Tag Archives: Vaccine Mandate

Vagaries of Vaccine Efficacy

23 Sunday Jan 2022

Posted by in Coronavirus, Vaccinations

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There should never have been any doubt that vaccines would not stop you from “catching” the coronavirus. Vaccines cannot stop virus particles from lodging in your nose or your eyeballs. The vaccines act to prime the immune system against the virus, but no immune response is instantaneous. In other words, if you aren’t first “infected”, antibodies don’t do anything! A virus may replicate for at least a brief time, and it is therefore possible for a vaccinated individual to carry the virus and even pass it along to others. The Omicron variant has proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt, though the wave appears to be peaking in most of the U.S. and has peaked already in a few states, mostly in the northeast.

I grant that the confusion over “catching” the virus stems from an imprecision in our way of speaking about contracting “bugs”. Usually we don’t say we “caught” one unless it actually makes us feel a bit off. We come into intimate contact with many more bugs than that. The effects are often so mild that we either don’t notice or brush it off without mention. But when it comes to pathogens like Covid and discussions of vaccine efficacy (VE), it’s obviously useful to remember the distinction between infections, on the one hand, and symptomatic infections on the other.

Cases Are the Wrong Focus

Unless calibrated by seroprevalence data, these studies are not based on proper estimates of infections in the population. Asymptomatic people are much less likely to get tested, and vaccinated individuals who are infected are either much more likely to be asymptomatic or the test might not detect the weak presence of a virus at all. VE based on detected infections is essentially meaningless unless testing is universal.

We are bombarded by studies (and analyses like the one here) alleging that VE should be judged on the reduction in infections among the vaccinated. The likelihood of a detected infection by vaccination status is simply the wrong way to measure of VE. It’s not so much the direction of bias in measured VE, however. The mere presence of cases among the vaccinated has been sufficient to inflame anti-vax sentiment, especially cases detected in mandatory tests at hospitals, where the infections are often incidental to the primary cause of admission.

The typical evolution of a novel virus is further reason to dismiss case numbers as a basis for measuring VE. Mutations create new variants in ways that usually promote the continuing survival of the lineage. Subsequent variants tend to be more transmissible and less deadly to their hosts. Thus, given a certain “true” degree of VE, so-called breakthrough infections among the vaccinated are even more likely to be asymptomatic and less likely to be tested and/or detected.

There is the matter of immune escape or evasion, however, which means that sometimes a virus mutates in ways that get around natural or vaccine-induced immune responses. While such a variant is likely to be less dangerous to unvaccinated hosts, more cases among the vaccinated will turn up. That should not be interpreted as a deterioration in VE, however, because detected infections are still the wrong measure. Instead, the fundamental meaning of VE is a lower virulence or severity of a variant in vaccinated individuals than in unvaccinated individuals.

Interestingly, to digress briefly, while immune escape has been discussed in connection with Omicron, that variant’s viral ancestors may have predated even the original Covid strain released from the Wuhan lab! It is a fascinating mystery.

Virulence

In fact, vaccines have reduced the virulence of Covid infections, and the evidence is overwhelming. See here for a CDC report. The chart below is Swiss data, followed by a “handy” report from Wisconsin:

From the standpoint of virulence, there are other kinds of misguided comparisons to watch out for: these involve vaxed and unvaxed patients with specific outcomes, like the left side of the graphic at the top of this post (credit to Twitter poster aparachick). This thread has an excellent discussion of the misconception inherent in the claim that vaccines haven’t reduced severity: the focus is on the wrong conditional probability (again, like the left side of the graphic). Getting that wrong can lead to highly inaccurate conclusions when the sizes of the two key groups, hospitalizations and vaccinated individuals in this case, are greatly different.

Bumbled Messaging

The misunderstandings about VE are just one of many terrible failures of public health authorities over the course of the pandemic. There seems to have been fundamental miscommunication by the vaccine manufacturers and many others in the epidemiological community about what vaccines can and cannot do.

Another example is the apparent effort to downplay the importance of natural immunity, which is far more protective than vaccines. This looks suspiciously like a willful effort to push the narrative that universal vaccination as the only valid course for ending the pandemic. Even worse, the omission was helpful to those attempting to justify the tyranny of vaccine mandates.

