It's really starting to piss me off that Inslee isn't getting credit for successfully managing the COVID crisis inspite of the federal guvmit's cascading failures--especially when loud-mouth asshole-moron Republinazi death cult guvnurs like stAbbott, deathSatanis, and Nobrain have been actively killing their own people.

Srsly, WTF is wrong with you???

Any person who has bed bugs will take reality-based steps to eliminate them. It's really a shame viruses aren't visible to the human eye.

RE: Single family housing

"The city plans to trash this type of zoning because nothing about it is of any lasting good."

There's one good thing about single family housing--it's the last type of housing where it's possible to not be forced into an HOA.
I've never found any condos or townhouses that don't also have HOAs.

I know The Stranger is primarily an amateur porn production company now, but you could pretend to do some reporting.

"It's on the whiteness of the city. The fewer POCs, the lower the deaths."

This is a thing you can examine. This is something you could actually "report" on. The King County dashboard shows deaths per 100k people in Seattle for Black folks was 82.9. This is still lower than the overall rate for all the cities in the NYTimes article except San Francisco. There are systemic inequalities, but the consistently communicated policies did result in an improvement for everyone in King County regardless of race.

8, your sense of humor makes Jay Leno look like George Carlin

Mudede--this report met all needs. Well done, Sir.

@16 "That same dashboard says "rates for communities of color are higher, with statistical significance, than among white residents" which if anything proves the exact opposite of what you're arguing."

No it doesn't. @9 didn't make the case that communities of color had the same levels as white residents, only that Seattle's communities of color did better than communities of color in other cities. The same is true when you adjust for age.

"the Venn diagram of "leadership who listen to experts" and "leadership who govern a wealthy, progressive population" is pretty much a circle."

Bullshit. New York fucked up the response, from top to bottom. The mayor, the governor and the federal government all fucked up. In contrast, Seattle and Washington State did a much better job. Of course demographics helped, but even when you control for that, we did better than most.

@9:

You're also not taking into the account the fact that Seattle's population is overwhelmingly white compared to most of the other cities listed in the NYT article. So, it only makes sense from a statistical standpoint that infection rates among the non-white population here would be comparatively lower than in cities with larger - and higher percentage - POC populations.

OMG are the Dominos
beginning to fucking FALL?
NYT:

Decrying Amazon’s ‘woke’ values, Marco Rubio [R-Florida man] comes out in support of a union drive.

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida became the most prominent Republican leader to weigh in on the unionization drive at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., with a surprising endorsement of the organizing effort on Friday.

“The days of conservatives being taken for granted by the business community are over,” Mr. Rubio wrote in an opinion piece published in USA Today.

“Here’s my standard: When the conflict is between working Americans and a company whose leadership has decided to wage culture war against working-class values, the choice is easy — I support the workers,” he continues. “And that’s why I stand with those at Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse today.”

-- Michael Corkery

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/03/12/business/stock-market-today?type=styln-live-updates&label=business%20updates&index=1&action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage#decrying-amazons-woke-values-marco-rubio-comes-out-in-support-of-a-union-drive

WHOA – Way to GO
Lil Marco!

here's some ‘Promised Land’ by Chuck Berry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK6MElklfvM&ab_channel=thecatkeaton

Yay Rubio. Stumbling into doing the right thing for the wrong reason (woke values).

Who dies from COVID-19, and why? We really do not know, and the available data are a statistical nightmare. We don't have credible comparable aggregates, nor do we have credible random samples, on case stix, or death stix, or seroprevalence.

We do know the differential impact of COVID-19 on individuals is huge. Roughly half of us exhibit no symptoms, while an unfortunate small fraction of us get a wild waterslide ride to the morgue.

I suspect genetic factors - including racially-correlated differences - are greatly underestimated.

Seattle doesn't include a lot of Black folks, but we still have poor folks. We have similar levels of folks who can't WFH - though in other communities more of these essential workers might be Black. We have similar levels of multigenerational households. The conceit that we'd have more deaths if we had more Blacks because then we'd have more poverty? That does not compute.

