledge can only be expressed in degrees of uncertainty and that those degrees of uncertainty can range from very uncertain to very close to certain. And that within a given field, there <i>will</i> be experts, whose opinions <i>generally should</i> be given more weight than those of a non-expert, but still aren't <i>guaranteed</i> to be true (see the "is COVID airborne" issue!).</p><p>I would also urge people to always, always be looking for ways that <i>their own beliefs </i>might not be true, not just ways that the beliefs of people they disagree with might not be true. I try to do this, as a scientist. To always look for the holes in my own explanations for my data. I'd like to think that scientists, on average, are better at doing this than are most people, but if this is true, it's not by nearly as big a margin as many think. I'd also like to think that <i>I'm</i> better at this than are most scientists. (My PhD advisor had a term, the "skeptical Jeff response," for the tough but ultimately helpful questions I would ask at lab meetings to illuminate potential missing pieces of other lab members' projects, and I try really hard to take the same approach to my own work.) I don't know for sure whether this is true, but I try my best.</p><p>I would also like to bring up some very relevant words from another musician whose work I love, although in this case they do not come from his music. Jonathan Meiburg, Shearwater frontman and past Okkervil River member, recently published the utterly fantastic book <i>A Most Remarkable Creature </i>about his studies of the fascinating group of birds known as caracaras. Near the end of the book, he recounts a conversation with paleontologist Julia Clarke while out on a dig:</p><p><i>As we walked, Julia noted how good it felt to escape the clutches of the internet, and how hard it is to avoid the trap of thinking that everything worth knowing is a Google search away. For the moment, no one but us knew about the fossils we carried in our packs, any one of which might have the power to change our understanding of the past, and there was an undeniable sweetness in standing at the very edge of a small part of human knowledge.</i></p><p><i>...</i></p><p><i>"The more I think about it," said Julia, "the more I think this idea - that the world is <b>known</b> - is what keeps people from committing to a life of discovery."</i></p><p>There's something beautiful about recognizing our fundamental ignorance about the world. Because it means there is always more to learn about the world. Our endless capacity to learn new things is one of the most remarkable things about being human (although an endless capacity to learn is most certainly not unique to humans - but perhaps the capacity to <i>recognize </i>that we <i>have </i>an endless capacity to learn <i>is</i>?). There is an infinite amount to learn about the world, and people should always be wary of settling too firmly on any particular belief, but rather should always be on the lookout for new evidence that could modify that belief. This is true about COVID and it's true about so many other things.</p><p>Rather than being separated by all the things we think we know, let's be joined by the awareness of how much we <i>don't </i>know.</p><p>Do I have high hopes that society will change in its approach to this problem? No, not really, but if I can get a few people thinking about it, and they can get a few other people thinking about it, well, that's something.</p><p>Also, check out <i>Ignorance</i> by The Weather Station. It's amazing. That's one thing I do know.</p>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-5028955500330770642021-04-25T13:44:00.002-07:002021-04-25T13:44:50.224-07:00Do cats have a preferred side when wrapping their tails against their bodies? An observational studyAt some point during the last half year or so - I'm having trouble remembering exactly when, perhaps because so much of the time has blurred together - I decided to do a little study at home to try to find the answer to a very important question.<div><br /></div><div>If you have a cat or cats in your life, you've undoubtedly noticed that sometimes a cat will sit with its tail wrapped against one side of its body. For example, here is a picture of my cat Eponine, at one year old, with her tail against the left side of her body:</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwZkxkWiZwqR4G1dBSmjw8UIO4BFVrAp_41iMRAjsSWCJiY4ofAWUoheRbS7LRA2AXGV-P-y3uoxfqZ3CUGL-zdEuQJP13vwvD6zcpHrn5vEMtGbDnKsO-MOcY0LFN6Y75DkBykSQyO55U/s1357/2008-03-25+eponine+001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1079" data-original-width="1357" height="508" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwZkxkWiZwqR4G1dBSmjw8UIO4BFVrAp_41iMRAjsSWCJiY4ofAWUoheRbS7LRA2AXGV-P-y3uoxfqZ3CUGL-zdEuQJP13vwvD6zcpHrn5vEMtGbDnKsO-MOcY0LFN6Y75DkBykSQyO55U/w640-h508/2008-03-25+eponine+001.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div>I realized that I did not know whether, when cats do this, they have a side preference. If I observed Eponine doing this many times, would her tail consistently be on her left side? Would it usually be on her left side but sometimes on her right? Would it usually be on her <i>right </i>side? Would it be essentially random?</div><div><br /></div><div>Since I was spending a large amount of time at home, I thought hey, it would be fun to do a study to try to answer this question!</div><div><br /></div><div>Study subjects:</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgypxfQ42Tb27QTqNNVvX_XuEEuZ7fiUgHnDiO1OlfvlU8lLkyasNiyVpcxtsQINR5JB9Q2DNuX5nmtW1R8-xa70FTtPTFcgqOxyeS1TAxfhOz2I-XV9aXbMg2ffoU_jeRw1bOgHvxFBPO0/s2048/IMG_20200322_133942904%257E2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1668" data-original-width="2048" height="326" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgypxfQ42Tb27QTqNNVvX_XuEEuZ7fiUgHnDiO1OlfvlU8lLkyasNiyVpcxtsQINR5JB9Q2DNuX5nmtW1R8-xa70FTtPTFcgqOxyeS1TAxfhOz2I-XV9aXbMg2ffoU_jeRw1bOgHvxFBPO0/w400-h326/IMG_20200322_133942904%257E2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Eponine, 13 year old (at time of study) female</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqURkJAF9Qfn23c50nJjmg8RlFpPq9Vl2KmnYxRujMgKISzPu9A_t87o_kRBCNyYHRZLRsfl04xq5JKNSKNPfolaLfbj2SNCi3miXjdeUro5yIk3hn0SPxlNNoc8-K5fhHpHHvhLUJwZCS/s2048/IMG_20200421_132911654.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqURkJAF9Qfn23c50nJjmg8RlFpPq9Vl2KmnYxRujMgKISzPu9A_t87o_kRBCNyYHRZLRsfl04xq5JKNSKNPfolaLfbj2SNCi3miXjdeUro5yIk3hn0SPxlNNoc8-K5fhHpHHvhLUJwZCS/w400-h300/IMG_20200421_132911654.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Gavroche (hereafter referred to by his nickname Gavvy), 4 year old male</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Y9eDJZ-n0k_fxNOma-TevnRKVbXtf9UaGOhfzy9yi1rwpkyMW4BwHFA-vOZX8wTMnZtQllIC5ZlM0Gz0cmk8NeFHaqRRB92OwuRaG12FZjw-DZWrhCQlklV8kYXhZB1-8hHA1LO5fC66/s2048/IMG_20200112_125836234.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Y9eDJZ-n0k_fxNOma-TevnRKVbXtf9UaGOhfzy9yi1rwpkyMW4BwHFA-vOZX8wTMnZtQllIC5ZlM0Gz0cmk8NeFHaqRRB92OwuRaG12FZjw-DZWrhCQlklV8kYXhZB1-8hHA1LO5fC66/w300-h400/IMG_20200112_125836234.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Graystripe, 3 or 4 (exact age not known because he was already fully grown when I adopted him as a stray) year old male</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">To carry out the study, I simply observed my cats in their normal day-to-day lives and whenever I saw one sitting with its tail wrapped against one side of its body, I recorded the side with a tally mark. There were a few criteria for which observations did and did not count. To be included, the cat had to be sitting on a flat surface and with its body in a roughly symmetrical manner other than the tail, and with the tail all the way against the side of the body.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">So here are a couple examples of observations that would <i>not </i>count.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd6VwLB_vRIS0XZvyPrWxth__bbAYeneMc9ZpeVMYU9htDZt2APlAU5ER1mVYxgnGJ6VCTU1kSXCeUlcomTqxRmggVtt3e14mkyKL-h_gMx4hLHKpuHGvQkCbRb4fDk_N7zUoRMrd6cdvm/s1941/IMG_20201222_231355168.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1941" data-original-width="1601" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd6VwLB_vRIS0XZvyPrWxth__bbAYeneMc9ZpeVMYU9htDZt2APlAU5ER1mVYxgnGJ6VCTU1kSXCeUlcomTqxRmggVtt3e14mkyKL-h_gMx4hLHKpuHGvQkCbRb4fDk_N7zUoRMrd6cdvm/w330-h400/IMG_20201222_231355168.jpg" width="330" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Here Graystripe is lying on his side, so although his tail is wrapped against his body, this doesn't count because he's not sitting with his body in a symmetrical manner.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgES7F5p59y9HW_EGEkz6eAbjP9BWtpkedyd6wtp-Otjs_W7mj7obKVJhM1zguFP4T3kiBb95ieuHCNq2F9V12oQt5LU5lrcFrVrPd1UCCykUBJOOX6yWI7JomynmcqU_KgbeojXWt5EBvZ/s2048/IMG_20200513_231338826.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1723" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgES7F5p59y9HW_EGEkz6eAbjP9BWtpkedyd6wtp-Otjs_W7mj7obKVJhM1zguFP4T3kiBb95ieuHCNq2F9V12oQt5LU5lrcFrVrPd1UCCykUBJOOX6yWI7JomynmcqU_KgbeojXWt5EBvZ/w336-h400/IMG_20200513_231338826.jpg" width="336" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Here Gavvy is sitting with his body roughly symmetrical. His tail is pointing toward his right side, but it's not wrapped against the side of his body so it doesn't count.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">On the other hand, I did not distinguish between cats sitting upright and sitting "like a loaf," and counted either as long as their bodies were roughly symmetrical and their tails were against one side of their bodies.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMqgxXYwdrBMpfnxZJPJ8AsdTX-76lP8v9iOFP98sDUrbWvFUHMd2h7x5Tq5YHDFYsSxBFqYqd89YbVmHkTlLvYLlVSAGeS9StiEzOq9Tbgqr5TfxbbEbAPtvaH7TfGDZNZrtviZmtvARt/s2048/IMG_20200224_205255355.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1628" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMqgxXYwdrBMpfnxZJPJ8AsdTX-76lP8v9iOFP98sDUrbWvFUHMd2h7x5Tq5YHDFYsSxBFqYqd89YbVmHkTlLvYLlVSAGeS9StiEzOq9Tbgqr5TfxbbEbAPtvaH7TfGDZNZrtviZmtvARt/w318-h400/IMG_20200224_205255355.jpg" width="318" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Sitting upright with tail against right side of body - this counts.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5Gq1nizONQbKYybx0rwzIxkjMJhUXsG_ivbXo1kKXAx1sldqDRs3d-5LB7uSiypeDuVyZIaaru5DdC1QLvJFAaoKCRJHB4NXPf7dIioHp1hp7-Z_rdGmoGa3c6bb9wl3-H0iLO6qtBH7O/s2048/IMG_20200916_141037160%257E2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1573" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5Gq1nizONQbKYybx0rwzIxkjMJhUXsG_ivbXo1kKXAx1sldqDRs3d-5LB7uSiypeDuVyZIaaru5DdC1QLvJFAaoKCRJHB4NXPf7dIioHp1hp7-Z_rdGmoGa3c6bb9wl3-H0iLO6qtBH7O/w308-h400/IMG_20200916_141037160%257E2.jpg" width="308" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Sitting "like a loaf." Tail is not visible in this picture but I believe was against right side of body; assuming that is accurate, this would count.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The tendencies of cats to sit upright vs. "like a loaf" were not measured in this study but could be an interesting topic for future research!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I did not specify an amount of time over which to carry out the study but simply recorded every observation meeting the criteria until I had enough to be confident about the results. Here is the record of my observations:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMDxy7EkSJRA-i4XNXmtVn2yCxY4vjglVpkl8dJh2kpopv2LlGc5AnbphEMMwz4x2EUJZpZzDYcasH-dvHvaw7LjU1ybB8gQXuWLi7uFOigHKjBaVwdlRX8kLFm7rGk6YwV6HVJ3GW7sOA/s3802/IMG_20210425_140049359.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2813" data-original-width="3802" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMDxy7EkSJRA-i4XNXmtVn2yCxY4vjglVpkl8dJh2kpopv2LlGc5AnbphEMMwz4x2EUJZpZzDYcasH-dvHvaw7LjU1ybB8gQXuWLi7uFOigHKjBaVwdlRX8kLFm7rGk6YwV6HVJ3GW7sOA/w640-h474/IMG_20210425_140049359.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The first thing that jumps out is Eponine sat with her tail wrapped against her body a lot more often than the other two cats. This makes me wonder if the tendency to do this might be a female vs. male thing, but obviously I couldn't even attempt to draw any conclusions about that without studying more cats.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The next thing that jumps out is Gavvy wrapped his tail on his right side a lot more often than his left whereas the other two cats had close to equal numbers by side. Here is a graph of the total numbers by side for each cat:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdSGa-Tn9JJM9C-QTy6BIzIHgime24m8SfPaMlBvVdZDGyMHkcVKnlOjLKazbLi1rOdwrePImyby_xB9ZC8ypBZynPJC89zhylFaVENV6jdhWqW3bFXe1FAa91yTNnUGp9JEbckT-WulKY/s2048/cat_tail_sides.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1230" data-original-width="2048" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdSGa-Tn9JJM9C-QTy6BIzIHgime24m8SfPaMlBvVdZDGyMHkcVKnlOjLKazbLi1rOdwrePImyby_xB9ZC8ypBZynPJC89zhylFaVENV6jdhWqW3bFXe1FAa91yTNnUGp9JEbckT-WulKY/w640-h384/cat_tail_sides.png" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div>And here is a graph with the percentages for each cat, along with confidence intervals for the percentages:<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidqtDsVb_ReMr3y-PsT_Tps9sklHiu27U_anyR8w2SRoLUK2sXKUdeK7E1NZ7OnsvMFrvFt-RfBTc2NhshIbjtcf7shF1VMsQMM4QgHVC9ts6U7Mgigv3qGsPSj8hS8V-GvFnyvimheifr/s2048/cat_tail_side_percentages.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1230" data-original-width="2048" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidqtDsVb_ReMr3y-PsT_Tps9sklHiu27U_anyR8w2SRoLUK2sXKUdeK7E1NZ7OnsvMFrvFt-RfBTc2NhshIbjtcf7shF1VMsQMM4QgHVC9ts6U7Mgigv3qGsPSj8hS8V-GvFnyvimheifr/w640-h384/cat_tail_side_percentages.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">(The error bars on the graph show the range that the actual percentages would fall within 95% of the time if the observations were unbiased. <a href="https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Modules/PH717-QuantCore/PH717_ConfidenceIntervals-OneSample/PH717_ConfidenceIntervals-OneSample5.html">Source for how to calculate confidence intervals for proportions if anyone is interested.</a>)</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Using a <a href="https://stattrek.com/online-calculator/binomial.aspx">binomial probability calculator</a>, for Eponine, if she actually has no side preference - that is, the actual probability for each side is 50% - by random chance there would be a 26.5% chance that at least 66 (the observed number) out of the total 124 observations would be on the left side. Or, there would be a 53% chance that at least 66 out of 124 would be on <i>one of the two sides </i>(26.5% chance for left plus 26.5% chance for right). In other words, the degree to which Eponine's results diverged from a 50/50, no preference outcome is easily consistent with random chance and we do not have evidence that Eponine has a side preference.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">For Graystripe, the observed results were exactly 50% on each side - 22 left and 22 right. So clearly for Graystripe we also do not have evidence for a side preference. (But note the larger confidence intervals for Graystripe than for Eponine, which is due to fewer observations having been made - although we don't have evidence for a side preference, we haven't <i>proven </i>that he has no side preference. But if he does, it's not a dramatic one.)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">For Gavvy, the outcome is quite different. There is only a 0.024% chance that with no side preference, he would have only 8 or fewer "left" outcomes out of 38 total, or 0.048% chance to have 8 or fewer outcomes be on one of the two sides. The chances of obtaining results like those for Gavvy if he, in reality, had no side preference are smaller than one in two <i>thousand</i>. For Gavvy, we have strong evidence that he prefers to wrap his tail on the right side of his body.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Before I did this study, I genuinely had no idea what the answer to my question was. After doing the study, I can conclude that some cats do have a strong preference toward wrapping their tail on one side of their body, and some cats do not. I learned something about the world! Isn't science great? 😸</div>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-16986097152325354812021-01-12T17:03:00.000-08:002021-01-12T17:03:50.083-08:001/6 vs. 9/11<p> As I continue to process the horrific events that took place at the United States Capitol last Wednesday, I can't help but think back to another time during my life when our nation came under attack. And to think of the similarities and differences between the two incidents. Especially the differences.</p><p>September 11, 2001, started like any other day. I was 18 years old and had recently begun my freshman year of college. That morning I went to the dining hall and ate breakfast before returning to my dorm room to get ready to head off to my morning classes. Upon my return to that small double room, 9/11 very suddenly became a day very unlike any other day. The television was on (very odd), on the television there was a live shot of the twin towers with smoke billowing out of them, and my roommate quickly said, "Two planes just crashed into the World Trade Center."</p><p>It was immediately obvious that something unimaginably horrible was happening.</p><p>Classes weren't cancelled yet so I headed off to class not long after. While walking across campus I passed some construction workers who were listening to the radio and I heard something about the Pentagon having been struck. In class news and rumors flew (remember those days when we didn't all have the Internet in the palm of our hands?). By some of the early reports, the attacks were even more widespread and destructive than they were in reality. I remember hearing something about a bomb going off at the State Department, which of course had not actually happened. But the reality, obviously, was horrible enough. At the time it was the worst day of my life and there wasn't really any competition.</p><p>January 6, 2021 did not start like any other day. It was an unusual, tension-filled day from the start. We all knew that Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden's election victory and that numerous congressional Republicans were planning to continue their assault on democracy by objecting to the results. We also knew that Trump was holding a rally not that far from the Capitol, a gathering of his supporters who had already been whipped into a frenzy by lie after lie after lie about the election and about so many other things.</p><p>I guess it should have been obvious in retrospect that something really awful might happen. Certainly I was nervous. But I wasn't expecting... <i>that</i>.</p><p>I was sitting on my sofa, working on my laptop, as I've generally been doing every work day during this awful pandemic. I was periodically checking Twitter, as I also generally do.</p><p>Okay, more than periodically.</p><p>The previous day I had seen a report about some Trump supporters getting into it with cops in DC, and I kind of thought - <i>oh, that's nice, it's about time! -</i> after all the other news stories this year about various protests and the response, or lack thereof, by law enforcement. Peaceful BLM protests being violently cracked down on by police. Heavily armed anti-mask zealots invading state capitol buildings while cops stood by and watched. <i>Finally</i>, I thought, <i>the MAGA wackos are getting a taste of their own medicine.</i></p><p>So on Wednesday, when early in the afternoon I saw reports of a mob gathering outside the United States Capitol and starting to get in scuffles with police forces, I at first thought it was more of what had happened the previous day. Surely the protesters (I still thought of them as protesters at that time - not yet as rioters, or insurrectionists, or terrorists) would take some licks from the cops and eventually disperse without doing any real damage.</p><p>Then around 2 or so I saw a tweet stating that the Capitol had been breached.</p><p>The expression "shit got real" comes to mind but when I really think about it? I don't think it got real yet, not for me, or probably for most everyone all over the country as we all in one way or another became aware of the news.</p><p>I ended up spending most of the rest of the day watching the news on TV. I was horrified by what I saw. But as horrified as I was that day, it was nothing compared to the horror I've felt in the ensuing days.</p><p>I think on 1/6 I was, in a way, watching it more like I was watching a movie or TV show than real events that were really happening in real life.</p><p>I suppose 9/11 was also like that, in a way. But on 9/11, man, seeing the WTC collapse? There was no way to deny the sheer magnitude of horror we were all witnessing. No way to not just feel utterly sick and utterly full of dread.