Waning Efficacy

It should be noted that the efficacy of vaccines will wane over time. This phenomenon has been measured by the presence of antibodies, which is a valid measure of one aspect of VE over time. However, immune responses are more deeply embedded in the human body: so-called T-cells carry messages alerting so-called B-cells to the presence of viral “invaders”. The B-cells then produce new antibodies specific to characteristics of the interloping pathogen. Thus, these cells can function as a kind of “memory” allowing the immune system to mount a fresh antibody defense to a repeat or similar infection. The reports on waning antibodies primarily in vaccinated but uninfected individuals do not and cannot account for this deeper process.

Conclusion

Vaccines don’t necessarily reduce the likelihood of infection or even the spread of the virus, but they absolutely limit virulence. That’s why Jay Bhattacharya, one of the authors of The Great Barrington Declaration, says the vaccines provide a private benefit, but only a limited public benefit. Yet too often we see VE measured by the number of infections detected, and vaccine mandates are still motivated in part by the idea that vaccines offer protection to others. They might do that only to the extent that infections are less severe and clear-up more quickly.

Three Justices Reveal Astonishing Covid Ignorance

10 Monday Jan 2022

Posted by in Coronavirus, Supreme Court, Vaccinations

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Good God! What a remarkable display of ignorance we witnessed on Friday from three different Supreme Court justices. This trio dumped buckets-full of erroneous information about the current state of the COVID pandemic, all points that are easily falsifiable. The three are Sonia Satamayor, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan. The flub-fest occurred during a proceeding on challenges to OSHA’s attempt to impose a nationwide vaccine mandate on private employers having more than 100 employees. I’m sorely tempted to say these jurists must know better, but perhaps they were simply parroting what they’ve heard from “reliable” media sources.

Here’s a list of the false assertions made by the three justices at the hearing, as compiled by Michael P. Sanger, along with my own brief comments:

  • 100,000 children in critical care and on ventilators (Sotomayor) — Not even close!
  • Vaccine mandate would prevent 100% of US cases (Breyer) — Lol!
  • 750 million people tested positive last Thursday (Breyer) — That’s more than twice the U.S. population… in one day! Haha! See here.
  • COVID deaths are at an all-time high (Sotomayor) — No, they are well under half of the all-time high, and many of those “announced” deaths are Delta deaths and deaths that occurred weeks to months ago.
  • It’s “beyond settled” that vaccines and masks are the best way to stop the spread (Kagan) — Say what?
  • COVID vaccines stop transmission (Kagan) — Is that why two fully vaccinated attorneys arguing the government’s case just tested positive?
  • Federal agencies can mandate vaccines using the police powers of the federal government (Sotomayor) — Incorrect, not at their fancy. Police powers with respect to health, safety and morals are generally reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment. The Commerce Clause allows Congress to regulate these powers through federal agencies on “major questions”. Congress, however, has never acted on the question of vaccine mandates.
  • Hospitals are nearing capacity (Sotomayor) — Again, no! And see here.
  • Omicron is deadlier than Delta (Sotomayor) — Omicron may be more severe than the common cold in some cases, but all indications are that it has much lower severity than the Delta variant.
  • Hospitals are full of unvaccinated people (Breyer) — No, on two counts: 1) hospitals are not full, and 2) there are COVID hospitalizations among the vaccinated as well. Also see here.

I’ve covered most of these points on this blog at various times in the past, a few links to which are provided in the bullets above. As one wag said, it’s almost as if these justices read nothing but the New York Times, the paper that once assured the world that Joseph Stalin was actually a pretty decent fellow. With tongue firmly in cheek, Ed Morrissey asked whether Twitter would suspend Justice Sotomayor for spreading COVID misinformation.

There also followed a desperate attempt by left-wing journalists to convince themselves and their followers that Justice Neil Gorsuch had incorrectly claimed hundreds of thousands of people die from the flu every year. The actual Gorsuch quote in the transcript reads:

“Flu kills—I believe—hundreds, thousands of people every year.”

And that indeed is what can be heard clearly on the audio (short clip here). But in the fertile imaginations of the lefty commentariat, Gorsuch uttered an extra “of”. Gorsuch was clearly correcting himself mid-sentence. As noted by Phil Kerpen, the line of questioning had to do with the establishment of a limiting principle under which OSHA could conceivably have authority to impose a vaccine mandate. Naturally, Gorsuch intended to quote a number smaller than the count of COVID deaths.

Most of the justices appeared to lean against the OSHA mandate. We’ll probably get a ruling this week. However, the episode vividly illustrates the power of the leftist mainstream media and social media to manipulate beliefs, even beliefs held by individuals of formidable intellect. It also shows how fiercely people cling to falsehoods supporting their ideological mood affiliations.

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: