Regular Fare:
The
Bank of Canada says the housing market has gone bonkers – and it can’t do
anything about it
Unhedged: Talking
bubbles with Jeremy Grantham
The
Global Saving Glut and the Fall in U.S. Real Interest Rates: A 15-Year Retrospective
Population
growth and the which way is up problem in economics
a declining working age population is likely to lead to lower rates of
investment and therefore creates a risk of “secular stagnation,” a sustained
period of inadequate demand in the economy. … In other words, the concern that
the deficit hawks have been raising forever is the complete opposite of the
problem that the economy is likely to face as the economy ages. Instead of
having too much demand, it looks like we will have too little demand. We will
actually need the government to run large deficits to keep the economy close to
full employment. Not only were the deficit hawks wrong about the magnitude of
the problem, but they were also wrong about the direction.
Which Jobs Are
Seeing The Fastest Wage Growth.
David Rosenberg:
"A Whole Bunch Of People Are Really, Really Wrong" About Inflation
What's going on isn't a fundamental "regime shift", but rather
a "pendulum" swinging back to the opposite extreme following the
sudden deflationary demand shock caused by the pandemic… Rosenberg argues that
the factors that contributed to this surge in prices are already starting to
fade. Commodity prices are falling back to earth, supply chain shortages are
slowly being addressed
Slack in the
Economy, Not Inflation, Should Be Bigger Worry
A little
taxonomy of inflation – there is no thing like ‘the’ price level
The lock downs have, directly or indirectly, increased costs, led to disruptions of supply chains and a surge in hiring leads to shortages of labor in some places. Don’t bother. Or: do bother, but that means that we should not bother about erratic price developments but about the ability of households and companies to survive the disruptions. The erratic price developments have to play out
… But figure 1 shows that there, indeed, are quite some different
developments when it comes to different categories of spending.
China's Credit
Impulse Just Turned Negative, Unleashing Global Deflationary Shockwave
Bottom line: China's credit impulse is now officially in contraction, and while there is delayed impact across the globe, with the lag on various assets ranging between 1 and 22 months, the fact that China is now an active headwind to inflation suggests that in the very near future the market's fears about soaring inflation will soon transform into worried about disinflation or outright deflation, similar to what happened in the post-2011 episode although addressing just this concern, Morgan Stanley said today that it doesn't see a repeat of the 2012-2015 type of global slowdown as the risk of a secular stagnation environment is diminishing for this cycle.
… Suffice it to say that they [these pessimistic arguments] don’t
hold water. Indeed, as Arthur Kroeber, head of research at Gavekal Dragonomics,
has put it: “Is China fading? In a word, no. China’s economy is in good shape,
and policymakers are exploiting this strength to tackle structural issues such
as financial leverage, internet regulation and their desire to make technology
the main driver of investment.” … So there is no reason for China to abandon
its growth model based on state-led investment in technology to compensate for
the decline its workforce.
GMO Quarterly
Letter: Why today’s highfliers are so likely to fall back to
Earth
MMT Fare:
The Idea That
Deficit Spending Is a Burden on Our Children Is the Dumbest Propaganda
Every time the government sells a bond, it creates a liability for the
government. But it also creates an asset for whoever bought it.
FinTech Fare:
A New Report From JPMorgan Shows Just How Big Tether
Has Become
Ten
Stablecoin Predictions and Their Monetary Policy Implications
To understand the financial services industry at the time of the
financial crisis, you were well placed if you’d read Hyman Minsky. Minsky
himself was ten years in his grave by then but his theories linking financial
markets and the broader economy served a useful model of what was going on.
Today, that economist is Ronald Coase. If you want to know what’s going on in
financial services today, he’s the man to study.
Tweets of the Week:
Pettis: Chinese regulators are
putting ever more pressure on property developers to constrain the debt needed
to fund their activity. Why? it must be because they don't think this activity
contributes to real growth in the economy… And Beijing is right: the fact that
the debt associated with this kind of investment has been rising so much faster
than its GDP contribution over the past 10-15 years is prima facie evidence of
malinvestment.
