Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: health care Page 10 of 35

Explosive Growth, Vaccines And Covid Variants

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On February 10, 2021

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Stumbled across this chart of projected Covid growth in the province of Alberta. This is a chart of what happens IF Alberta changes nothing in terms of its restrictions and vaccine count, ALL that changes is the B117 variant becomes dominant.

If that doesn’t concern you, we aren’t looking at the same chart.

The good news is that it appears that vaccines do reduce transmission and Pfizer, at least, work against B117. What that means is that in order to crush Covid we are either going to have to get almost everyone vaccinated or we are going to have to do a proper “Zero Covid” lockdown. There are other variants, as well, and the data against the South African variant is not as good, so it may be that vaccines may not do the job at all: they may deal with original Covid and B117 but mutations continue.

If that’s the case we will only get this under control with severe lockdowns and travel restrictions of the sort that most countries outside of Asia have been unwilling to do, plus wide-spread vaccination. mRNA vaccines have fast design times, and if we are willing to risk them without trials, and we are willing to force sharing of the design and production knowledge, we might use fast-turnaround vaccines to help against Covid.

The risk here is that Covid becomes endemic, a new normal, like the flu, never truly under control, but much more dangerous. This also may lead to a world where travel never recovers properly, especially between nations which have taken the disease seriously and dealt with it, and those which have not, like America, most of Europe and Canada.

To avoid this we need to stop dancing around. Break the vaccine patents and force sharing. Recompense the companies involved, a few tens of billions is all that is needed and is trivial to major governments. Go to CovidZero. And get vaccines into every arm.

One piece of good news is that the Russian vaccine, Sputnik V, a traditional vaccine, is 92% effective: only 3% less than then two mRNA vaccines. It doesn’t need very cold refridgeration and it doesn’t have the unknowns of a new tech. I would suggest, at least for the moment, to push it heavily for populations who are vaccine hesitant: it’s still a vaccine, but not an untried type.

The other point that should be made is that we need to defeat this in every country to be truly safe, and that means vaccines and support for poorer countries. Supply bottlenecks because a few companies and countries want to maintain IP laws are insane; they could leave us with a permanent disease problem which will hurt the economy for decades to come. This is yet another example of how we are unable to plan more than for a few weeks to a year or so in advance, no matter how important the issue.

For my readers, I reiterate that:

Be careful out there. Don’t be stupid, take what precautions you can, and be as safe as you can. I know for many of my readers, who work jobs that just aren’t safe, there are limits, but Covid isn’t over and I’d like for you to not get sick, get long Covid, or die.

This isn’t over yet.

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Will Bill Gates And mRNA Vaccine Monopolies Be Responsible For Millions of Covid Deaths?

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On January 26, 2021

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Good question.

Oxford University surprised and pleased advocates of overhauling the vaccine business in April by promising to donate the rights to its promising coronavirus vaccine to any drugmaker…

…A few weeks later, Oxford—urged on by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—reversed course. It signed an exclusive vaccine deal with AstraZeneca that gave the pharmaceutical giant sole rights and no guarantee of low prices

Seems pretty straight forward.

Then there’s a second issue. The mRNA vaccines, which so far seem to be the most effective, are supply capped: they can’t manufacture them fast enough. Unrelated to Gates (so far as I know) the manufacturers of those vaccines, like Moderna, are refusing to share the manufacturing process and other information. Vastly more doses could be produced and many lives saved, but IP is sacred, not your grandmother’s life.

Moderna’s entire costs for the vaccine were covered by government, yet the manufacturing process is kept secret, and people die.

It would be simple enough to just pay Moderna and Pfizer their expected profits plus some, and break the patents: this is something governments can do. It was suggested and vetoed.

So, if someone you know dies because of no vaccine, remember that government and Bill Gates wanted that, because the holy grail of restricting information so that the rich could profit off it was more important than people living or dying.

This is always who Gates has been, by the way. He’s white-washed his reputation over the last few decades, but he’s always been a monopolist who is willing to have other suffer and his foundation is mostly about his own interests. The Gates Foundation interference in education was a vast disaster, as well.

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Staying Happy in Self-Isolation

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On January 18, 2021

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A reader wrote me to say this article had been helpful to them. Given that the pandemic and self-isolation is ongoing, I thought it would be worth putting back up. (Originally published March 2, 2020.)

There are a lot of guides for this going around, so I’m going to skip most–but not all–of the more obvious advice. You know how to watch shows online, play games, and read books. Catch up on all that reading!

Problems fall into three broad categories: lack of people, other people, and emotional self-regulation. I’ll speak briefly on the first two, but this article is mostly about learning to create your own emotions on demand.