</p><p>On 1/6, most of the images that we saw, on that afternoon, were tame, often even laughable. A crazy guy in a buffalo costume posing for the camera in the chambers of Congress? Another goofy looking guy with his feet up on Nancy Pelosi's desk? Do those really look scary? It was clear something really crazy and unsettling was happening, but the full extent of it...</p><p>The full extent really only started to come out over the next few days and I'm sure there's even more that we still don't know, but the grim details of what happened that day, that most of us have now probably seen but had no idea of that afternoon... A functional gallows erected outside the Capitol. An angry mob chanting, "Hang Mike Pence!" after their treasonous leader told them that the Vice President had betrayed their cause. That same mob beating a police officer to death. Windows and doors being smashed as the mob descended on the locations where vulnerable members of Congress cowered. One rioter being felled by a single shot fired by a brave, outnumbered security officer who resorted to lethal force only when it became truly necessary.</p><p>Eugene Goodman, a Black police officer facing off, alone, against an angry white mob, and luring them away from the undefended doors to the Senate chambers. He should be considered a hero in a similar echelon as those brave Flight 93 passengers who gave their lives to protect the Capitol on 9/11.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQS8aHKqskRTCtG45jgOD3dweuNpE8sHfTbtSbJpn8Bff-JLDLksO3o_xxd21lGpcKg3AghHtdEdbSo2oDgHlYD342i_xiJm32gflZfff_8T0VsUqMUPTDdirRLALcrOVT972A-ZH4tVQ2/s600/eugene_goodman_lead_image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQS8aHKqskRTCtG45jgOD3dweuNpE8sHfTbtSbJpn8Bff-JLDLksO3o_xxd21lGpcKg3AghHtdEdbSo2oDgHlYD342i_xiJm32gflZfff_8T0VsUqMUPTDdirRLALcrOVT972A-ZH4tVQ2/s320/eugene_goodman_lead_image.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>9/11 was instantly more terrible than anything I'd ever experienced in my life. In the days that followed, the terror remained, but as I think back on it, I think that with each passing day, life gradually moved - not back to normal - but back to a place where I could enjoy the day-to-day moments of life without constant anxiety and dread. It didn't happen right away. But each day seemed a little less bad than the previous one.</p><p>1/6, in the moment, didn't seem as terrible as 9/11. But the ensuing days have had the opposite effect. Each day, as more details have come out and the actuality of what happened and is still happening has continued to sink in, has seemed <i>worse.</i></p><p>Looking at it now, I think that 1/6 is more frightening than 9/11. (At least from the perspective of a citizen of the USA - I don't want to diminish the horror that was experienced by the victims of the misguided wars our country launched in response to 9/11.) On and after 9/11, there was never even the tiniest shred of possibility that Osama Bin Laden would overthrow the United States government and install himself as leader. Islamic extremists were never attempting to take over our government and any such attempt would have been utterly futile. On 1/6, the man who currently <i>is </i>president of the United States - and who, thanks to our broken Electoral College system, could have been reelected if the vote counts in a few select states had shifted a little bit in his direction - incited his followers to attempt to overthrow the government and install him as an unelected dictator.</p><p>And hours after that happened, a majority of the Republicans in the House of Representatives still voted to overturn the results of the election!</p><p>It is incredibly frightening that so many of our fellow citizens have been swept up in this authoritarian movement. It is horrifying that, in our two party representative democracy, one of the two parties has largely rejected the concept of democracy and has now moved beyond gerrymandering and voter suppression into outright violence.</p><p>And now we see numerous Republican elected officials and right wing pundits saying that impeachment would be too divisive and we need to just move on for the sake of unity.</p><p>This is like if after 9/11, people had said that trying to get Bin Laden would be too divisive, so we should just let him off without consequences and move on.</p><p>It is true that we need unity. We need unity against the people who tried to overthrow our government. Anyone who opposes consequences for Trump is picking the side of the people who tried to overthrow our government. The rest of us - conservatives, moderates, and liberals alike - need to unite against them. Only then can we move forward as a country.</p><p>And even after Trump is gone from the presidency, the seditious movement he fomented isn't going to disappear. That's a big reason why 1/6 is scarier than 9/11. Because a small group of extremists on the other side of the globe can't do nearly as much damage as what could potentially be done by a homegrown radical movement that has now infected the minds of millions of Americans. But I have hope that things are going to get better. I have hope that 1/6 was a big wakeup call for a lot of people about the threat that we face. And I know there are more of us - the people who want our democracy to continue - than there are of them.</p><p>Another reason that I think this past week has been so extremely unsettling (not that the events themselves aren't unsettling enough) is that thanks to COVID so many of us are already so isolated and already under such enormous stress. We can't gather to comfort and reassure each other the way we normally would. I remember shortly after Trump was elected, and I was feeling disconsolate. (For good reason, I'd certainly have to say from the vantage point of four years later.) And my parents came to visit me and we went out for a nice dinner. It was good just to spend time with family. So many small comforts like that are missing now. But it's important to remember that it won't be like this forever. I hope everyone is doing the best they can to take care of themselves and to be there for each other even if it can't be in person. When we look back on this time, years in the future, I think it's going to be hard to believe we really lived through it all. Or that things really were as bad as they are at this moment. I look forward to that day.</p>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-84482827183410643732020-11-22T16:19:00.000-08:002020-11-22T16:19:31.185-08:00Thankful, redux (or: Thanksgiving in the ICU)<p>I've been thinking a lot about all the people who will be spending this Thanksgiving in the ICU.</p><p>Unlike most people, I've already had the experience of seeing a loved one spend Thanksgiving in the ICU. Seeing a loved one spend Thanksgiving in the ICU while on supplemental oxygen, at that.</p><p>In November 2013, my wife Cara, who three months earlier had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer at the age of 34, had a sudden downturn in her health after her first treatment failed the week of Thanksgiving. Two days before Thanksgiving, having noticed an increasingly distressing deterioration of her respiratory function, she went to the hospital, was admitted, and soon found herself in an ICU bed.</p><p>I wrote about the whole experience four years ago in a post called <a href="https://guyaboutcleveland.blogspot.com/2016/12/thankful.html">Thankful</a> so I won't recount the story in detail this time. The title of that post was taken from a post Cara herself wrote just days before her hospital admission called <a href="http://girlaboutcleveland.blogspot.com/2013/11/thankful.html">Thankful</a> in which she reflected on how much she had to be grateful for despite her lung cancer diagnosis. She wrote the post before she realized her health was suddenly worsening again. That's a reminder to me about how precious our lives and good health are and how we should never take those things for granted.</p><p>Cara hated being in the ICU. I remember well how much she hated it. The crowded conditions, the lack of privacy, all the beeping of hospital machines and all the other noises that made it so difficult to get any restful sleep. She was very glad when she got to move to a room in the cancer center later that week, before the surgery she had the following week. But on Thanksgiving Day, she was still in the ICU.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6nWu9DUmiWxlLPec_gyPzJglT_bJksJoXG6mAphBnd8-_uW8Rzvme758LglaZlOZP70N8V85uvHhcf-5ElOrn3zrPGUd_vc830gMY7NmEHtgI0n978g5DPp4ij0ALOfbQnQGblimRniU_/s960/1457651_10152084681136241_335685747_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6nWu9DUmiWxlLPec_gyPzJglT_bJksJoXG6mAphBnd8-_uW8Rzvme758LglaZlOZP70N8V85uvHhcf-5ElOrn3zrPGUd_vc830gMY7NmEHtgI0n978g5DPp4ij0ALOfbQnQGblimRniU_/w300-h400/1457651_10152084681136241_335685747_n.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><i><div style="text-align: center;"><i>A picture Cara posted from her ICU bed: "That bag looks like a turkey, right? Is it?? #adventuresoftheICU"</i></div></i><p>Every year since Cara had moved to Cleveland, we had traveled to Columbus together for Thanksgiving dinner with my family. I would make applesauce. Cara would make rolls. We would enjoy a delicious feast and quality time with loved ones. Despite Cara's recent cancer diagnosis, that was again our plan in 2013. Obviously, the plan changed. But Cara and I did still get to share Thanksgiving dinner with family. Her parents came up to Cleveland and together they and I, with Cara's father doing most of the cooking, prepared a feast just as scrumptious as any we'd had in the past, and we took the food in to the hospital to share with Cara.</p><p>(I fondly remember how much our cat Mitters loved to munch on pieces of leftover turkey. She went crazy for that stuff.)</p><p>It was not the ideal way to enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner. But we were all glad that we could at least do what we did. Looking back from the vantage point of November 2020? I'm even more grateful.</p><p>As much as Cara hated being in the ICU, her accommodations and the fact that she was able to share a Thanksgiving dinner with her husband and her parents were absolutely luxurious compared to what things are like for someone in an ICU during the raging COVID pandemic. An ICU patient now would likely only be permitted a single visitor, if even that. Certainly not three. And sharing a meal with a visitor would be out of the question due to the exposure risk.</p><p>For someone who is intubated, as many COVID ICU patients are, the simple act of eating food would be beyond their capacity. Something they could only dream of hopefully being able to do again in the future, if their condition improves.</p><p>And then there are all the nurses and doctors and other health care workers toiling away in those ICUs instead of having a relaxing holiday at home with their families. They've already sacrificed so much all year, and now they're being asked to sacrifice even more as the pandemic reaches its worst levels yet in most of the country.</p><p>As much as it breaks my heart to think of all the people spending this Thanksgiving in ICUs across the country, I fear that Christmas next month could be even worse.</p><p>In all likelihood, it <i>will</i> be even worse, if enough people decide to have their usual Thanksgiving gatherings this week.</p><p>So I beg you, think of all those overwhelmed health care workers, and think of all those ICU patients, and think of all those potential future ICU patients whose illnesses could be prevented if we all decide to stay safe this week. Think of those people when you decide how you're going to celebrate this Thanksgiving. And even if you've already decided to avoid risky gatherings, perhaps someone you know has other plans. Perhaps by politely urging that person to reconsider, you could make a difference - a difference that could (although you'll never know it) save someone's life.</p><p>If my writing this post stops just one person from getting sick with COVID, it will have been a success.</p><p>I know how exhausted everyone is from this horrible pandemic. I know we all want it to be over and to be able to go back to doing all the things we miss so much from our normal lives. It's very understandable to just want to have a normal Thanksgiving right now.</p><p>The bad news is, this week the pandemic is worse than it ever has been, and it is less safe than ever to hold such a gathering.</p><p>Why, then, am I thankful at this dark point in time?</p><p>Because the good news is that the end is in sight.</p><p>We have recently gotten amazing news about vaccines that have been developed in record time.</p><p>When I wrote my previous post about Thanksgiving in the ICU, and about being thankful, the reason I was thankful was this: when Cara was in the ICU that Thanksgiving, it looked like her life was near its end, but thanks to amazing advances in cancer treatments and to the heroic work of scientists and doctors, she got to have another 17 months of life, and during that time we made so many wonderful memories together. And now I am thankful for similar reasons.</p><p>It borders on miraculous that we are getting these vaccines this quickly. And think about the past, before these marvelous advances in science and medicine had occurred. Think about what it was like before there were vaccines. The Black Plague killed a third or more of the people in Europe in the mid-1300s. The 1918 influenza pandemic killed about 50 million people worldwide.</p><p>If we were not able to develop a vaccine, we might have to eventually settle for just letting the virus run its course through the population while doing our best to protect more vulnerable people (efforts that so far are failing rather horribly here in the United States). Think about that. In New York City, about 3 out of every 1000 residents has been killed by COVID. Extrapolate that death rate to the entire US and it would be about one million deaths. And cases have started rising again in New York, showing that as much as some people would like to tell you otherwise, "herd immunity" has not been achieved.</p><p>Who can say how long it would take and how many people would have to die for the pandemic to run its course without vaccines? Not to mention the even larger number of people left with long-lasting reduced quality of life by their infections? It's horrific to contemplate.</p><p>We should all be so, so thankful for these advances in medical science, and for all the people whose hard work has made them possible.</p><p>Now is not the time to gather with people from outside your household for a Thanksgiving dinner. But it is a good time to reflect on reasons to be thankful.</p><p>In the coming months, people will start getting vaccinated. Over time, more and more of the population will be protected against the virus. In the spring, weather will start getting warmer again and more suitable for spending time outdoors, further driving infections down. By the summer, we could very well be back to something like normal.</p><p>I'm going to be so incredibly thankful when I can safely hang out with a group of friends, have a normal dinner with my family, <i>go to concerts again.</i> Probably about as thankful as I've ever been for anything in my life. Just imagine what that's going to feel like. And keep those thoughts with you through these dark winter months.</p><p>Next year, let's have the best Thanksgiving ever.</p>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-30229671938629402462020-10-18T13:10:00.001-07:002020-10-18T19:19:36.488-07:00"That's the best kind of show, sometimes"<div class="separator">September 13, 2006. An ordinary Wednesday. I got up in the morning, had breakfast, realized I was exhausted, went back to bed, and finally managed to drag myself back out of bed at about 1:15 so I could go to my 2:00 class.</div><p>(I know that this is what happened on that particular day 14 years ago because I told it to Cara in a message I sent her that day.)</p><p>I was a second year graduate student, living alone in a little apartment on the fourth floor of an apartment building near Case Western Reserve University's North Residential Village. I was also recovering from a broken arm suffered at the beginning of August, and had just very recently gotten my cast removed but was still wearing a wrist brace for support (that figures into this story later). I had a penchant for staying up very, very late playing computer games and chatting with a certain girl who lived in Columbus. Hence the dragging myself out of bed so I could go to a 2:00 pm class.</p><p>It was an ordinary day. Little did I know at the time that it was a day that would turn out to be at least a little bit life-changing.</p><p>"I'm heading to a concert pretty soon," I messaged Cara at 9:52 pm.</p><p>"Tonight?" she asked.</p><p>"Yeah," I replied, and explained that it was two local bands, playing a free show at my school. (This was one of the weekly Spot Night shows, a topic I've <a href="https://guyaboutcleveland.blogspot.com/2019/11/in-memory-of-spot-night.html">written about</a> before.)</p><p>"Ah," said Cara. "That's the best kind of show, sometimes."</p><p>My response? A blunt, "I disagree."</p><p>That's hilarious to me now. Both the bluntness (something I still do, but did to a far, far greater extent back then) and the fact that back then I just had no idea how amazing little, local concerts could be! Every really great show I'd been to had been a nationally known band. I'd seen a few decent performances by local bands, but I genuinely didn't consider the idea that a little known Cleveland band might become one of my favorites.</p><p>That night totally changed how I viewed local music.</p><p>"I just got back," I messaged Cara at 12:26 am. "The concert was really good. It was an interesting mix of genres, the first band was alt-country and the second was post-rock. I bought CDs from both... I liked both of them more than any other obscure Northeast Ohio bands I've seen."</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs-nrcUXunzbQxwc4kmZajx_W4eDLLJU2FWwkE4BRRQTYolpYweuwlN9eYldSkSM85OxXGQ3ZZWoAic7Tuak_OijO2hDRm_Qavz7ZgOJg6AUCZwqa7F15GlrV64qZXpnUrTXfnuubmYmLL/s2000/gmv+tbahpe.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1359" data-original-width="2000" height="434" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs-nrcUXunzbQxwc4kmZajx_W4eDLLJU2FWwkE4BRRQTYolpYweuwlN9eYldSkSM85OxXGQ3ZZWoAic7Tuak_OijO2hDRm_Qavz7ZgOJg6AUCZwqa7F15GlrV64qZXpnUrTXfnuubmYmLL/w640-h434/gmv+tbahpe.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><i><div style="text-align: center;"><i>The CDs</i></div></i><p>That was an enthusiastic endorsement from 23-year old Jeff. (I've realized I tend to express myself much more passionately now than I did back then.) That show really did far exceed any previous performance by local bands that I'd experienced. And in doing so, it pretty much opened up a whole new world of music to me, right in my backyard, as in the ensuing years I went to more and more shows by local artists and discovered more and more to love in the music of "obscure Northeast Ohio bands."</p><p>The two bands who played at the Spot that night were called Goodmorning Valentine (the alt-country band) and To Be a High Powered Executive (the post-rock band, and if you know anything about the genre I'm sure you could have guessed which band was which). It was the recent release after a very long hiatus of a <a href="https://tobeahighpoweredexecutive.bandcamp.com/album/tall-shapes">new To Be a High Powered Executive album</a> that inspired me to write this post! More on that in a bit.</p><p>After seeing their excellent performances and buying and listening to their CDs, I would become big fans of both bands that played that night. One thing that really made an impression on me, in addition to their music, was how friendly and down-to-Earth the musicians were. And that's another thing that seems funny to me now, because why wouldn't they be? But back then, I didn't know that.</p><p>I told Cara about how when I bought a CD from Goodmorning Valentine, the lead singer asked what had happened to my (brace-enclosed) wrist and that he "seemed genuinely concerned." I really appreciated that genuine concern. I also said that during their set, he had said, "Do you always get this many people here? We should play here more often."</p><p>Despite the crowd of "60 to 70 people," which to me was quite small, I noted that this had definitely been said with sincerity.</p><p>"I love that," Cara said.</p><p>"Both of the bands seemed really nice and appreciative of the crowd," I replied.</p><p>"A show isn't anything without the people," Cara added.</p><p>Ain't that the truth. (Thanks, COVID...)</p><p>That's one of the great things about being a fan of local musicians, or not just local musicians, but also many other musicians who regularly play to modest crowds. You often get the chance to connect with them on a person-to-person level, and when you tell them how much you appreciate their music, that will really mean something to them. I've said it before, when someone creates something that has an impact on your life, and you get the opportunity to tell them, you should take that opportunity.