Despite having a reputation for being a month in the doldrums, August has historically been a very eventful month, frequently not in a good way. In a good column in the Wall Street Journal Andy Kessler takes note of several important developments that have taken place in August:
Surprise! On Aug. 11, 1951, New York’s WCBS-TV broadcast the first baseball game in color, a double-header from Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field. The surprise was that television could do color at all—maybe 100 color sets existed at the time. Yes, “The Wizard of Oz†stunned theatergoers with color in August 1939. But television? Around 20% of U.S. homes had black-and-white TVs, often to watch Rocky Marciano’s almost monthly boxing matches, which my dad called the Bum of the Month club. By 1960 almost 90% of homes had sets. As broadcasts in color ramped during the ’60s, color-TV sales boomed. Someone paying attention 70 years ago would have seen the future.
Surprise! On Aug. 13, 1961, the world woke up to 32,000 troops in the Soviet sector of Berlin installing 97 miles of barbed wire and eventually building concrete fences—not to keep people out, but to keep anyone from leaving. The Berlin Wall stood for 28 years, as the icy Cold War proved that capitalism in the West, especially West Germany, completely outdistanced the stagnant communist Five Year Plans and neighbor turning in neighbor via East Germany’s Stasi secret police. The only question is why it took so long to implode.
Surprise! On Aug. 15, 1971, President Nixon ended the international gold standard set up at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference. Most didn’t see that coming. After years of funding Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and the never-ending Vietnam War, the U.S. couldn’t afford both guns and butter as other countries began demanding physical gold instead of printed dollars for trade imbalances. Subsequent inflation was definitely not “transitory.†Oil embargoes and economic “malaise†followed. Real assets soared, stocks flatlined. This was broken only when President Reagan had Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker’s back as he slew inflation with punishing interest-rate hikes.
Surprise! On Aug. 5, 1981, Reagan fired more than 11,000 striking air-traffic controllers, members of the Patco union. Union membership as a percentage of the U.S. workforce peaked in 1945, but the decline slowed in the 1960s and 1970s. It’s been steadily falling since Reagan’s action. That and capital-gains tax cuts, encouraging capital formation, set up U.S. companies for rapid and profitable growth. A massive bull market began in 1982—Aug. 13 actually—with the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 777. We’ve rarely looked back.
Others include the publication of the first web site (1991) and the removal of Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in Libya (2011). However, I fear that Mr. Kessler is a captive of the misconception, common today, that nothing ever happened before he was born.
Some other notable developments in August:
August 1, 1894: the beginning of the first Sino-Japanese War
August 1, 1914: the German Empire declares war on the Russian Empire and although declared on July 28, World War I, the Great War truly got under way
August 1, 1944: the start of the Warsaw Uprising
No one has ever accused me of being a cockeyed optimist. Given all of the COVID-19 related upheaval throughout the developing world, I would not be a bit surprised if a major war didn’t break out somewhere this month.
Speaking of COVID, I made a short visit to the grocery this morning.
I wore the big tinted glasses that they gave me after cataract surgery and a standard white face mask.
I saw only one other wearing the feed bag, a middle aged Asian woman.
What was interesting was reactions.
The employees were unmasked as were all the rest of the customers and if I read their expressions correctly, they could only be described as malice towards myself and my protective gear.
I think that people around here are done with that and do not want a sequel.
I really, really hope they are right.
“Masks: There is still little to no scientific evidence for the effectiveness of cloth face masks in the general population, and the introduction of mandatory masks couldn’t contain or slow the epidemic in most countries. If used improperly, masks may increase the risk of infectionâ€
Despite the erratic insistence of government entities who mandate masks, even for children – little ones too – there have been no definitive studies showing that wearing a mask lessens the spread of virus more than not wearing one. Furthermore, the constant wearing of one causes headaches, brain fog, and if not cleaned frequently a source of bacteria which is than inhaled.
I personally believe if you feel safer/better wearing a mask, do so. For those who don’t want to wear a mask, don’t.
There is lots of evidence that masks reduce spread of Covid. Studies of mask effectiveness pre-date Covid and we have known for a long time that they help. It starts at the lab level like you would expect for any drug or intervention. Every lab study done that I have seen (many) shows masks having a positive effect. Out in the real world you have to read the studies carefully. Compliance is an issue and most studies dont really look at total effect ie they dont account for what happens when both people in a pair are wearing a mask. They protect both from someone spreading the disease and someone catching it. You also need to be aware of a lot of the negative studies which tend to be pretty small. With small numbers you can prove almost anything.
Then you should look for secondary reinforcement. If masks work then you should also see reduction of spread in other respiratory viruses, which is what we saw.
The following is a pretty good meta study looking a lot of studies. Most are well done and the authors point out studies that are weak. (I apologize for inject numbers and data into the discussion again.)
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118
Steve
n95 masks offer some protection of spreading respiratory diseases. All others are pretty worthless.
Read the data. We have years of experience with masks. Provide an explanation why we saw such a large drop in RSV and flu. Once again, you provide feelings.
Steve