Tag Archives: Non-Pharmaceutical interventions

Sweden’s Pandemic Policy: Arguably Best Practice

14 Monday Nov 2022

Posted by in Health Care, Pandemic

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When Covid-19 began its awful worldwide spread in early 2020, the Swedes made an early decision that ultimately proved to be as protective of human life as anything chosen from the policy menu elsewhere. Sweden decided to focus on approaches for which there was evidence of efficacy in containing respiratory pandemics, not mere assertions by public health authorities (or anyone else) that stringent non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) were necessary or superior.

The Swedish Rationale

The following appeared in an article in Stuff in late April, 2020,

“Professor Johan Giesecke, who first recruited [Sweden’s State epidemiologist Anders] Tegnell during his own time as state epidemiologist, used a rare interview last week to argue that the Swedish people would respond better to more sensible measures. He blasted the sort of lockdowns imposed in Britain and Australia and warned a second wave would be inevitable once the measures are eased. ‘… when you start looking around at the measures being taken by different countries, you find very few of them have a shred of evidence-base,’ he said.

Giesecke, who has served as the first Chief Scientist of the European Centre for Disease Control and has been advising the Swedish Government during the pandemic, told the UnHerd website there was “almost no science” behind border closures and school closures and social distancing and said he looked forward to reviewing the course of the disease in a year’s time.”

Giesecke was of the opinion that there would ultimately be little difference in Covid mortality across countries with different pandemic policies. Therefore, the least disruptive approach was to be preferred. That meant allowing people to go about their business, disseminating information to the public regarding symptoms and hygiene, and attempting to protect the most vulnerable segments of the population. Giesecke said:

“I don’t think you can stop it. It’s spreading. It will roll over Europe no matter what you do.”

He was right. Sweden had a large number of early Covid deaths primarily due to its large elderly population as well as its difficulty in crafting effective health messages for foreign-speaking immigrants residing in crowded enclaves. Nevertheless, two years later, Sweden has posted extremely good results in terms of excess deaths during the pandemic.

Excess Deaths

Excess deaths, or deaths relative to projections based on historical averages, are a better metric than Covid deaths (per million) for cross-country or jurisdictional comparisons. Among other reasons, the latter are subject to significant variations in methods of determining cause of death. Moreover, there was a huge disparity between excess deaths and Covid deaths during the pandemic, and the gap is still growing:

Excess deaths varied widely across countries, as illustrated by the left-hand side of the following chart:

Interestingly, most of the lowest excess death percentages were in Nordic countries, but especially Sweden and Norway. That might be surprising in terms of high Nordic latitudes, which may have created something of a disadvantage in terms of sun exposure and potentially low vitamin D levels. Norway enacted more stringent public policies during the pandemic than Sweden. Globally, however, lockdown measures showed no systematic advantage in terms of excess deaths. Notably, the U.S. did quite poorly in terms of excess deaths at 8X the Swedish rate,

Covid Deaths

The right-hand side of the chart above shows that Sweden experienced a significant number of Covid deaths per million residents. The figure still compares reasonably well internationally, despite the country’s fairly advanced age demographics. Most Covid deaths occurred in the elderly and especially in care settings. Like other places, that is where the bulk of Sweden’s Covid deaths occurred. Note that U.S. Covid deaths per million were more than 50% higher than in Sweden.

NPIs Are Often Deadly

Perhaps a more important reason to emphasize excess deaths over Covid deaths is that public policy itself had disastrous consequences in many countries. In particular, strict NPIs like lockdowns, including school and business closures, can undermine public health in significant ways. That includes the inevitably poor consequences of deferred health care, the more rapid spread of Covid within home environments, the physical and psychological stress from loss of livelihood, and the toll of isolation, including increased use of alcohol and drugs, less exercise, and binge eating. Isolation is particularly hard on the elderly and led to an increase in “deaths of despair” during the pandemic. These were the kinds of maladjustments caused by lockdowns that led to greater excess deaths. Sweden avoided much of that by eschewing stringent NPIs, and Iceland is sometimes cited as a similar case.

Oxford Stringency Index

I should note here, and this is a digression, that the most commonly used summary measure of policy “stringency” is not especially trustworthy. That measure is an index produced by Oxford University that is available on the Our World In Data web site. Joakim Book documented troubling issues with this index in late 2020, after changes in the index’s weightings dramatically altered its levels for Nordic countries. As Book said at that time:

“Until sometime recently, Sweden, which most media coverage couldn’t get enough of reporting, was the least stringent of all the Nordics. Life was freer, pandemic restrictions were less invasive, and policy responses less strong; this aligned with Nordic people’s experience on the ground.”

Again, Sweden relied on voluntary action to limit the spread of the virus, including encouragement of hygiene, social distancing, and avoiding public transportation when possible. Book was careful to note that “Sweden did not ‘do nothing’”, but it’s policies were less stringent than its Nordic neighbors in several ways. While Sweden had the same restrictions on arrivals from outside the European Economic Area as the rest of the EU, it did not impose quarantines, testing requirements, or other restrictions on travelers or on internal movements. Sweden’s school closures were short-lived, and its masking policies were liberal. The late-2020 changes in the Oxford Stringency Index, Book said, simply did not “pass the most rudimentary sniff test”.

Economic Stability

Sweden’s economy performed relatively well during the pandemic. The growth path of real GDP was smoother than most countries that succumbed to the excessive precautions of lockdowns. However, Norway’s economy appears to have been the most stable of those shown on the chart, at least in terms of real output, though it did suffer a spike in unemployment.

The Bottom Line

The big lesson is that Sweden’s “light touch” during the pandemic proved to be at least as effective, if not more so, than comparatively stringent policies imposed elsewhere. Covid deaths were sure to occur, but widespread non-Covid excess deaths were unanticipated by many countries practicing stringent intervention. That lack of foresight is best understood as a consequence of blind panic among public health “experts” and other policymakers, who too often are rewarded for misguided demonstrations that they have “done something”. Those actions failed to stop the spread in any systematic sense, but they managed to do great damage to other aspects of public health. Furthermore, they undermined economic well being and the cause of freedom. Johan Giesecke was right to be skeptical of those claiming they could contain the virus through NPIs, though he never anticipated the full extent to which aggressive interventions would prove deadly.

