US Pandemic from 30,000 Feet

It seems to me the general pattern of the pandemic spread was:

• the first to become ill and those who spread the disease were the well-off.  By definition if you were traveling between China and Europe, or between Europe and the US, or China and the US, you had money and an upper-middle class or upper class lifestyle.  And those you gave the virus to likely shared those characteristics.
• but second to become ill were the parents and grandparents of the travellers, those in nursing homes and assisted living homes.  My assumption is that most people in such homes are from backgrounds with above-average incomes, even though Medicaid may cover care.
• the final tier of victims were the vulnerable, those in meat packing plants, those in congested areas living in crowded homes, immigrants and the poor.

This is just speculation; I hope I live to see some good social research on the subject. 

I Remember: Space's Early Days

Watched the successful launch today.  Brought back memories of the pathetic early days of our space program, plagued by disasters and pitifully behind the Soviets in throw weight.  America certainly wasn't great in space in those days--1957 to mid 60's.

After Musk had his Starship blow up in the unmanned testing phase, I and I'm sure others of my age thought back to those early days, which increased my concern over today's launch.  But I've long since tried to learn not to obsess over what I can't control.  Today means the Starship event was just another instance of Harshaw rule, and we can all applaud Musk and NASA.

Our Pictures in the Head Are Wrong

Until today I had an image in my mind: people come down with some symptoms, they start to get worse, they go to the hospital to the ICU.  Sometimes they go on ventilators and likely die; sometimes they are able to recover and leave the hospital.  That to me was the normal course of events for people with covid-19.  It's wrong.

I started looking at data today.  One set of data was the rate of death, which turns out to be about .6 of  1 percent.  Then I tracked down CDC data on the rate of ICU admissions.  That turns out to be much smaller.

I should have realized: sometimes people die in the hospital as I was thinking, but sometimes they die in their nursing or assisted living home.  And sometimes they die in their home home. So dying in the hospital is not the majority experience. 

As is often the case,things are more complicated than the images you have in your head.

How Far Do Aerosols Carry?

Josh Marshall at TPM links to an article which seems to take aim at the science behind the 6 foot distance, arguing it's old science and modern instruments can offer more accurate measurements.

I'm no expert--Marshall repeats the suggestion if you're close enough to smoker to smell the tobacco, you're likely too close for covid-19.  That's the sort of layman's measurement which appeals.  Might not be right but appeals.  I'd offer another layman's measurement: in season 3 of the Last King some episodes are set in winter.  It appears they shot in winter, because the exhaled breaths of people and horses are very visible.  Hard to guess the distance traveled, but often likely over 6 feet.

Election Predictions

I was wrong in 2016.  Maybe I'll do better in 2020.

As of Memorial Day, I'd put the odds this way:

• 10 percent chance Trump wins a majority of the 2-person popular vote and wins back the House.
• 30 percent chance Trump wins a majority of the electoral vote and keeps the Senate
• 10 percent chance neither candidate wins with 48 hours of election day, including possibility it goes to the House
• 30 percent chance Biden wins a majority of votes, both popular and electoral but fails to win the Senate.
• 10 percent chance Biden wins a comfortable majority, and squeaks a Senate majority
• 10 percent chance Biden wins a landslide, taking House and firm Senate majority

Bottom line, I think the Dems have more upside than the Reps but it's currently a tossup.

Furman and I: Great Minds

Politico reports that some Democrats, led by former Obama economist Furman, are worried that the fall will see lots and lots of positive economic news, as the economy starts to recover from the pandemic shutdown.  That's similar to my post here.

On the other hand, a FiveThirtyEight survey of economists has a prediction of a relatively slow recovery, a slight majority predicting a Swoosh (i.e., Nike logo) recovery.

Revising the US Food System

In the wake of the pandemic I'm seeing calls for the US to change the way we produce and distribute food.  Some of the proposals are intended to make it more resilient to disasters, some just hope for environmental friendlier ag.  See this piece and this 

I've doubts.  The way our food system currently works was never planned, but evolved. The forces at work were economic,governmental, social--the market system meant rewards for greater productivity and lower costs; the government ensures uniform food regulations for the country, government programs have eased the dislocations caused by the growth of more productive agriculture, the society as a whole values education, science and technology and the new, people place less of a priority on the taste and provenance of food and more of a priority on fast, cheap food which they don't have to prepare themselves.