</p><p>I've discovered more and more wonderful local bands in the years since. To Be a High Powered Executive, though... there was just something about that band. In the period from 2006-2008, I'm pretty sure they became the band I'd seen live the most times. And they were just so good. I was pretty heavily into the post-rock genre (mainly instrumental music, usually guitar-driven but sometimes with orchestral elements, featuring complex arrangements and melodies and often quite lengthy songs as well as often lengthy song titles [e.g. "The King Has Bled, We Have Slept, and Now We Must Wake"] and/or band names [e.g. To Be a High Powered... well, you get the point]) at the time, including a strong fandom of big names in the genre like Explosions in the Sky and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. I did feel that in a lot of the lesser acts in the genre, and even sometimes with the bigger names, there was a tendency for the music to be a bit formulaic. Like how many different ways can you write a swelling guitar crescendo?</p><p>To Be a High Powered Executive, they never failed to keep things interesting in a way that few post-rock bands could match. Their music kept you on your toes because there was so much variety from song to song and also even within songs; halfway through a song it would go in a totally different direction, but at the same time it all flowed together so well. Another strength was their strong rhythm section; the intricate bass melodies were a marvel to see live, and between that and the drumming the music just had this great <i>groove </i>to it, it was danceable as hell and that was part of why they were so fun live. Add two guitars trading off parts that ranged from delicate to face-melting (oh, plus an occasional fifth member adding some nice percussion and xylophone flourishes), and they were just a machine. One of the best post-rock bands I've ever seen, my favorite local Northeast Ohio band I've ever seen, and a band who deserved far more fame and recognition than they received, but who did have a small but devoted following.</p><p>Cara became a big fan of the band too, although she, still living in Columbus at the time, didn't get to see them live nearly as many times as I did. I remember buying a CD for her at one of their shows that I went to solo, their 2007 album <i>We Don't Want It Safe, We Want It Secret. </i>It's an excellent album that I highly recommend.</p><p>(Here are a few pictures from a fantastic show at the Grog Shop with TBaHPE opening for Le Loup and also joining the latter band on stage during one of the headliners' songs. I think this was the show where I bought the CD for Cara.)</p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0SCu1W3EUiYQJaemuVhanA-56UkysTf62YfTIKshGS7vexiaji1-koSNNtj9g2z3xigYKjsFJGWYY2PCUWpmSfMYOKTTR7YD7pHVN1MPgFdpA7tnzLH52K30w3jbCb5fRe_GGU2TK4g6S/s800/2008-05-01-le-loup-005.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0SCu1W3EUiYQJaemuVhanA-56UkysTf62YfTIKshGS7vexiaji1-koSNNtj9g2z3xigYKjsFJGWYY2PCUWpmSfMYOKTTR7YD7pHVN1MPgFdpA7tnzLH52K30w3jbCb5fRe_GGU2TK4g6S/w400-h300/2008-05-01-le-loup-005.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglhoR4qVI9JOLmOWraSCHNAtLQEb52ZvOFiaCQXtEekJT14gQOW2lZXtp-fZIL76tNTifefHluQy4doNJTYTfjC1s4SFDsXCkSB-KLPKKNNXTA18trshcMPY1HEB-nwmdMiEidWoJygOfZ/s700/2008-05-01-le-loup-006.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="525" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglhoR4qVI9JOLmOWraSCHNAtLQEb52ZvOFiaCQXtEekJT14gQOW2lZXtp-fZIL76tNTifefHluQy4doNJTYTfjC1s4SFDsXCkSB-KLPKKNNXTA18trshcMPY1HEB-nwmdMiEidWoJygOfZ/w300-h400/2008-05-01-le-loup-006.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg77jJ08bq09XxILeFrDq99KT4zmLWcWzAB5Az5m_24ZZlpCY_xbDhAGQ8bXMpM3DUN3Q7xODW2nzVVwI207o_e5HDndcyG_w09OY6SQqpbgjHDIPJCBoY4iHAhvn7SQ7bBNaWdIiPLx2_b/s800/2008-05-01-le-loup-008.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg77jJ08bq09XxILeFrDq99KT4zmLWcWzAB5Az5m_24ZZlpCY_xbDhAGQ8bXMpM3DUN3Q7xODW2nzVVwI207o_e5HDndcyG_w09OY6SQqpbgjHDIPJCBoY4iHAhvn7SQ7bBNaWdIiPLx2_b/w400-h300/2008-05-01-le-loup-008.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibt2rJACADIVrTDNwTAeYwaZnNq5LQGXPLVdks9EYTlHqqz4RwfAlkYLnED7a1LRrIcL5oRi8QwsHEQlPDVV9CcUlmLEYYZ73TpX8qPSquzZCesUTaZ866gszYr4XE1nbjhK0pVNGQGjs4/s700/2008-05-01-le-loup-009.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="525" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibt2rJACADIVrTDNwTAeYwaZnNq5LQGXPLVdks9EYTlHqqz4RwfAlkYLnED7a1LRrIcL5oRi8QwsHEQlPDVV9CcUlmLEYYZ73TpX8qPSquzZCesUTaZ866gszYr4XE1nbjhK0pVNGQGjs4/w300-h400/2008-05-01-le-loup-009.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyD303sFmrUiYulJpR9HTP1Lt1zkca1TUlXRUrTy5rVjhjD90c6HtuSz5RSf7Pweo3CeiSulG10kcSKiMhP7cXDa8GHDYBmX1zCjcVAqfW6MVaSHBV07iTBfluc05pJOv4R2y8ZxBZWP8B/s800/2008-05-01-le-loup-037.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyD303sFmrUiYulJpR9HTP1Lt1zkca1TUlXRUrTy5rVjhjD90c6HtuSz5RSf7Pweo3CeiSulG10kcSKiMhP7cXDa8GHDYBmX1zCjcVAqfW6MVaSHBV07iTBfluc05pJOv4R2y8ZxBZWP8B/w400-h300/2008-05-01-le-loup-037.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKXV_kfljq8MxAdEXpTYXvGk7tNy8BLLh6OkYEZ1q1HmEfmlKzNQ36y4yKesaFrb4mx6kMQGrue_hjW0uGZfBzf_jFfypuTz0lqs3uPaoF3CQ5NbTKOTd1LpG1hvC9hLakcgyqmsjLnHSD/s800/2008-05-01-le-loup-041.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKXV_kfljq8MxAdEXpTYXvGk7tNy8BLLh6OkYEZ1q1HmEfmlKzNQ36y4yKesaFrb4mx6kMQGrue_hjW0uGZfBzf_jFfypuTz0lqs3uPaoF3CQ5NbTKOTd1LpG1hvC9hLakcgyqmsjLnHSD/w400-h300/2008-05-01-le-loup-041.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div>One of my favorite memories related to the band is something that Cara liked to say. In a great live version of their song "To Morla" that was made available online, at one point one of the guitars inadvertently hits a note a half-step too high before adjusting downward to the correct note, and it doesn't sound bad, just different, but it was very noticeable to people like Cara and me who had listened to the original version of the song so many times. So Cara liked to call that note "the accidental accidental." That combination of music nerdiness and wordplay is an excellent example of why I loved her so much.</div><p>On November 25, 2008, two days before Thanksgiving, I sent an email to Cara with a very short subject line:</p><p><b>:(</b></p><p>And in the email I quoted what I believe was a MySpace message from the band:</p><table id="m_7724996765728935662betterb" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><tbody><tr><th></th><td style="font-family: Roboto, RobotoDraft, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">THIS IS IT..... OUR FINAL PERFORMANCE</span></td></tr><tr><th><br /></th><td style="font-family: Roboto, RobotoDraft, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">WEDNESDAY at the BEACHLAND, $3<br /><br />DREADFUL YAWNS<br />HOT RAILS<br />TO BE A HIGH POWERED EXECUTIVE<br /><br />Hello friends. With sadness and joy, we announce after many confusing months our final show.....ever. We are playing first, so come early. It will sort of be like a Thanksgiving present from all of us. But, there will be a set full of oldies, goodies, and even some new ones that you'll have this show only to hear.<br /><br />It is also the last night in Cleveland for our dear Michael Lassins..... if nothing else, come to see him before he is on his way.<br /><br /><br /><3 <span class="il">tbahpe</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>"Well, now I want to go to this concert," I added, and also mentioned that I didn't know whether my dad had gotten tickets for "the hockey game" yet. Apparently on Wednesday, the night before Thanksgiving and the night of the concert, there was a Columbus Blue Jackets game and we had been invited to go to the game with my parents and were trying to decide whether we wanted to go. (Cara had moved to Cleveland in September and we would be heading down to Columbus for Thanksgiving.) The sudden and unexpected announcement that my favorite local band would be playing their last show ever made it a very clear decision to me - going to the concert was a much higher priority than going to a hockey game.</p><p>So that's what Cara and I did. I remember being in the tiny Beachland Tavern, near the front of the crowd, rocking out to those familiar tunes, feeling exhilarated but also saddened that this was the last time.</p><p>That happens a lot with local bands. They come and go. A band member might move to another town and then that's just the end. Or the members might just move on to other things in their lives. It's nice when you at least get a chance for a sendoff, like in this case. I remember Cara and I also happened to be at the final show of another local band we really liked, Unsparing Sea - that time we didn't know in advance that it was the last one. Other local bands I've loved, like Machine Go Boom and Afternoon Naps, have faded out of existence without a farewell show, at least not to my recollection. The band Likenesses released an amazing debut album in 2015 and shortly after dropped off the face of the Earth and I never found out why.</p><p>So I'm really glad Cara and I got to go to that last To Be a High Powered Executive show.</p><p>I remember after their set Cara and I wanted to get t-shirts, and we tried to give them money but they didn't let us pay, saying, "We're done. Just take them." I still treasure that shirt.</p><p>We didn't even end up sticking around for the other bands. So we delayed our trip to Columbus by a day and skipped out on an NHL game to see one band play for maybe an hour or less. But it was absolutely 100% worth it.</p><p>At the time, TBaHPE had been working on another album, but then had to break up due to one of the members moving out of state. The album was never completed, and I was always sad about that.</p><p>And thus it was to my absolute delight when the album <a href="https://tobeahighpoweredexecutive.bandcamp.com/album/tall-shapes">Tall Shapes</a> appeared practically out of nowhere last month after a nearly 12-year hiatus for the band. It might even be one of my favorite things to have happened in this godforsaken year.</p><p>The album is certainly a departure in sound from the old TBaHPE (I was very surprised when I hit play for the first time and early in the first track heard <i>singing</i>, something that was completely absent from the band's previous albums) but after giving it a number of listens I'm a big fan and it's a great addition to the catalog. The songs are shorter, there are new and more diverse instrumentations, a few of the tracks have, yes, vocals - all in all, it's a nice evolution of the band's sound (at times reminding me of a cross between the old TBaHPE and the very little known <a href="https://soundcloud.com/trumpets-in-the-snow">Trumpets in the Snow</a> project two of the band's members did a number of years ago) that at heart retains most of the essential elements that made the band so good in the first place. What a great surprise and gift to have this new album after so, so many years.</p><p>I might be even more thrilled if, some day, the band could play a reunion show, playing their old and new songs. Who knows if that's something that could realistically ever happen, but it's nice to imagine. A show in an intimate setting with a small but enthusiastic audience of friends and devoted fans.</p><p>That's the best kind of show, sometimes.</p>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-7532375135038911382020-10-15T10:01:00.003-07:002020-10-16T10:48:12.357-07:00A deeper dive into COVID data: the politics of COVID spread<p>Most people who live in Ohio are probably aware by now that we're experiencing another new surge of COVID cases. If you hadn't seen yet, or if you don't live in Ohio, now you know: Ohio is experiencing another new surge of COVID cases.</p><p>But you might not know in what parts of Ohio most of those new cases are happening.</p><p>I live in Cleveland. I'm certainly very concerned and troubled by new spikes in COVID cases anywhere in Ohio or anywhere else for that matter, because I don't want people to get sick and die, but if I want to assess the current level of risk for myself or people around me, I want to know what's happening here in Cuyahoga county. So let's take a look at what's been happening in my county and elsewhere in the state.</p><p>I'm going to focus on new hospitalizations. New case counts are important, but are highly dependent on how many tests are being run and on who is being tested. To me, changes in hospitalization numbers are a better indication of how the spread of the disease is changing. (If you're interested, you can see county case data on <a href="https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/dashboards/overview">the state government's COVID dashboard</a>.)</p><p>Here's a graph of the hospital admissions in Cuyahoga county by day of the pandemic (all results in this post use the data made publicly available by the Ohio Department of Health):</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6nO6IvegohbQkXB-Hk9Rm7iBwFr14EZHyCsYeXHxnEuxWeluBNVIQ0Pkqp1-bEDBSGaDQK28HAVpjVHhjCWE91XTln84bxh5LJU0EVa5uT-hT_9iAg7o3MeRt5PCK4zvMCAlCE3ow9z1N/s850/2020-10-15+cuyahoga+admissions.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6nO6IvegohbQkXB-Hk9Rm7iBwFr14EZHyCsYeXHxnEuxWeluBNVIQ0Pkqp1-bEDBSGaDQK28HAVpjVHhjCWE91XTln84bxh5LJU0EVa5uT-hT_9iAg7o3MeRt5PCK4zvMCAlCE3ow9z1N/w640-h376/2020-10-15+cuyahoga+admissions.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>It's important to note that the numbers from the most recent days are incomplete and will increase somewhat as time goes on. I do see a hint we might be starting to tick up after a long declining period. But there's certainly been no major spike here. In July we were briefly getting around 30 or more new admissions per day. Then the numbers steadily declined to the point where for much of September we only averaged around 2-3 admissions per day. That's quite an improvement!</p><p>What happened in July? As far as I can tell, the most important thing that happened in July was a mask mandate went into effect - first county specific mask mandates, but not long after, a statewide mandate. I suspect, though, that adherence to the mandate is not as good in some parts of the state as others.</p><p>Ohio has three major cities, Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati, that are in Cuyahoga, Franklin, and Hamilton counties, respectively. Wherever I go around Cleveland, people seem to be generally good about wearing masks now. I suspect that tends to be more true in large cities in general and less true in other parts of the state. Here's a graph showing changes in the new hospitalization numbers (per capita) for the three largest Ohio counties vs. the rest of the state:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAyNze8g18hisDI3ALEDnd5LSGSgs2KzTmIWMnlplSWOfmTLgyXkwXITA_KtxANzi3ULjQRhCncADFkMKs3epvMeYnvEcy5RITEs-bIxsmmEIE71ejFzcX7HMcQ_iqAtMQnZL-8IbrJQuz/s953/2020-10-15+ohio+admissions.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="654" data-original-width="953" height="440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAyNze8g18hisDI3ALEDnd5LSGSgs2KzTmIWMnlplSWOfmTLgyXkwXITA_KtxANzi3ULjQRhCncADFkMKs3epvMeYnvEcy5RITEs-bIxsmmEIE71ejFzcX7HMcQ_iqAtMQnZL-8IbrJQuz/w640-h440/2020-10-15+ohio+admissions.png" width="640" /></a></div><p>(Note: this uses the extrapolation method I detailed in <a href="https://guyaboutcleveland.blogspot.com/2020/06/a-deeper-dive-into-covid-data-what-do.html">this post</a> to get more accurate estimates for the recent days that have incomplete data.)</p><p>We can see that in the big cities, after the mask mandates went into effect there was a big decline and although there may be a recent uptick, the numbers have remained at a level that is close to the lowest since March. In the rest of the state combined, the recent spike has pushed the numbers to the highest level at any point during the pandemic.</p><p>I will say that although I think masks clearly help, they aren't the whole story - there are also many other factors that basically can be summarized as how seriously are people taking the pandemic and how seriously are people taking efforts to slow the spread.</p><p>Cuyahoga, by the way, has had the most dramatic improvement. From March through July in aggregate, out of 88 counties in Ohio we had the very worst per capita hospitalization rate. August? 53rd out of 88 (first being best). September, 23rd out of 88. And October thus far? 14th out of 88. So I think we should appreciate the efforts we've all made that have saved a lot of people from sickness and death.</p><p>Anyway, it occurred to me that this divergence between the big cities and the rest of the state could very well be related to how politicized the pandemic has become. We have a Republican president and we have a right wing media who have pounded into the heads of their followers messages like: COVID is just like the flu, masks don't work and/or might be dangerous and/or are "unmanly," stay-at-home orders were government tyranny, we should just open everything up and let "herd immunity" take over, etc., etc., etc. And it's very clear that as a result of this, Trump supporters are much less likely than the rest of the country to view COVID as continuing to be a serious threat that we have to continue to take serious measures to address, even as the deaths continue to pile up. So I decided to take a look at whether data support the hypothesis that this polarization is affecting COVID spread in Ohio.</p><p>Here's a graph of the per capita hospitalization numbers by county from August through today (August being the cutoff point because mask mandates went into effect in July) plotted against the share of the 2016 presidential election vote received by Donald Trump:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicjJ66jW5LsYBjfF8s_HnGQVTEp6jXynVR_DaZDOhrk6gXuBkNTTzvxEyq_-lJA4SpxGSn6PpC-UUjpfAzFujt-zthtz3nITcnk-tBqA8_a_HN0eFEFoGrVy1bD2VodNyK4B_D4_y5DF7I/s900/2020-10-15+ohio+covid+vs+trump+vote.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="900" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicjJ66jW5LsYBjfF8s_HnGQVTEp6jXynVR_DaZDOhrk6gXuBkNTTzvxEyq_-lJA4SpxGSn6PpC-UUjpfAzFujt-zthtz3nITcnk-tBqA8_a_HN0eFEFoGrVy1bD2VodNyK4B_D4_y5DF7I/w640-h426/2020-10-15+ohio+covid+vs+trump+vote.png" width="640" /></a></div><p>Indeed, we see that the more a county voted for Trump in 2016, the more likely it is that that county has had a bad COVID outbreak since the statewide mask mandate went into effect. I was actually surprised at the strength of the apparent effect - the two most pro-Trump counties are the two counties with the worst outbreaks!</p><p>Now, certainly, this is suggestive evidence but not proof that Trump support leads to worse COVID outbreaks. There are other potential explanations and I'm open to hearing them.</p><p>One alternate explanation that someone raised when I made a similar point recently, and that I don't buy, is that the reason outbreaks are now worse in rural areas is because the worse outbreaks that previously occurred in cities caused a population immunity effect that has subsequently slowed the spread in cities.</p><p>This explanation doesn't make sense, because even the hardest hit places in Ohio had nowhere near the fraction of the population become infected as somewhere like New York City. In New York City, nearly 3 out of every 1000 residents has <i>died </i>of COVID, whereas in Cuyahoga county, about 2 out of every 1000 residents has <i>been hospitalized</i>, to give an idea of the magnitude of the difference. Even in New York City it is questionable whether there has been enough population immunity to have a significant effect in slowing disease spread. In Ohio the idea is completely far-fetched.</p><p>But let's humor that explanation and address it with data. If cities in Ohio are now doing better because their previous worse outbreaks have caused a protective effect, we would expect that there would be an inverse relationship between how hard hit a county was in the earlier part of the pandemic and how hard hit it has been recently. Is there such a relationship?</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhINR15_aEZYT-giFveCP4RLsuulV7HkXXd3oDmCIKoKmGHAvblCkHL8lRLLw9rV52ocEXkzUvUjmjOM3Sm4ZQKPUp4rgoQgVY2azQe3lQ7NGJqphh7PVNFlgPEaphuXb-mrlIBKHtXHQLo/s900/2020-10-15+ohio+county+hospitalizations+comparison.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="900" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhINR15_aEZYT-giFveCP4RLsuulV7HkXXd3oDmCIKoKmGHAvblCkHL8lRLLw9rV52ocEXkzUvUjmjOM3Sm4ZQKPUp4rgoQgVY2azQe3lQ7NGJqphh7PVNFlgPEaphuXb-mrlIBKHtXHQLo/w640-h426/2020-10-15+ohio+county+hospitalizations+comparison.png" width="640" /></a></div><p>No, there is not. There is no relationship whatsoever between hospitalization rate from March through July and hospitalization rate from August through the present. (There is a measure called R-squared of how strong a linear relationship is that goes from 0 (no correlation) to 1 (perfect correlation). The R-squared of this graph is literally 0.00. If you're curious, the R-squared of the previous graph on correlation with Trump support was 0.10, with a p-value of 0.002 - so the claim is not that Trump support guarantees a bad outbreak, but rather significantly increases the chances of one.)