Mark Byron

FEMA Meets Rube Goldberg

The $400/week unemployment insurance plan the president proposed yesterday just might work. Give the White House some credit for creative finance, as they shoe-horned it into a FEMA emergency relief fund for folks who are out of work due to an emergency but fall through the normal unemployment cracks. 

I would think that would be designed for folks displaced from their job due to a flood or a hurricane; I'm picturing a business in downtown Sanford just NW of Midland that got wiped out this spring when the Sanford Lake dam collapsed. COVID doesn't quite fit the design of such a regional tragedy, but it isn't much of a stretch to treat the current unpleasantness as a disaster. Thus, it might just pass legal muster.

Two caveats are mentioned in the CNBC piece. One is that the money is a 75%-25% federal-state match, so states would have to pony up $100/week for each covered worker. That might be hard to conjure up in a state that is spending more due to COVID and bringing in less tax revenue. Doubly so when any federal help to cover those state budget deficits is not forthcoming; the Republicans are not thrilled "bailing out" more-generous Democratic state governments who were the hardest hit during the first batch of cases this spring. State governments will be torn between helping their needy and balancing their budgets.

Also, some Democratic governors might be leery of taking part if it is seen as selling congressional Democrats up the river and partnering with Trump on a financial Rube Goldberg end-run of the legislative process. I'd expect some push-back from quarters on the left on states going along with this, just as many Republican states were less than thrilled with being a part of Obamacare.

The other bug in this FEMA plan is that the normal unemployment insurance system can't be used to deliver it. The initial system set up this spring piggy-backed on existing unemployment infrastructure. Folks can't be on both normal unemployment and this FEMA 400 (sounds like a new NASCAR race heavy on crashes). Thus, we'd need to see states have to quickly (or not so quickly) craft a institutional and software system to administer this new FEMA moolah; easier said than done.

For Trump, any slowness can be blamed on lousy state governments, not FEMA. Any Democratic opt-outs of the plan can be spun as lefties caring more about politics than the needy. If neither takes place, I'll eat my words, but the odds are good on both happening.

Give Me Liberty, Give Others Death

I'm rather taken aback by the large number of people not wearing masks after being instructed months ago to do so. They aren't budget-busters (disposable ones costs about a buck in bulk and washable cloth ones can be had under $10) and don't obstruct oxygen flow enough to worry about. The only negative side effects are that they look dorky and that they can fog up your glasses a bit.

However, the negative side effect of not wearing them in this COVID era is passing along a disease that kills a non-trivial percentage of the folks getting it. We've had 67,683 confirmed cases in Michigan and 6,024 deaths. That's about a 9% kill rate. Granted, there were likely a lot of asymptomatic folks who never got tested, thus skewing the death rate up a bit, but that's still rather bracing.

Not only does a mask help you avoid the bug, but it also helps you giving the bug to someone else if you have it and don't know it. Thus, I struggle to see a downside of wearing one.

Folks weaned on the idea of rugged American individualism might beg to differ. Americans have a tendency to hate being told what to do, especially if it is someone from the other party telling you it.

I didn't vote for Gretchen Whitmer two years ago. Despite being ticked at Bill Schuette for being an ardent Trumpite, I held my nose and voted Republican.

I'm glad I got outvoted, for we'd have many more dead Michiganders had he won, assuming he erred on the side of keeping things open until things got much worse. I'm not planning on becoming a Democrat, but the Republican leadership in both Washington and Lansing has had a tin ear towards public health, erring on the side of wanting to keep businesses open and to play to that rugged individualism streak that ignores the idea of looking out after one's fellow man.

Last I checked, being considerate of others is a virtue. "Love your neighbor as yourself", I think the phrase goes. Some odd dude named Jesus said it a couple of millennia ago.

The folks who ignore mask requirements and feel that social distancing is for wimps have helped give us a resurgence of COVID cases.

Trying to make mask-wearing voluntary didn't work. The news of the afternoon is that Gov. Whitmer is making it mandatory, fining folks $500 for not wearing them and shutting stores down that don't make people mask up before going in.

The problem I've seen of not doing it that way is that businesses don't want to play the bad cop. A security guard at a Family Dollar in Flint got killed for doing that a couple of months back. Even if that level of reaction is a rarity, having someone make a stink and storm out isn't great for business.

I'll give Midland's Big Boys some credit for doing this voluntarily. The waitress manning the front door noted that they were just following CDC guidelines. No one else has been doing that in Midland. I've been in five other sit-down restaurants since things opened back up last month, and none are calling BS on maskless wonders.

Until now, that is.

COVID's Being a Real Bexar to Hidalgo County.

I was surprised when I saw yesterday's county-by-county totals for Texas. It had Hidalgo county leading the way in new cases. Not Dallas or Houston's Harris or San Antonio's Bexar (it's pronounced Bear, BTW). Even this geography buff and to hit Google for it.

