Checking the COVID-19 Olympics scores for Florida and California ahead of the DeSantis v. Newsom debate

Governor French Laundry and Governor Science Denial are debating this evening. Let’s do a little pre-debate fact-checking. Americans have agreed that all of a society’s success can be measured by the society’s score in the COVID-19 Olympics. A society that achieved 0 COVID-tagged deaths by pushing all of its citizens into Hamas-style tunnels for 10 years (until a vaccine-style vaccine became available that definitively reduced deaths on a population-wide basis) would, for example, be celebrated as the best of all possible societies.

Lockdown-champ California starts off in the lead in the COVID-19 Olympics by having a lower COVID-19-tagged death rate. Once you adjust for the percentage of the population over 65, however, the death rates are about the same and the excess death rate may actually be higher in California (the CDC makes these data available, but somehow doesn’t bother to make it easy to compare states).

Where is SARS-CoV-2 having a field day right now? The CDC’s wastewater page:

The Science-denying Republican strongholds of Minnesota and Vermont are seriously plagued (God hates Republicans and loves #Science). California is moderately plagued and the plague level in Florida is “low”. In other words, if we accept that current Scientific dogma that humans, especially politicians and bureaucrats, are in charge of viruses, Gavin Newsom’s lockdowns, mask orders, forced vaccinations, school closures, etc. have resulted in a higher rate of SARS-CoV-2 infection than the Team Sweden approach that Ron DeSantis adopted in the summer of 2020 (see Ron DeSantis and Coronapanic for excerpts from the not-so-great man’s book).

I continue to maintain my position that Nikki Haley would be more likely to prevail over Joe Biden in November 2024 because Ron D doesn’t have the soothing optimistic tone that Americans love. For example, Americans want to believe that someone who hates Jews and loves jihad will do a 180-degree flip once exposed to suburban life in Michigan or Minnesota. Ron just says “no”:

(Possible influence for Ron D’s rejection of Immigration Dogma: Florida is where, in 2016 (prior to Ron DeSantis assuming the governorship), first-generation Afghan-American Omar Mir Seddique Mateen killed 49 people at a gay nightclub. Mr. Mateen came from a “moderate Muslim” family and had spent his entire 29-year life in the land of Diversity is Our Strength (TM).)

Loosely related:

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Thanksgiving

This year, I’m especially grateful that there is no war on U.S. soil. Regardless of which side in the Hamas-Israel fight one supports, nearly everyone will agree that war is hell and those who are insulated from war are fortunate. Since 1865, Americans have enjoyed better insulation than almost any other group of people, though, of course, quite a few Americans who identified as men have been sent off to fight.

Zooming all the way to the other end of the spectrum… I’m grateful that we can eat outdoors in nice weather in Florida without being besieged by yellowjackets, the wasps that ruin what would otherwise be great experiences in the Northeast U.S. I’ve enjoyed outdoor meals on both coasts and in Orlando and never been bothered. Florida is supposedly part of this insect’s range, so I have no explanation for why yellowjackets don’t swarm around restaurants and backyard barbecues.

For something in the middle… ChatGPT, which will be one year old on November 30, especially its ability to liberate programmers from the tedium of having to search for libraries and API calls (admittedly a tedium created by other programmers, drunk on the near-infinite memory capacity of modern computer systems). ChatGPT and similar have the potential to make programming an interesting job once again (see Is “data scientist” the new “programmer”?).

Readers: What are you grateful for this year?

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Halloween in Florida

Due to the crowds drawn by our neighbor’s fantastic pirate house, we ran out of candy last year after giving out 1,500 pieces. This year, the stock is 2,000 pieces (thanks, Costco). Here are a few photos around the neighborhood:

We need this costume (at a neighbor’s party):

Johnny Depp is attacked by a more aggressive foe than Amber Heard:

I love this house:

Forecast for trick-or-treating here in Jupiter is 79 degrees and clear.

One of the nice things about Florida is the geographical and psychological distance from upsetting world events. No matter how upsetting the headlines, people here recognize that (a) they’re not important or powerful enough to change anything, and (b) their own life is mostly unaffected. A typical Floridian’s mood is not controlled by the media.