Can these forces be changed, even if you have a popular cause that supports government action? Tastes can change, norms can change, but I'm not sure how well any social movement can manage such change.

Trump Is Dyslexic?

Bob Somerby at Daily Howler is often repetitive and long-winded, but he offers a perspective I don't often find elsewhere (although he and Kevin Drum respect each other and Kevin's my favorite blogger).

Here's Somerby discussing Andrew Sullivan's attack on the president.

Buried in there somewhere is the suggestion Donald Trump might be dyslexic.  I've not heard that before, but it's an intriguing suggestion.

As Somerby notes, liberals would normally shy from attacking someone with some disabilities or mental disorders, but not DJT.  The possibility won't change my attitude towards him either.

[Updated: If you assume that Trump is starting from a position of no knowledge, it would explain why he's easy prey for the last person to talk to him, and why he's suspicious of people.  For similar thoughts,here's Friedersdorf.

Speculation on What the FBI Was Doing

I approach the Michael Kelly case with some preconceptions:

1. the FBI has never been particularly fond of liberals.  The head of the agency has never been an agency.  For a long time it was headed by J.Edgar Hoover, a great bureaucrat and no friend to liberals.  It was a struggle to get some diversity into the agency, both minorities and women.
2. as an entrenched bureaucracy with its own esprit de corps it's liable not to follow direction from the outside.
3. Kelly I knew from his association with Gen. McChrystal and the Rolling Stone article, which got McChrystal fired.  I may have seen appraisals like that of Sarah Chayes in Business Insider, essentially a loose cannon, as I was once called, innovative but needing close management.
4. Not being a lawyer I've no good way of judging between claims that the interview with Flynn where he lied had no "predicate" (the Barr position) and therefore the case was tainted, and claims that the charges were appropriate and well-based.
5. Being a Democrat I'd enjoy any embarrassment to the Trump administration.

So, what do I make of Kelly, his indictment, and the subsequent dropping of the case by Attorney General Barr?

1. He was totally miscast as National Security Advisor, particularly for a president such as Trump. His selection, despite the warning from Obama, was an early instance of Trump's incompetence.
2. I doubt the narrative that the FBI looking at Flynn was part of an Obama administration's plot to undermine the Trump administration.  I don't believe the FBI would risk good relations with the incoming administration just because Obama or Yates told them to. That wouldn't fit my picture of the FBI as sophisticated bureaucratic players.
3. Not being a lawyer, I've not carefully followed the arguments about FBI having a predicate for its investigations, particularly because the rules seem to differ some between a criminal investigation and a national security (counter-intelligence) investigation.
4. My vague suspicion is as follows: in counter-intelligence people are paid to be suspicions, overly so.  Witness James Jesus Angleton, about whom I've written a time or two. It doesn't seem totally unreasonable to me that FBI agents would look at Flynn, fired by Obama from his DIA job, and say to themselves: if I were a Russian agent I might try to exploit his hard feelings, at least feel him out.  Certainly the KGB would see that as a potential gold mine and certain to reap big bureaucratic rewards.  
5. If I'm an FBI bureaucrat, I think I'd believe that the Russian/Flynn investigation could offer big rewards--it'd be good for my reputation and promotion prospects.  (I'm assuming that the FBI culture is rather insular, and  agents would believe that their director still, as J. Edgar was, could insulate them from flak from DOJ and the presidency.  )
6. I like a summary of the Mueller report from Dana Milbank: the Trump campaign wanted to collude with the Russians but was too incompetent to.  The whole episode is murky, and I don't believe it could have been much clearer to FBI agents.
7. One known unknown: we don't know what covert sources of information were and are available to the administration.   Presumably there are some, the existence of which has been hidden from the public record.

So my bottom line is disbelief in any sinister plot against Trump and his people. I think a combination of bureaucratic motives, culture, and incompetence came together with Trump incompetence to produce one good result: Flynn's resignation as national security adviser and likely a bad precedent for the way the FBI should operate in the future.

Firing Inspectors General

As a good government ("goo-goo") type, I'm perturbed by the president's removal of several IG's and acting IG"s.  But this piece  suggests there's not much Congress can do to stop such actions by a president.  IG's are executive branch employees and as such are subject to the president's authority.

I wonder: could we look to sports, the NFL, for a solution:  There the tension is between getting the call right and keeping the game flowing.  Could we give the president a couple get-out-of-jail cards per term--allow her to fire two IG's but no more?  Arguably this would permit the president flexibility but not too much.