Several states (and these tend to be very white states) are at the high end of apparent case rates and seroprevalence but low on the per capita death scale - despite having the worst records of protective measures. And they have their fair shares of poverty and essential workers.

Known race-linked genetic factors include blood type A (bad news for Whites), variants in the angiotensin system (bad for Blacks), variants in lung tissue response to medications (bad news for Hispanics), and lack of HLA complex diversity (bad news for full-blood Native Americans).

Structural racism in general, structural racism specific to health care, differentials in stress loads (lifetime or immediate), and cultural preferences (soul food) play more than minor roles in complicating this multi-factored magilla.

Case-level genomics may eventually sort some of this out, but for now we may reasonably assume that COVID survivability is in part an innate form of white privilege.

This is the only organization that is publicly keeping tabs on the racial disparities in infection rates and deaths from COVID and the numbers are horrifying (the numbers they are able to get because many, many states are not providing racial data - which is suspect in and of itself, since it is known that non-white communities have had far more people sickened and far more deaths from COVID, percentage wise, than white people).

https://covidtracking.com/race

https://covidtracking.com/race/dashboard

One of the reasons Trump chose to do nothing is because early on he knew it was going to kill significant portions of non-white populations in this country. All of the white people? They're just collateral damage in Trump's mass murder of non-whitepeople. Trump is a mass murderer and a genocider.

If I were a gambling type, I'd put my $ on the low Covid death rates in Seattle being due to the city leaning both young and healthy. Young = attracts tons of under 30's, healthy = low obesity rates and a culture of fitness/outdoor activities. Smoking rates probably matter as well - I believe Seattle has less than average cigarette smokers.

jesus, 'charity case' Perfessor?
NO body does Schlog
any Better.

@31 -- Agreed.

speaking of Mass Murdering (Nazi) basterds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScA4s92G_0U&ab_channel=SceneScreen

"Sir Tim Clark, president of Emirates, to Boeing [the place with the De-Fective board of mis-directors]: You are 'not getting it'"

hmmm. too bad you weren't here a year or so ago SirTimmy 'cause I was shouting it from the rooftops but better late than never. Boeing's prolly Never gonna get Union employees on its Board. hell the union's gonna be long-gone from Boeing soon enough. adios, Bill et al. you guys really helped build Seattle. Well Done.

that's one Happy Pig
are they Sacred there
or is that someone's din-din?

Is there a place with more whiteness than Gove County, Kansas? Perhaps a compound in Idaho.

"The racial makeup of the county was 97.95% White, 0.10% Black or African American, 0.16% Native American, 0.10% Asian, 0.72% from other races, and 0.98% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.24% of the population."

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gove_County,_Kansas)

And yet, all of that whiteness, all of that truly astounding whiteness was, somehow, not enough:

"... coronavirus has killed a higher percentage of Gove County residents than any other county in the United States: One out of every 132 people has died."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/12/12/coronavirus-deaths-highest-us-rural-republican-leaning-county/3828902001/

Why, oh, why, was such a superlative level of whiteness not enough to save the white people of Gove County, Kansas?

"...mask-wearing remains controversial in Gove County, and friendships are being strained as authorities struggle to persuade their neighbors to follow basic public health guidelines, such as avoiding large gatherings."

Wearing masks protects from COVID better than does whiteness!

Who knew?

@36 -- well there's Whiteness and there's Stupidity and when the Twain shall meet mayhem and Madness is sure to quickly folllow. are they all Cousins? nevertheless, they have all the FREEDOM! they'll ever need. adios and sayonara (look 'em up when you get to Heaven)(they have Free Libraries! for all Comers in Heaven)(if not, say Hello! to the Oxymoron for us wouldja?)(Thanks)!