</p><p>So that takes us back to the explanation that rural counties are now tending to be hit worse because people there aren't taking the pandemic as seriously, which is probably related to Trump support.</p><p>This analysis is specific to Ohio, but I know that there exist data showing similar effects at both the county level and state level when looking all around the country.</p><p>So I guess the message is: the virus doesn't care whether you believe in it. In fact, the virus (if we are anthropomorphizing the virus) prefers it if you don't believe in it, because that makes it easier for the virus to infect you and people around you. If people don't take the pandemic seriously, these problems will only continue to get worse.</p><p>But the other message is, be concerned, but don't panic, about rising COVID numbers in Ohio. We collectively know so much more about how to stay safe than we did in March. If you take that knowledge into account and take measures to stay safe, you're much more likely to stay safe than if you ignore that knowledge. If you and all the people who live around you do that, it is possible to keep the numbers down. So keep wearing masks in public, and keep avoiding dangerous gatherings of people, especially crowded indoor gatherings. We are all in this together and the data suggest that in places where people <i>believe</i> that we are all in this together and act accordingly, the results will be better.</p>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-87285286998482523612020-09-22T15:33:00.000-07:002020-09-22T15:33:12.239-07:00Did you know? (Some important facts about American democracy in the year 2020)<p style="text-align: left;">Everyone knows that Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 despite losing the popular vote.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Losing the popular vote, in fact, by nearly 3 million votes.</p><p style="text-align: left;">That's what the Electoral College can do. That's the way our system of government works. Whether it's a good idea for our system of government to work that way is another matter. But consider first some other facts that I suspect are less well known.</p><p style="text-align: left;">In the United States, our government has three branches. At the federal level, Republicans control the executive branch despite having received fewer votes by a healthy margin. What about the other two branches?</p><p style="text-align: left;">Currently, in the Senate, there are 53 Republican senators and 47 members of the Democratic caucus (the latter includes 45 Democrats and two independents who caucus with them). Republicans therefore control the Senate.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Did you know that the 53 Republican caucus members collectively represent states with a population smaller by about 12 million than those represented by the 47 Democratic caucus members?</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJZnrdK1jUmS-qY1aDuptAJzvpa24pRGToAufhDr0aAsI89yG3Myv0fkb3xwXfMqJMIicKTDrZOEKBwvyRVLwsWn4NYrMateoKc2FWqmcwuTABCtiJH99vtPlQUQxuPCiaheuXKLz-v5Ay/s1089/2020_senate.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="653" data-original-width="1089" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJZnrdK1jUmS-qY1aDuptAJzvpa24pRGToAufhDr0aAsI89yG3Myv0fkb3xwXfMqJMIicKTDrZOEKBwvyRVLwsWn4NYrMateoKc2FWqmcwuTABCtiJH99vtPlQUQxuPCiaheuXKLz-v5Ay/w640-h384/2020_senate.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><p style="text-align: left;">(Note: this uses 2019 census estimates, and is based on splitting into halves the populations of states represented by one member of each party, and assigning the full population to the appropriate party for states represented by two members of the same party.)</p><p style="text-align: left;">In the House of Representatives, thanks to the blue wave of 2018, Democrats hold the majority. Aggregating all House races in 2018, Democrats won the popular vote over Republicans by 8.6%. This was a good thing for the Democratic Party, because prior to the election it was estimated that Republicans would be favored to retain their majority even if they lost the nationwide popular vote by <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/house/">up to 5%</a>!</p><p style="text-align: left;">This is the result of gerrymandering of House districts, which very disproportionately benefits Republicans overall. Importantly, this is also true at the state level; for example, in Wisconsin in 2018, Republicans maintained their majority in the state's House of Representatives by a whopping 63 to 36 seats despite losing the overall popular vote by 8%. This is just one example. Similar situations exist in some other states.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikI-F6zWWzSojbuXGz60pzqdBoI8RygonjWXwMM0rfkfIQCQ2WKpSM8DM2W4dKS-TX2wyXVqkiK3-00azeVCL0PYGs8BBClvXSbUdrlNp3pqDKbtvFqDOvWLttZLDA8FNzdl51j2fH-gS6/s1088/2020_wi_house.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="653" data-original-width="1088" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikI-F6zWWzSojbuXGz60pzqdBoI8RygonjWXwMM0rfkfIQCQ2WKpSM8DM2W4dKS-TX2wyXVqkiK3-00azeVCL0PYGs8BBClvXSbUdrlNp3pqDKbtvFqDOvWLttZLDA8FNzdl51j2fH-gS6/w640-h384/2020_wi_house.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">The third branch of government is the judicial branch. At the highest level, United States Supreme Court justices are appointed by presidents and confirmed by the Senate (both of which we've just established are currently controlled by a party with minority support). These judges, who have the final say on so many important issues that affect all Americans' lives, are supposed to be unbiased, nonpartisan arbiters of justice, but let's face it, we all know that isn't really the case.</span></div><p style="text-align: left;">After the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which has given everything I write about here extra importance, the makeup of the court is 5 justices appointed by Republican presidents, 3 by Democratic presidents.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Did you know that? Did you also know that in the last 30 years, the national popular vote for president, which is also effectively a popular vote for Supreme Court justices, has favored Democrats six times and a Republican just once?</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha6vXNt5Dx7-DY8XWaxJ0pu1xfWwWCJvqN_lc5l3EqUFukrd7x8TSgu_BLlW3axILqYt6pfRytRBHJ9kxoCdQAxmnCmLZY8_wsL9z1UY-NUHNP0VW-oUmQ75rdBd401vJhleBdF6MLSI_m/s1086/2020_supreme_court.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="652" data-original-width="1086" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha6vXNt5Dx7-DY8XWaxJ0pu1xfWwWCJvqN_lc5l3EqUFukrd7x8TSgu_BLlW3axILqYt6pfRytRBHJ9kxoCdQAxmnCmLZY8_wsL9z1UY-NUHNP0VW-oUmQ75rdBd401vJhleBdF6MLSI_m/w640-h384/2020_supreme_court.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">If you have read this far, I'd ask you to just pause for a moment and think about these facts.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">Were you aware of them?</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">Whether or not you were aware of them, do you think that most people know these things?</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">What does this all mean for our country's ability to function as a healthy democracy? Is it possible for a country to continue to have a functional democracy if a party that receives fewer votes over and over is nonetheless able to retain its hold on power? And therefore a minority of the population is able to continuously exert its will, with the power of the government behind it, on the majority?</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">I would contend that the answer is no. I would contend that a country where one party continues to succeed in doing whatever it can to consolidate power despite lacking popular support is on a path toward authoritarianism.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">In a representative democracy, as we ostensibly have in the United States, when a party's positions become unpopular with voters, what is supposed to happen is that the party modifies its positions to try to once more appeal to a plurality of voters. </span>The modern Republican Party is instead taking advantage of structural problems with our democracy to maintain a hold on power while continuing to push deeply unpopular plans like taking away people's health care, giving massive tax cuts and subsidies to giant corporations and the ultra-wealthy, and rolling back environmental regulations.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Most people see such actions as clearly bad. But let's say that you are a supporter of such actions. Can you not still see the problem? If a party that consistently has minority support continues to hold power and continues to enact policies that most people oppose, and appoints judges to the Supreme Court and lower courts who will hand down important rulings that most people oppose, more and more people will view the government as illegitimate. And if enough people view a government as illegitimate, how legitimate can the government even be?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">There are, of course, arguments as to why it is actually a Good Thing that our system of government works this way. Why it is perfectly fine that a resident of Wyoming has approximately 68 times as much of a say in what the Senate (which passes laws that, and confirms judges who, affect everyone in the country equally) does than the say a resident of California has. Why it is perfectly fine that presidential candidates only have to try to appeal to voters in a select group of swing states, and voters who live in safe Democratic or safe Republican states have essentially no say through their votes in who is elected president. To evaluate whether these arguments are valid, I think it's useful to imagine whether any of the people making those arguments would even for a moment buy the same arguments if the roles were reversed. I think it's a safe bet the answer is no. (Yes, different people might then be making those arguments, but the arguments wouldn't hold any more water.)</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">Anyway, what the arguments essentially boil down to is that empty land should have votes. Or, to be less polite but more accurate, that rural white voters should have a bigger say than anyone else in what the government does.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">I can also imagine a potential objection: someone might say that these factors just happen to favor Republicans right now, but that's just the way the cards fell and the same factors could favor Democrats in the near future, so we shouldn't upend our system of government to fix this. To which the response is emphatically no: these issues have been getting worse and worse in the same direction for most of my lifetime, and there has been no point in remotely recent history when there was a remotely comparable imbalance in the other direction.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">The more imbalanced things get, the harder it becomes to fix the imbalance. Somewhere along the line you reach a tipping point beyond which you simply don't have a democracy anymore.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">I'm not going to use this post to go into detail about what could or should be done to fix these problems. I just want everyone to be aware of them. A lot of people recognize that our government is broken but don't really know the reasons why. Lazy "both sides" media reporting leads a lot of people who aren't as tuned in to politics to think the problem is just that the two parties can't work together.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">If you look at what's been happening over the last few decades - with key events including the Supreme Court handing the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000 when it was later shown that a statewide Florida recount would have resulted in Al Gore being president, and then years later the stealing of a Supreme Court seat by the Republican Senate when that seat was vacated with almost a year remaining in President Obama's second term - I don't think that's it at all.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">So if the information in this post is new to you, remember these graphs. If someone you know is talking about how broken Washington is but they don't seem to really know why, take the opportunity to educate them. If Republicans are saying that Democratic plans for things like the Supreme Court or the Electoral College or Washington, DC statehood are unfair, think of whether that's true in the context of the information presented here. A lot of things will be changing in this country in the coming years. I hope that we all take what is happening now as a life-long reminder to never take our democracy or our fundamental rights for granted. We have to move forward as engaged and informed and ever vigilant citizens if we want America to live up to its ideal as a land of liberty and justice for all.</span></div>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-40624122566339689572020-09-11T07:07:00.000-07:002020-09-11T07:07:43.362-07:00Never forget<p>And so another 9/11 is here.</p><p>I realized that this is the first September 11th on which it has, for me, been more than half a lifetime since <i>the </i>9/11. That's a pretty weird thing to think about, and pretty hard to believe. But yeah, it's been 19 years since that horrible day that shook me, 18 years old and early in my first semester of college, to the core.</p><p>So that's one reason that this September 11 is different to me from those of past years.</p><p>I think there's something else, though, that makes this one really stand out, and take on a whole new meaning.</p><p>I still remember the feelings I had in the aftermath of those horrific terrorist attacks. To me at the time, it was the worst thing that had ever happened in my life. I felt so in a pit of despair that I legitimately wondered if I would ever truly feel happy again.</p><p>I was very young and naive. I had no idea of the ups and downs that life could bring.</p><p>9/11 was not the worst thing that has ever happened.</p><p>I don't want to be dismissive, though. It was a truly terrible thing.</p><p>As I reflect back on that day now, I think it's fitting that the anniversary this year comes in the same week that we received definitive audio proof that Donald Trump, in early February, was fully aware of the fact that COVID-19 was a terrible threat, and far more dangerous than the flu, and that all the statements he made to the contrary from that point on were not borne of mere ignorance but were brazen lies, and that it is therefore undeniable that he has the blood of tens if not hundreds of thousands of Americans on his hands.</p><p>Never forget 9/11. It's a refrain that has been hammered into us over and over.</p><p>Not that anyone who lived through that day could forget it.</p><p>But of course, "never forget" doesn't just mean that we should remember what happened. It means that there are lessons we should have learned from the events and those lessons should shape our lives and the actions we take both as individuals and as a country, into perpetuity.</p><p>Sadly, the people who are most apt to say "never forget" tend to be the people who took all the wrong lessons from those tragic events. Who used them as excuses for promoting xenophobia and endless war.</p><p>This has been clear for a long time. But now, the events of this year have fully revealed the utter hypocrisy and sheer moral depravity of the most vocal members of the "never forget 9/11" crowd.</p><p>The official death toll of the victims of the 9/11 attacks is 2977.</p><p>Each one of those deaths was a tragedy.</p><p>We changed so many things about our country in response to those attacks. Many of those changes were for the worse. All were promoted with the idea that we should do whatever it takes to stop something like that from happening again. Because "never forget."</p><p>For the last five-plus months, on average every two to three days a 9/11's worth of Americans has died from COVID-19. This didn't have to happen. Most of those deaths were preventable. If the federal government had taken decisive action at the start of the pandemic, and had committed our country's vast resources toward the challenge of containing the virus, and if our so-called leader had not lied and minimized the threat and encouraged his followers to not take it seriously, most of those people would still be alive.</p><p>The people who have been most loudly telling us over and over for the last <i>19 years</i> to never forget those 2977 victims are the same people who are most likely to just shrug their shoulders at sixty 9/11s' worth (and still climbing, with the end nowhere in sight) of mostly preventable deaths.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiIKZO_B-l2_E8tJ_6R-sHWtTVOwH_x82oF1bFaxEgH3xyQZ4Ou4FonEVxVTjEFQQrGZTsXc-tvqFDyJh1FqIizSkHg_QsGimIiUKY4-C5FAFPmoZXT4w9-QF1hTCARVonF5iVL1_RFpA2/s900/american-flag-at-half-staff-1590152753.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="506" data-original-width="900" height="351" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiIKZO_B-l2_E8tJ_6R-sHWtTVOwH_x82oF1bFaxEgH3xyQZ4Ou4FonEVxVTjEFQQrGZTsXc-tvqFDyJh1FqIizSkHg_QsGimIiUKY4-C5FAFPmoZXT4w9-QF1hTCARVonF5iVL1_RFpA2/w625-h351/american-flag-at-half-staff-1590152753.jpg" width="625" /></a></div><br /><p>What is happening in this country right now is kind of like if 9/11 was happening over, and over, and over, except the terrorists are the people in charge of the country, and we're currently in a campaign season where there's a real chance that those terrorists will be elected to another term.</p><p>Which is why on this 9/11 it's more important than on any before for us to say:</p><p>Never Forget.</p><p>Never forget this horrible tragedy that is unfolding all around us. And this time, let's collectively learn the right lessons from a horrible tragedy.</p><p>Donald Trump, by repeatedly lying to the American people to minimize the threat of COVID, and by deliberately slowing down testing efforts that could have helped contain the virus, and by doing numerous other things both before and during the pandemic that sabotaged our ability to effectively respond, is guilty of crimes against humanity. And we should never forget that. But we should also never forget that he's not the only guilty party.</p><p>Donald Trump is also the most corrupt and most criminal president in our nation's history. He does things pretty much every day that would fully warrant removal from office under the Constitution's impeachment clause. Early this year, before COVID became widespread in the U.S. but after the threat was already becoming apparent (on January 27, which was <i>during the impeachment trial</i>,<b> </b>USA Today published an op-ed <i>by Joe Biden</i><b> </b>under the prophetic heading <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/01/27/coronavirus-donald-trump-made-us-less-prepared-joe-biden-column/4581710002/">Trump is worst possible leader to deal with coronavirus outbreak</a>), 53 Republican senators had the chance to do their constitutional duty and vote to remove Trump from office for his high crimes and misdemeanors. Only one, Mitt Romney, chose to put country over party.</p><p>They didn't know it at the time, but how many lives would have been saved if nineteen of Romney's Republican colleagues had joined him and the Democratic and independent senators and Trump had been removed?</p><p>(I'm not saying Mike Pence would have been the ideal president to lead the fight against COVID, but I doubt he'd have gone to nearly the levels Trump has in actively sabotaging our country's response.)</p><p>Trump has the blood of countless Americans on his hands. Trump is guilty of numerous acts of criminality and corruption and should have been removed from office many times over. Trump is also blatantly racist and blatantly misogynistic and a serial sex offender.</p><p>The Republican Party has stood nearly in lockstep behind him.</p><p>And the most distressing and depressing thing, the thing I never could possibly have imagined happening to this country when I think back to the events of 9/11/2001, is that about 40% of Americans are totally okay with this. Totally fine with all the damage Trump has done. Totally fine with their leader's failures and <i>lies </i>directly leading to the deaths of thousands upon thousands of their fellow citizens.</p><p>(We should also never forget that the toll of our country's failure on COVID is so much more than those hundreds of thousands of deaths. It's also in the perhaps equally large if not larger number of people left with long-term debilitating effects from the virus. It's also in all the people facing economic ruin thanks to Republicans' refusal to fund adequate relief packages. It's also in so many experiences that are normally parts of the fabric of our lives, precious time with our loved ones, celebrations and mourning, that we've had to sacrifice and will have to continue sacrificing as we continue to not contain the pandemic. We should never forget any of this.)