Bill Gates, Wayward Climate Nerd

17 Wednesday Nov 2021

Posted by in Climate, Energy

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Bill Gates’ considerable philanthropic efforts through the Gates Foundation are well known. Much of the foundation’s activity has focused on disease control and nutrition around the globe. Education reform has also been a priority. Many of these projects are laudable, though I’m repulsed by a few (see here and here). During the coronavirus pandemic, Gates has spoken approvingly of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (lockdown measures), which are both coercive and ineffective (and see here). He has earned the enmity of anti-vaxers, of course, though I’m not anti-vax as long as the jabs are voluntary. The Gates Foundation funded the World Health Organization’s effort to provide guidance on digital vaccine passports, which is a de facto endorsement of discrimination based on vaccination status. His priorities for addressing climate change also raise some troubling issues, a few of which I address below.

Squeezing Policy from a Definition

Gates put a special Malthusian twist on a TED Talk he did back in 2010 using an equation for carbon dioxide emissions, which he’s reprised over the years. It gained a lot of notice in 2016 when a few sticklers noticed that his claim to have “discovered” the equation was false. The equation is:

CO2 = P x S x E x C,

where P = People, S = Services per person, E = Energy per service, and C = CO2 per energy unit.

This equation first appeared as the so-called Kaya Identity in a scientific review in 2002. Such an equation can be helpful in organizing one’s thoughts, but it has no operational implications in and of itself. At one level it is superficial: we could write a similar identity for almost anything, like the quantity of alcohol consumed in a year, which must equal the population times the ounces of alcohol per drink times the number of drinks per person. At a deeper level, it can be tempting to build theories around such equations, and there is no question that any theory about CO2 must at least preserve the identity.

There’s an obvious temptation to treat an equation like this as something that can be manipulated by policy, despite the possibility of behavioral links across components that might lead to unintended consequences. This is where Gates gets into trouble.

Reality Checks

As David Solway writes, Gates’ jumped to the conclusion that population drives carbon emissions, reinforcing a likely perspective that the human population is unsustainable. His benevolent solution? A healthier population won’t breed as fast, so he prescribes more vaccinations (voluntary?) and improved health care. For good measure, he added a third prong: better “reproductive health services”. Let’s see… what share of the 0.9 -1.4 billion reduction in world population Gates prescribed in 2016 would have come from terminated pregnancies?

In fact, healthier people might or might not want more children, but lower child mortality in the developing world would reduce certain economic incentives for high fertility. Another reliable association is between income and child bearing: an increase in “services per person” is likely to lead to smaller families, but that wasn’t given any emphasis by Gates. Income growth is simply not part of the narrative! Yet income growth does something else: it allows us to more easily afford the research and investments required for advanced technologies, including cleaner energy. These things take time, however.

Solway points to other weaknesses in Gates’ interpretation of the Kaya Identity. For example, efforts to slow population growth are not reliably associated with “services per person”, fuel efficiency, or carbon efficiency. In other words, carbon emissions may be powerfully influenced by factors other than population. China is a case in point.

Centralized industrial and social planning is generally ill-suited to advancing human well being. It’s especially suspect if the sole objective is to reduce carbon emissions. But Gates knows that lowering emissions without a corresponding drop in real income requires continuing technological advances and/or more efficient decisions about which technologies to deploy. He is a big advocate of developing cheap hydrogen power, which is far from a reality. He is also excited about carbon capture technologies, which are still in their infancy.

Renewables like wind and solar power play a large part in Gates’ vision. Those technologies cannot deliver a reliable flow of power, however, without either adequate backup capacity or a dramatic advance in battery technology. Gates over-promotes wind and solar, but I give him credit for acknowledging their intermittency. He attempts to come to grips with it by advocating nuclear backup, but it’s just not clear that he has integrated the incremental cost of the necessary backup capacity with other direct costs of these renewables… not to mention the considerable environmental costs imposed by wind and solar (see the “back-to-nature” photo at the top for a cogent illustration). Power storage at scale is still a long way off, and its cost will be significant as well.

We could deploy existing energy technologies to greater advantage with respect to carbon efficiency. We’ve already reduced CO2 emissions in the U.S. by substituting natural gas for less carbon-efficient fuels, but the Biden Administration would rather discourage its use. Gates deserves credit for recognizing the huge role that nuclear energy can play in providing zero-carbon power. Despite that, he still can’t quite bring himself to admit the boneheadedness of heavy reliance on intermittent renewables.

Bill’s “Green Premium”

Gates seems to have deemphasized the Kaya Identity more recently. Instead, his focus has shifted to the so-called “green premium”, or the incremental cost of using zero-carbon technology relative to a traditional source. Needless to say, the premium is large for truly zero-carbon sources, but Gates emphasizes the importance of using the green premium to guide development even in the here and now.

That’s fine, but it’s not clear that he gives adequate consideration to cases in which emissions, while not eliminated, can be reduced at a negative incremental cost via appropriate substitution. That describes the transition to natural gas from other fuels. This is something that markets can do without the assistance of ham-handed interventionists. Gates prefers nuclear power and says natural gas is “not a real bridge technology” to a zero carbon future. That’s short-sighted and reflects an absolutist mindset that ignores both the economic and political environment. The thinking is that if it’s not zero emissions, it’s not worth doing.

Gates emphasizes the need to sharply reduce the range of green premia on various technologies to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But the goal of net-zero emissions 2050 is based on the highly unlikely proposition that global catastrophe awaits failing net-zero. In fact, the predicted consequences of doing nothing are based on drastic and outdated carbon growth scenarios and rudimentary carbon-forcing models that have proven to be severely biased to the upside in terms of predicting global temperature trends.

The idea that 2050 is some kind of “deadline” is a wholly arbitrary determination. Furthermore, the absolutism with which such goals are stated belies a failure to properly assess the true costs and benefits of carbon-based energy. If we so much as accept the notion that fossil fuels have external costs, we are then expected to accept that zero carbon emissions is optimal. This is not “science”; it is doctrine propped-up by bizarre and false scare stories. It involves massive efforts to manipulate opinion and coerce behavior based upon shoddy forecasts produced by committee. Even carbon capture technology is considered “problematic” because it implies that someone, somewhere, will use a process that emits CO2. That’s a ridiculous bogeyman, of course, and even Gates supports development of carbon capture.

