Pandemic lessons from Hong Kong

The covid-19 pandemic is going to be a rich source of data for how to deal with any future pandemics. The prevalence and degree of severity of the disease has varied widely across the globe, as have the ways in which various countries responded to it, and this has given rise to so-called ‘natural experiments’, those in which one can isolate and study the effects of individual factors without having to actually do experiments.

One of the firmest lessons is the importance of vaccinations for everyone but especially the need to vaccinate those segments of the population that are most likely to suffer adverse effects and death. In the case of covid-19, it was the elderly and the immunocompromised who were most at risk.

But there is also the question of how far to go with trying to isolate regions in order to keep the virus out of the country. The countries that practiced severe lockdowns and strict border controls (such as China, New Zealand, and Hong Kong) were initially able to keep the numbers extremely low while many other countries were suffering badly, but now the situation seems to be reversed in that the previously affected countries are seeing a decline while those initially low case number countries are seeing a spike.
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Second Republican governor vetoes ban on transgender sports

The bans on transgender athletes being proposed by Republican state legislatures are so cruel and unnecessary that even some Republican governors are taking a stand against them. Utah governor Spencer Cox has just joined fellow Republican governor Eric Holcomb of Indiana in vetoing such legislation. In doing so, he offered some heart-warming words. (All boldfacing is mine.)
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Wars and war crimes

War crimes follow wars as surely as night follows day.

When you look at the list of things that constitute war crimes according the Geneva Conventions and the Nuremberg Tribunals, you will immediately see that any sustained conflict inevitably leads to actions, such as “Atrocities or offences against persons or property, constituting violations of the laws or customs of war”, “the wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages” or “devastation not justified by military necessity”, that fall into the category of war crimes. So when the US declares that Russian troops have committed war crimes during its invasion of Ukraine, they are undoubtedly right. One major crime is “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression.”

But what is infuriating is the revolting hypocrisy demonstrated by all the righteous indignation by the US and its allies about Russian war crimes when the long and ugly and incontrovertible history of war crimes by the US is ignored by the US political class and that mainstream media. After all, the US has so many times in the past been involved in the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression”, Iraq being merely one of the most recent.

I was trying to formulate a post about this but Chris Hedges pretty much said it all.
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Covid-19 fatigue

I am one of the fortunate ones in that I was able to get vaccinated and boosted and since I am retired, during the worst of the pandemic I could spend most of my time at home and thus could easily practice social distancing. I also wore masks whenever I was in any indoor facility with other people. But while it was not onerous, I too have started to feel weary of taking these precautions and was hopeful that the rapid decline in cases in the recent past signaled the transition from a pandemic phase to an endemic phase that would enable us to let down our guard and just take the kinds of precautions we are used to with other familiar airborne contagions like the flu and cold, where we stay at home when we have symptoms and avoid contact with people who are exhibiting symptoms.

But now we hear reports of a delta-omicron hybrid and a BA.2 version of the omicron variant causing a slight uptick in cases in Europe and the UK, which in the past have been leading indicators of what would happen in the US after about two or three weeks. 45% of the US population has been infected with omicron and thus have some immunity to that BA.2 version of it but that still leaves a large number at risk.
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The US is no longer the world’s longest consistent democracy

Politicians in the US (and many ordinary Americans) like to boast about how this country is the greatest and the oldest continuing democracy. The former claim has always been dubious since from the beginning the country has gone out of its way to limit the right to vote to a favored class: first by not giving Blacks and women to vote, then by placing restrictions like poll taxes and literacy tests that excluded the poor, and to this date seeking to find novel ways to discourage poor and minority communities from voting by making them jump through various hoops and by gerrymandering electoral districts so that the elected representatives are not representative of the electorate.
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A set of podcasts worth browsing

A friend alerted me to the existence of this series of fascinating BBC podcasts called In Our Time. Each 40-50 minute episode consists of the host Melvin Bragg exploring one topic in depth with three academics from various British universities and research institutions. Originating in 1998, it produces a new episode each week and by now its archives have close to 1,000 podcasts. Each episode also has a comprehensive reading list for those who want to know more. The topics range all over the place, covering science, history, literature, art, religion, and so on so that anyone will find something that appeals to them or are curious about. Since the panelists are experts in the area being discussed, one gets reliable information based on in-depth research. The program is ideal for a generalist like me.
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Absolute and relative risk

Probability can be deceptive. The concept sounds easy to understand and we glibly use the ideas in everyday life but there are many subtleties involved. Given how important probabilistic ideas are in life, some have suggested that it be introduced into school mathematics curricula much earlier than it currently is and discussed in more depth.

One subtlety can be highlighted by this example. Suppose that you read about a new study that finds that by taking some measures, you can reduce the risk of stroke by 50%. Should you adopt those measures?

To make a decision you need to weigh the benefit against the costs, which in this case may be that the measures involve taking medications that have rather serious side effects, or that the regimen involved is arduous, or that it is very expensive. But even taking those into account is not enough to decide because you need to know another key piece of information and that is the absolute risk numbers.

The relative risk is what is usually reported and quoted in the media. It is obtained by comparing the results of the test group with the control group. So if the test group has five positive cases and the control group has ten, then the relative risk reduction is 50%. But this ignores the importance of sample size that determines the absolute risk. If the sample size had been 10,000, the absolute risk would have dropped from 0.1% to 0.05%.

Paula Byrne, one of the authors of a recent study on the benefits of taking statins to lower cholesterol, says that focusing only on relative risk does not give enough information to make an informed decision.
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Great moments in cheerleading

You would think that by now, after all the protests about racist depictions of Native Americans, that at least some person in large organizations would realize when something is at best racially insensitive or downright racist and say, “Wait a minute! This is not appropriate.” But apparently not.

Walt Disney World apologised after a Texas high school drill team performing at the entertainment giant’s Florida theme park wore fringed outfits and chanted: “Scalp ’em, Indians, scalp ’em.”

“The live performance in our park did not reflect our core values and we regret it took place,” a spokesperson, Jacquee Wahler, said in a statement.

Native American advocates criticised Disney and Port Neches-Groves high school after video of the performance to Twitter.

“Any Natives who attend [Port Neches-Groves high school] should prolly just accept their classmates dehumanising them cuz ‘tradition’, right?” wrote Tara Houska, an Ojibwe tribal attorney and founder of the Giniw Collective and Not Your Mascots.

“Shame on [Disney] hosting this,” she said. “Nostalgic racism is RACISM.”

According to the Orlando Sentinel, a Disney employee asked the troupe to remove headdresses prior to their performance.

Wahler, the Disney spokesperson, said the performance that followed was “not consistent with the audition tape the school provided and we have immediately put measures in place so this is not repeated”.

I am pretty sure that Native Americans must be simply fed up with people ‘honoring’ them without first consulting with them about what would be an appropriate form such an action should take, and instead going with the first stereotype that they can come up with and then defending their decisions with ridiculous rationalizations.

The anti-worker bias in the media

Currently we are are experiencing a rare period when employers are finding it hard to fill positions, especially in the lower-wage service sector. But it is telling how differently the media covers this to how they cover the times when unemployment levels are high. The common thread is that in each case, they present the point of view of the employers, not the workers.

Cartoonist Ted Rall accurately captures the differences in the way that the media and the pundit class cover a labor surplus versus a labor shortage.

When jobs are scarce, workers are told to make big changes in their lives to adjust to reality. Now that workers are scarce, however, whiny employers are offered sympathy rather than given advice to change their obsolete business models.