The first issue is if you’re by yourself. People, even most introverts, do need human contact. Isolation is harmful, and long periods of it show as brain damage. The internet isn’t much of a substitute, but as much as it is, make an effort: Don’t stick to text. Get on voice or even video and voice. The more channels you have, the better. I’ve had people I haven’t talked to in ages reaching out to me, this is a good time to reconnect to old friends and relatives you like. Even better if you can do something online together–games or puzzles or whatever. Set up a camera to show the kitchen and talk while you cook, etc.

The second issue is you’re with other people: People are great, but people also suck, and even if you like someone being in the same place as them for two or three weeks when you’re used to seeing them only the evening and the morning can get on your nerves. At the extreme end, I’ve seen anecdotal reports from police that domestic violence calls are increasing.

This is easiest to handle if you’re honest with each other than you need some alone time. Have the conversation, be clear it doesn’t mean you don’t like or love the other person, and consider even scheduling both alone and together time. Some people won’t need this, we all know best friends and couples who love being in each other’s pockets, but if that isn’t you, it doesn’t mean you aren’t real friends or don’t love each other.

The third issue is emotional self-regulation. Most of us have routines, things we do every day. Get up, coffee, light breakfast, drive to work, work, chat with co-worker, have lunch, work a bit more, goof of on the internet, etc, etc. We’ve figured out routines that keep us mostly in the same set of emotional spaces throughout the day. This is like walking with a cane: You’ve set up mood assists throughout the day, week, and year.

When you lose that routine, you lose those assists. You’ve been walking with a cane: Leaning on it, threatening kids on your lawn, and suddenly a dog thinks its a stick and races away and it’s gone.

So you need to learn how emotionally self-regulate without so many assists or you need to find new assists.

Write down things you love doing during the day that you can do at home. Those are your assists. When  your mood is low, look at the list and do one of them.

To emotionally regulate without assists you have to accept that a lot of your moods can be directly controlled. I’m not saying it’s always easy, but it’s mostly not easy because you never learned how; it’s not something our society trains us to do.

Let’s say you want to feel loving. Stand up, close your eyes, and imagine a child you love or a puppy. They’re mad glad to see you, and dash to you, and throw themselves into your arms. Open your arms in a huge hug, then mimic hugging them. Imagine it as best you can.

Practice this both with the physical movements, and entirely in your mind, until you can do it whenever you want and bring up that feeling.

Say you want to feel excited or gleeful. This is an arousal emotion, and can be used to change fear into something positive. Open your eyes as wide as you can, concentrating on lifting them up, and grin! Think of something exciting: Jumping out of an airplane with a parachute, jumping over a wall, playing frisbee with your dog, that time you snuck into some place you shouldn’t have and it was a gas, the first time you learned about something you loved (I remember how excited I was when I first read D&D books in the seventh grade), or remember bombing down a hill on your bike or a toboggan.

The feeling you’re looking for is WHEEEEEE!

When I do this, I often remember the TV show Pinky and the Brain. It always starts with Pinky asking, “What are we going to do today, Brain?” To which Brain replies, “Same as every day! Take over the WORLD.” I say that out loud or mentally.

Any emotion you can normally feel can be activated in this way: Imagine the situation, and either mimic the physical sensations of it happening, or feel them in your imagination. Ideally do both.

So find a memory or experience that reliably brings up the emotions, and watch your body as it moves into that emotion. What does it feel like? What is the face doing? The body? What are you thinking?

Once you know what it feels like, and what the change feels like, you can learn to bring it under conscious control.

There’s nothing wrong with using props here, especially in the beginning. If a piece of music reliably brings up the mood, use it. Just be aware as the emotion arises, then try and do it without the prop later.

Like most skills, there’ll be fumbling. New skills take time. Keep at it. You’ve got plenty of time and this is a chance to learn a skill that will make your life immeasurably better long after social distancing is done.

(If readers like this article, I may put together a post on emotional self-regulation while dealing with other people. Other people can be the greatest help or hindrance, but working together in this way is the among the greatest experiences in life.)

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Effects of the New 60 Percent More Infectious Covid Strain

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On December 28, 2020

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Cases have been found outside of Britain, including in the US and, ironically, France (slammed the door too late.) The practical result of the increased infectiousness are discussed by Tomas Pueyo.

The points are, as you’d expect, that it increases the speed of exponential growth. If it becomes the dominant strain (and it almost certainly will, because it grows faster), you have to really lock down. No sham lockdowns, people don’t go out for anything but food (maybe you even deliver that); schools are closed, no one works outside the house unless they truly are an essential worker.

Herd immunity now requires 75 percent+, not 60 percent of the population. That means it will take longer, and with respect to vaccines, people will need to be convinced to take them, or if necessary, forced to.