Conclusion

I’ve never felt any real antipathy for Bill Gates as a person. He built a fortune, and I used his company’s software for most of my career. In some ways I still prefer it to macOS. I believe Gates is sincere in his efforts to help humanity even if his efforts are misdirected. He seems to reside on the less crazy end of the spectrum of climate alarmists. He’s putting a great deal of his private resources toward development of technologies that, if successful, might actually lead to less coercion by those attempting to transform private energy decisions. Nevertheless, there is menace in some of the solutions to which Gates clings. They require concerted action on the part of central authorities that would commandeer private resources and abrogate liberty. His assertion that the world is over-populated is both dubious and dangerous. You can offer free health care, but a conviction that the population must be thinned can lead to far more radical and monstrous initiatives.

The “green premium” promoted by Gates is an indirect measure of how far we must go to achieve parity in the pricing of carbon and non-carbon energy sources, as if parity should be an objective of public policy. That proposition is based on bad economics, fraudulent analyses of trends in carbon concentrations and climate trends, and a purposely incomplete menu of technological alternatives. Yes, the green premium highlights various technological challenges, but it is also a direct measure of how much intervention via taxes or subsidies are necessary to achieve parity. Is that a temptation to policymakers? Or does it represent a daunting political barrier? It’s pretty clear that the “median voter” does not view climate change as the only priority.

Stagflation and the Supply of Bad Public Policy

20 Wednesday Oct 2021

Posted by in Inflation

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Price inflation is getting more attention now than it has in many years, but not everyone is convinced it will persist, most conspicuously bond investors. The Biden Administration’s initial narrative was plausible even if there were seeds of doubt: a price spike was to be expected relative to the low-ebb of price changes during the pandemic. However, the inflation data has come in strong since the spring, and events point to continuing price pressures and the potential for expected inflation to drive escalations in contract pricing. Once embedded like that, the phenomenon broadens and gets harder to squeeze out.

Broadening Price Hikes

The evidence at hand is never enough to take much comfort in predictions, and the uncertainties now are similar to those I discussed in June. At the time, the price moves had been pronounced only in the prior month or so, and there was no evidence of any breadth. Now, it’s at least clear that increases in the so-called “core” Consumer Price Index (CPI), which excludes food and energy prices, have escalated. In addition, the growth in the median component of the CPI basket reported by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland has begun to jump. So has the “trimmed CPI”, which excludes the most extreme 8% of prices changes in both directions within the index. The chart below shows one-month changes in these gauges:

So the recent upward price trends have expanded in breadth, and their persistence is making it a little harder to argue that the changes are transitory rebounds from pandemic weakness.

Bond Investors Still Nonchalant

Investors are by no means convinced that the recent price pressures will persist. They have an incentive to bid-up bond yields to compensate for expected inflation, so these yields can be used to infer inflation expectations. The chart below from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows the five-year “breakeven” inflation rate, which is derived from inflation-indexed versus unindexed Treasury securities.

The pattern does not suggest that a meaningful change in inflation expectations has taken place. In fact, the implied five-year inflation forecast has edged down a bit. Of course, we’re still worrying about a fairly short period of high month-to-month changes in prices, and five years is a long time in that context.

This “casual” reaction of interest rates to the inflation spike undoubtedly reflects investors’ belief that the Federal Reserve will tighten policy in an effort to contain inflation. Some of us have strong doubts about the Fed’s inflation-fighting resolve, however. There is little the Fed can do to relieve supply-side problems, and many would argue that the Fed should take an accommodative stance in an attempt to minimize output and job losses, but that would reinforce the inflationary effects. There is no easy way out. Risks loom in both directions, and though I might regret it, at recent yields, I’m not buying Treasury bonds.

Sources of Price Pressure

Economists have tended to divide price pressures into those driven by demand and those driven by supply. Sometimes the terms “demand-pull” and “cost-push” inflation are used for shorthand. The former is usually associated with economic growth, where rising prices indicate that demand is outpacing gains in capacity. With cost-push inflation, however, rising prices indicate that production snd supply is somehow impeded. You get higher prices and lower output. This is so-called “stagflation”. Today we seem to have a combination of those inflationary forces in play: demand has rebounded from the pandemic lows of 2020, while breakdowns in the supply chain have choked production, with a consequent need for more severe price rationing. If the latter forces win out, we will have entered a stagflationary episode.

Unfortunately, administration policies are exacerbating supply-side inflationary pressures. Officials first insisted that the jump in inflation measures would be transitory. More recently they’ve said that it really only hurts “the rich”, an assertion that is decidedly false. Biden flaks are doing their level best to put lipstick on a pig. “Peppermint” Psaki says it shows that people just want to buy things! On the other hand, the Washington Post encourages us to “lower our expectations”. Um, yeah… I think we’re there!

Burning Energy Producers and Consumers

Energy policy is an obvious case: while a hurricane moving through the Gulf of Mexico took a big bite out of domestic oil production, Biden took several steps to hamstring the domestic fossil fuel industry at a time when the economy was still recovering from the pandemic. This included revoking permits for the Keystone pipeline, a ban on drilling on federal lands and federally-controlled waters in the Gulf, shutting down production on some private lands on the pretext of enforcing the Endsngered Species Act, and capping methane emissions by oil and gas producers. And all that was apparently just a start.

As Mark Theisen notes, when you promise to destroy a particular industry, as Joe Biden has, by taxing and regulating it to death, who wants to invest in or even maintain production facilities? Some leftists with apparent influence on the administration are threatening penalties against the industry up to and including prosecution for “crimes against humanity”! This is moronic, of course, but perhaps these extremists are just trying to move the Overton Window. Fossil fuels have been and still are a miracle in terms of human well-being, and renewable (but intermittent) energy sources are simply not capable of replacing the lost power, as Germans, Californians, and Texans are learning. Furthermore, the effort to kill fossil fuels amounts to a war on the poor. Americans are facing steep increases in their utility bills and blackouts during the times when power is needed most. Now, Biden is actively trying to wheedle more oil production out of OPEC, as if it’s okay for those nations to extract it, but not for us to do so!

