Who did COVID victims catch the virus from?

 Most all COVID patients in hospitals or on ventilators were put there by someone or someones who had not been vaccinated.

Given that police officers are forced in their jobs to go into below average sanitary situations -- taking whatever they pick up with them into other less than optimum sanitary conditions -- could that make any police force into a"super-spreader force", if not vaccinated?  Nothing snarky intended.
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Risk of taking the vaccine -- exact numbers unnecessary:
Let's just say half our population (cradle to grave) have gotten the vaccine -- 165 million -- at least one dose.  How many died from those needles?  Not even 100 died?  Be a gigantic story, if they did!
Let's just say one-quarter of our population -- 80 million -- has been exposed to the virus to the point where their immune system reacted.  700,000+ died.
Best odds?
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Those who wait for "more research" to judge the vaccine by will likely out wait the pandemic by the time their curiosity is satisfied -- will essentially wait for every epidemic to pass by before they ever get vaccinated.  Smart.

"Dark City" labor market

Imagine a world where buying consumer goods takes place only on Mon-Tue-Wed-Thur-Fri — and — cashing pay checks done only on Sat-Sun.  (I just viewed Dark City, so I am in the mood for such a model.)

Typical employers like Target and Walgreens average 12.5% labor costs — outliers WalMart and fast food have 7% and 25% labor costs.  Say, in one-single Mon-thru-Fri week, lower 40% pay employees double wages on average -- up 50% at fast food, up 2 1/2 X at Walmart.

Consumer prices for goods produced by lower income workers have to rise about 12.5% across the board — demand falls 12.5% for lower pay produced goods …

… on that particular Mon-thru-Fri.

Sat comes; lower cost workers pick up their doubled pay — for producing possibly fewer goods — Mon-thru-Fri haven’t dawned yet.

Mon comes; lower pay workers take the extra money squeezed from consumers to market to purchase goods and services — probably proportionately more on goods produced by lower wage workers.  Demand for lower pay produced goods rises more than 12.5%.


Put this eight-grade, market math to work for everybody whose labor the consumer might agree is worth more:
https://onlabor.org/why-not-hold-union-representation-elections-on-a-regular-schedule/

Joe Manchin's phoney trillion dollar trilogy.

 $5.4 trillion over six months -- compares to $3.5 trillion over ten years -- how? 

Even if we were leaving the bill for our grand kids -- GDP $20 trillion a year today -- 50% more population -- 50% more per capita income -- $45 trillion econ output 40 years from now (two generations).  Meantime $3.5 trillion sinks to $1 trillion with inflation.  Just saying.

Can't pay for Social Security today, Joe?  Trust Fund depleting?  Wanna build another Trust Fund for future?  Trust Funds make a lot of sense: you raise taxes decades earlier when the economy is less productive and the nation is less populous.  Then, you keep taxes lower in the future when we are more productive and more over crowded.  Smart.

South Vietnam won the war – at first

(1)  If we believe Richard Sorely’s 1999 book, A Better War, by mid-1972, the poor bedraggled South Vietnamese villagers, with about half the obsolescent American weapons they could have used, had so reduced their poor bedraggled Viet Cong counterparts that an American ambassador could travel the countryside without escort.
https://www.amazon.com/Better-War-Unexamined-Victories-Americas/dp/0156013096

(2)  This in turn made it impossible for Northern main forces to conceal their caches of food, medicine and ammunition delivered down the Ho Chi Minh trail– their main force soldiers were eating grass.  

(3)  Which in turn prodded North Vietnam to send every last soldier it had left at home – 200,000 – down south in an old fashioned conventional tank and artillery assault in a desperate attempt to relieve -- thrown back with 50% casualties.

The defending infantry were exclusively Vietnamese -- aided by American logistical, air and intelligence support.

Three years later North Vietnam blitzed its way through South Vietnam in three months.  With three more years to shape up, the South should have been even more ready.  What happened?  No American logistical, air, intelligence and financial support.  

We had taken our bat and ball and gone home.  After losing 60,000 American lives and spending hundreds of billions of dollars we wouldn’t even give South Vietnam the money to finish the job …

… craziest thing I’ve seen in my life.

Cannot fault Southern spirit:
“On the road to Saigon at Xuan Loc, an ordinary South Vietnamese unit, the 18th Division, fought battle-hardened North Vietnamese regulars backed by tanks, trucks, and artillery to a standstill for two full weeks. Not only did those South Vietnamese soldiers take heavy casualties, with more than a third of their men killed or wounded, but they held their positions through those long days of “meat-grinder” combat until the enemy had to circle around them to reach the capital.”
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/09/the-winner-in-afghanistan-china.html

According to Frank Snepp’s 1977 book, Decent Interval, we had someone on the North Vietnamese politburo and they had voted to throw in the towel (not sure the timeline here) – but when they in time caught on that the South was rationing artillery rounds, etc., they decided to start up again – with the well known result.
https://www.amazon.com/Decent-Interval-Frank-Snepp-dp-0394407431/dp/0394407431/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1633025165    

The decision year.  In 1965, our knees were still knocking over two little countries almost taking over the world 20 years earlier.  Now, the two biggest countries in the world were (very vocally) coming to get us (“We will bury you”).  It may look 10 X more dangerous than it should when it’s coming at you, but at that time but we were plenty scared (think Korea).