I'm afraid what will happen when the administration changes: the new president will use the Trump precedent to fire the Trump-IG's and goo-goo norms will suffer further erosion.

CFAP--A Tip of the Hat

I remember the pains of trying to implement new legislation on a rush basis.  I could tell, and have told, stories about the experience. 

One thing I never experienced was trying to implement new legislation while working from home during a pandemic.  A tip of my hat to those working in DC and the field who are trying to navigate that morass.  (Post inspired by Brent Orr's picture of the training room in the South Building from which they did online training of the field on CFAP.)

What Will the Recovery Look Like?

I've no insight, but since when does that stop a true blogger?

Personally I think it will be slow-fast-slow. 

• the first slow will because the majority of people won't be risk-takers, they'll let others be the trailblazers.
• the fast will be as people realize that it is relatively safe--isolated incidents but nothing drastic enough to cause major political subdivisions to revert back to a lock-down.
• the second slow will be because of the drag on economic activity from the measures taken to minimize risk plus dealing with the economic damages of the pandemic--the closed restaurants, the half-empty nursing homes, etc.

We'll see.

A Test of Leadership

Back in the day I got bawled out by my deputy division director for cursing at an employee.  I deserved it.  I think it was that conversation where he discussed a fellow branch chief.  Lou was a WWII vet, whose ship IIRC had been sunk on D-Day.  He was a voluble guy, loud and boisterous with a temper.  But Bob pointed to him as a good leader, simply because he was consistently Lou.  His employees and those who dealt with him knew, at least after the initial getting-to-know-you, that what you saw was what you got, no surprises.  I needed that, to be consistent.  (Not sure I ever achieved that.)

I think of that lesson from time to time, never more these days when considering our President.  His approval rating on dealing with the pandemic has not been good.  Meanwhile some of our governors have very good ratings, particularly Gov. Cuomo. I don't follow him closely, but it seems to me his record of decision-making hasn't been all that great.  I account for the difference in ratings between him and Trump by consistency by the one and inconsistency by the other.

The Usefulness and Reuse of Masks

Early on in the pandemic, I think I was informed that masks would insulate the wearer from the world, particularly the viral particles floating around in the air from those already infected.  So it made sense that masks were one-time use--you go out wearing a mask, you meet someone infected and his virus particles get hung up in your mask. You then go home, and the mask represents a threat to anyone who contacts it.  Fine.

But now I'm getting the impression the main function of the mask is to protect the world from you, the wearer.  It captures your germs, your viral particles.  Is that true?  If it is, then the mask can be used more than once.  If you're infected, and the mask captures your virus, there's no new contamination in the home and no real downside to reusing it.

Anti-Trump Derangement Syndrome

Conservatives use TDS to paint liberals as so biased against the president that they're incapable of treating his positions fairly.

I'd suggest the Anti-TDS as applying when conservatives or independents (like Ann Althouse) lean over backwards to whitewash his tweets and news conferences using excuses like he's joking or he's being sarcastic. 

I think it's sometimes true that DJT says things he doesn't expect to be taken seriously, but I refuse to believe it's a joke or sarcasm, at least not as a normal thing.

A Man Who Cares: Joe Fore

Joe Fore on Twitter does something I love:  assess typoographical choices of the legal profession.

(Thread) There’s been a lot of #legalwriting typography content lately. After seeing @BobLoeb’s great graphic showing font choices by federal circuit, I wanted to explore each circuit’s formatting choices in more detail, and, hopefully, draw out some broader themes.

— Joe Fore (@Joe_Fore) May 18, 2020

He dings the First Circuit for their use of monospaced type, one of my pet peeves.

Suppose We Didn't Have Work From Home

There have been a lot of comparisons between the current pandemic and those in the past, particularly in terms of case numbers and deaths.

One thing which isn't accounted for in such comparisons is the existence of the Internet and the enabling of work from home. My point is that in 2020 we had the option of closing offices and working from home, of closing schools and going to remote learning, of moving to tele-medicine.

I don't know how much difference it makes; I don't know the extent to which shelter-in-place was implemented in past pandemics.  But I'm sure it makes a significant difference, which social scientists will be trying to figure out over the next years.

Suppose Trump Is Mostly Right?

Let's say the reopening of the US goes okay, some glitches, but on the whole the level of deaths keeps declining down to a low level, so Covid-19 is just the fourth or fifth most common cause of death.