</p><p>It's just bewildering that Trump's approval rating has only slightly budged through all of this horror. I never could have imagined it before I saw it actually all unfold before my eyes. I can only conclude that a dedicated right wing propaganda campaign that has been carried out over the course of the last few decades has twisted so many people's minds to the point where they have lost much of their ability to discern fact from fiction or right from wrong.</p><p>And so it's imperative that we never forget. Never forget Trump's crimes. But also never forget the crimes of his enablers in the Republican Party. And never forget the perhaps equally as heinous crimes of <i>their </i>enablers in the right wing media.</p><p>I know a lot of people who have voted Republican in the past and are now desperate to get Trump out of office. I know a lot of moderates and even liberals who are just desperate to get back to some sense of normalcy.</p><p>If Trump is gone next year and we collectively let out a big sigh of relief and then decide life is back to normal? If those never-Trump Republicans go back to voting Republican once Trump is off the ballot? If all those people who have become newly politically active decide their activism is no longer necessary?</p><p>Then we'll be just as doomed in the long run as we would be with a second Trump term.</p><p>The Republican Party and their right wing media allies are a far bigger threat to the people of this country than al Qaeda could ever have dreamed of being. Sixty 9/11s' worth and counting of COVID deaths make that clear. That threat isn't going to go away if Trump loses.</p><p>No decent, patriotic American should ever support the Republican Party again, at least until that party has completely remade itself into something totally different from the extremist, authoritarian movement it has become. That might happen some day. It definitely won't happen in two or four or even eight years. And we must be constantly vigilant against the threat that propaganda campaigns pose to our democracy. Too many of our friends and loved ones have already been lost to those propaganda campaigns, but there are so many impressionable young minds out there who could still be swayed in either direction.</p><p>Never forget 9/11.</p><p>Never forget how the meaning of 9/11 was twisted to help reshape our country for the worse.</p><p>Never forget 2020.</p><p>Most importantly, never forget what allowed the events of 2020 to happen, and always fight to protect our society from going down this path again.</p>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-87602872812659055692020-09-09T10:44:00.002-07:002020-09-09T12:40:17.022-07:00Did Sturgis really cause 19 percent of all U.S. COVID cases in August? A skeptical response<p>I want to make something very clear at the beginning of this post so that it is not misconstrued: I think COVID is a very serious problem that our country has failed miserably to control. I think the motorcycle rally that brought hundreds of thousands of people to Sturgis, SD was a very bad thing and it was incredibly irresponsible and dangerous to hold the rally this year. The point of this post is not to defend the Sturgis rally. I am emphatically not defending the rally. My purpose is more to look at how popular media report research findings and how people tend to believe and uncritically share stories that support views they already hold.</p><p>In the last couple days I'm seeing the story about the Sturgis motorcycle rally held August 7-16 being a COVID super-spreader event all over the place. The big headline that everyone is sharing is that the rally has led to more than 250,000 COVID cases nationwide. An <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus-updates/2020/09/sturgis-motorcycle-rally-is-now-linked-to-more-than-250000-coronavirus-cases">article from Mother Jones</a> states, "According to a new study, which tracked anonymized cellphone data from the rally, over 250,000 coronavirus cases have now been tied to the 10-day event, one of the largest to be held since the start of the pandemic."</p><p>It is not true that over 250,000 cases have been tied to the event. Let's take a look at the origins of this claim.</p><p>The original study, <a href="http://ftp.iza.org/dp13670.pdf">The Contagion Externality of a Superspreading Event: The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and COVID-19</a>, is from the "Discussion Paper Series" of the IZA - Institute of Labor Economics. I note that the article states, "IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper
should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author." As far as I can tell this study has not undergone formal peer review. Now, not going through peer review does not mean something is wrong, just as going through peer review does not mean something is right. But it is, I think, a factor in how much weight should be given to the conclusions.</p><p>The study, the authors of which are four economists, uses anonymized cell phone data to show travel of people to Sturgis from the surrounding areas and elsewhere in the country, and looks at changes in COVID case rates before and after the rally in those same areas. (This is a very oversimplified explanation. If you want to see all the details, read the paper.)</p><p>The conclusion that the rally caused a large increase in cases in Sturgis and adjacent counties, and even in the state of South Dakota as a whole, is one that I feel very comfortable accepting after reading the paper. I won't spend time here going over the evidence for those findings. And there's no doubt that attendees who traveled from elsewhere in the country brought COVID back home with them. No doubt at all. But what's the evidence for that "250,000 cases" conclusion?</p><p>In the discussion section of the paper, the authors state, "In counties with the largest relative inflow to the event, the per 1,000 case rate increased by 10.7 percent after 24 days following the onset of Sturgis Pre-Rally Events. Multiplying the percent case increases for the high, moderate-high and moderate inflow counties by each county’s respective pre-rally cumulative COVID-19 cases and aggregating, yields a total of 263,708 additional cases in these locations due to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally."</p><p>Basically, the authors observed that in counties with more travel to Sturgis, COVID increased more after the rally, and then they did some multiplication and summation based on those percentage increases to arrive at the >250,000 cases estimate.</p><p>Let's look at the underlying data.</p><p>This is the figure demonstrating that COVID increased more in counties with high travel to the rally:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidlE79iSdqlALN6zmoBhDkpIaJ87Yo99TjVO85094_xzbrJbKGPGApaV2Pax3Uy3ctdFh-_eTJ3dCDyRD7Go8t5dV_UCAYqXcJMKb9KqTbqIhKRJ7he1tdNO_1wqDxjozIaNM6lO0k_RU7/s1074/sturgis_article_fig7.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="702" data-original-width="1074" height="408" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidlE79iSdqlALN6zmoBhDkpIaJ87Yo99TjVO85094_xzbrJbKGPGApaV2Pax3Uy3ctdFh-_eTJ3dCDyRD7Go8t5dV_UCAYqXcJMKb9KqTbqIhKRJ7he1tdNO_1wqDxjozIaNM6lO0k_RU7/w625-h408/sturgis_article_fig7.png" width="625" /></a></div><br /><p>By the way, the figures in this paper have no figure legends, which is irritating. I'm interpreting the figure based on what is written in the results section.</p><p>The vertical axes on the plots show relative changes in COVID case numbers, the horizontal axes show time in days with the red vertical line indicating the start of the rally, and the panels from (a) to (e) go from counties with the highest relative travel to Sturgis to counties with the lowest relative travel to Sturgis.</p><p>One thing to note here is that almost all the points on the graphs have large error bars, representing the degree of uncertainty in the estimates. Most of the error bars overlap the zero line. Now, the fact that the error bars overlap the zero line does not mean there's no evidence that the increases are real. But it does mean that we cannot state with an extremely high degree of certainty that the increases are real.</p><p>To get the estimate of "263,708 additional cases" the authors put in numbers that had very high degrees of uncertainty, did some math, and got out a point estimate that is presented by itself without any uncertainty. But because the underlying numbers had so much uncertainty, that estimate also has a huge amount of uncertainty! Articles that say over 250,000 cases have been "tied to" the event are ignoring this.</p><p>And there's another thing I notice about these graphs. If you look at the trends of numbers from the leftmost point on each graph through the first point to the right of the red vertical line (which would be too early for the rally to have had a measurable effect on COVID numbers), you can see that for the top three panels, counties with travel to Sturgis ranging from high to moderate, it appears the COVID curves were already bending upward. And then they continued to bend upward more sharply. For the last panel, counties with low travel to Sturgis, the COVID numbers were on a steady downward trend, and then continued on that steady downward trend.</p><p>An alternate interpretation of the data in this figure is not that Sturgis caused the nationwide increases, but rather that people who live in places that were doing a worse job keeping COVID under control in August are more likely to have traveled to Sturgis for the rally. Which, intuitively, would make sense, wouldn't it?</p><p>I'm absolutely not stating that as any sort of definitive conclusion, but I think it's something the authors as well as other people reading the paper should consider as a possibility.</p><p>The conclusion about the rally causing over 250,000 cases nationwide does not appear to be the result of a rigorous analysis; it's in the discussion section, not the results section, and it's presented with no measure of uncertainty. It's not the main claim of the paper. To me it comes across as more of a hypothetical discussion point that should be taken with a grain of salt. But it's the part of the paper that is getting all the headlines and that everyone is sharing as if it's a fact and not a hypothetical.</p><p>I think that issues like this are all too common with popular media reporting of scientific research studies. But I also suspect that in this case the study authors may be partly to blame. I suspect they knew that the gaudy claims about 19% of all cases nationwide in August and $12 billion in health care costs would get a lot more attention than the much more strongly supported claims that the rally caused large COVID spikes in and around Sturgis and even around South Dakota as a whole state. And they probably wrote the discussion and promoted their findings with this in mind.</p><p>Did the Sturgis motorcycle rally cause increased COVID spread in Sturgis, surrounding counties, and the state of South Dakota? Undoubtedly, and this study makes that case quite well. Was there spread from the rally to many other parts of the country from which rally attendees traveled? This is also undoubtedly true.</p><p>Did that spread from the rally result in over 250,000 total cases, accounting for 19% of all new cases nationwide in August?</p><p>Maybe? But maybe not. Personally, I'm doubtful. And it's certainly not something that should be stated as a fact.</p><p>All people have a natural tendency to more easily accept claims that support the views of the world they already hold. As misinformation campaigns threaten to destroy our democracy, it's becoming more and more important to be able to distinguish fact from fiction, as well as to be able to distinguish claims that are very strongly supported by evidence from claims that might be true but aren't nearly as certain. For me, the widespread sharing of this story (one I initially took at face value before I looked into it) is a good reminder of that.</p>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-77266504315382988992020-07-06T18:32:00.000-07:002020-07-07T07:39:21.540-07:00Live music in the time of pandemicAnyone who knows me well knows that going to concerts is one of my most favorite things to do. Perhaps my favorite thing of all if the concert is a really really good one.<br />
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I haven't been to a concert in more than four months. The last one I attended was on February 27 - We Were Promised Jetpacks at the Grog Shop, a show I won tickets to from a local college radio station. It was a fun show but not one that would have stood out to me... if not for, well, you know.<br />
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Certainly not being able to go to concerts is not as bad as becoming horribly ill or dying from a deadly pandemic, but it is most definitely something missing in my life. Something missing in a lot of people's lives. Especially the people, the musicians and the venue owners and employees, who make their living by bringing the amazing thing that is live music into other people's lives. That's a toll of the pandemic that doesn't get as much attention as a lot of other aspects but shouldn't be forgotten.<br />
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Thank goodness for live stream concerts. Although nothing lives up to the magical experience of seeing a great show in person, they have done a lot to fill the void for the music obsessed like me.<br />
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I'll always remember the first really good quarantine show I saw. Hard to believe that it was three months ago now. That seems simultaneously too long and too short - in many ways time seems to have lost all meaning during this strange age. In the early days of quarantine, all the live stream shows were basically just someone in their bedroom or living room singing and playing an acoustic guitar with often dodgy video and/or audio quality. And these were nice to have, what with the sudden and glaring absence of real live music or other outside-the-home entertainment options in all our lives. But they were such a pale imitation.<br />
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Weakened Friends changed that with their "Where The Heart Is" digital concert on April 4.<br />
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Do you remember what life was like back in early April? How everything was just a constant stream of fear and horror and panic and anxiety? And yes, perhaps in some ways it's still like that, in a resurgent way these last couple of weeks. But now we've at least had time to adapt to this strange new reality. We at least have a better understanding of what's going on. Back then it was all so novel and so confusing and so scary. Anything that could provide some small measure of escape was almost miraculous.<br />
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When Weakened Friends announced their show, I was really excited. The Portland, Maine-based three piece rock band are one of my favorites I've discovered in the last few years, but not only that, they hold a special place in my heart. Their show at Mahall's last November was the first that my girlfriend Megan and I ever attended together, and for a couple who loves music as much as we both do, that's a big deal! We had only known each other for a little more than a month at the time, and it was a fantastic show and a memorable evening for both of us.<br />
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So I was definitely looking forward to the digital concert, but I had little idea what was in store - it blew away any expectations I might have had. Weakened Friends decided that if they were going to do a quarantine show, they were going to go all out. They weren't going to do a standard bedroom acoustic stream. They weren't going to skimp on the production values. The three members of the band conveniently all live in a house together. So they rigged the house up with a professional quality sound system. They created a setup with guitarist/lead vocalist Sonia Sturino in a bedroom, bassist/backing vocalist Annie Hoffman in the kitchen, and drummer Adam Hand in the living room, each fully plugged in, each captured by their own video feed. And they played a full on, no holds barred rock show with professional quality video and sound from three separate rooms inside their own house. I'd never seen anything like it before and haven't seen anything like it since.<br />
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Oh, and there was a cat cam!<br />
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I remember sitting at my kitchen table, watching the show on my laptop, earbuds in, texting Megan who was watching at her house. I commented that I thought watching this show was something I'd always remember, and three months later I'm sure that I was right.<br />
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What a strange time that was. What a strange time it still is, but the strangeness was heightened then. For fifty minutes full of energy and emotion and hooks and riffs and impassioned vocals, Weakened Friends gave us a much needed respite from the insanity and horror of late March/early April 2020.<br />
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It really was something special. Better than many shows I've seen in person. Every visible vibration of the kitchen cam was like a little bit of healing rock energy transmitted through the Internet and into my apartment.<br />
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The show can still be watched today. I rewatched it recently and it was as good as I remembered and also a very interesting time capsule of those early days of the pandemic. None of us had any solid idea back then what was going to happen. I doubt, though, that many of us honestly expected that three months later the situation in the U.S. would be getting even worse at the same time that most other countries would be getting the pandemic under much better control. But I guess it's not really surprising now that it's all unfolded before us.<br />
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I remember back then thinking that July was the earliest I thought we might get to go back to attending real concerts in person. Nope. Sigh.<br />
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But back to the Weakened Friends digital concert. If you like the band and haven't seen this concert yet, what are you waiting for? <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=561534181380911">Go watch it now!</a> If you don't know the band but like rock music (kind of '90s alt rock influenced with rawly emotional vocals - Sturino does some remarkable things with her voice that really set the band apart from the pack) and want to see something unique and amazing, check it out too. They are such a great band and I'm grateful their music came into my life.<br />
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"Where The Heart Is" was the first really standout quarantine concert, and I think it's still the most memorable, definitely the most unique, and probably still the best. But there have been some other really good ones in the months since.<br />
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Megan and I have really enjoyed watching performances from other artists we love like Angel Olsen, Sharon Van Etten, and Phoebe Bridgers. Sometimes we watch together in person, sometimes we watch "virtually together." Either way it's a great form of connection both between the two of us and between the musicians and all their fans. This technology we have that allows us to have these experiences really is a marvelous thing and something we shouldn't take for granted. Think about what life must have been like during the 1918 flu pandemic when there were so many fewer entertainment options available in one's home and there was no way to have a face to face interaction with a person in a different location.<br />
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The most recent memorable live stream show and the first to rival Weakened Friends in my book came from another artist who many of you already know also holds a very special place in my heart, Andrew Bird. Megan and I were in fact supposed to be traveling to Colorado recently to see him perform at Red Rocks. His first real live stream concert was obviously not a true replacement for the transcendent experience that show surely would have been, but it was at the very least a good consolation prize.<br />
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I really liked the sentiments Bird expressed in his email announcing the concert:<br />
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<i>As a rule I prefer to play before I speak, but these are strange times. I’m doing my first live stream concert on Sunday, June the 28th, the day I was supposed to headline the Hollywood Bowl. This will be at Old Style, my favorite guitar shop, a slightly more intimate venue. There will be an audience of Gibsons, Guilds and Gretchs. I assure you, we are working hard to make it of the highest quality and worthy of your time and hard-earned money. Of course it’s no substitute for the communal ritual of attending a show with your fellow citizens, but every time a new medium emerges I only consider doing it when I think there’s something new and interesting that can come of it.</i><br />