@37: Yes, stupidity correlates heavily with whiteness (cf. "Capitol Riot"), but this suggests a lack of stupidity, not whiteness, is what's keeping Seattle healthy, relative to the far, far greater whiteness in Gove County, Kansas.

(Perhaps it also means we need look elsewhere than Charles Mudede and The Stranger for good information on public health?)

@36:

Yeah, there are LOTS of places more fucking white than Gove County, KS - hell you could probably pick any random few square blocks of Seattle outside of the CD or ID, for one.

You think comparing an entire county in the middle of fucking nowhere Kansas with a population of less than 3,000 to a major city with a population more than 1,000 times greater (using the NYT's estimated population of 4,000,000) to make an assertion that because 22 people have died there (as compared to more than 2,500 here) that somehow Gove County's INSANELY HIGH COVID DEATH RATE proves ANYTHING?

Oh, wait. It does prove a couple of things: 1. That you don't know fuck-all about how statistical analysis works, and; 2. That you are a fucking moron...

@39: "..pick any random few square blocks of Seattle outside of the CD or ID, for one."

Why? Charles was addressing Seattle as a whole, not some random part(s) of some non-random sections of it.

Specifically, he claimed, "The fewer POCs, the lower the deaths." As Cove County, with a population of (at most) 2.05% POC demonstrates, a very high death rate can co-exist with a very low POC population rate. (Practitioners of the art of reading comprehension can note this completely refutes Charles' assertion.)

"...in the middle of fucking nowhere Kansas..."

It seems they were pretty well connected indeed, given their very high rates of infection and mortality from COVID. (Had you read the entire story, instead of just frothily pounding away at your keyboard after reading the small portion I generously quoted for you, then you might have noticed I-70 passes through the county.)

"...somehow Gove County's INSANELY HIGH COVID DEATH RATE proves ANYTHING?"

It POKES a RATHER large HOLE in Charles' ASSERTION, "Seattle's Whiteness Likely Explains Its Low COVID Death Rate," which is THE ONLY point I was ADDRESSING.

You're WELCOME.

@40:

Welcome for what?

Look, Einstein, here's how it breaks down:

Population:

Gove County, KS = 2,600 (per theUSA Today article you cite)
Seattle, WA = 4,000,000 (per the NYT article quoted in Charles' post)

Population ratio Seattle : Gove County 1,538.46 : 1.00, thus Seattle is more than 1,500 times larger than Gove County (this is just to point out the glaringly obvious apples-to-oranges comparison you're attempting to make).

Number of COVID Fatalities:

Gove County = 22 (https://usafacts.org/visualizations/coronavirus-covid-19-spread-map/state/kansas/county/gove-county)
Seattle = 2,560 (per NYT)

Deaths per population:

Gove County: 22/2600 = 0.0083 or 1 death per every 118 people

(NOTE: Based on the above figures, in order to achieve a ratio of 1 death per each 132 people, with a total population of 2,600 people, the number of deaths would need to be less than 20. Conversely with 22 reported deaths the population would need to be around 2,900 to achieve the same ratio; in both cases a difference of about 10%. So, right off the bat, the 1 out of 132 ratio cited in the article is inconsistent with the data presented.)

Seattle: 2,560/4,000,000 = 0.00615 or 1 death per each 1,562 people

Now, in order for Gove County to have the same 1 : 1,562 deaths-per-people rate as Seattle, only 2 people would needed to have died - 9% of the total number of recorded fatalities. Conversely, in order for Seattle to have the same 1:132 ratio as reported (in error, apparently) for Gove County, some 30,300 people would have needed to die - or more than eleven times the number that have died from COVID here thus far, and nearly 1,400 times more than the total number of fatalities in Grove County.

So, basically this whole time you've been conflating a statistically insignificant number of deaths in one isolated and extremely small sample size in order to "prove" that the COVID outbreak there is worse than it is where the sample size is orders of magnitude (remember that 1,500 : 1 ratio I mentioned above?) greater.