Labor Shortage

Have you heard it’s hard to get help these days? You’ll notice it pretty fast if you have regular occasion to deal with service establishments. Goods are getting scarce on the shelves as well. Food and paper goods are getting pricier. The semiconductor shortage has been prominent, impacting production and pricing of electronics, computers, and new cars, with a big cross-effect on the used car and rental car markets. Everywhere you look, sellers seem short of inventory. This year it might be tough to fill the space under the Christmas tree for lack of availability.

This isn’t just about cargo ships unable to unload at the ports, although that’s significant. Patrick Tyrell and Anthony B. Kim note the difficulty of overcoming the supply chain breakdowns even with 24/7 operations at the ports. Tyrell snd Kim offer this quite from the Financial Times:

“The US is facing a shortage of warehouse space and truck drivers, and shifting to 24/7 operation will require enormous co-ordination between the publicly operated ports and private sector groups, including large retailers and freight companies.”

There are several reasons for the labor shortage: a few workers and businesses might still be living in fear of COVID, especially in “blue” states and urban areas where the fear factor seems to have been more palpable. That’s where the high unemployment is. There has also been an apparent wave of retirements among late baby-boomers who were already on the cusp of hanging up their skates. However, the Biden Administration has instigated a set of ill-advised policies that blunt work incentives, leading to reduced labor force participation: the repeated extensions of pandemic-related unemployment benefits; increased child and dependent care tax benefits; the moratorium on evictions from rental property; the elimination of work requirements for expanded Medicaid coverage; and increased EBT and SNAP benefits. This is not hard to understand: if you pay people to stay home, they will stay home, even as you suffer through an interminable wait for your fast food. But there might not be a wait at Dunkin’ Donuts, because they’ve been running short on donuts due to “supply chain issues”!

Destructive Public Policy

COVID policy contributed to the early plunge in demand in 2020. Economic output declined, and ramping-up production is not always a simple thing. In this case, it was hindered by repeated non-pharmaceutical interventions and confused messaging from public health authorities. These are issues I’ve felt compelled to address too many times on my blog over the past 18 months. The negative economic effects of these policies continue to linger, and it should surprise no one.

The Democrats’ so-called “social infrastructure” bill, which looks mercifully unlikely to pass without major curtailments in scale and scope, would exacerbate many of the problems cited above. As I’ve noted recently, it’s more of an “infra-shackle” bill for the private economy than an infrastructure bill. For $3.5 trillion (an understatement based on budget gimmickry), we get heavy regulation and taxes, particularly on fossil fuels, subsidies for uneconomic technologies, assorted entitlements with no means testing, wage- and job-killing (and inflationary) hikes in corporate taxes, and other tax disincentives to private investment. The bill would represent a huge reallocation from the private to the public sector via coercion and public competition for scarce resources.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, now Biden has issued his legally dubious vaccine mandate, which has been met with outrage among many workers, from Chicago cops and other public servants, health care workers, truckers and workers at such corporate giants as Boeing, Southwest Airlines, and many others. Unions are furious. People are walking out. This represents a negative “supply shock”, an unexpected event that hinders production and boosts prices. Joe Biden looks to be well on his way to earning the title of “The Stagflation President”.

I’ll leave you with this gem from Brian Dunn:

In Praise of Voluntary Vaccination

31 Tuesday Aug 2021

Posted by in Coronavirus, Vaccinations

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I was vaccinated in March and early April and I’m damn glad to have done it. I have certain co-morbidities, and I’m of an age at which contracting COVID seems like a very bad idea, I felt a little run-down on the day after my second jab, but that was my only side effect, notwithstanding the unending litany of antivax hysterics to which we’ve all been subjected (even on certain sites to which I contribute).

Freedom Without Misinformation

In the context of the pandemic, it’s important to take a stand for liberty. In that spirit, I oppose the imposition of mandates requiring face masks and vaccinations against COVID. Furthermore, vaccination is at best unnecessary for those having acquired immunity from infection and for those at low risk, especially children. In fact, the younger, healthier, and fitter you are, the less important it is to be vaccinated.

It’s disappointing, however, to see completely innumerate people cite statistics purporting to show that COVID-19 vaccines are deadly or even particularly dangerous to those lacking contra-indications. Far worse, and far more idiotic, is to suggest that a conspiracy is afoot to kill large numbers of people via vaccination! I’m truly embarrassed to hear individuals who otherwise share my libertarian ideals say such irresponsible bullshit.

While the COVID vaccines seem to have more frequent side effects than earlier vaccines, they are not particularly risky. I’ll discuss the safety of the COVID vaccines in what follows. Even minuscule risks are unacceptable to some individuals, which of course is their right. However, others find these risks acceptable considering the far greater dangers posed by the early strains of COVID and even the more recent but less deadly Delta variant.

Unverified Adverse Events

The vaccine scaremongers often quote statistics from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Reporting Events System (VAERS). Here’s a disclaimer about the system from the CDC’s web site:

“Healthcare providers, vaccine manufacturers, and the public can submit reports to VAERS. While very important in monitoring vaccine safety, VAERS reports alone cannot be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event or illness. The reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable.”

All kinds of reports are submitted alleging adverse events. For example, one observer cites the following reports from the system:

The link above refers to the following report as “Hulk Syndrome”, which was alleged to have been a side effect of the MMR vaccine:

Finally, we have this report related to the Pfizer COVID vaccine:

In case that’s hard to read, it claims that a COVID vaccine caused a third arm to grow from the reporting individual’s forehead, which constantly slaps him or her while trying to sleep. This report is a case of wonderful sarcasm, but it was submitted to VAERS! The real lesson is that the VAERS system collects many unverified accounts of side effects, so the aggregate counts of adverse events are not reliable, even by the CDC’s admission.

A More Sober Risk Assessment

Therefore, the VAERS system has obvious limitations. But even stipulating the use of VAERS reports, the risks of the COVID vaccines are vanishingly low. For example, roughly 198 million people in the U.S. have received at least one dose of a vaccine. As of last week, there had been about 13,600 reports of post-vaccination death in VAERS. The raw number is very high, and I don’t wish to minimize the seriousness of those losses. Nevertheless, if those deaths were all attributable to vaccination, and that is a BIG “if”, the risk of death from vaccination to-date is just 0.007%. That is seven thousandth of 1%. 