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<i>Doing these daily songs on Instagram has been a godsend for me. It still feels like performance, rough and scrappy and true to how I’m feeling that morning. Plowing through my catalogue daily is doing something to my playing that I think will come through in this concert. It also helps me feel some purpose. It helps me feel connected with you in a time when this sacred ritual we share cannot happen.</i><br />
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The feeling of connection, concerts as a sacred ritual... it really gets to the heart of the matter of how I feel about all this.<br />
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Bird set up for his solo performance in the Old Style Guitar Shop with a captive audience of guitars wearing hats and wigs.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE6ZYVoAF-vakqy0Ml7iuicoauDxd20eaTj3Bs4ae0Cbclethdu_py-vsKheKpHsD5XYI1ZhwxXcLHD6hS_O1zP0pSBDQ6RJItOr9_25SgbleBm8oKYEaeUwE6g4UKkPBFGuiOm3XktN3v/s1600/andrew+bird.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="509" data-original-width="901" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE6ZYVoAF-vakqy0Ml7iuicoauDxd20eaTj3Bs4ae0Cbclethdu_py-vsKheKpHsD5XYI1ZhwxXcLHD6hS_O1zP0pSBDQ6RJItOr9_25SgbleBm8oKYEaeUwE6g4UKkPBFGuiOm3XktN3v/s640/andrew+bird.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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It was very whimsical and charming in a very Andrew Bird way. He had some other fun touches like piping in audience noise and reacting to it as if it was real. He has always been such a unique individual and performer in a way that I find incredibly endearing. And he is also incredibly talented. Of course, if you've experienced any of his wonderful performances, or if you've heard me talk about them before, you know this.<br />
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The first time I saw him live I was so in awe of his wizardry with using looping pedals to build up intricate songs out of different violin and guitar parts all by himself in a live setting. In more recent years most of his live shows have moved to more of a full band experience. They're still amazing but in a different way. This solo show was therefore a nice throwback.<br />
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He also made sure the show was worth the price of "admission" by playing a full length set clocking in at around an hour and forty-five minutes, easily the longest quarantine live stream show I've seen. Maybe that sounds like a long time to watch someone play a concert over the Internet... but I was mesmerized the whole way through. I really just adore this man and his musical talents.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMmWKI8J_6EHvLveLOobPTGAEaytdpWFPnAusPDYgCPC9rL6qHEF5t-asnE8Np3oH9L60UsiJ63dEFphR0-wBhQusBWVmstTXE0sEiHUmsy8SpDz3Wr4Pti5QYvJHDNF9FleEuWhY5zUDG/s1600/andrew+bird+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="508" data-original-width="906" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMmWKI8J_6EHvLveLOobPTGAEaytdpWFPnAusPDYgCPC9rL6qHEF5t-asnE8Np3oH9L60UsiJ63dEFphR0-wBhQusBWVmstTXE0sEiHUmsy8SpDz3Wr4Pti5QYvJHDNF9FleEuWhY5zUDG/s640/andrew+bird+1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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The setlist was a great mix of songs from throughout Bird's lengthy and prolific career. I was especially thrilled that he included "Why," by request. It's a song that Bird just so elevates live, drawing out its length and engaging in a dialogue with himself (about excessive passivity in a relationship) in a manner that no one but Bird, with all his endearing quirkiness, could pull off so well.<br />
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What a much needed respite from the horrors of our current reality.<br />
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I can only imagine how emotionally powerful it will be when Megan and I get to once more see artists like Weakened Friends, Angel Olsen, and Andrew Bird live and in person. Whenever that will be. For now I'm so glad we have these streaming shows to bring the joy and wonder of live music into our homes and into our socially distanced lives.<br />
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This isn't a novel observation, but I really hope that people will remember from this whole experience of isolation just how much value the arts - music and other forms - bring to our lives. And will realize that the artists who create all these great things should be supported financially. I think that musician is one of the most important jobs in the world, and it's sadly one where the odds of making a good living are horribly stacked against you. And that was before the pandemic, which is making it all so much worse.<br />
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There are so many people who think nothing of spending ten dollars on a drink at a bar or on a fast food lunch many times in just the course of a single week, but won't spend ten dollars to buy an album that so much hard work and passion went into making. I wish that would change.<br />
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If you miss concerts, check out some of these live stream shows. More and more are being added to the calendar as the prospects of musicians going on tour in the not-too-distant future in this country depressingly grow dimmer and dimmer. And support the <a href="https://www.nivassoc.org/">National Independent Venue Association</a>. It's such an important cause.<br />
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One day we'll get to go to real concerts again and it will be such an amazing day but until then let's be grateful for the gift of music and let's share it with each other and let's appreciate and support all the wonderful musicians who bring that gift to us.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-45223160076642477912020-06-28T16:15:00.000-07:002020-06-28T20:19:39.697-07:00A deeper dive into COVID data: who's getting sick and dying, how that's changing, and what it might meanEveryone no doubt knows that older people are at greater risk of severe complications and death from COVID-19 than are younger people. Most people have probably also heard that men are at greater risk than women. And many people have also probably heard that the age demographics of who's getting infected have been shifting toward younger people.<br />
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Let's look more closely at these trends with the numbers from the Ohio Department of Health.<br />
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First, here is a graph of the per capita case rates broken down by sex and age group:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNQDmtn_XcZw9Ll197HywWinon02EgRPt-Klb_8dbqgCv8C44_G2xJqvpD3CFtu-xUtipKJx5EjvcYazjlFv3hEbLEAaYMQxmHlARi1V0MspfR7sMH04d-HSKELZ9HnzOu_SwCjkV_ge6o/s1600/cases_age_sex.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNQDmtn_XcZw9Ll197HywWinon02EgRPt-Klb_8dbqgCv8C44_G2xJqvpD3CFtu-xUtipKJx5EjvcYazjlFv3hEbLEAaYMQxmHlARi1V0MspfR7sMH04d-HSKELZ9HnzOu_SwCjkV_ge6o/s640/cases_age_sex.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Remember, these are known cases of COVID, so there may be biases that influence how likely people from different groups are to get tested if they are in fact infected. For example, older people are more likely to develop symptoms, and so would be more likely to go get a test.<br />
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The striking trends from this are that people over 80 are much more likely to have a known case, people under 20 are much, much less likely, the other age groups are pretty flat at a level between the oldest and youngest, and for most age groups, men are more likely than women to have a known case.<br />
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To see how likely it is that different groups develop more severe symptoms, let's look at the same graph but for hospitalizations:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgizJxxpHDtxQkIMn4Y9YAAvfnOnB046b7ye5hkdENiN_-fomiNZvHmsANwA5d_pFr398jmxHRstiXEviWAT9xSxWqzOSBEod3IqFYAeii8lKFhs33Li0TRz-J3vyJGHU41G-jrP0D1yvaF/s1600/hosp_age_sex.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="860" height="372" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgizJxxpHDtxQkIMn4Y9YAAvfnOnB046b7ye5hkdENiN_-fomiNZvHmsANwA5d_pFr398jmxHRstiXEviWAT9xSxWqzOSBEod3IqFYAeii8lKFhs33Li0TRz-J3vyJGHU41G-jrP0D1yvaF/s640/hosp_age_sex.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Here there is a very clear increasing trend with age, as well as a clear tendency in the older age ranges for men to have higher rates of hospitalization for COVID.<br />
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Last, deaths:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ2iSDUUuqA2lcl-bz9KtHQw8huqlc9yGtwq2bJCH1GV_AG41laDnYn_bAqCacLtXIzvd4_4Ma3LRKzJs0SiGfnqaueflem8cyXTrn5VIEXrs6P4mOW6iuCI0ntXp5LmGriQwA3TFlqQov/s1600/deaths_age_sex.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ2iSDUUuqA2lcl-bz9KtHQw8huqlc9yGtwq2bJCH1GV_AG41laDnYn_bAqCacLtXIzvd4_4Ma3LRKzJs0SiGfnqaueflem8cyXTrn5VIEXrs6P4mOW6iuCI0ntXp5LmGriQwA3TFlqQov/s640/deaths_age_sex.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Here, the bias toward worse outcomes in older people becomes far more dramatic, and the bias toward worse outcomes in men remains.<br />
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Let's also look at the rates of hospitalization and death <i>among people with known COVID cases </i>for the different groups.<br />
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Hospitalizations:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnq1Fh6ruyjj_d5Q2hkZiGfmyuDfS27FyjpzTPEd1ipDnE2kJw8U1nT_-rLQQF4Kg3zW0D0XVYmrsOeVRHbQvp12Dv0XmkDbWAA9JHr3SRdp-T97LUmnI90_e-aAcR2HckbHXa5WFs3bW6/s1600/hosp_rate_age_sex.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnq1Fh6ruyjj_d5Q2hkZiGfmyuDfS27FyjpzTPEd1ipDnE2kJw8U1nT_-rLQQF4Kg3zW0D0XVYmrsOeVRHbQvp12Dv0XmkDbWAA9JHr3SRdp-T97LUmnI90_e-aAcR2HckbHXa5WFs3bW6/s640/hosp_rate_age_sex.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Deaths:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQajhuiulDlsHuNLttScTQbyuY56hZPOUK_QKtfaQIk0wxltJ7GmnyvlAH9fz6_khuxfnUIDSkTovf3k8WBgiBUY1Ti2Su4Y2dOh-o4TNrHZYrlAXdaGJ9PAVMLwZSm9rCSgG0fR-bZmTS/s1600/death_rate_age_sex.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQajhuiulDlsHuNLttScTQbyuY56hZPOUK_QKtfaQIk0wxltJ7GmnyvlAH9fz6_khuxfnUIDSkTovf3k8WBgiBUY1Ti2Su4Y2dOh-o4TNrHZYrlAXdaGJ9PAVMLwZSm9rCSgG0fR-bZmTS/s640/death_rate_age_sex.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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So, similar trends in terms of age and sex biases as the previous graphs.<br />
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Note that among men at least 80 years in age known to have had COVID in Ohio, a staggering four out of ten have died. That is pretty disturbing and really drives home how important it is to protect our older friends, neighbors, and relatives from this disease.<br />
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Some people look at these trends and think that younger people don't have to worry about COVID. That's a, to put it bluntly, stupid idea for multiple reasons.<br />
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One, young people can easily pass it on to old people who can get really sick and die, and the more people in the overall population who are infected the more likely that is to happen, and it's a really cruel and heartless attitude to think it doesn't matter if a bunch of old people die.<br />
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Two, even among young and otherwise healthy people, there is a real chance of severe complications and death, even if it's a small one, but by now there are a lot of young people whose lives have been ended by this virus.<br />
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Three, and this is probably the part that is most misunderstood: COVID outcomes aren't a binary between "dies" and "recovers to full, normal health." There are so many people out there, of all ages, who are continuing to have debilitating symptoms months after they were infected. In a lot of these people the effects of COVID might be with them for the rest of their lives even though they didn't die and they "recovered" from the disease. That's not something anyone should want.<br />
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For the next part of this post, let's look at how the age demographics of the outbreak have changed over time. I'm sure a lot of people have heard by now that we are seeing a shift toward a younger infected population. Some people are even saying that we shouldn't worry about the case spikes that are currently happening in many parts of the country because it's now mostly younger people getting sick.<br />
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This is another stupid idea, but I digress.<br />
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Although you may have heard about these trends, do you know what the actual numbers are like? Let's take a look.<br />
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Here is a graph of the share of all COVID cases in Ohio falling into each age range, separated by months of the pandemic:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikANThWLRFMAlA6Gr2JRnR9BX_uGaaiw8senL5Ve1Umr-79bvesdJElRlezZBnhTxH0duNjfDj6-XWZehPMFH7zRYUEMeV5pyHepWT9exl6C8o1biIBoBuMhq9p6SbCdDXOem72Ufp8edp/s1600/case_shares_monthly.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikANThWLRFMAlA6Gr2JRnR9BX_uGaaiw8senL5Ve1Umr-79bvesdJElRlezZBnhTxH0duNjfDj6-XWZehPMFH7zRYUEMeV5pyHepWT9exl6C8o1biIBoBuMhq9p6SbCdDXOem72Ufp8edp/s640/case_shares_monthly.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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This dramatically illustrates how the age demographics of the outbreak have changed. In March the group with the biggest share of cases was ages 50-59 followed closely by 60-69. There was some slight shifting around in April but then in May and especially into June there has been a huge shift toward younger people. In June the group with the biggest share is 20-29 by a fair margin, 30-39 is second, and even 0-19 has come up to surpass every group 60 and above.<br />
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Next let's look at hospitalizations:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikcogqcgwiPm4qqjic5x7eL-Y-YiuNLFZHD2gr19kvvM04jJO29X9LHLWQQexau_Yl4UKid_cuxbMn_jvzi4BGi1cuKWWy_44iv-0nWV1r-0qN13E9ycFtOFB_CVOUwlCp1yGDx3pDUlqH/s1600/hosp_shares_monthly.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikcogqcgwiPm4qqjic5x7eL-Y-YiuNLFZHD2gr19kvvM04jJO29X9LHLWQQexau_Yl4UKid_cuxbMn_jvzi4BGi1cuKWWy_44iv-0nWV1r-0qN13E9ycFtOFB_CVOUwlCp1yGDx3pDUlqH/s640/hosp_shares_monthly.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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The hospitalizations graph illustrates the same shift toward younger demographics but it's more subtle because younger people continue to be less likely to be hospitalized. Still, if you compare June to the earlier months you can clearly see the below 40 age groups coming up and the above 50 age groups coming down.<br />
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And last, the shares of deaths:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU8PLyXMATOtSXxU8RfUmzxZwhQqBMCu292864li665kZpl1hTaPQVQlazcFXg6G4vhhoTqFF-obN6dqFzG2OOJmaoJmeLO0CtdOeVP-Qq2_h2BQR2n4_ojXwbRewaClitMoznZ73xjTRk/s1600/death_shares_monthly.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU8PLyXMATOtSXxU8RfUmzxZwhQqBMCu292864li665kZpl1hTaPQVQlazcFXg6G4vhhoTqFF-obN6dqFzG2OOJmaoJmeLO0CtdOeVP-Qq2_h2BQR2n4_ojXwbRewaClitMoznZ73xjTRk/s640/death_shares_monthly.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Here there honestly aren't any major changes, because the death rates for younger people remain much lower. However, as deaths are a lagging indicator and the case spikes in young people are currently getting worse, I'd expect a bit of a shift in this graph for July.<br />
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Let's also look at a different way of visualizing the data, to show how the absolute numbers are changing over time. Here I combined ages into just three groups because the graphs would be messy and hard to read with eight different lines.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDtaWg9a4zOW8tekkO4zMXXkFU3CLp9MSmH7NBhHv2bgWuuJjywuFPIumxEjsfVOpJfB8vevevzyxm_4E31cOrWJWbPb6VoIQ5ic6EIAXMPGd3-xGdSNTsArKaYa4FJ4_RIdDhiMEYF_dW/s1600/cases_daily_ages.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDtaWg9a4zOW8tekkO4zMXXkFU3CLp9MSmH7NBhHv2bgWuuJjywuFPIumxEjsfVOpJfB8vevevzyxm_4E31cOrWJWbPb6VoIQ5ic6EIAXMPGd3-xGdSNTsArKaYa4FJ4_RIdDhiMEYF_dW/s640/cases_daily_ages.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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This is the graph of the 7-day moving average of daily cases for (roughly speaking) younger people, middle-aged people, and older people. Note as always that the weird spike in April is from a bunch of cases in prisons all being reported at once. This makes it very clear how the cases in younger people have been continuing to increase while this has not been happening in older people.<br />
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And here's the hospitalizations graph:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfxPhiiwRvKhm-QBTqNLHHtnKniDR1HoWbEyHLmZ2JbNQNgxbk7Ezi5gf_a_fl-Kpc3i-iXatm25q0IiKrOS5YPQINVovpL6IFlYacW2VgJmzJ5cEYnNXFduJam0aMF5A30Ack4TtIWvae/s1600/hosp_daily_ages.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfxPhiiwRvKhm-QBTqNLHHtnKniDR1HoWbEyHLmZ2JbNQNgxbk7Ezi5gf_a_fl-Kpc3i-iXatm25q0IiKrOS5YPQINVovpL6IFlYacW2VgJmzJ5cEYnNXFduJam0aMF5A30Ack4TtIWvae/s640/hosp_daily_ages.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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This shows that the number of older people being hospitalized has come down dramatically from the peak, whereas the number of younger people being hospitalized has remained fairly steady.<br />
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Why are the shapes of the cases and hospitalizations curves so different? If cases go up in an age group, shouldn't hospitalizations also go up?<br />
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It's because the number of cases is strongly affected by how many tests are being performed, and we have been increasing the number of tests. Hospitalizations, on the other hand, are mainly just a factor of how many people are getting sick.<br />
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I think it's possible to make some interesting inferences based on this, which I'll discuss more in a little bit.<br />
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The overall conclusions from these trends are that the outbreak is definitely shifting to be more concentrated among younger people. It appears that older people have been better at taking the message to heart that they need to be careful and limit exposure, whereas younger people have become increasingly less careful. And let's be honest, that makes a lot of sense.<br />
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As a result of this, in the current outbreaks the death rates are almost certainly going to be lower than in the outbreaks back in March and April. And it is a good thing that the death rates will be lower, I will acknowledge that. But that doesn't mean the current outbreaks are not a problem or that we shouldn't be very worried. We should be very worried for reasons I've already discussed and will discuss more in the rest of this post.<br />
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Everything I've shown so far has been me just presenting the numbers as they exist. The only manipulation I've done to the numbers is creating moving averages of the daily numbers to show the trends more clearly. Going forward, I will be making some inferences that I think are reasonable and playing around with the numbers in ways that it's important to acknowledge have a fair amount of uncertainty. You definitely shouldn't take anything I'm saying as the gospel truth. And I'm very open to feedback. But I think that by thinking more about what these numbers mean, we can make some interesting, albeit very tentative, conclusions.<br />
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What is the current case load in Ohio relative to other times during the pandemic?<br />