And suppose that's low enough that businesses and schools reopen during the summer without major setbacks.

So now it's October 1 and things have been going pretty well.  And most important they have been going pretty well since May 15.

And the stories in the media are no longer the gloom of uncertainty but the resilience of the country.

And despite the impact on the economy, our "animal spirits" have revived and the majority of the country thinks things are improving, and we're on the right track.

What then will be the outlook for Trump's reelection?

A Note From the Store: Toilet Paper

I was intrigued yesterday by the toilet paper  shelf at Safeway.  Usually they have multi-roll packs of their own toilet paper, plus those of name brands.  There were a few such packs of their own brand yesterday, but the bulk of the shelves were filled with individual rolls of a couple of brands I'd never seen before. They were foreign, I think, but didn't linger to investigate further.

Trump: Keep Your Cotton Pickin' Hands Off My Money

I remember when the Thrift Savings Plan was created as part of a plan to reform the compensation of federal employees, of which I was one. IIRC the administration tried to eliminate the defined benefit retirement plan under civil service.  Switching from defined benefit to defined contribution was all the rage in private enterprise back then.

IIRC correctly there was some opposition particularly on the right based on the idea the investment money would be under the control of political types who would try to use their leverage to further their socialistic goals.

From EBRI's summary:i

KEY FACTORS TO SUCCESS: Despite initial opposition from labor groups and veto threats from the Reagan administration, Congress ultimately enacted a plan that reduced federal spending and eventually won strong support from federal workers, particularly because of the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). Lawmakers deliberately and carefully insulated the TSP from political manipulation and minimized the impact of the federal workers’ investments in the financial markets.

Now the Trump administration is pushing the TSP board not to include Chinese stocks in the I (international) fund.  (Some in Congress are pushing a law forward to effect the same goal.)What it means is a lower return on my money because they view China as an adversary. 

I hope all those conservatives who worried about political considerations impacting TSP investment decisions back in 1986 will now oppose this move.

We Do Better by Our Animals Than Humans?

This is a paragraph from a Washington Post article on an OK veterinary lab which got into Covid-19 testing:

The Oklahoma Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory’s scrappy, collaborative effort to shift gears amid a crisis was aided by basic biological similarities between humans and other species: Animals’ nasal passages are routinely swabbed for viruses, and nucleic acid is extracted from samples and amplified on state-of-the-art machines identical to those used in human testing for the novel coronavirus. But it also highlights the preparedness of many animal health labs, which — unlike public health labs — have been buttressed by federal grants to be bulwarks against outbreaks that could cripple livestock and poultry industries.

That last sentence struck me.

The Impact of Technology on FSA Communications

I posted previously on my discovery of the FDA Facebook group, which is a new means of communication across the organization.  Some further thoughts:

When I joined ASCS my impression was it was hierarchical organization.  Questions would come from the county through the district director to the state office to the area director to the applicable program specialist in the program division.  At least that was the theory. Over time I discovered the role of the county and state committees, which was contested.  In theory they were in charge of applying policy decisions to their counties and states.  (This is what they had been in the 1930's.) In reality it seemed to me that they often lacked the expertise and always lacked the day-to-day operational awareness really to fulfill that role.  As a result over the years their role had diminished, but smart county and state executive directors would manage their relationships with their committees.

The role of the district director was also evolving, as symbolized by the change in terminology from "farmer fieldman" to "district director".  My impression is that these positions were often quite political, with significant turnover when the political party in charge changed.  As a cynic my impression was the quality of the DD's varied, meaning they sometimes were obstacles and were bypassed by the more knowledgeable CED's.

When ASCS started installing System/36's in county offices, it put a lot of strain on the old systems.  First and foremost, nobody involved in the new technology had experience with it, so a simple question that a program assistant might take to a more senior person, or the CED, wouldn't receive an answer. The time required to move a question from county through state to DC (KCMO)and finding someone with an answer and then getting it back down the chain was simply too long.

Time and experience solved some of the problems as we all learned by trial and error. I suspect, but can't prove, that informal communication networks expanded.  People learned who in the state was more capable with the technology. 

Cleaning Up After the Trump Elephant

The old joke about following a circus parade and having to clean up after the elephants...?

After Trump leaves office there will be a lot of cleanup needed:

• reestablishing norms for openness, including releasing tax returns, maintaining public records of who visits the White House,  putting assets into blind trusts, not using official events to push political agendas or to sell stuff, etc.
• redoing the interactions with Congress.
• [updated--prohibiting policy announcements by twitter.]