To put those VAERS deaths into perspective, I should first add the caveat that I am highly skeptical of the COVID case and death statistics. Nevertheless, let’s take the official U.S. COVID death toll of 646,000 at face value. I’m also treating reported vaccine deaths from VAERS at face value, which is a huge stretch. So, we have COVID mortality of 0.2% of the U.S. population, which is more than 28 times the risk of death from vaccination. I grant you the risk posed by COVID is lower going forward than in the past, which is due both to vaccinations and the declining virulence of the virus itself.

There are a range of vaccine side effects reported in VAERS, from pain near the injection site to such alarming conditions as anaphylaxis, Bell’s Palsy, and myocarditis/pericarditis. VAERS would attribute over 54,000 hospitalizations to the vaccines, a rate of 3 hundredths of one percent of those receiving at least one dose. Like COVID deaths, the number of COVID hospitalizations is likely inflated. Still, at 1.9% of the U.S. population, the risk of hospitalization from COVID is 68 times that of hospitalization from vaccine side effects reported in VAERS.

A large share of VAERS reports, covering all adverse events, are from middle aged individuals. It’s unclear how concentrated that reporting is among those with co-morbidities, including obesity, but I suspect they are heavily represented.

Coincidental Events

Perhaps less obvious is that many sincere reports to VAERS from both the public and health care providers represent coincidental events. A number of states have given heavy vaccine priority to the elderly and those with co-morbidities, and demand from those groups has been disproportionate in any case. Most of the VAERS-reported deaths also happen to be among the elderly and co-morbids.

For example, more than 38% of VAERS death reports come from the 80+ age cohort, accounting for roughly 5,200 deaths. That’s four hundredths of one percent of the 12.9 million people of ages 80+ in the U.S., most of whom have been vaccinated. Well over 1.2 million 80+ year-olds can be expected to die each year under normal circumstances. That a few would occur within days, weeks, or months of a vaccination should be expected. Furthermore, it would not be surprising, given the controversy surrounding vaccines and the suggestive power of antivax propaganda, for families or some caregivers to imagine a connection between vaccination and subsequent death. File a report! Who knows? Perhaps a class action award might be in it someday.

This is not to deny that a small number of individuals could be in such weakened states, or perhaps have unknown vulnerabilities, that the vaccines have catastrophic consequences. No doubt there are a few deaths precipitated by COVID vaccines in combination with other conditions. However, a large share of the deaths reported to VAERS are likely to have been coincidental. Likewise, people develop conditions all the time… sore joints, rashes, coughs, and headaches. It runs the gamut. Some of the VAERS reports of a less serious nature are undoubtedly coincidental, and perhaps some are due to the vivid imaginations of a subset of those having consented to the vaccine with great reluctance.

What Kills and What Doesn’t

Everything comes with a risk, and tradeoffs between risks must be balanced. The COVID pandemic was deadly, and I’ll be the first to admit that I underestimated its potential to kill. However, its deadliness was magnified by the non-pharmaceutical interventions imposed in many jurisdictions. Lockdowns and closures took a massive toll on the health of the population, cutting short many lives due to economic and personal despair as well as deferred and cancelled health care. While those interventions were deadly, I do not believe that kind of harm was intended. I do suspect the concomitant assault on liberty was welcomed in certain circles.

There are certainly downsides to the COVID vaccines. There have been more side effects and deaths than have ever been reported relative to earlier vaccines. It’s also a shame that public health authorities refuse to recognize the superior effects of natural immunity and the heightened risk of vaccinations to those with prior infections. And it’s a travesty that “vaccine passports” are now being demanded for various forms of travel, entertainment, and entry to some places of business. Despite these issues, it’s blatantly false to assert that the vaccines are generally harmful. Many more of the remaining vaccine-hesitant can benefit from vaccination. Let’s advocate for better assessments of risk by age and co-morbidity, and simply avoid the vaccines if that is your preference.

Addendum: I just came across this nice piece entitled “A Statistical Analysis of COVID-19 Breakthrough Infections and Deaths“. I thought I should share the link in case anyone supposes that so-called breakthrough infections somehow invalidate some of the comparisons I made above. This chart is particularly revealing:

The Left Always Hurts the Ones They “Love”

28 Monday Jun 2021

Posted by in law enforcement, Leftism, Lockdowns

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The policies foisted upon the country by the Left always hurt those constituencies they think they’ll help, and they backfire in very predictable ways. There are too many instances of that truism to recount, but just a couple of examples follow.

Economic Perils of Precaution

We can start with the interminable non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) imposed in many states during the pandemic. These included shelter-at-home orders, limits on public gatherings, school closures, and the like. These lockdown measures were more severe in so-called blue states controlled by the Democrat Party. But NPIs were a policy failure and did little to stem the pandemic or excess deaths. Moreover, they resulted in the closure of many businesses and massive job losses. The economic burden fell especially hard on low wage earners, as the following chart shows:

For high earners (the red line), the employment decline at the start of the pandemic was small and relatively brief. Less fortunate were those earning under $27,000 annually (the blue line). They suffered a much larger initial decline in employment and had a continuing loss of almost 24% of jobs. While those who lost jobs ultimately received enhanced unemployment compensation and other benefits, the idleness and loss of work experience inflicted long-term damage to health, psyches, and future prospects. Thus, the party with pretensions of championing the cause of the downtrodden was pleased to intervene with policies that undercut the working poor.

But Some Precautions Are “Racist”

Another prominent case in which leftists have harmed those for whom they claim to advocate is the effort to “defund the police”. Low income and minority populations do not favor such a policy because they understand the value of protection against criminal elements who victimize their communities. The residents of these communities are most at risk from gangland violence and homicide. Furthermore, nearly all “victims” of police homicides are armed, and police homicides are closely associated with crime. And again, the sad fact is that crime is heavily concentrated in minority neighborhoods. The statistics do not support assertions of bias in policing. Obviously, these citizens have taken notice that the riots cheered on by the Left have been destructive to their communities.

Crime has spiked in Minneapolis and elsewhere since last summer, when George Floyd’s death sparked interest in the “defund the police” mantra promoted by the Left. And there followed a reduction in police budgets of about 5.2% in aggregate in the 50 largest cities in the country (though not all of these cities made cuts). Moreover, the effectiveness of policing has been undercut more broadly by the substantial legal risk now facing officers who earnestly attempt to enforce the law, as well as more restrictive use-of-force policies.