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The most naive way of answering this question would be to simply look at the number of daily reported cases. If you spend any time looking at graphs of Ohio's COVID numbers, the shape of this curve, a 7-day moving average of the daily reported cases, probably looks familiar:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCQFgG7aSwpOx9eVvKJSUvWAOaxII7t3a3z8oNme_vsWI5gudLz2PBk5SUpu2RvLQKJrjXibl-x3YLsaotkO56yBnI-souOrwlfMbcTQAHb-4RXm5tRcko-lwSqcf9qsZoD34UxprzbJ54/s1600/cases1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCQFgG7aSwpOx9eVvKJSUvWAOaxII7t3a3z8oNme_vsWI5gudLz2PBk5SUpu2RvLQKJrjXibl-x3YLsaotkO56yBnI-souOrwlfMbcTQAHb-4RXm5tRcko-lwSqcf9qsZoD34UxprzbJ54/s640/cases1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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The numbers are normalized so that 1 is the peak level we have been at thus far (excluding the spike from batch reporting of prison cases). So looking at this, you might think, oh, as of very recently we are at the highest infection rate yet.<br />
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But we know that the number of cases strongly depends on the number of tests administered, and the number of tests administered has increased a lot compared to the earlier days of the pandemic. So the number of people being hospitalized is probably a better indication of the current case load:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDhBx0aTWK91ob3x1pbvq9BaON8DR4OFDBm1XY6kCKiQhKh5eU24_b51YfWCSGryIk77-nSGoj7o9BOcqQpxaGUtxVc7aC1qooZck_VDDOiM8s-3mRqUzLY22oma4kIbvG4pxAQmJ7SwUt/s1600/cases_hospitalizations1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDhBx0aTWK91ob3x1pbvq9BaON8DR4OFDBm1XY6kCKiQhKh5eU24_b51YfWCSGryIk77-nSGoj7o9BOcqQpxaGUtxVc7aC1qooZck_VDDOiM8s-3mRqUzLY22oma4kIbvG4pxAQmJ7SwUt/s640/cases_hospitalizations1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Here we see from the red curve of hospitalizations that the peak was reached in late March. Then the numbers went down, leveled off for a while, went down again, and then started going back up, but are still well below the peak. (The numbers here use my estimation method for more recent numbers that I detailed in my <a href="https://guyaboutcleveland.blogspot.com/2020/06/a-deeper-dive-into-covid-data-what-do.html">previous post</a> and that appears to be somewhat more accurate, but you'd see a similar trend if you looked up a traditional graph of the daily reported hospitalization numbers.)<br />
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But do the changing demographics of who is infected affect the accuracy of using hospitalization rates to estimate case load? I think it's pretty undeniably the case that they do. Among people who are known to have had COVID in Ohio, someone who is 70 or older is about 8-9 times as likely to have been hospitalized as someone who is younger than 30. Therefore, if there were ten new hospitalizations of people who were younger than 30, that would clearly indicate a higher case load in the overall population than ten new hospitalizations of people who are older than 70.<br />
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I attempted to account for this factor by making an adjustment to the hospitalization numbers. For every date, I looked at how many people in each age group were hospitalized, adjusted by the different hospitalization rates of different age groups, and summed the results to get what I would call an "inferred case load." There are no units to this metric; I am not trying to make any judgment about what the actual infected rate in the population is, only about how it's changing over time. Here's a graph showing the results of this adjustment with the blue line that has been added on top of the previous graph:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgljeVuEhLaUSnA-CY443yEMOcxHfzP8bKEhUhldO2oLPL_mmsSUkxw9ykV5yXFLWI1N6rJXCHG0MWJG7ksjKjSpq8_96hAndJE8oLYHvT5tBPyWvQv65Fk9XbvR18ycFPi1MKnX15pHBoO/s1600/inferred_case_load1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="850" height="414" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgljeVuEhLaUSnA-CY443yEMOcxHfzP8bKEhUhldO2oLPL_mmsSUkxw9ykV5yXFLWI1N6rJXCHG0MWJG7ksjKjSpq8_96hAndJE8oLYHvT5tBPyWvQv65Fk9XbvR18ycFPi1MKnX15pHBoO/s640/inferred_case_load1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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It was in late April that the demographics of the pandemic began their shift toward younger people and there you can see the blue and red curves diverge from each other. The share of total hospitalizations taken up by younger people grew, implying (relatively speaking) a larger case load than that implied by the hospitalization numbers with no age adjustment.<br />
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From this estimate, it appears that the plateau from mid April all the way to late May may have been an illusion. Total cases may have been growing during that time, but concentrated more among young people.<br />
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Any way we look at it, there was a real drop in the infected rate toward the end of May.<br />
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But then the numbers did start going up again. And with the adjustment, it appears that the numbers may now be going up more sharply than we realize, and we may already be much closer to the peak infection rate thus far.<br />
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(In fact, because this is a 7-day moving average and the numbers are continuing to rise, we may already be higher than the peak in late March.)<br />
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I don't know exactly why numbers would have been gradually rising from late April to early May and then dropped in late May before starting to rise again. One idea, although it's speculation: at the start of the stay-at-home order everyone was taking things really seriously, which clearly halted the rise and brought the numbers down at first. As more time went on, people started to relax and engage in somewhat more risky behaviors. Especially younger people. Then, in May, when the weather got nicer, people shifted their social activities to the outdoors, where less disease spread occurs.<br />
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But then the state made the premature and foolish decision to open a bunch of businesses like bars, indoor restaurants, and gyms that should not be open now, and this led to the ongoing increase in June.<br />
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That's just speculation that I think is plausible. Especially for the explanations of the changes during April and May. For the current rise I think it's pretty clear that the premature reopening is a factor, when we put what's happening in Ohio in the context of what's happening elsewhere in the country.<br />
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I will reiterate that the inferred case load (blue curve) is an estimate based on methods I think are reasonable, but with a fair amount of uncertainty. It hasn't been peer reviewed or anything like that. You shouldn't take it as something that's definitely or even probably the truth. But I myself would stake out a pretty confident claim that the age-adjusted numbers are at least a closer match to the real case load than the non-age-adjusted hospitalization numbers.<br />
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By the way, in my last post, I showed this graph:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-bf-EC98BrCsI1JKpjnJwmLqKSEamSG46d4ojX2BHbn8b8QcpRiPlikE5Vc7RgbDLqv4J0WzEKDAjjnv2Ib3Zt74VcfbSp5HpxsI5sVqOz81vvu0x4yIvMrh_A4mEw-nEFUXeZPit6xf7/s1600/hospitalizations_three_methods1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-bf-EC98BrCsI1JKpjnJwmLqKSEamSG46d4ojX2BHbn8b8QcpRiPlikE5Vc7RgbDLqv4J0WzEKDAjjnv2Ib3Zt74VcfbSp5HpxsI5sVqOz81vvu0x4yIvMrh_A4mEw-nEFUXeZPit6xf7/s640/hospitalizations_three_methods1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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And I said:<br />
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<i>We have also been in a period of declining hospitalizations. If you are looking at a graph of new hospitalizations by their report date, which is the graph you'd normally see, it looks like the curve is still trending downward. But in the estimated curve, it appears that the downward trend has recently leveled off and (although the most recent estimated numbers contain the most uncertainty) we may be starting to head back up.</i><br />
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What does the same graph look like now?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipoc7j4PqGup1mQCZrSeACardm6bzeKwX5IRi3dsGI-au6jxloxJehttKodezbW8wuxSeJXmdhlUe4KBq9fYsTRw_owhnDc30cH7PbHI4Ecnn2wD6XdE7398CjwPHve4vK8kd01n12W9rP/s1600/hospitalizations_three_methods_new1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipoc7j4PqGup1mQCZrSeACardm6bzeKwX5IRi3dsGI-au6jxloxJehttKodezbW8wuxSeJXmdhlUe4KBq9fYsTRw_owhnDc30cH7PbHI4Ecnn2wD6XdE7398CjwPHve4vK8kd01n12W9rP/s640/hospitalizations_three_methods_new1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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So when I said, based on my estimate, that the numbers might be starting to head back up even though the graph of reported numbers still seemed to be heading down, it turns out that this was correct. And the reported numbers are now following along and rising as well, with an expected time lag.<br />
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What does this all mean for the future course of the pandemic?<br />
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As I said, the death rates in the months ahead will be lower than the death rates in the spring. And that is a good thing.<br />
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But the idea that we are okay now because the people getting infected trend younger is nonsensical.<br />
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The only way we can get back to some semblance of normal life is by successfully containing the virus. Many other countries are doing this. We're utterly failing.<br />
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Even if older and more at risk people are doing a better job of staying safe, do we really want to live in a society where anyone who is older or in a high risk group, <i>or </i>who <i>lives with </i>anyone who is older or in a high risk group, has to constantly live in fear and limit their exposure as much as possible for what could be an entire additional year?<br />
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Because that's what things will be like if we continue to just let the virus spread unchecked among a now younger skewing infected population. And even then, there will be cases that slip past those safety measures and get to more vulnerable people who will die. And even among younger people, there will be lots of long term debilitating health consequences and some deaths.<br />
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The only effective methods of containing the virus without shutting down huge segments of society are widespread mask wearing and contact tracing. For the latter to be effective, cases need to be at a manageable level. If there are so many cases floating around that it's impossible to know about most of them, contact tracing isn't going to make a big difference. That's where we are right now in most of the country.<br />
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These trends have also gotten me thinking about what will happen with schools this fall. The low infection rates among children do suggest the possibility that, with appropriate safety measures, primary schools could reopen. But colleges? College students are the demographic where cases are exploding right now because they take it the least seriously. And putting them back in dorms together will inevitably lead to massive outbreaks that will leak out to the rest of the population and make it impossible to get the pandemic under control. There's no way that colleges with students living on campus can safely reopen this fall. Just no way.<br />
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We need to back off from reopening (as Texas and Florida are already doing, and Ohio probably will eventually so better sooner than later) and we need to take social distancing and mask wearing seriously. This problem is not getting better with the measures we're currently taking, so if we don't take better measures it's going to continue to be with us for a long time.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6316861035480074668.post-49409508224456609622020-06-23T10:18:00.000-07:002020-06-23T10:18:44.004-07:00A deeper dive into COVID data: what do those daily numbers actually mean? (Or: why growing hot spots are already worse than you know)Every day we can go online and see a news report that today our state announced <i>x</i> new COVID cases, <i>y</i> new hospitalizations, and <i>z</i> new deaths. Have you ever wondered what those numbers actually mean?<br />
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Someone who was very new to all of this might think, oh, if those are the newly released numbers today, that means that <i>yesterday</i> there were <i>x</i> new cases, <i>y</i> new hospitalizations, and <i>z</i> new deaths.</div>
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Someone who has been following the numbers for a while would probably know by now that that's not quite true. They probably would have noticed that every week the number of daily deaths spikes in the middle of the week and plummets on the weekend. And they might know that this is because reporting slows down on the weekend and this creates a backlog that is cleared during the ensuing week.</div>
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Based on this knowledge, my general assumption was that most of the deaths reported on any given day were deaths that had occurred over the last few days, with some slowing down on the weekend and catching up during the week.</div>
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Turns out, it's more complicated than that!</div>
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Warning: this is going to be a very nerdy post full of graphs and number crunching, but if that sounds interesting to you, read on. The purpose of this post is largely educational, but if you don't feel like wading through the whole thing and want a take home message related to what's going on in the country right now, it's this: in places like Arizona, Texas, and several other southern states where numbers are now spiking, the real current numbers are likely already substantially higher than the reported numbers, and it might already be too late to avert disaster.</div>
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I've been following the numbers from <a href="https://covidtracking.com/">covidtracking.com</a> for quite some time. That site is the source for most visualizations of COVID daily numbers for the U.S. and its states that you'll see online. Every day the site updates and the number of newly reported cases, deaths, and (for many states) hospitalizations becomes available. What we are seeing there, and what is going into almost all the graphs that you might see, are the numbers by <i>report</i> date. Using the numbers from covidtracking.com, there's no way to see the actual dates on which those deaths, hospitalizations, or positive COVID tests occurred.</div>
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I recently started also looking at the numbers the state of Ohio provides on its <a href="https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/dashboards/overview">COVID-19 dashboard</a>. Here, the test date as well as (if applicable) hospitalization date and death date for each reported COVID case in Ohio are available. Here we can see on what dates all these events actually occurred, not just on what dates they were reported.</div>
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I've spent some time analyzing all these numbers and learned some things I found very interesting, so I wanted to share them with anyone else who'd like to learn more about this topic.</div>
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For the first set of graphs I looked at the numbers Ohio reported on each day of the one-week period from May 27 through June 2. This is a graph looking at all of the COVID cases Ohio reported during that week, by the case onset date (x-axis), with color coding indicating on which day of that week the cases were reported:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFDUKCVkmutB9cADDHSbFFAbaLIswNroxItYxawoy8kXyJ7GuySyTtD8dDrJzBvqZK3jT6xXSt9Km5D46BS2I2lS2nw5xUwJ33q3NJgSzUx0RqUfyPQE73qiw9LHAXaj18KFZ45Gf_7JMi/s1600/cases_by_report_date.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFDUKCVkmutB9cADDHSbFFAbaLIswNroxItYxawoy8kXyJ7GuySyTtD8dDrJzBvqZK3jT6xXSt9Km5D46BS2I2lS2nw5xUwJ33q3NJgSzUx0RqUfyPQE73qiw9LHAXaj18KFZ45Gf_7JMi/s640/cases_by_report_date.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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So, for example, new cases that occurred on May 26 were reported in large numbers on May 27, 28, and 29, and continued to be reported in decreasing numbers on May 30, 31, and June 1.</div>
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You can see from this graph that the bulk of the new cases reported between May 27 and June 2 happened relatively close in time to that week, but a quite substantial number of the cases occurred up to three weeks earlier, with smaller numbers going all the way back to March.</div>
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If you look closely, you might also notice that some of the colored bars are slightly negative, which would indicate that on the report date indicated by that color, the number of cases with that onset date was adjusted downward, presumably a result of corrections to make previously reported numbers more accurate.</div>
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Let's next look at the same graph but with hospitalizations:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEyWvWU8upSMSsgxDKKcTAIQDD82eR_Z4gyL8HLyLDTEXzw99nctFMHHUqx-KqG_lr_awsven61SOu_GzAphBH9GhVA91T8yFzF_PZkBXCysRZ0ObY7xOPnzQTm1nbsfOJ2SG87ETxWqAx/s1600/hospitalizations_by_report_date.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEyWvWU8upSMSsgxDKKcTAIQDD82eR_Z4gyL8HLyLDTEXzw99nctFMHHUqx-KqG_lr_awsven61SOu_GzAphBH9GhVA91T8yFzF_PZkBXCysRZ0ObY7xOPnzQTm1nbsfOJ2SG87ETxWqAx/s640/hospitalizations_by_report_date.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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It looks fairly similar to the new cases graph, although the peak at the right side is somewhat broader, indicating a tendency for there to be a bit more of a delay with the new hospitalization reporting than the new case reporting, at least over this time period.</div>
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And now the same graph for deaths:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk8ejwCGCnZ2rLzTqcOjzGU9i51drTT3BAEphR5j4dsXfW2NXeVvUK4nPhIs8If_rPlS6fQvbwI8pEAjLBzkS-iZhctAKVQIRx21ku_PrPalvCL37b8VQW3jRvMA3n6hHD3czni4vy3tV3/s1600/deaths_by_report_date.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk8ejwCGCnZ2rLzTqcOjzGU9i51drTT3BAEphR5j4dsXfW2NXeVvUK4nPhIs8If_rPlS6fQvbwI8pEAjLBzkS-iZhctAKVQIRx21ku_PrPalvCL37b8VQW3jRvMA3n6hHD3czni4vy3tV3/s640/deaths_by_report_date.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Here the trends differ more from the other two graphs. The top of the peak is farther to the left, and the height of the peak relative to the height of the trailing bars toward its left is not as large, indicating that a greater proportion of deaths had reporting delays of more than a few days.</div>
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So those are examples of what the reporting delays can look like for cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Next let's look at the delays in a more quantitative manner. Here I used a longer period of time, from May 27 through June 10. For every case, hospitalization, or death reported in that time, I calculated the difference between reporting date and event date, and then I plotted the cumulative distributions of those values:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs2G-chQkXMNsAeWLvFwVuIKL8jEcrLC9pR1JUNF8MNuYQ0zxd_-_4H9ZOLqgpV-u3eLI969e96cAhJuwocm1Qw5v19z9ltg0Y3dFsavZCkZ6iOwEiDFB5VPIMrwpt0OyrKhzL65Rc94Kz/s1600/ecdfs1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs2G-chQkXMNsAeWLvFwVuIKL8jEcrLC9pR1JUNF8MNuYQ0zxd_-_4H9ZOLqgpV-u3eLI969e96cAhJuwocm1Qw5v19z9ltg0Y3dFsavZCkZ6iOwEiDFB5VPIMrwpt0OyrKhzL65Rc94Kz/s640/ecdfs1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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This graph shows, for any number of days from the day an event occurred, what fraction of events of that type are reported within that number of days. So for example, if you move right along the x-axis to 2 days, you can draw a line straight up and see that about 30% (0.3) of deaths are reported within two days of the death date, whereas for hospitalizations and cases it's more like 40%. Or say you want to see how many days it takes before half of a given event type are reported. Go up the y-axis to 0.5, then draw a line straight to the right and find that it takes 3 days for hospitalizations and cases but 5 days for deaths.<br />