I don't know how we do this.  The natural tendency of each branch of government is to keep their authority, so it may be harder to undo Trump precedents than we'd like to think.

Bucket-a-Day

I've started reading P.D.James "Time To Be in Earnest"-- a sort of memoir in diary form.  Describing her childhood she mentioned heating the water for the weekly bath.  Don't know why that cause me to think of our "bucket-a-day". Here's an article discussing a modern use.  For us we used it in the summer only.  The rest of the year we had the coal stove going.  In addition to cooking and heating part of the downstairs the stove also heated our water.  Pipes ran through it to capture heat from the fire.  The heated water, being less dense than cold, would rise through a pipe to a tank in the upstairs bathroom.  When you opened the hot water faucets in the kitchen and downstairs half-bath the hot water was drawn from the tank to the faucets. 

FSA Now and Then

I signed up for Facebook years ago, but rather quickly decided I wouldn't make much use of it.

But, the other day I thought to search for FSA and found there's a big and active FSA group there.  I was approved to join, so I'm occasionally starting to review the posts (whatever the Facebook term is for it).

Apparently most (all?) FSA offices are operating behind locked doors, so producer contact is by phone and email.  Looks to be variation in the rules applied and the infrastructure being supplied.  (IMHO that's an old story, inevitable in the US but that's no consolation to those getting the short end of the stick.) 

Reading some of the comments of the toll being experienced by the staff reminded me of the field's experiences with the 1983 PIK program and then the pain of moving to the System/36.  This generation will have their own war stories with which to bore their young successors.

Upton Sinclair's Jungle

The covid-19 problems in meatpacking plants remind me of Upton Sinclair's Jungle. It had a major impact on the American food system, but much remains the same--especially the use of immigrant labor under what seems to be harsh conditions, at least when looked at through American eyes.

Legislating Good Norms

Our current president has broken a lot of the norms and a few of the laws which existed before 2017.  One of the tasks of whoever succeeds him will be to figure out how to return to those norms.  One pathway is for Congress to pass and the president to sign laws which have that effect.  One such effort is already under way, as described in this post from FCW.  Rep. Porter is proposing to tighten the rules on "acting" officials.  President Trump has admitted he likes to have acting officials so he has more power: he can intimidate them more easily and fire them if they won't bend.  In normal times presidents and Congress acted reasonably quickly to fill most vacancies, although they were instances where a Senate would put a hold on a nominee in order to pressure the administration to take some particular action.

My opinion of Porter'sbill: we shouldn't have needed it but we do. The bureaucracy does not work well with "acting"officials at the top.

On Fences and Hedgerows

Here's an article on hedgerows in the UK. 

I remember visiting North Carolina ASCS offices with the district director (this was 1968 or 9) and noticing some barbed wire fences (not many in the tobacco-growing area) with the wire on the outside of the posts.  I was struck because in NY we put the wire on the inside; dad explained it meant that cows pushing against the wire were pushing against the post, while if it were on the outside they would be forcing the staple out of the wood.

Years later I learned the difference related to the way agriculture developed in the Northeast versus the South.  In the Northeast livestock were fenced in; field crops were attractive to livestock.  In the South livestock, especially hogs, were left to roam free, field crops of tobacco and cotton weren't attractive to livestock, fields of corn etc. that were attractive were protected by fencing out.

Now I'm guessing the use of hedgerows in the UK reflects the relative scarcity of wood--no split rail fences there,  the fact that fields developed long before barbed wire became available, and the development of a historic pattern.  Hedgerows would seem to require a long lead time to grow; not like a fence which can go up in a few days.  So if farms have been around for centuries, there was time for hedgerows to develop.

Superspreader Individuals or Situations

Megan McArdle offered this thought in a thread commenting on an elaborate analysis of probabilities (too elaborate for me to even try to follow):

Over the long term, I think this stuff matters less; if you remain open, in any moderate population center, a superspreader will find you. But early in the epidemic, a random walk will make some places look smart and others look dumb, purely by chance.

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) May 4, 2020

I can venture to comment on this, however.  The assumption here seems to be that "superspreading" is a function of an individual (think Typhoid Mary perhaps, but not necessarily asymtomatic).  That's certainly been my understanding from the past. 