These changes are an unambiguous disaster for so many good people having the misfortune to live in high-crime areas. And the political disaster is starting to sink in among Democrats, who are already attempting to change the narrative (and see here). It’s pretty transparent that the “black lives matter” dialectic appeals to Democrats primarily as a selling point of convenience, and not so much when there’s actual blood in the streets.

Only the Obvious Matters

Destructive lockdowns and efforts to “defund the police” are just two examples of a perverse phenomenon. It’s well known to keen observers of the history of Marxism in action that it usually victimizes its presumed beneficiaries. That dynamic is at play under school discipline policies that seek to avoid “disparate impacts” on minority students, leaving other minority school children in disruptive learning environments; gun control initiatives making it difficult for minority residents and businesses to protect themselves; rent controls leading to a deteriorating stock of low-cost housing; wage floors causing low-skilled workers to lose hours, benefits, and jobs; energy policies with regressive impacts on household budgets; tax policies destroying incentives for job creation; and a welfare state creating disincentives to work and promoting family instability. This list goes on and on.

The difficulty leftists have in coming to grips with these unintended consequences is that they can’t see past first-order effects. Like spoiled children, they grasp only the ostensible benefits of their demands. And like bad parents, they behave as if to seek approval of the most spoiled among their presumed charges.

Bottom-Line Booster Shots

17 Saturday Apr 2021

Posted by in Coronavirus, Public Health, Vaccinations

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The barrage of precautionary COVID missives continues, and with a familiar “follow-the-money” twist. The CEOs of both Pfizer and Moderna say that booster shots are likely to be needed a year after initial administration of their COVID vaccines, and almost certainly every year thereafter. Of course, this message is for those who felt compelled to be vaccinated in the first place, whether out of concern for their own health, high-minded community spirit, fear of social ostracism, or fear of possible vaccine passport requirements. It’s probably also intended for those who acquired immunity through infection.

There are reasons to believe, however, that such a booster is unnecessary. This case was made a few days ago in a series of tweets by Dr. Monica Ghandi, an infectious disease expert and Professor of Medicine at UCSF. Ghandi says immunity from an infection or a vaccine can be expected to last much longer than a year, despite the diminished presence of antibodies. That’s because the immune system relies on other mechanisms to signal and produce new antibodies against specific pathogens when called upon.

So-called B cells actually produce antibodies. Another cell-type known as T cells act to signal or instruct B cells to do so, but so-called “killer” T cells destroy cells in the body that have already been infected. Dr. Ghandi’s point is that both B and T cells tend to have very long memories and are capable of conferring immunity for many years.

While our experience with COVID-19 is short, long-lasting immunity has been proven against measles for up to 34 years, and for other SARS-type viruses for at least 17 years. Dr. Ghandi links to research showing that survivors of the 1918 flu pandemic were found to have active B cells against the virus 90 years later! The COVID vaccines cause the body to produce both B and T cells, and the T cells are protective against COVID variants.

A last point made by Dr. Ghandi is intended to dispel doubts some might harbor due to the relatively ineffectual nature of annual flu vaccines. The flu mutates much more aggressively than COVID, so the design of each year’s flu vaccine involves a limited and uncertain choice among recent strains. COVID mutates, but in a more stable way, so that vaccines and adaptive immunity tend to retain their effectiveness.

While I’m sure the pharmaceutical companies believe in the benefits of their vaccines, there are undoubtedly other motives behind the push for boosters. There is money to be made, and much of that money will be paid by governments eager to jump on the precautionary bandwagon, and who are likely to be very insensitive to price. In fact, the vaccine producers might well have encouraged those pushing vaccine passports to include annual booster requirements. This would be another unwelcome imposition. The very discussion of boosters gives government officials more running room for other draconian but ultimately ineffective mandates on behavior. And the booster recommendation gives additional cover to public health “experts” who refuse to acknowledge real tradeoffs between the stringency of non-pharmaceutical interventions, economic well being, and other dimensions of public health.

UFOs and the Crisis Seeking State

26 Friday Mar 2021

Posted by in Extraterrestrial Life, Government

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Happy with the government’s management of the pandemic? Happy with how much government grew during the pandemic? How well do you think governments would manage our realization that we have nearby extraterrestrial observers? It’s hard to know what that would mean for our future, but such a presence could well pose a singular menace to humanity. It might ignite panic, to say nothing of the bedlam that would ensue with the actual ingress of extraterrestrials or their intelligent machinery.

How would governments handle it? If the pandemic is any guide, my guess is they would follow the authoritarian impulse. For our own safety, that is. Hoarding and shortages of key goods might ensue. Curfews and stay-at-home orders would be seen as a way to limit civil disorder. Depending on the perceived threat, draconian measures such as limiting the use of electronics and communication devices might be considered. No telling what might seem appropriate to political leaders, but a military component to the response is much more likely than under a pandemic, and not just because of the external threat.

Let’s assume we’re talking about observers, not battalions of landing parties. A lot would depend on what’s known about them, or more specifically what the government knows. Why are they probing our atmosphere? Why are they studying our planet and our civilization? Are they waiting for a larger force to arrive? Can their machines self-replicate using resources mined from elsewhere in the solar system? Of course, the reaction of the public depends on how the government characterizes the presence of our observers. That gap in knowledge is of great concern.

But let’s take a step back. Is it real? We know the pandemic was “real”, but many question its true severity and the appropriateness of stringent non-pharmaceutical interventions, including yours truly. Some would say the government’s response was opportunistic, calibrated to force a change in political leadership, and calibrated to transform the role of government in our lives as well as attitudes about that role. Now imagine the opportunity for even more drastic change in the role of government given the prospect of an intersection with a potentially grabby alien civilization!

Like many others, I am fascinated by the possibility of life beyond our planet. Discussions of the Drake equation and the Fermi paradox are like candy to me. UFO sightings are always a matter of curiosity, except now we’re learning to call them “unexplained aerial phenomena” (UAPs) under guidance from government and military authorities. Lately, we’re hearing a lot about UAPs observed and filmed by military aircraft and detected by other forms of telemetry. These admissions are considered a sea change in the government’s attitude toward sharing sensitive, and possibly socially disruptive, information with the public. By June 1, a large batch of information on additional UAP sightings is due to be released under the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2021, which was signed into law by President Trump in December.