Related:

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Meet in Orlando at the big fencing tournament?

Who would like to meet in Orlando at the big fencing tournament? I expect to be in Orlando on Thursday and Friday (26 and 27). Watching the competition is free. SeaWorld and Disney may also be involved! (Those are neither free nor immune from the inflation that the government assures us does not exist.) A friend’s kids are competing. If you haven’t had your mRNA COVID-19 booster and your flu shot (prevents all flu symptoms except for hospitalization and death), you can get that mistake corrected at the same time:

What if Ron DeSantis comes down from Tallahassee and says something unkind about the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community? Just text “CRISIS” to Dr. Shannon Jolly, the Sr. Manager – Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging for USA Fencing.

Potentially confusing:

USA Fencing encourages everyone to be mindful of others’ pronouns and gender identities. When in doubt, ask politely, and use the pronouns people share with you.

In the first sentence, people are merely “encouraged”. In the second sentence, however, people are ordered to use specified pronouns. Also, what do they mean by “when in doubt”? Are they suggesting that gender identity can be inferred from surface appearance?

Please email philg@mit.edu if you want to get together!

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New Yorkers write about the Florida homeowners insurance market disaster… using 100-year-old wooden houses as a typical example

Just as the weather here in Palm Beach County turned perfect (dry and highs of 75-80), friends in Maskachusetts who’ve been talking about escape send me an article from the Manhattan-based Wall Street Journal, “Home Insurance Is So High in This Florida Town, Residents Are Leaving”:

James and Laura Molinari left Chicago for a two-story stucco home in this city’s historic Flamingo Park neighborhood. The four-bedroom house was a short bridge away from Palm Beach island and walking distance to downtown West Palm Beach.

Then the renewal for his home insurance arrived. The new rate for the year starting in September was around $121,000—more than seven times what the Molinaris said they paid last year, and more than 13 times what they paid when the family moved to Florida in 2019.

While they found a better rate from another insurer, at about $33,000 it is still nearly double what they paid last year. The family this month listed the home for sale with an asking price of nearly $3.5 million after determining that insurance costs made staying there too expensive. Others in Flamingo Park told The Wall Street Journal they are drawing the same conclusion.

Paying nearly 1% of the house’s value for insurance is pretty expensive. But… “historic” in Florida? Here’s a house that I found on Zillow in that neighborhood:

It’s almost 100 years old. Is it made from concrete blocks and steel rebar like the typical reasonably new house in Florida? No. It’s a wood structure (“frame”):

So the New York-based journalists write about a 100-year-old neighborhood with the implication that this is typical for Florida. In fact, any house built after Hurricane Andrew (1992; made landfall south of Miami as a Category 5 storm) is likely well-defended against hurricanes. State Farm won’t write new policies on houses built before 2003, presumably due to the fact that a post-Andrew building code took effect statewide in 2002 (a similar code took effect just two years after Andrew in South Florida).

More from the newspaper:

“When you have a home that’s one million dollars or less, your insurance premium becomes higher than your mortgage,” he said.

Can this be true? The article mentions a bunch of folks paying about 1 percent of their house+lot value to insure an ancient wooden structure. Absent a huge down payment or a savvy purchase just after the Collapse of 2008, wouldn’t a 30-year mortgage obtained in pre-Biden times have to be at least 2 percent of the house+lot value?

Separately, there doesn’t seem to be a huge effect yet from the new laws. “Here’s why Florida insurance premiums aren’t expected to go down anytime soon” (WTSP, October 12, 2023):

Karen Clark & Co’s analysis says that while there are factors beyond legislative control causing homeowner premiums to rise, recent laws targeting lawsuits against insurers might at least keep future premium hikes smaller than they might otherwise have been.

According to data, Florida had 10 times the percentage of litigated homeowner claims compared to other states where major hurricanes made landfall. On average, claims that are subject to lawsuits cost about seven times more on average than ones that aren’t. With new laws reducing the amount of insurance claims taken to court, one of the factors driving up future premium costs might be mitigated.

I’m wondering about the highlighted sentence. Is that adjusted for the severity of the damage to the house? It makes sense that a $10,000 problem doesn’t result in a lawsuit while a $100,000 problem might.

