- UK policy on lockdown and other European countries are not evidence-based
- The correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only
- This will eventually lead to herd immunity as a “by-product”
- The initial UK response, before the “180 degree U-turn”, was better
- The Imperial College paper was “not very good” and he has never seen an unpublished paper have so much policy impact
- The paper was very much too pessimistic
- Any such models are a dubious basis for public policy anyway
- The flattening of the curve is due to the most vulnerable dying first as much as the lockdown
- The results will eventually be similar for all countries
- Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people.
- The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%
- At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available
Johan Giesecke, one of the world’s most senior epidemiologists
20 Apr 2020 Leave a comment
in econometerics, health economics Tags: economics of pandemics, pessimism bias
Hornsdale Power Reserve: huffing and puffing old men coming to the aid of their colleague
20 Apr 2020 Leave a comment
Now it was established in previous two posts that the Hornsdale Power Reserve did surprisingly little to avert a frequency drop caused by a 560 MW capacity loss (contrary to what was suggested in the RenewEconomy article), the focus of this post will be on how the message was brought. Knowing how little the battery actually did, then how on earth could Giles Parkinson paint it as if something extraordinary had happened? This post will explain how this is done.
Let’s start with the title:
Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units after Loy Yang trips
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The Virus Wars
20 Apr 2020 Leave a comment
the whole reason for shutting down the economy was to ensure our healthcare system was not overloaded
The proverb is “Generals are always fighting the last war,” and its origin is uncertain. One possibility is a quote from Winston Churchill: “It is a joke in Britain to say that the War Office is always preparing for the last war.” 1948 Winston S. Churchill _The Second World War_ I (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985) 426:
Konrad Lorenz demonstrated how imprinting works upon animal behavior, while military historians have reported how powerfully human social animals are influenced by the past and instilled lessons from others.
Austria – 20th century. Animal behaviourist Konrad Lorenz and mallard goslings
Which brings me to these reflections about the current WuHanFlu outbreak. The chart at the top summarizes our received epidemiological wisdom about the danger of viruses according to the dimensions of deadliness and contagiousness. As the diagram shows, extremely deadly viruses tend to kill their hosts too quickly to be transmitted widely. Conversely, a…
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The Rolling Stones perform “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” | | One World: Together At Home
20 Apr 2020 Leave a comment
in Music
Agent-Based Modelling – 4.6.2 – Thomas Schelling, Part 1
20 Apr 2020 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, defence economics, economics of information, industrial organisation, labour economics, law and economics, managerial economics, organisational economics, Public Choice Tags: game theory
Jason Brennan: Fake Socialism vs. Real Capitalism
20 Apr 2020 Leave a comment
in Adam Smith, applied price theory, applied welfare economics, Austrian economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, economics of education, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, growth disasters, growth miracles, health and safety, history of economic thought, human capital, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, liberalism, libertarianism, Marxist economics, Milton Friedman, politics - USA, poverty and inequality, property rights, Public Choice, survivor principle Tags: Age of Enlightenment, capitalism and freedom, The Great Escape
COVID19 models – a lesson for those who trust climate scientists-Joe D’Aleo
19 Apr 2020 Leave a comment
Why Property Rights?
19 Apr 2020 Leave a comment
Economist Bryan Caplan debated another socialist recently on capitalism vs. socialism. He posted his opening statement here. In that blog post he linked to his previous debates on socialism and I noticed he debated Elizabeth Bruenig two years ago. That name is familiar to me (or actually not that familiar because she got married and changed her last name) because years ago I engaged her in a debate in the comments section of her blog (if I recall correctly). Unfortunately, she blocked me ¯_(ツ)_/¯. She was coming at socialism from a Christian perspective and it lead me to write this blog post: Was Jesus A Socialist?
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Climate Cult Hijacks COVID-19 Crisis By Demanding More Subsidies For Wind & Solar
19 Apr 2020 Leave a comment
It didn’t take them long. The climate cult has hijacked the COVID-19 crisis, demanding more subsidies for wind and solar. Apparently, more windmills and solar panels will operate like some kind of collective vaccine against the coronavirus.
Never mind that the worst affected COVID-19 victims need to be admitted to ICUs and hooked up to ventilators, which require electricity delivered 24 x 7, irrespective of the weather and time of day.
Hiding behind the pasty faced weather-worriers are a band of cynical and opportunistic renewable energy rent seekers who have turned night into day, with demands for more taxpayer support for already heavily subsidised and forever chaotically intermittent wind and solar.
‘Audacity’ doesn’t really cover it, as Alan Moran reports below.
Green Snouts Sniff a COVID Windfall
Quadrant
Alan Moran
16 April 2020
The Pope, deprived of the counsel of Cardinal Pell, the Church’s most astute voice, foolishly called coronavirus…
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Thank @GreenpeaceAU @Greens @NZGreens for lower petrol prices
19 Apr 2020 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, public economics
Sustainable development = inefficient resource depletion
19 Apr 2020 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, fisheries economics, law and economics, property rights, resource economics


NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC : ‘Norway Was Warmer 1,000 Years Ago’
19 Apr 2020 Leave a comment
Lost Viking ‘highway’ revealed by melting ice | Nat Geo
“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know,
it’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”
– Mark Twain
***
H/t @WEschenbach
THE post title is obviously a parody. However, it happens to be a factual one, albeit politically incorrect.
OUR very ‘warm’ friends at National Geographic have inadvertently proven the Medieval Warm Period that existed a mere ~1000 years ago. An inconvenient period known as a “climate optimum” that ClimateChange™️ and National Geographic have spent so much currency, propaganda and magazine paper, ‘denying’.
Climate Change Myths: Sorting Fact from Fiction | Nat Geo
Climate Change Myths: Sorting Fact from Fiction | Nat Geo
*
*Nat Geo has deleted the “continue reading this myth” link. So, you will have to imagine what they would have gone on to say. Not hard…
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