It's a border county with McAllen as the lead city. My mind recalled reading in a children's sports book circa 1970 of a Little League WS winner from McAllen  with an ace switch-pitcher. I was a bit off, as the '57 champs played in a McAllen regional but were from Monterey in Mexico-proper. Ángel Macías the switch-pitcher, pitched a perfect game in the final.

The county's namesake's an interesting character, a very worldly priest (reminding me of Haitian strongman Jean Aristide) who championed the native Mexicans over Spain and was a martyr for independence.

Anyways, it's suffering badly with COVID right now, bad enough that they added about 25% to their case totals in one day, 1552 was the haul from Thursday.

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We've had back to back days with 61,000 plus cases nationwide. Florida, which has one of the earliest data-dumps in the country, nearly set a new record today, with today's 11,443 just missing the 4th's 11,458. U-G-H-L-Y...Ugh-ly.

Going Viral---Again

Some bracing numbers from today's 3PM Michigan COVID data-dump. By my spreadsheet, we had a 0.89% growth in new cases. That doesn't sound like much, but it's the highest percentage since May 24th. 

What's more interesting is where we had cases spiking. West Michigan, mostly, which had been largely spared at first while Detroit and southeast Michigan got hammered. Going down the list, we have Allegan (SW of Grand Rapids) at 2.9%, Barry (S of Grand Rapids) at 4.8%, Clinton (NW of Lansing) at 3.8%, Kent (Grand Rapids proper) at 2.4%, Mason (an hour north of Grand Rapids on Lake Michigan) at 8.5%, albeit on a small sample going from 47 to 51, Montcalm (NE of GR) at 5.9%, Newago (directly  north of GR and an anti-lockdown hotbed) at 3.7%, and Ottawa (Holland west of GR) at 1.7%.

Oceana county, which I highlighted the other day, is just south of Mason, is in at 4.9%. Their per-capita rate is 11.7 cases per thousand, in hawt pursuit of Wayne's 12.6 for the state lead.

In comparison, the old hotbeds of metro Detroit aren't as active. Wayne (Detroit and Dearborn) are at 0.5%, Oakland (NE suburbs and more upscale) at 0.7% and Macomb (NE subs and more blue collar, Reagan Democrat central) at 0.5%. Flint's Genessee county is in at  0.5% and Washtenaw (Ann Arbor) is in at 1% even. 

Thankfully, Sparkle City (otherwise known as Midland) pitched a shutout today after throwing up a 1.6% and 2.4% (2 and 3 cases respectively) the last two days.

Thus, you have something of a microcosm of the US, where the hard hit and Democratic-leaning (save Oakland) southeastern metro areas that got hammered back in the spring recovering a bit while the more Republican west is now playing catch-up.

That puts governor Whitmer, a Democrat, in a awkward spot. A targeted lock-down of the metro Grand Rapids area (and metro Lansing, who's bar-induced spike made national news) seems to be called for, but having That Woman From Michigan putting a conservative bastion into renewed lock-down would create something bordering on civil war; the protests that we saw this spring in Lansing would get multiplied five-fold if we needed to close sit-down dining and non-essential stores. However, that might be what is called for if these numbers continue.

Future Tense...VERY Tense

I've found the stock market interesting the last few days. The COVID spike of the last week doesn't seem to faze it, since a lot of the modern economy works well under lockdown or even thrives on it, as people use techie things more and biotech firms are the golden children of the era.

This morning, the market continued its climb, with a surprisingly good jobs report and news Boeing got its 737-MAX passed a re-certification test to get back in the air after being grounded for over a year after a balky avionics system helped cause a pair of fatal crashes.

That is, until news of Florida hitting a new daily COVID record hit. Reuters reported a five-figure case number for today; the old record of 9585 was set last Saturday  (sad commentary that I have such links at the ready). It's nice that employment was up last month, but how long will it last? Boeing might have the MAX getting back in the air, but will they have folks using it to get somewhere if we're not ramping our travel back up right away? Earlier in the week, the Boeing news was that a Norwegian airline was backing out of a 737-MAX deal on COVID grounds.

The biggest S&P 500 ETF got up to 315.70 about 10AM, but shot back down to 312.66 (as I go to press at 11:11) on the Reuters article. Finance is in large part about predicting the future and how particular firms (or the market at large) is going to fit into that future. God knows and controls the future, but He's not overly chatty about the stock market. Thus, figuring out said future and attaching values to companies is a mix of art, science and SWAGs (scientific wild-[keister] guesses).

Interesting times, indeed.

Full disclosure- I'm in a pro-volatility fund right now, since I'm expecting trouble, so I have some bad schadenfreude about a market drop, given that I'm profiting from it.

Open Invitation

Last night, while I was reading an article on the upcoming college football season and whether it will take place, I saw an ad from a Trump super-PAC, featuring the Donald superimposed on a Big Sky-ish valley scene with mountains on the right, with the caption "Opening Up America Again", if I recall correctly. VP Pence was plugging the “keep opening up America” meme in this CNBC article.

