May 23, 2020 (Memorial Day)
Comorbidities, alt-right, weather and COVID, for-profit colleges
A note for the reader: Before this newsletter moved to Substack it was an email thread between friends. I’m posting the previous emails here for completeness, and so that if I invoke a previous comment readers can refer to them.
Hi everyone,
Another awesome week in the world of content-mining for your favorite weekly newsletter, which lifted an otherwise difficult work week. Enjoy your Memorial Day Weekend!
1) Wish I thought of it: For the last two weeks I had thought about making a map that overlays age and demographic characteristics on the COVID tracking maps. NYT did a better version just looking at comorbidities.
2) Bad news: The Alt-Right is rearing its head, and while its a small group, we don’t use the anti-terrorism tools we have at our disposal to fight them.
3) Wish I thought of it 2, Lost in New York: This analysis on weather’s impact on social distancing compliance reminds me of Stan Veuger’s Tax Day Protest paper.
4) Human Capital: Ok, let’s just rip off the bandaid and shut down all for-profit colleges.
5) Markets: Clean analysis on what shoppers are buying online. Should have taken Aren Rendell’s advice and loaded up on Lulu stock late last year.
6) Living with ‘Rona: It has been pretty well-established that there we are undercounting deaths related to COVID. However, what I hadn’t realized before is the regularity with which death is unevenly distributed over the course of a year.
7) Bring out y’r dead: On a related note, how might we best serve the memory of the dead?
8) Living with ‘Rona: Mail forwarding requests show where NYC residents fled…which emphasizes the question: Why has Florida stayed so healthy?
9) Books: I have began reading more and more book reviews in recent years. The funny thing is many of them don’t make me want to read the book itself, but are interesting enough as synopses to be shared. Here’s one on a book recounting the history of an unlikely literary trio and the oft-neglected Anglo-Boer Wars.
10) Down the Rabbit — Wikipedia (henceforth, Rabbiki) Hole:
The Lunar Society has a fascinating read on its history. Notable members include Erasmus Darwin, who often is overshadowed by his grandsons, Francis Galton and Charles.
Charles’s brilliant writings included not just On the Origin of Species, in which he blended Erasmus’s (uncited) theory of evolution with his own empirical studies but also an infamous two-part series on his deliberations over whether to marry Emma Wedgwood (his decision, “Marry — Mary — Marry Q.E.D.”, would be perhaps the most important in securing his happiness throughout a sometimes troubled life).
Francis Galton, for his part is today is in turn revered or abhorred, depending on with whom one is speaking. Often I have found that those who know him for contribution to one field often have no idea he is known outside of their field, much less what he contributed elsewhere. Some of the things he is famous for:
(1) pioneering modern meteorology,
(2) inventing the statistical methods of correlation and regression, the experimental derivation of the normal distribution (which, in turn, was used to develop pachinko), as well as the idea of regression towards the mean,
(3) introducing fingerprints to modern forensics,
(4) and finally coining the phrase “nature versus nurture”, his thoughts on which led him to invent eugenics and the eugenic social movements in Nazi Germany, America, and elsewhere.
So on the whole not without fault, but at least one could say he was not the slacker of the family.
BONUS: for the long weekend, here is a very fascinating paper by one of the researchers Caroline works with on how the date range of open enrollment is such that the stress and financial burden of the holidays suppresses health insurance demand.
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Your weekly recommendation: A coworker of mine shared this with me. It then was featured on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. I am hooked. Will be (maybe unironically) tuning in for 2020 League starting June 21.
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Graphs of the Week
1) [WSJ] We all know that birthrates are declining, leading some to point to immigration as a way to keep population growth continuing…but one is led to ask: what about policies geared at an automation-replacement ramp, whereby workers are not shut out of the market, simply replaced? While the investment may not be worth it for many private industries, an aging population makes this a compelling idea to complement growth-minded immigration policies
2) [WSJ] CBO predicts a nike swoosh
3) [WSJ] Mortgage applications rebounded in a big way…rates are low, low, low folks and likely to stay there for some time. I would lock in a 30-year fixed rate mortgage in next 18 months if you are planning on buying anyways.
4) [From The Essential Scan newsletter, a collab between USC and Brookings (s/o one of its editors, Kate Hannick)]
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Harrison