Countries that already got Covid-19 under control, like Vietnam, New Zealand, China, and Taiwan (notice a trend?) will be fine. They just keep tracking and tracing; keep quarantining visitors, and keep clamping down hard on even a hint of a break-out. Those of us who haven’t, like most of Europe, the US, Canada, Brazil, and so on, can either get serious RIGHT now and close schools and go to a real lock down, or we are going to have to wait for vaccine immunity, which may take until the end of 2022 depending on how many doses your country is getting and when (and if people will take them, or be forced to).

In general terms, my sense is that the first half of 2022 is going to be worse than 2021 in countries that have fumbled Covid, after that things should start improving noticeably.

This was a pro-active choice by our elites: They decided not to handle Covid. It was handled in many countries, the playbook is known to anyone who cares to know it just by seeing what was done or reading a 101 textbook, but “fumbling” Covid made elites in countries like the UK, Canada, and the US a lot richer and more powerful, so it was allowed to rage through the population and destroy the small business economy so that those who were able to stay open, like Amazon and Apple, and so on could grab huge amounts of market share.

Grandma died and young people got life-long heart problems so Jeff Bezos and private equity scum could get richer.

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Trump Outflanks Dems from the Left

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On December 23, 2020

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So, as you’ve probably heard by now, Trump is opposing the Covid “stimulus” bill and asking it be amended to include a $2,000 check, not a $600 one. Pelosi says he should pass the bill then they’ll pass another bill with the extra $1,400 (which is a ludicrous lie and we all know that).

The cries from many liberal supporters of the bill are that it is a good bill because it includes unemployment insurance relief increases of $300 a week. That’s sort of true, it’s the main good thing in the bill, but the problem is that a lot of people who need help aren’t currently getting UI.

Trump’s simply right about this, whatever his motives. Moreover, throughout the year he’s fairly consistently advocated more relief than Congress has provided.

But the standard play is unfolding. Screamed warnings that if the bill doesn’t pass no one will get relief, and that if it isn’t passed by the 26th, 12 million people will go off UI, so pass the bill, even if it’s inadequate. “We’re giving you something, in a bill packed with pork, and that’s not nothing, so take something.”

This is based on standard economic-neoliberal thinking. There’s a little decision game about it. You and another person are given a hundred dollars. The other person decides how the money is split. You can’t change how it is split, but you can veto getting any money.

The theory is that even if the person deciding how the money is split offers you a cent, you should take it. After all, you’re better off, right? In the real world, people don’t do that. If the split gets too low, they veto any money.

This is correct if you are dealing with a situation where the “game” will be played more often than once. If you don’t do it, you get a cent each time, and the other person gets almost all the money.

The correct action is a veto.

It’s why the Squad should have taken down Pelosi if she didn’t meet some essential demands — to show that they can’t be bullied, and that they have to be dealt with. If you wont use whatever power you have, you have no power, and you get nothing but table scraps.

In this sense, Trump is able to be “wrong” because he’s lame duck now. If he was going to be around for another four years, this threat would have real power because he could gum a lot of things up and he could insist those 12 million people be put back on UI (it’s not like an amended bill couldn’t do that). Biden is very unlikely to veto such a bill.

But he’s not wrong that $600 checks are too little and an insult. That’s not even a month’s rent for most people.

And if he runs in 2024, a lot of people will remember this attempt to get them more money as his last fight.

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A Brief Note on the New Covid “Stimulus” Bill

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On December 21, 2020

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So, the bill that looks likely to pass is 900 billion. One $600 check, $300/week in UI improvement (this is the real good thing in the bill) and some miscellaneous good stuff, along with a variety of pork.

It’s a bad bill, totally inadequate to the circumstances. In the new year, millions of Americans will become homeless. It’s hard to say exactly how many, but ten million would be a low end estimate.

There is insufficient support for States and cities, so there will be a round of savage austerity cuts in the new year, given the complete refusal to actually tax rich people.

In many ways, 2021 is going to be WORSE than 2020 for Americans. About a third of small businesses will likely go out of business, the big winners like Amazon will not hire enough people to make up for it, and the end result will be a shittier economy than in 2019 concentrated in fewer hands.

Meanwhile, in London, England, a new Covid strain has appeared that is twice as contagious as the original.

None of this was remotely necessary. Proper support for small business and people would have cost less than the financial crisis bailouts (and could mostly have been done through the Fed for “free”), while the pandemic itself could easily have been crushed in about six months by simply following the same playbook that places like Vietnam used, a playbook that is simply “follow the textbook.”

But, in the US, the UK, and Canada, and I suspect a lot of other nations, Covid-19 has been a huge boon to the rich, vastly increasing their wealth and power. So, well, why save lives and jobs? I know I’ve said this repeatedly, but it’s a point that bears repeating.

You’re getting scraps, while the rich feast, and the politicians tweet selfies of themselves getting vaccinated before ICU nurses and doctors.

It’s how this part of the world runs. But not how it has to.