Minor problem. When you're opening up businesses, you're increasing the number of interactions with people and increasing the chances of our old friend COVID-19 being exchanged along with cash and credit cards. Given that we have a record number of daily cases nationwide, centered on some of our more free-market-friendly southern states, opening up has its downside.

The irony of the Opening Up America ad on the college football article is that it seems that the very opening up of the economy in the South and elsewhere is helping give COVID a second wind and imperiling the sports seasons folks in "them thar parts" especially like. I'm one of them: me loves me some football...or basketball...or baseball.. or about any sport right now.

It's a tough dilemma. Going into lock-down mode does a real number on the economy but cuts down on the disease spread. Coming out of lock-down, especially when folks feel that masks and social distancing are something that fearful wimps and liberals do, puts a Space-X rocket on the R₀ figure. Michigan (as I predicted Monday) just closed its bars after opening them back up a couple of weeks ago, following Texas, Florida and California's lead. Finding that new-normal mix that lets us do more things while keeping COVID under control (and if R is 1.25, it ain't under control for long) is very tricky.

Maskless Wonders

I've been tracking the county-by-county cases of COVID in Michigan each day, using it to see trends. So far, Midland has seemed to been out of the line of fire. Only Traverse City's Grand Traverse county has a lower per-capita infection rate than Midland among counties of Midland's size or larger (80,000 was the floor on my Excel filter).

However, I'm seeing a lot of maskless wonders around town. Thursday, I was at a Subway; I believe I was the only patron with a mask on while ordering. While Subway did a good job of doing proper social-distancing interior design, with six-foot markers on the floor and signs making ever other table a no-go, the patrons weren't paying attention to the signs or state law mandating masks inside businesses. 

Friday at Bob Evans for breakfast saw some improvement in that. They're trying to do social distancing right, limiting the lobby to five people and enforcing that well, but most of the patrons were maskless. Some older customers were coming in with masks, but others don't. I'm not going to tell the guy with the "The 2nd Amendment-the original homeland security." T-shirt he needs a mask; not a good career move.

It's not just Midland.

This Mitch Albom piece points out that you can lead a horse to safe behaviors, but you can't make them do them easily. He wrote about Harper's, a brewpub in East Lansing that became a hot spot, with 71 cases of COVID flowing from it.  Not that the Harper's folks weren't trying.

Trisha Riley thought she had prepared. She, her husband, Pat, and two of their children operate Harper’s Restaurant and Brew Pub in East Lansing, a popular 10,000-square-foot indoor restaurant with a large outdoor deck.

“We did a whole day of training, we had every staff person come in, they got all the guides from the state and local governments, we let everybody ask questions, and we had them all wear their masks,” Riley told me Friday. “We actually gave them masks to go home with to get used to it.”

And then the doors opened. June 8th. Not surprisingly, the crowds were large. Riley and her staff kept the place at below half-capacity, which means around 225 people.

But on the deck, they noticed customers moving tables together on their own. And outside the restaurant, people in line were ignoring markers to maintain 6-foot distances — and most were not wearing masks.

“It was a full-time job of trying to monitor (the line) to keep people 6 feet apart,” Riley recalled. “The most difficult part was they know we don’t own the sidewalk. You get a lot people saying, ‘That’s great, but this is not your property.’ “

That type of behavior was what made the libertarian-minded governors of Texas and Florida to close their bars, or at least to get them to stop serving hooch. Michigan might not be too far behind, as we're spiking quite a bit from some encouraging lows of mid-month.

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Folks like me who like deep dives into the issues of the day have become armchair epidemiologists. A go-to stat in that realm is the reproduction factor, or R for short, which is how many people an infected person goes on to infect on average. Keep it under one and things start to die off. Have it above one, and things start to grow quickly, especially when the power of compound growth rates kicks in.

A neat go-to site I ran into is RT.live. That's R_t, as in the current R factor; no relation to the Putin-brownnosing Russia Today outfit, which also goes by RT. Michigan is at 1.22, not far behind Texas' 1.25. Florida is 3rd with 1.5 and Nevada's 1.64 is a jarring as the lights on the Strip. Despite a solid effort to lock things down by governor Whitmer, we broke contain shortly before we got paroled.

It will be hard to go back to another round of stay-at-home, especially when the economy can't handle it and the White House will be cheerleading to keep things open. However, this case spike isn't a sustainable new normal, either.

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The sore-thumb county in the Michigan stats is Oceana county on the Lake Michigan shore north of Muskegon. They're noted for growing asparagus, but they've got COVID coming out their asparagus right now. They've racked up 143 cases in the last ten days jumping them to 243 confirmed cases. That's in a county of 26,000. Only Detroit's Wayne county has more cases per capital in Michigan.