I’m as curious as anyone, but there are many reasons to be skeptical about UAP sightings, at least insofar as entertaining the possibility that these are extraterrestrial beings or machines. For example, there are natural (and technical) explanations for the images seen in the Navy videos. But some have speculated that these are sightings of top-secret technologies developed by an agency of the federal government such as the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA). A former Pentagon UFO Program Chief dismisses that as improbable. Well, if you say so. Another possibility is that a foreign government has leaped far ahead of the U.S. in the science of flight. That would be threatening to U.S. security, though perhaps not as threatening as the machinery of an interstellar expeditionary force.

Whether the potential threat is an intersection with extraterrestrials or simply advanced technology possessed by an earthbound adversary, might it be in the interests of certain factions to promote our vulnerability? Or to manufacture evidence of such a vulnerability? Forgive my tin-foil hat, but I think the answer is yes. For example, it would be an opportunity for the defense establishment to garner more funding. It’s also a potential opportunity for those who wish to impose a more authoritarian order. There is always something to be gained from potential threats, so much so that major segments of our society seem to thrive on them. But is that what’s happening?

Defense funding is one thing, but the kinds of threats in question might call for widespread actions on public safety at all levels of government. Federal funding will be required to meet these needs, after all, and only the federal government can print money to create the means of competing for resources with the private sector. This is consistent with other federal initiatives that, beyond their stated public purposes, seem almost designed to eviscerate the power of state and local governments:

“The plan to federalize government is already moving and has three parts:

  • Flood every unit of local government with federal cash, irrespective of need, while prohibiting tax cuts, thereby bailing out failing states and cities.
  • Make that flood of federal money made regular and permanent.
  • Annul or override state laws that make certain states competitive, thereby eliminating their competitive advantages, and federalize elections to make it all permanent.”

The third point has as much relevance in the context of any threat to our security as did the pandemic. Once lower levels of government are dependent on federal funds, there is little they can do to resist federal demands. The more credible the threat of an incursion by an extraterrestrial or foreign force with awesome technological power, the more likely are voters to accept expansive programs to enhance their safety, including assistance to lower levels of government for providing various forms of local protection … the federal way.

The pandemic did little to promote faith in the government’s ability to manage a crisis. Nevertheless, look no further than the federal budget explosion induced by the pandemic for evidence that advocates of expansive government did not let the crisis go to waste. Will they want new crises? I’m sure they will. There’s certainly a possibility that a drummed-up threat from UAP’s would be a candidate down the road. It might need a little more percolation, but make no mistake: it has potential value to statists.

I still prefer to call them UFOs, and it’s still fun to think about them, but if they’re “real”, or even if they belong to a foreign power, we might be in big trouble. If they’re not “real”, our own state actors might toy with us enough to make us wish we’d never heard of UFOs.

CDC Wags Finger; Diners Should Wag One Back

09 Tuesday Mar 2021

Posted by in Coronavirus, Public Health

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The CDC’s new study on dining out and mask mandates is a sham. On its face, the effects reported are small. And while it’s true most of the reported effects are statistically significant, the CDC acknowledges a number of factors that might well have confounded the results. This study should remind us of the infinite number of spurious and “significant” correlations in the world. Here, the timing of the mandates (or their removal) relative to purported effects and seasonal waves is highly suspicious, and as always, attributing causality on the basis of correlation is problematic.

On one hand, the CDC’s results are contrary to plentiful evidence that mandates are ineffective; on the other hand, the results are contrary to earlier CDC “guidance” that masks and limits on indoor dining are “highly effective”. Nevertheless, the latest report has massive propaganda value to the CDC. The media lapped up the story and provided cover for Democrats eager to pass the COVID (C19) relief package. Likewise, the Biden Administration is apparently committed to the narrative of an ongoing crisis as cover for continued attempts to shame political opponents in states that have elected to “reopen” or remain open.

Right off the bat, the study’s authors assert that the primary mode of transmission of C19 is from respiratory droplets. This is false. We know that aerosols are the main culprit in transmission, against which cloth masks are largely ineffective.

Be that as it may, let’s first consider the findings on dining. There was no statistically significant effect on the growth rate of cases or deaths up to 40 days after restrictions were lifted, according to the report. In fact, case growth declined slightly. There was, however, a small but statistically significant increase after 40 days. The fact that deaths seemed to “respond” faster and with greater magnitude than cases makes no sense and suggests that the results might be spurious.

The CDC offers possible explanations the long delay in the purported impact, such as the time required by restaurants to resume operations and early caution on the part of diners. These are speculative, of course. More pertinent is the fact that the data did not distinguish between indoor and outdoor dining, nor did it account for other differences in regulation such as rules on physical distancing, intra-county variation in local government mandates, and compliance levels.

Finally, the measurement of effects covered 100 days after the policy change, but this window spans different stages of the pandemic. There were three waves of infections during 2020, which correspond to the classic Hope-Simpson pattern of virus seasonality. One was near year-end, but as each of the first two waves tapered (April-May, August-September), it should be no surprise that many restrictions were lifted. Within two months, however, new waves had begun. Karl Dierenbach notes that most of the reopenings occurred in May. Here’s how he explains the pattern:

“The map on the left shows counties where there was no on-premises dining (pink) in restaurants as of the beginning of May (4/30). … The map on the right shows that by the end of May, almost the entire country moved to allow some on-premises dining (green).”

“In the 100 days after May 1, cases nationwide fell slightly, then began to rise, and then plateaued.”

“And what did the CDC find happened after restaurants were allowed (changing mostly in May) to have on-premises dining? … Surprise! The CDC found that cases fell slightly, then began to rise, and then plateaued.”

The summer “mini-wave” is typical of mid- and tropical-latitude seasonality. Thus, the CDC’s findings with respect to dining restrictions are likely an artifact of the strong seasonality of the virus, rather than having anything to do with the lifting of restrictions between waves.