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You Can’t Buy Anything That Matters When It Matters (Covid Vaccine Edition)

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On December 12, 2020

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… unless you have control over the production facilities.


I think this map is a little inaccurate, but it makes the point. Money matters, yes, but having control over vaccine manufacturers and R&D matters more.

This is true of everything. Oil is not a global market if there are ever shortages decision makers care about. FOOD is not a global market if there’s ever a worldwide shortage, and countries which net import will find that out. (The Irish famine, where Ireland, then an imperial colony, continued to export food even as its people starved, underlines the word control.)

Global markets are OK for things that don’t matter. For anything that does matter you want manufacture, R&D and supply lines concentrated in your own country or that of true close allies. In those cases, you want mutual vulnerability. If country A has it all and is a close ally, that won’t work when they’re desperate, you have to have part of the dependencies.

Even this doesn’t work completely. It was very popular before WWI to state that a big European war couldn’t happen because of how interdependent the economies were.

Yeah.

 

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Industrial policy means that if you can, you make it at home, and if it costs a little extra, too bad, slap on a tariff. If you control natural resources, you NEVER sell them raw if you have any choice. The history of England’s economic development leading to the Industrial revolution starts with a ban on selling English wool to mainland Europe, allowing them to build their own textiles industry. Of course, those textiles were worse than what Flemish weavers would have made, and less efficient to start, with higher prices. The English, correctly, did not care. They had the wool, and there wasn’t a huge surplus of wool. Buy the clothes from us or no one.

Food, water and essential goods: if it is at all possible you want to be self sufficient in all three. In sensible countries a great deal of geopolitics is driven by this when a country can’t do it all internally. China knows, for example, that the US can shut down the Strait of Malacca any time it wants, crushing their oil supply and that is a major reason why they are creating a huge land route all the way across the Asian continent, and getting snuggly with the Russians (who can supply oil by land.)

Chinese economic policy, letting Westerners get super rich by producing goods in China, was also driven by this. The Americans aren’t wrong, the Chinese were super-aggressive about technology transfer. The deal was often that in order to get access, you had to give them the tech. If you wouldn’t, they would try and steal it (Americans stole a ton of British IP back in the day, don’t get all pious, everyone does it.) There was also technology-arm breaking creep. Sure, you gave us a tech a few years ago, but what have you given us recently, and why should we allow you to stay in our market today?

Foolish nations, like Canada and the US, let key industries go overseas, or sell raw materials without processing. Wise countries don’t, unless they’re getting something very worth it in return. Getting a bunch of new rich people who made their money by selling your country out isn’t “worth it” to anyone but the rich people and the politicians they bribed.

Money doesn’t cut it. Per capita Canada bought more Covid vaccines than anyone else, but notice that Canadians won’t be in the first wave to get mass vaccination. This is a “white, 1st world” country, and it can’t buy its way in. (The case is a bit more complicated than that, because the government are incompetent, but we’ll leave it there for now.)

If it isn’t on your territory, where your people with guns and your bureaucrats have power, you don’t control it and when it matters, you can’t buy it.

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Twelve Million Renters To Be Homeless Soon Because It Benefits the Rich

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On December 9, 2020

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And so we are where knew we would be:

Nearly 12 million renters will owe ~$5,800 in back rent and utilities by early January.

This was predicted regularly: people lost their jobs, they got one $1,200 and improved EI benefits for a while, and that’s pretty much it. Eviction protection is nice, but it doesn’t pay the rent and ends. This was 100% predicted and predictable, your lords and masters knew it was happening and would happen.

Oakland Homeless Encampment

They could easily have stopped it, and chose not to. The Fed and Treasury and Congress bailed out rich people, and their wealth has skyrocketed. Meanwhile New York wants to put a tax of $3 on deliveries of anything but food and medicine to bail out the subway system; taxing the poor and middle class rather than the rich who made out like bandits.

The money to fix this is fairly trivial. 69,600.000,000 – about sixty-seven billion dollars. In context, the TARP bailout for rich people was 700 billion back in 2008. The Federal reserve, by some calculations, floated about 20 trillion dollars. Seventy billion isn’t even real money in the modern world.

 

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But when renters can’t pay rent, the landlords will go bankrupt, and the actual rich will buy up the properties. Meanwhile desperate unemployed people keep wages down and ensure that current workers will do anything they are told with no back talk, because they know there are way fewer jobs than workers. Win/win/WIN.

If you’re rich.

So, if you’re going to be homeless, or lose the property you rent, rest assured it’s in the cause of allowing the rich to control even more of the economy, gutting small and medium landlords and small and medium businesses (who have had to shut down, while companies like Amazon and large retailers make mint.)

Your leaders impoverish and kill you for money. That is all. Wouldn’t want you to think this is for no reason at all or because of incompetence. Your poverty and desperation does help somebody, and that’s why it is happening.

 

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