But in the context of this new pandemic, I ran across an interesting report by someone who tried to assemble worldwide reports of mass contagion and then to analyze common features. I may have mentioned this before.  The features were crowds plus intimate contact and/or a lot of vocal activity--cheers, shouts, etc. 

One would think we could rely on people to avoid such situations, although when you look at the rallies protesting against lock-downs you have to wonder.  But in principle avoiding such situations is easier than identifying potential superspreaders.  It's likely unknowable currently to determine the proportion of total infections occurring from superspreader individuals, versus crowd contagion, versus individual contact.

Comparing to Whom?

I don't think I posted during the Kavanaugh confirmation process, except to predict it wouldn't matter much in 2020.  Now Biden is facing questions on his past, and the right is accusing the left of inconsistency, of applying a different standard to Biden than Kavanaugh.

Let me opine;

• first, the context.  In the Kavanaugh case the issue was whether to confirm him to a life position on the basis of known facts, and some allegations.  In the Biden case there are two possible framings: either he's just a candidate for the Dem nomination, and therefore the Dems should choose someone else, or at least investigate more, OR he's the Dem nominee in all but name and the issue is whether to vote for him or someone else in November. I think the latter position is more logical, as well as favoring my "priors". Sanders is the logical alternative to Biden as nominee, but he's my least favorite.  A dispute over who replaces Biden would kill chances to win the presidency IMO.
• In my mind some of the "We Too" movement is what was called "pour encourager les autres". In other words, we're trying to establish new social norms by levying punishments which, in some cases, are disproportionate to the crime.  I'd view Al Franken's case in that light. If he had apologized at the time of the incidents and the woman accepted it, that would have closed the case.  Even if she didn't accept it, it wouldn't be a problem for a future political career.  You have to distinguish between Franken and Weinstein or Cosby, who were accused and convicted of actual crimes. 
• The distinction between contemporaneous incidents, where the response by the victim and possibly law enforcement quickly follows the incident, and the asynchronous ones, where the victim comes forward well after the incident is important.
• Biden's touchy-feely episodes, for which he's apologized, seem not to have been crimes but breaches of good behavior as now understood. 
• The Tara Reade incident would have been a crime when committed, although a recourse to HR and not the police would be the usual response, I think.
• In judging the evidence as between the Kavanaugh and Biden cases these seem relevant:

1. alcohol involved in the Kavanaugh case on both sides, perhaps explaining behavior but also blurring memories.
2. no other accusers of Biden, which if it continues, is strong evidence--as in the Franken case once the ice is broken other people come forward.  Even with Kavanaugh others came forward.
3. the scenario for Kavanaugh drunken teenagers in an otherwise empty house seems more likely than groping in an office building presumably with other people in it.
4. Dr. Ford seems to have been more consistent with her story than Ms Reade, and her life has been smoother than Reade's.  That's classist, yes, so be it.
5. Reade has told more people her story at different times, though it's not clear how many times she alleged digital penetration. Without that there could have been a touchy-feely incident at the core of the story.
6. "Me too" movement and Biden goes too far when saying the woman must be believed: the story must be heard and carefully weighed.
7. While the difficulty of searching Biden's 1800 boxes of records can be exaggerated, assuming his office manager was well organized, I doubt the worth of doing the research.  A manager of interns and mail is likely to pass through an office without leaving much written history.

So my bottom line is I support Biden and will vote for him.  On treatment of women, Biden's record with women is much much much better than Trump's.  Indeed, on everything his record is better than Trump's.

The Wearing of Hats

One of the things which fascinate me is the wearing of hats in the US.

If you look at pictures showing massed men in the 1920's/30's, as in unemployment lines or baseball stadiums, you see all the men wearing hats.  There also seems to be a lot of uniformity in dress, like business suits, but the hats are the easiest to see.

Recently I noticed a picture of Abraham Lincoln addressing a crowd, I think the 2nd Inaugural, and noticed his audience was also wearing hats.  The picture wasn't as clear as more modern ones, but it looks as if there's a bit less uniformity in the types of hats being worn.  In another photograph his audience in front is hat wearing, the big shots behind him are hat carrying, mostly top hats.

When you google "when did American men stop wearing hats" the first result is an Esquire article saying hat wearing started to decline in the later 1920's.  Why--perhaps because more people were in cars so they were less needed and some were more awkward to wear.

This NPR page has good comparison pictures and blames Ike but also cars.

Neither of the pieces comment on the change which seems apparent to me--fewer hats correlates with greater variety in menswear.