Circling back to the WSJ article… the only way to save money is to move back to the Northeast where the WSJ is based?

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Gifted education in public schools: Massachusetts vs. Florida perspectives

As a general rule, whatever is sacred in Massachusetts is illegal in Florida and vice versa. In MA, there is no state funding for gifted programs and the typical town-run public school system has no differentiation until 8th or 9th grade. The idea that children of all abilities go through material at a single level, with some bored and some lost, is sacred. In FL, by contrast, county-run school districts are required by state law to offer gifted education beginning in 2nd grade. Parking an academically-inclined student in a grade-level classroom is actually illegal.

A friend and I were chatting about this while on a walk with his dog in Wellesley, Maskachusetts back during my August trip up and down the East Coast. A neighbor walking her own dog joined the conversation and opined that public schools shouldn’t have gifted education because it tended to result in racial segregation, with Black students left behind, for example.

Where had she attended school? Milton Academy ($64,000/year for day students) and then an Ivy League college. Had she sent her own children to the Wellesley Public Schools where they could receive the benefits of sitting in a classroom with a diversity of academic talent if not a diversity of skin color? No. They also went to Milton Academy and then on to the Ivies.

Has the lack of gifted education in Maskachusetts public schools resulted in racial harmony? Let’s check NBC:

At one point, the teen grabbed a bigger stone, threatened the victim with it and called him “boy” and the N-word, according to the police narrative. …

The victim also wrote in his statement that the other juvenile “started laughing and called me George Floyd, obviously making fun of me and showing NO remorse.”

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The accident chain, hurricane-proof garage door edition

The high price of homeowner’s insurance is one of the rare Florida problems that is not exaggerated by New York-based media (an organized attempt to stem the tax base exodus?). Folks near, but not on, the ocean can expect to pay about 0.7 percent of the structure value (not including the land) annually. Hoping to bring this down to 0.6 percent, and also insulate the recently-air-conditioned garage, I decided to swap out the 20-year-old wind-rated garage door for one that is wind- and impact-rated.

So what if the garage door is damaged in a hurricane? A car parked inside can’t be blown away. The rest of the junk in the garage is probably stuff that you didn’t need anyway. It turns out, however, that if the garage door fails it can open the house up to so much wind pressure that the roof is blown off.

Clopay, the manufacturer of our new 9200 door, configured it for shipment with 10 struts instead of the 5 that actually fit. This was the beginning of what in aviation is called “the accident chain”, a sequence of events that start small and eventually lead to the loss of an airframe. Clopay apparently delivered a kit with both 50 KSI 16-gauge steel struts and also the 80 KSI 15-gauge struts that are required for the W8 wind load that I paid for.

With 10 struts installed instead of 5, the door would weigh a spectacular 703 lbs. So Clopay also included two super heavy springs (the “#7 light blue” ones above). And they included non-standard big drums for the cables.

The high-school graduates (maybe?) who installed the door apparently didn’t get concerned about the extra struts. They put on the 50 KSI weaker struts, as it happens, thus rendering the door a W6 door.

The building inspector said that the result wasn’t right as far as the spring balance was concerned, but that he couldn’t fail the door installation because of that. He didn’t notice that the struts were stamped with “50 KSI” and that this marking didn’t match the “80 KSI” on the engineering drawing filed with the town.

While I was on an aviation hop up to Montreal and back, the installers came out to swap the springs and left without considering it odd that the door was as heavy to lift, once disconnected from the opener, as a 100+ lb. barbell. A properly balanced door can be lifted with a couple of fingers:

I began digging into this and discovered the 50 KSI struts that should have been 80 KSI. The result, of course, was everyone being angry with me. The installers, who’d been out 3 or 4 times total, were upset that I was hassling them and they weren’t at all contrite about having put in struts that didn’t match the engineering drawings, the building permit, or what was required to protect against the next climate-change-driven hurricane. The manufacturer tech support guy was upset because he said it was the installer’s job to calculate and fix everything (does it make sense for the manufacturer to send the installer a bunch of extra parts and the wrong springs and then hope that the installer will be able to do the engineering calculations that the manufacturer couldn’t do correctly?).