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The distribution for deaths lags the distributions for cases and hospitalizations, meaning deaths tend to have longer delays, up to about 10 days or 75% reporting. Note that for all three types of event it takes about nine or ten days before you even get to three-quarters of full reporting! Beyond that point the trends reverse and it takes longer to pick up the most lagging cases and hospitalizations than the most lagging deaths; I'm not sure why that is. Also, the distributions for cases and hospitalizations are quite similar to each other.<br />
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You might wonder whether these distributions are affected by the day of the week on which the event occurred (or at least, I wondered that!).<br />
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The answer is yes. Here's a figure of the same thing except separated out by the day of week of each event (day of the event, not day the event was reported):<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqTiy_KMYOQqTkX7p9F7vzwuENhBBC4qWRjaQ0d2BKwsTgyxdw3KTXNl7sCrJoKeFggFVa9Oyw9pi8z5OfdRU9E4l_rlb7vJUhrSZN5rr3qP1hCfJk3wbSRfYIbxZ9MWAj_Fuond0MaBp7/s1600/ecfds_by_day1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqTiy_KMYOQqTkX7p9F7vzwuENhBBC4qWRjaQ0d2BKwsTgyxdw3KTXNl7sCrJoKeFggFVa9Oyw9pi8z5OfdRU9E4l_rlb7vJUhrSZN5rr3qP1hCfJk3wbSRfYIbxZ9MWAj_Fuond0MaBp7/s640/ecfds_by_day1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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You can see that the delays are much more pronounced for deaths that occurred on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, which makes sense with what I've already mentioned about reporting of deaths being slower on weekends. If a death isn't reported by Friday, there's a good chance it will take several additional days before it's reported. It takes a full seven days before there's even a 50% chance that a death occurring on a Wednesday will be reported.<br />
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Hospitalizations and new cases generally don't have as pronounced of a day-of-week effect on reporting delays. I did notice that for some reason, new cases occurring on Sundays apparently tend to have much longer delays.<br />
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So what does this all mean when it comes to interpreting the daily numbers that we see?<br />
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If you've read any of my posts about COVID you've seen graphs that look like this one:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZhw1gNicY934QGzAINZZdaMiPphUwAQYY8r2bM4G9aqUq3BaFvQrP-l3nmWLpZQzXM6tNM4D9Qbx1TzJbA_9vKSosqKTV3UHaS9-eEdz4xnQeXQfwFOBBk07ewhK9dPBDbV7zK4rxyo70/s1600/deaths_by_date_reported.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZhw1gNicY934QGzAINZZdaMiPphUwAQYY8r2bM4G9aqUq3BaFvQrP-l3nmWLpZQzXM6tNM4D9Qbx1TzJbA_9vKSosqKTV3UHaS9-eEdz4xnQeXQfwFOBBk07ewhK9dPBDbV7zK4rxyo70/s640/deaths_by_date_reported.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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The gray curve shows the number of deaths that were reported each day and shows the weekly oscillations I was talking about. You'll see trends like that on any COVID death graph that is showing the daily reported numbers with no smoothing. The black curve is a seven day moving average of the gray curve, which is another very common way of displaying COVID data. (Note: the dates for the black curve are the center dates of each seven-day period. Sometimes you might see the same sort of graph but with the dates being the end dates.) As each point is the average of seven days, it eliminates day-of-week effects and the weekly oscillations go away. You'll see this method of displaying the data on a lot of websites.<br />
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Similar graphs could be generated for cases and hospitalizations.<br />
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Now let's see what it looks like when we compare the numbers by their report date (which is the way they are almost always displayed) with the numbers by their event date.<br />
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First, new cases:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg166pV4EgTy4VTFpo71JrYDbFCmE5vcUR2z1lO-QYImZtXevE3JifxIXNO5ohJvVNgoiTuKENF2kXRFkJrbt-YDRPgu-e6vxbD6kYiID22mc_lpsk5aJginEptM3fWqYmn6tNaH6Ref9iy/s1600/cases_by_date1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="848" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg166pV4EgTy4VTFpo71JrYDbFCmE5vcUR2z1lO-QYImZtXevE3JifxIXNO5ohJvVNgoiTuKENF2kXRFkJrbt-YDRPgu-e6vxbD6kYiID22mc_lpsk5aJginEptM3fWqYmn6tNaH6Ref9iy/s640/cases_by_date1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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As I always do with the graph of daily cases for Ohio, I'll point out that the weird spike in mid-April is a result of a huge number of positive tests in prisons all being reported in a big bunch.<br />
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I will also point out, as usual, that reports of cases have to be put in the context of the total test numbers. If the cases are going up it might be because more testing is being done; you have to also pay attention to the percent positive. If cases and percent positive are <i>both</i> going up that's when you really know there's a problem. This is now happening in a number of states, mostly southern; it hasn't been happening in Ohio although the last few days unfortunately show signs we might be starting to head back in that direction...<br />
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You can see throughout the graph the delay between when positive tests happened and when they were reported. It does look like the delay was larger in March than it is now, which doesn't surprise me. But the delay still exists.<br />
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Next, hospitalizations:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9EjxKppS-lupm8anj3J7XHWFQMvEWdFScxrklXTs5c5z2_QnPXbNvGpgMZwnjaV_y7yjx3TTUGl4xpzE3XKNSV024Bsg1NDoJmG3IIS0j8lzoIgfzaWlph3zwoupBuCpJ7z-tX8oAmoeB/s1600/hospitalizations_by_date1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="847" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9EjxKppS-lupm8anj3J7XHWFQMvEWdFScxrklXTs5c5z2_QnPXbNvGpgMZwnjaV_y7yjx3TTUGl4xpzE3XKNSV024Bsg1NDoJmG3IIS0j8lzoIgfzaWlph3zwoupBuCpJ7z-tX8oAmoeB/s640/hospitalizations_by_date1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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And last, deaths:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip7YgKHw6j-0-wJWrEJrfkHAbz2wdbosJM4bOT7WnWtTI9u7_GduuigS3SYpUgJTlN_U8XEov9jUPjbxNO9E_CPZh4rS-_xW3Ww9xCvF4xEhXnYj7AWRrDKFu7_S-NHDqKOwwBd46EVNHQ/s1600/deaths_by_date1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip7YgKHw6j-0-wJWrEJrfkHAbz2wdbosJM4bOT7WnWtTI9u7_GduuigS3SYpUgJTlN_U8XEov9jUPjbxNO9E_CPZh4rS-_xW3Ww9xCvF4xEhXnYj7AWRrDKFu7_S-NHDqKOwwBd46EVNHQ/s640/deaths_by_date1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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So the theme of these three graphs is that when you're in a period of time where the numbers are going up, the average daily reported numbers are lower than the real daily average numbers. When you're in a period of time where the numbers are pretty flat, the two are about the same as each other. When you're in a period of time where the numbers are going down, the average daily reported numbers are higher than the real daily average numbers.<br />
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Another thing about these graphs is in all three, the numbers by event date (red) take a fairly sharp downward turn toward the end, but that's not real - that's from most of the numbers not having been reported yet. More on that in a moment.<br />
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Because with this pandemic the most rapid daily changes have always come from the growth phase, not the decline phase, the biggest deviation between the daily reported numbers and the real daily numbers always comes during times when the numbers are sharply rising. See, for example, around March 25-27 on the hospitalization graph. The real daily numbers were about twice the size of the numbers being reported at that time.<br />
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What does this mean in regard to what's going on today? There are a number of states, such as Arizona, Texas, Florida, and South Carolina, where numbers are currently going sharply up. Things are already looking bad but the reality is things are already worse than the numbers we're seeing!<br />
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And this doesn't take into account the delays from infection to onset of symptoms, from onset of symptoms to hospitalization, hospitalization to death, etc. I might explore those in another post. I think people are generally aware of these time lags and the fact that the numbers currently being reported reflect people who might have gotten infected a couple weeks ago. But the reporting delays explored in this post can create an even bigger time lag between "events on the ground" and when their effects really show up in the numbers we see.<br />
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This post is mainly about sharing some things I found interesting and trying to educate people, but if there's a big take home message, it's that if the numbers being reported are sharply rising, things are already worse than they look, so action needs to be taken ASAP. Fortunately in Ohio we did that in March early enough to avert disaster. In places like New York government officials waited too long and catastrophic death tolls were the result. Now, despite a much greater advance warning and much greater knowledge of the disease, it looks like the same mistakes might be in the process of being made in places like Arizona.<br />
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So that's the big takeaway, and now I also want to share some other analyses I found interesting.<br />
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The thing I mentioned about how the graphs of events by event date bend downward at the end but that's not real? So the graphs by report date have outdated numbers. And the graphs by event date have very incomplete numbers. Is there a way we can see what's really been going on, say, in the last week?<br />
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I took a stab at this by creating a function that takes the number of currently reported deaths or hospitalizations for each date along with how many days in the past each date was and returns an estimate of the "real" number of deaths or hospitalizations. The estimate is based on the cumulative distributions of reporting delays that I showed earlier.<br />
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So, for example, let's say that for a day five days in the past, there have currently been ten deaths reported. And say that the cumulative distribution shows that by day five, 50% of deaths for a given day are reported on average. Then the estimate for the "real" number of deaths for that day is doubled from ten to twenty. (The function is slightly more complicated because it uses the different distributions for each day of the week, which I found seemed to add a little accuracy.)<br />
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How do I know whether this method is effective? I can now look at the deaths that were reported by a date several weeks in the past, calculate the estimated daily deaths, and then compare them to what the numbers look like several weeks later, now that reporting is much closer to complete. I did find that the very most recent day has too much variability because the correction being made is very big, so I'm dropping the most recent day from the analysis, but other than that the results are pretty good. Let's take a look.<br />
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Here's a graph that shows the deaths by death date, both the most recent numbers and those that were reported by May 26, along with the estimated deaths from my calculations:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJVgh-byUyK2PRyjw3OkfD1KWc2j7hIxNLBUHQZIv8HbFSeA5rVHOI1J-8uIphUOBawyJ8nS7iOdUXOysJ9biTjaPE7PAPdyMeTEvOM_gd9fjTaIFKuZRtkwLTHSBLfncfYD0s4fdRjrvX/s1600/estimated_deaths_checking1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJVgh-byUyK2PRyjw3OkfD1KWc2j7hIxNLBUHQZIv8HbFSeA5rVHOI1J-8uIphUOBawyJ8nS7iOdUXOysJ9biTjaPE7PAPdyMeTEvOM_gd9fjTaIFKuZRtkwLTHSBLfncfYD0s4fdRjrvX/s640/estimated_deaths_checking1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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As you can see, the deaths that were reported by May 26 (gray curve) show the same downward bend at the end that we saw earlier in the graphs of the most recent numbers. The numbers for that same time range as of the most recent report (black) show that that downward bend was not real. The real numbers were basically flat at that time. But on May 26, using my estimation function, we would have seen that downward bend transformed into something that was basically flat (orange) and that turns out to be quite close to the more complete numbers that we now have for those dates.<br />
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The closer you get to the current date, the more uncertainty there is in these estimates, but all in all the method seems to work well. I also checked this with the function I made for hospitalizations as well as with the deaths/hospitalizations that were reported by a couple of other dates over the course of the last month, and I was quite pleased with how the results turned out.<br />
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Given the dual problems of the numbers by report date (what we usually see) being outdated, and the numbers by event date being very incomplete for more recent dates, this adjustment method seems like a decent way to better see what's really been going on recently. I'm not claiming that it provides any huge utility for informing decision making, but it does provide at least a little insight about the recent trends. Whether or not anyone else finds it useful, it was an interesting exercise for me to tackle!<br />
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Now let's update the graphs I showed earlier comparing events by report day to events by event day to include these estimates. Here's the updated graph for deaths:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj420gHc9VZ76pkZMDP5UpkHlNLHyLqnVAKfs5JTFNfLFaiVDFbn1Vb9K-t1wy6KNzGLJgYeI3va0p6HduRjXv3bc1Kzw7fTT8toHOsNeZUZ2ICDjUljyYlzyC6FVYHno0Z9APSfotSg338/s1600/deaths_three_methods1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj420gHc9VZ76pkZMDP5UpkHlNLHyLqnVAKfs5JTFNfLFaiVDFbn1Vb9K-t1wy6KNzGLJgYeI3va0p6HduRjXv3bc1Kzw7fTT8toHOsNeZUZ2ICDjUljyYlzyC6FVYHno0Z9APSfotSg338/s640/deaths_three_methods1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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You can see that, as we have been in a period of declining deaths, the estimated deaths from my calculation (blue) are in between the deaths by date reported and the deaths by event date.<br />
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The hospitalization graph is more interesting:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGdrBmfUXbhyLsDqn1F8qYwRUztar1V3D95VFeVfPvzNrIATKONSAW7IVh0ehfCGCQa1UA4xV8FSwgJd5JBJn7y-c0s4RpqC1sclri10lvjTGA0AIlyAHS2vn3yeVOm3NzTr0m1nY8PTC1/s1600/hospitalizations_three_methods1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGdrBmfUXbhyLsDqn1F8qYwRUztar1V3D95VFeVfPvzNrIATKONSAW7IVh0ehfCGCQa1UA4xV8FSwgJd5JBJn7y-c0s4RpqC1sclri10lvjTGA0AIlyAHS2vn3yeVOm3NzTr0m1nY8PTC1/s640/hospitalizations_three_methods1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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We have also been in a period of declining hospitalizations. If you are looking at a graph of new hospitalizations by their report date, which is the graph you'd normally see, it looks like the curve is still trending downward. But in the estimated curve, it appears that the downward trend has recently leveled off and (although the most recent estimated numbers contain the most uncertainty) we may be starting to head back up.<br />
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This is concerning. I was worried about what would happen when bars and restaurants reopened. We didn't see an immediate effect from that, but we may be seeing one now. The numbers will have to be closely watched in the coming days. If this is the start of a real upward trend, it suggests we need to back off from reopening for the types of businesses (such as bars and indoor dining at restaurants) with the most transmission risk.<br />
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It also reinforces the importance of everyone being careful and of wearing masks, for which there is now a lot of compelling evidence of benefit in slowing disease spread.<br />
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One last interesting tidbit I found from this analysis. We know that in the reported numbers there's a strong day of week effect with higher numbers midweek and lower numbers on the weekend. Are there day of week effects in the actual numbers by event day?<br />
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First, cases:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8ZlsmSawKAJsbPE6twh7tOnwvw7XGsiA9uVSL_JryBUzdeUfi2hIe6u6bXzFGhm0eDO3KJ_j-Sc-yqvU6a9S8sL-mA13T9vbSdsIq9oV0WXfVkjlbeFJPpmp8falabnJLTIBuSGhs_GdH/s1600/cases_by_wday.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8ZlsmSawKAJsbPE6twh7tOnwvw7XGsiA9uVSL_JryBUzdeUfi2hIe6u6bXzFGhm0eDO3KJ_j-Sc-yqvU6a9S8sL-mA13T9vbSdsIq9oV0WXfVkjlbeFJPpmp8falabnJLTIBuSGhs_GdH/s640/cases_by_wday.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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The numbers are much lower on the weekend, especially on Sunday. This isn't surprising. If someone gets tested as a result of, say, a doctor's appointment, that would clearly happen less on the weekend. (Note: in making this particular graph I excluded the very high single day totals from prison testing, which would bump up the Thursday and Friday numbers if they were included.)<br />
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Next, hospitalizations:<br />
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Similar to cases but with a less pronounced decline on the weekend. Also Monday appears to have a slight bump compared to other weekdays. This all makes sense as well. People would be somewhat less likely to go get admitted at a hospital on the weekend, and then there's a bump on Monday to partly make up for people delaying going over the weekend.<br />
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The deaths graph is what surprised me:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwTwSDvOsxKcEhk3JEUN8ULmasGAK8GL8wYwvNPjuEVaQPTbHH36MReh4HqmTBN7Ye-OE8eavTwjAosZXr_Hx9HQUMiJXbI6kbOglYNtvXWWY67HPvkDEYrVoQdByYTnKYPFJXpaRGoyb-/s1600/deaths_by_wday.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="850" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwTwSDvOsxKcEhk3JEUN8ULmasGAK8GL8wYwvNPjuEVaQPTbHH36MReh4HqmTBN7Ye-OE8eavTwjAosZXr_Hx9HQUMiJXbI6kbOglYNtvXWWY67HPvkDEYrVoQdByYTnKYPFJXpaRGoyb-/s640/deaths_by_wday.png" width="640" /></a></div>
Friday really stands out from the other days and I wonder why this is. Now, I don't know for sure that all of the death dates are completely accurate. Perhaps there is some tendency for the dates to occasionally be in error in a way that biases them toward Fridays.<br />
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If it is a real trend, I do have a somewhat morbid hypothesis for why it might exist. Perhaps when someone is clearly going to die soon, there's a little bit of a tendency - whether it be in the dying person, in the family, or in the hospital staff - to want to "get it out of the way" before the weekend.<br />
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Just a thought. And it might not be a real trend.<br />
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So that wraps up this deeper dive into Ohio's COVID data. I hope you found it interesting and informative. I may do some other posts like this exploring other aspects of the data. I've always really loved numbers and analyzing numbers and making charts and graphs ever since I was a child. Now, between posts like this and analysis I'm doing of things directly related to my research job, I spend a huge amount of my time thinking about and working with COVID-related numbers. It can be a distressing topic to spend so much time on, but I think doing all this helps me feel a little less powerless, because I'm actively working on things to try to make a difference.<br />
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Stay safe, everyone.</div>
Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17020513085177811061noreply@blogger.com0