Cardboard Tigers: T. Walker, G. Wilson, Wockenfuss

Seventeenth and last in an occasional series. Collect ’em all! I’m working through a stack of Tigers baseball cards from the late 1960s and early 1970s, with occasional newer cards. Tom Walker pitched in 36 games for the 1975 Tigers, starting 9 of them and finishing 17 others. He had a 3-8 record, a 4.45 […]

Here we go again: Putting COVID numbers in context

A disclaimer: COVID-19 is serious. If you don’t take it seriously by following the rather simple alleviation tactics you have available to you (vaccination, mask-wearing, washing hands, etc.), it can kill you. There is a difference, however, between it can kill you and it will kill you, and this is a distinction that is seldom […]

Will the Pfizer and Merck pills move COVID-19 into endemic status?

From my inbox this morning: Pfizer’s pill is the second to show significant effectiveness against COVID-19; Merck also has one that’s waiting for authorization from the FDA. Are these pills the next step toward moving COVID-19 from pandemic to endemic status? A quick definition of our terms might be useful here: A pandemic is a […]

“The presidency is not a popularity contest.”

Joe Biden’s popularity with the American public continues to decline, per FiveThirtyEight: To be clear, Biden wasn’t very popular to begin with. On Inauguration Day, only 53% of us approved, while 36% disapproved (leaving about 11 percent withholding judgement, which seems prudent now). That figure was at or below nearly every president since Harry S […]

The rise and (hopefully) fall of the Delta variant in the U.S.

NOTE: This post uses several maps from covidestim.org. Here are the keys for each type of map: Using the excellent data visualizations on the covidestim.org site, I noticed an interesting “wave” effect as the Delta variant started to take hold in the United States in late spring. The first reports of significant spread of the […]