Here’s what I learned: if you live in Florida or some other hurricane-prone region, make sure that the struts on the back of the door actually are the right strength! Also, disconnect the door from the opener every now and then and check the balance.

Separately, a shout-out to Chamberlain and the Mexicans who assembled our 1/3 HP opener back in February 2003. This 20-year veteran has thus far survived the abuse of having to lift 5X the weight for which it was designed.

Related:

  • “Buffett’s Florida Bet Bodes Well for Troubled Insurance Market” (Washington Post, July 21, 2023): Last December, Florida’s legislature passed a controversial but necessary set of reforms aimed at shoring up the state’s teetering property insurance market, where a string of insurers had canceled policies and even filed for bankruptcy, leaving homeowners with dwindling options. [note that Governor DeSantis, who is typically blamed for laws passed by the legislature, does not get credit for this insurance “reform”!] … It’s also the top state for property insurance-related lawsuits, which companies contend are frequently frivolous and often fraudulent, pushing the cost of doing business even higher. … In remarks at Berkshire’s 2023 annual meeting, Vice Chairman of Insurance Operations Ajit Jain said the firm had boosted its property-catastrophe exposure by nearly 50% this year, including up to $15 billion now at risk in Florida. … Among other things, the package sought to curb the nuisance litigation by ending the so-called one-way attorney fee statute. Until the change, insurers had to pay prevailing plaintiffs’ attorney fees, an arrangement that the industry says incentivized frivolous lawsuits and helped build a cottage industry around exploitation of the system. In the most egregious cases, contractors would goad homeowners into filing claims under false pretenses, and insurers were often forced to settle to protect against soaring legal fees. Reinsurers in particular are “optimistic that between [higher prices] and the litigation reforms that Florida is becoming more attractive,” Frank Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Association of America, told me by phone on Tuesday.
  • “State Farm doubles down on Florida after Farmers Insurance pulls back” (Deplorable Fox, July 14, 2023): State Farm says it’s sticking with Florida months after ceasing new applications in California … [the company] sees more opportunity [in Florida], thanks to the state’s recent reforms for the industry. … DeSantis press secretary, Jeremy Redfern, said that since that time, the main issue driving up costs for insurers in the state has been excessive litigation. So, in recent years, the state legislature passed a series of reforms signed into law by DeSantis to address the issues. [Fox credits DeSantis while the Washington Post ignores him!] … The company’s statement added, “We are encouraged by the recent insurance reforms and efforts to curb legal system abuse, and we will continue to work constructively with the Florida Legislature and the Office of Insurance Regulation to improve the marketplace on behalf of our Florida customers.”
  • Effect on children’s wealth when parents move to Florida (the main reason to choose a state these days, of course, is whether you agree with the goals of the state/local government (vastly more powerful since 2020), but it still might be interesting to look at the $$. Property tax burden in Florida, as a percentage of value, is similar to in Maskachusetts. Income and estate taxes are 0% in FL compared to top brackets of 9% and 16% in MA. So the person paying more for homeowner’s insurance in FL may find that the tax savings overpower the insurance pain. And, of course, moving into a modern apartment complex dramatically cuts insurance costs, even those paid indirectly via rent. since the typical apartment building is tough for a hurricane to knock over.
  • “Changes in Atlantic major hurricane frequency since the late-19th century” (Nature Magazine 2021, by authors from Princeton and NOAA): “there are no significant increases in either basin-wide HU [hurricane] or MH [major hurricane] frequency, or in the MH/HU ratio for the Atlantic basin between 1878 and 2019”
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Jimmy Buffett: Airman

A multiengine seaplane pilot has gone west. Let’s have a look at James William Buffett’s pilot certificate, from the FAA Airmen Registry:

Jimmy Buffett was a resident of Palm Beach County, as far as the FAA was concerned. He was typed in the Grumman Albatross (C/G-111), three Dassault Falcon bizjets, and the original Cessna Citation bizjet (bird strikes from the rear). The “date of issue” being in 2019 could have been due to a change of address, a change of gender ID, or an added rating.

Buffett wanted to see a Democrat-run Florida and Democrat-run United States. In “Jimmy Buffett takes musical shots at Trump during concert” (2018), for example, Buffett was supporting Andrew Gillum in the governor’s race against Ron DeSantis. He got his wish in 2020 for the country, at least.