So now, it's time to ask the pertinent question: do you really think any SANE person wants to argue that 22 deaths in one place are somehow worse, because nearly 28,000 people DIDN'T DIE somewhere else? You are literally comparing a giant, mutant-sized state-fair-winning pumpkin (Seattle) to a small, withered currant (Gove County) and suggesting the two are in any way equivalent, which any competent statistician will tell you is complete and utter nonsense.

This is precisely why Mark Twain famously quipped: "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics".

@41: Please let us know your chosen purveyor of fine cannabis products.

"Seattle, WA = 4,000,000 (per the NYT article quoted in Charles' post)"

For April 2019, the US Census Bureau estimated Seattle's population as 753,675. The estimate for all of King County was less than 2.5 million. (https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/kingcountywashington,seattlecitywashington,US/PST045219)

I strongly suggest you stop citing Charles' "research" as a basis for anything useful.

In any case, I was merely pointing out that "whiteness" in no way prevented deaths from COVID, and Charles' formulation, "[t]he fewer POCs, the lower the deaths," was flatly contradicted by the large death rate in a place with very, very few POCs. The rest of your quoted statistics don't actually have any bearing on that.

@42:

And what I keep pointing out, and which you patently refuse to acknowledge, is that 22 fatalities, regardless of the obfuscating statistics you surround it with, with is NOT, by any rational estimation, a large number of deaths, and that comparing widely disparate sample sizes and attempting to draw any sort of resulting equivalency is not only disingenuous, it's flat-out stupid.

It's like calling the Dutch Fork, SC high school Silver Foxes, which had a 14-0 undefeated season in 2018, a better football team than the 2018 Super Bowl LII winning Philadelphia Eagles, because they only went 13-3 that year - it's a statement any normal person would laugh themselves into convulsions over, because it's such a patently ridiculous comparison.

@43: A large difference in size between two populations does not automatically render invalid a comparison between them, and no amount of your saying it does makes it so. We can meaningfully compare rates of COVID infections (or deaths) between, say, Iceland and India, even though those populations differ in size by orders of magnitude.

Citizens of Seattle adopted behavioral restrictions which the citizens of Gove County first ignored, then actively fought. That is the reason Seattle has a much lower rate of death from COVID than does Gove County; it has nothing to do with population size or ethnic composition. Charles does not like such facts intruding on his chosen beliefs, so he rejected those facts, and re-stated his chosen beliefs by playing the race card. Amusingly, you seem far more agitated by my trivial refutation of his (obviously false) claim than you are by Charles' contra-factual, racially-charged denials, but that's your problem, not mine; I merely find your behavior amusing.

(Speaking of amusing, you clearly do not know what the term, "statistically significant," means, much less how to perform the calculations needed to make such a determination.)

"It's like calling the Dutch Fork, SC high school Silver Foxes, which had a 14-0 undefeated season in 2018, a better football team than the 2018 Super Bowl LII winning Philadelphia Eagles, because they only went 13-3 that year..."

As the two teams would never play each other, ANY claim that one is 'better' than the other is laughable. The Silver Foxes had a better record in their league, and the Eagles won their league's championship. Determining which is 'better' is a matter of which counts more to the person(s) making that determination, but as no head-to-head comparison can ever exist, this is a matter for drunken sports-bar arguments, not rational determinations.

@Chas -- why The FUCK would you put that 'amusing' video on your post -- from TWO DIFFERENT ANGLES -- of that wee White Child getting violently BODY SLAMMED by the family pet? (just think of all the Amusement if he'd had his neck broken and they had to rush him to the
Hospital and on the way a Semi Truck knocked the ambulance off some cliff into the Pacific Ocean and then a Great White swallowed him and the driver whole.) (pretty fawking Funny, eh?)

an Exceedingly Low Point in your Tenure here, bud.

Please. Remove.

thnx!

@45 -- in your (otherwise Delightful! if at times [for me] un-Fathomable) Tenure