What about the imposition of mask mandates? The CDC’s findings show a much faster response in this case, with statistically significant changes in growth during the first 20 days. Another indicator of spurious correlation is that the growth response of deaths did not lag that of cases, but in fact deaths have reliably lagged cases by over 18 days during the pandemic. Again, the CDC’s caveats apply equally to its findings on masks. A large share of individuals adopted mask use voluntarily before mandates were imposed, so it’s not even clear that the mandates contributed much to the practice.

It’s a stretch to believe that mask mandates would have had an immediate, incremental effect on the growth of cases and deaths, given probable lags in compliance, exposure, and onset of symptoms. Moreover, a number of mask mandates in 2020 were imposed near the very peak of the seasonal waves. Little wonder that the growth rates of cases and deaths declined shortly thereafter.

We’ve known for a long time that masks do little to stop the spread of viral particles. They become airborne as aerosols which easily penetrate the kind of cloth masks worn by most members of the public, to say nothing of making contact with their eyes. The table below contains citations to research over the past 10 years uniformly rejecting the hypothesis of a significant protective effect against influenza from masks. There is no reason to believe that they would be more effective in preventing C19 infections.

The CDC’s report on dining restrictions and mask mandates is a weak analysis. They wish to emphasize their faith in non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to minimize risks. They do so at a time when the vaccinated share of the most vulnerable population, the elderly, has climbed above 50% and is increasing steadily. Thus, risks are falling dramatically, so it’s past time to weigh the costs and benefits of NPIs more realistically. The timing of the report also seemed suspicious, coming as it did in the heat of the battle over the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, which subsequently passed.

It’s also a good time to note that zero risk, including “Zero COVID”, is not a realistic or worthwhile goal under any reasonable comparison of costs and benefits. Furthermore, NPIs have proven weak generally (also see here); claims to the contrary should always make us wary.

Revisiting Excess Mortality

31 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by in Coronavirus, Pandemic

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In early December I said that 2020 all-cause mortality in the U.S. would likely be comparable to figures from about 15 years ago. Now, Ben Martin confirms it with the chart below. Over time, declines in U.S. mortality have resulted from progress against disease and fewer violent deaths. COVID led to a jump in 2020, though some of last year’s deaths were attributable to policy responses, as opposed to COVID itself.

Here’s an even longer view of the trend from my post in December (for which 2020 is very incomplete):

As Martin notes sarcastically:

“Surprising, since the US is undergoing a ‘century pandemic‘ – In reality it is an event that’s unique in the last ‘15 years’”

The next chart shows 2020 mortality by month of year relative to the average of the past five years. Clearly, excess deaths have occurred compared to that baseline.

Using the range of deaths by month over the past 20 years (the blue-shaded band in the next chart), the 2020 figures don’t look quite as anomalous.

Finally, Martin shows total excess deaths in 2020 relative to several different baselines. The more recent (and shorter) the baseline time frame, the larger the excess deaths in 2020. Compared to the five-year average, 364,000 excess deaths occurred in 2020. Relative to the past 20 years, however, 150,000 excess deaths occurred last year. While those deaths are tragic, the pandemic looks more benign than when we confine our baseline to the immediate past.

Moreover, a large share of these excess deaths can be attributed to non-COVID causes of death that represent excesses relative to prior years, including drug overdoses, suicide, heart disease, dementia, and other causes. As many as 100,000 of these deaths are directly attributable lockdowns. That means true excess deaths caused by COVID infections were on the order of 50,000 relative to a 20-year baseline.

As infections subside from the fall wave, and as vaccinations continue to ramp up, some policy makers are awakening to the destructive impacts of non-pharmaceutical interventions (lockdown measures). The charts above show that this pandemic was never serious enough to justify those measures, and it’s not clear they can ever be justified in a free society. Yet some officials, including President Biden and Anthony Fauci, still labor under the misapprehension that masks mandates, stay-at-home orders, and restaurant closures can be effective or cost-efficient mitigation strategies.

Spate of Research Shows COVID Lockdowns Fail

27 Sunday Dec 2020

Posted by in Lockdowns, Public Health

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For clarity, start with this charming interpretive one-act on public health policy in 2020. You might find it a little sardonic, but that’s the point. It was one of the more entertaining tweets of the day, from @boriquagato.

A growing body of research shows that stringent non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) — “lockdowns” is an often-used shorthand — are not effective in stemming the transmission and spread of COVID-19. A compendium of articles and preprints on the topic was just published by the American Institute for Economic Research (AEIR): “Lockdowns Do Not Control the Coronavirus: The Evidence”. The list was compiled originally by Ivor Cummins, and he has added a few more articles and other relevant materials to the list. The links span research on lockdowns across the globe. It covers transmission, mortality, and other health outcomes, as well as the economic effects of lockdowns. AIER states the following:

“Perhaps this is a shocking revelation, given that universal social and economic controls are becoming the new orthodoxy. In a saner world, the burden of proof really should belong to the lockdowners, since it is they who overthrew 100 years of public-health wisdom and replaced it with an untested, top-down imposition on freedom and human rights. They never accepted that burden. They took it as axiomatic that a virus could be intimidated and frightened by credentials, edicts, speeches, and masked gendarmes.

The pro-lockdown evidence is shockingly thin, and based largely on comparing real-world outcomes against dire computer-generated forecasts derived from empirically untested models, and then merely positing that stringencies and “nonpharmaceutical interventions” account for the difference between the fictionalized vs. the real outcome. The anti-lockdown studies, on the other hand, are evidence-based, robust, and thorough, grappling with the data we have (with all its flaws) and looking at the results in light of controls on the population.”

We are constantly told that public intervention constitutes “leadership”, as if our well being depends upon behavioral control by the state. Unfortunately, it’s all too typical of research on phenomena deemed ripe for intervention that computer models are employed to “prove” the case. A common practice is to calibrate such models so that the outputs mimic certain historical outcomes. Unfortunately, a wide range of model specifications can be compatible with an historical record. This practice is also a far cry from empirically testing well-defined hypotheses against alternatives. And it is a practice that usually does poorly when the model is tested outside the period to which it is calibrated. Yet that is the kind of evidence that proponents of intervention are fond of using to support their policy prescriptions.

In this case, it’s even worse, with some of the alleged positive effects of NPI’s wholly made-up, with no empirical support whatsoever! So-called public health experts have misled themselves, and the public, with this kind of fake evidence, when they aren’t too busy talking out of both sides of their mouths.