The economy

Well, today's news is better. The rate at which the economy is shedding jobs has dropped. The jobless rate has dropped--probably due to the number of people dropping out of the job search exceeding the number of people losing their jobs. The economy needs to start adding jobs before the number of people employed will grow, and it needs to add jobs at a rate greater than the number of new entrants added to the work force in order to increase the percent employed.

It's not the end of the issue. It may only be slight change from a relentlessly downward track, but it's gone on enough to let it be a trend. I am hoping that it continues.

The swine flu

The trend is unambiguously down in number of new infections and number of new visits to physicians about flu-like symptoms. It's now below the peak of 2006-2007's flu season, and substantially below the peak of 2007-2008's flu season. It's not below the epidemic threshold yet.

The amount of vaccine available (in the US) is 78 million doses. Some states are allowing non-high risk groups to be vaccinated.