Buffett became a billionaire via real estate development, mostly in Florida, and most recently with 55+ communities, e.g., in Daytona (see this New Yorker story). At the time of his death, he was working on a $400 million project just to our southeast in Riviera Beach. I hope that the project is completed. Even if I’m more of a classical and jazz listener, I’m sure that it will be an improvement over everything else that has been going on in Riviera Beach.

Maybe we need to honor Buffett’s memory by getting multiengine seaplane ratings in a Grumman Widgeon in Alabama. Who wants to go this fall, as soon as the weather cools off a little?

Or we could go to Key West, Florida. Although Buffett seems to have spent more time in Palm Beach, he is associated with Key West and built a hotel there. The good news is that Hotels.com is ready to help with the challenge of finding a gay-friendly place to stay in Key West. Note the “LGBTQ welcoming” checkbox at upper left in this listing of places available for Nov 3-5:

Very loosely related… the pilot who managed a successful off-airport landing in a Boeing 737 retired a few days ago.

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New York Times now says it is all of Florida’s coastal waters that hit 101 degrees

“What’s Next for Hurricane Season” (NYT, today):

… the heightened ocean water temperatures that grabbed headlines this summer for bleaching coral and turning Florida’s coastal waters into something akin to a hot tub. Scientists believe that climate change has contributed to the warming oceans. The abnormally hot water temperatures provide more energy to fuel hurricanes…

Loyal readers may recall Being boiled alive in the 101-degree ocean (according to NYT) in which the New York Times said that one buoy “in the Ocean Off Florida” hit 101 (it turned out to be a buoy in a 1-6′-deep puddle inside Florida, cut off from the actual ocean by the Florida Keys). Here’s the headline, complete with photo of the open ocean where the 101-degree temperature wasn’t measured:

In August, it was “a [single] high reading”. One month later, the “hot tub” temperatures have spread to most or all of the “coastal waters” surrounding Florida.

What does seatemperature.net say?

Water temp at the most familiar Florida beach is between -1 and +1 degree of the recent historical average. A typical hot tub is at 102 degrees. The current Miami Beach water temp of 86 is about where a recreational swimming pool would be set to. Over the past 7 years, it seems that the high temp for July, August, and September has been 89. In other words, what the New York Times calls “abnormally hot temperatures” are in the middle of the recent historical range.

What have elite New Yorkers been doing recently to address the climate change that they decry? Getting into fossil fuel-powered vehicles and going to see Bruce Springsteen perform in New Jersey. Instead of spending $2000+ on decarbonizing our economy, they’re listening to a geriatric fellow Democrat sing songs that they could stream for free. (Separately, these are the same folks who say that schools should be closed and the peasantry locked down any time that a respiratory virus threatens Gotham, yet they’re gathering in a crowd of 50,000+ to spread vaccine-resistant SARS-CoV-2 variants?)

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Why are there still 65,000 customers without electricity in Florida?

Hurricane Idalia came through northern Florida on Wednesday, August 30. Roughly 250,000 customers lost power. The situation at 10:00 am today, three days later:

It looks as though much of the problem is with two areas served by coop power companies (the numbers below are total customers then customers out):

They’re serving counties that were in the direct path of the storm. I’m wondering if they don’t have the hurricane-hardened infrastructure that we have in South Florida, where hurricanes regularly occur. Our transmission lines here are high above any trees that might fall. Delivery to neighborhoods is via underground cables. Is the problem up north simply that fallen trees have cut vulnerable lines? “About 40,000 linemen” were pre-positioned for Idalia, as for Hurricane Ian. But it seems as though the problem of restoration is tougher, at least on a per-customer basis (the affected counties are sparsely populated so maybe an entire power grid has to be reconstructed to restore 10,000 or 20,000 customers).

As the Bobs asked in Office Space, what is it that the 40,000 linemen actually do?

Separately, with all of the progress that has been made since Joe Biden took office, why don’t we have a gender-neutral term to replace “lineman”? What about electric grid workers who identify with one of the other 73 gender IDs recognized by Science?

Related:

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