Utopia, you are standing in it!

(1) Sweden’s Sonderweg (“special road”, idiomatically, “going its own way”) is the subject of heated debate pro and con.

At first sight, per capita mortality is an order of magnitude higher than in adjacent countries with similar ethnic profile, climate, and sociology. (Sweden does, however, have a higher percentage of 1st-generation immigrants than Norway, Denmark, and Finland — see below.)

At second sight, however, it turned out that Swedish morbidity and especially mortality is disproportionately concentrated in two populations: elderly in care homes (over 70%) and 1st-generation immigrants. Mortality among native Swedes from young to independent elderly, is actually not that elevated compared to the neighbors. 

On the gripping hand, while the Swedes may have avoided the economic ruination of a full lockdown and may be closer to herd immunity now should a second wave arrive, there are costs to this epidemic for everyone (the travel…

WESTERN OUTSKIRTS OF SAIGON

“WHAT IS THIS?” Nguyen Sinh Tuan said, raising his Leica M3 camera and focusing on Nguyen Duc Cui as he sat on the ground, massaging the leather of the brown oxford shoes that he had carried in his pack since the day he had made the blood-bound promise to his dying friend.

“I thought you had no film,” Cui said, smiling as Tuan released the shutter.

“I had no more film for photographs of darkness,” the photographer said. “They wanted pictures of that battle, and all that my lens could see was blackness and streaks of light. I had no film for that. However, I do have this roll of film to photograph today, Liberation Day!”

“It has not yet ended,” Cui said. “We still have ARVN entrenched here at Hoc Mon.”

“In a few hours,” Tuan said and snapped another photograph, “their President Minh will…

IMF in Global Financial Stability Report (Apr-2020) has a chapter on equity markets underestimating climate change risks:

The projected increase in the frequency and severity of disasters due to climate change is a potential threat to financial stability. Equity markets are a key segment of the global financial system, provide a data-rich environment, and are sensitive to long-term risks, making them fertile ground for investigating how projected future physical risk affects financial markets and institutions.

Looking back over the past 50 years shows a generally modest impact of large disasters on equity markets, bank stocks, and non–life insurance stocks, although country characteristics matter. Higher insurance penetration and greater sovereign financial strength have helped dampen the adverse effects of large disasters on equity markets and financial institutions.

While projections of climatic variables and their economic impact are subject to a high degree of uncertainty, aggregate equity valuations as of 2019 do…

Aleardo Zanghellini is a Professor of Law and Social Theory at Reading University. He recently published an article in the Sage Open Journal on Philosophical Problems With the Gender-Critical Feminist Argument Against Trans Inclusion.

He does not define what he means by “trans inclusion”. But over the course of the article it becomes clear he does not mean general inclusion in employment, housing, healthcare, or in public life. Specifically he means inclusion of people who identify as trans in single sex services provided for members of the opposite sex: ““[t]oilets, changing rooms, girls’ youth organisations, hostels, and prisons” and so on.

The article is largely an extended diatribe targeting the public philosophy of Professor Kathleen Stock. Zanghelli also criticises ‘gender critical’ thinkers in general for publishing primarily on sites such as The Conversation and Medium. These platforms he says “offer us both the opportunity and the temptation to…

The sneakiness of the novel coronavirus virus has wreaked havoc worldwide.

Not only have countries been forced to adopt emergency measures never seen in living memory, the outbreak has decimated the global economy and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

Although the coronavirus is a global pandemic, it’s striking how the pathogen’s destruction has varied across regions.

Whilst East Asia has largely got a grip on the virus, Europe is still reeling. The United Kingdom recently pipped Italy to take Europe’s highest death toll, with a tally that dwarfs all but a handful of nations. The United States has established itself as the world’s coronavirus leader— although not in the way President Trump would want us to believe. And Brazil appears to be the new epicentre of the pandemic, with growing fears that their healthcare system will not survive the oncoming onslaught.

This all begs the question: why…

(1) Dr. Seheult discusses remdesivir for different categories of patients, and suggests that the drug is most beneficial (in terms of quicker recovery) for patients sick enough to require oxygen, but not so sick as to require mechanical ventilation or ECMOs (“heart-lung machines”). In this latter group, the virus has already done so much damage that remdesivir amounts to “closing the barn door after the horses have fled”, while mild cases will resolve on their own.

The conventional division of patients is (averaged across age groups):

• 80% self-limiting, self-resolving disease
• 15% get more severely ill
• 5% critically ill

So it would be the 15% where the drug can make most of the difference, probably by keeping patients from moving into the 5% critical group.

(2) Dr. John Campbell’s video looks at the asymptomatic infection rate, which he frustratingly places “between 5% and 80%”, and briefly highlights different studies that arrive…

We mark today the official birthday of our head of state, Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, queen of New Zealand and of her other realms and territories.   Her actual birthday was 21 April 1926, when her grandfather George V was on the throne.

When she was born, the United Kingdom and the Dominions (as they were then called) were still among the most prosperous countries in the world.    Using the Maddison compilation of real GDP estimates (and averaging across 1925-27, on account of some considerable year to year volatility in some of the series), here is how things looked at about the time the Queen was born.

At the time, Newfoundland was an independent dominion (for which there is no data, but presumably it was a bit poorer than Canada), and South Africa was also still a domininion.  Maddison has no data for South Africa in the 1920s…

I’ve been working for some time on a review of the first full-length text based on Modern Monetary Policy, Macroeconomics by William Mitchell, Randall Wray and Martin Watts. A near-final draft is over the fold

Let me state at the outset that I am not equating what the police did to George Floyd with the violence of the rioters responding to his murder. Looting, burning, and breaking into stores is not as horrible as murder, and of course most of the protestors against Floyd’s murder were peaceful. But violent protest is also unconscionable. And so I’ll call out both the cops and the rioters, but am not trying to say there’s a moral equivalence—not at all. But I don’t think there is any excuse for rioting.

What the Minneapolis police did to George Floyd, with one kneeling on his neck while he was prone for a full eight minutes and 46 seconds (two minutes after Floyd became unresponsive), suffocating him to death, while three cops stood by, is unconscionable. The cop who knelt on his neck has been rightly indicted for third-degree murder. The other…