BREAKING: DeFi100 coin exit scams,
and runs away with $32 million in investors funds.
Website is now updated with the message “We scammed you guys, and you
can’t do shxt about it”
(not just) for the ESG crowd:
IEA World Energy
Outlook 2020. Achieving net-zero emissions by 2050
Wolfgang Knorr: What lies
beneath – on the latest net zero scenario by the International Energy Agency
REALITY AND THE
ROUTE TO NET ZERO
… It would be easy to critique this document, applauding its ambition
whilst questioning some of its methodologies and policy conclusions.
What matters much more, though, is the broad question of how we
understand the interconnection between energy, the economy and the environment.
Granted that environmental risk is a function of our use of energy, are
energy needs themselves a function of an economy that ‘grows’ according to its
own, self-propelled, essentially financial and internal dynamic? Or should the
relationship be reversed, identifying economic prosperity as a subsidiary
property of the use of energy?
… The same approach is used for the forecasting of future energy
requirements. All such conventional projections start with an assumption about
the future size of the economy, and only then calculate what that is going to
mean for energy needs.
Hitherto, the resulting informed consensus around energy has been that,
whilst renewable energy sources (REs) will capture an ever-increasing share of
the energy market, the quantities of fossil fuels used will continue to
increase. In contesting this, the IEA report applies a significantly new
impetus to the direction of travel in the forecasting of future energy needs.
To be sure, there are differences between proposals and forecasts. Even
so, the IEA’s Net Zero is an almost breathtakingly bold break from the prior
consensus. It argues that rapid commitment to energy transition can, by 2050,
deliver a world with zero net emissions of CO2.
In addition to massively increased investment in renewable sources of
energy (REs), the IEA calls for the immediate cessation of all new oil and gas
development projects. This amounts to an accelerated run-down of supplies of
legacy energy from fossil fuel sources.
The pay-off, says the IEA, isn’t just the prevention of catastrophic
degradation of the environment, but includes millions of new jobs and a big –
and this time a more globally-inclusive – spurt of economic expansion.
You won’t be expecting me to agree that all of this is feasible, and I
don’t. Let’s be clear, though, that the IEA, and others, are absolutely right
to stress the need for transition away from climate-harming fossil fuels to
REs. Indeed, SEEDS analysis takes this imperative even further.
Environmentalists – whose ranks now include most Western governments, as
well as organisations like the IEA – assert that continued reliance on fossil
fuels risks inflicting irreparable harm to the environment.
Where SEEDS goes further is in arguing that, whilst continued fossil fuel
dependency would probably wreck the environment, it would certainly destroy the
economy.
The explanation for this is simple – it is that the cost of fossil fuel
energy is rising, such that its net (post-cost) value is decreasing.
What this means is that the established sources of energy value that have
powered the Industrial Age are fading away.
This brings us back to the critical issue of method. Instead of assuming
a future economy of a given size, and then working backwards to the energy that
this economy will require, SEEDS starts with energy projections, and only then
asks what size of economy can be supported by the forward outlook for energy. Put
another way, SEEDS dismisses any notion of commencing with an assumed rate of growth
in economic output. …
Lithium, Cobalt,
& Rare Earths: The Post-Petroleum Resource Race
‘War’
footing needed to correct economists’ miscalculations on climate change, says
professor
The
climate crisis requires a new culture and politics, not just new tech
There’s
a simple answer to climate change. But will capitalism allow it?
COVID Fare:
WHO: Preventing and
mitigating COVID-19 at work
Other Cool Fare:
The mysterious microbes that gave rise to complex life
We’re Not Alone
in the Universe
When you combine our own existence with the fact that the universe is
unfathomably huge and contains quintillions of possibilities, there’s strong
evidence to suggest the presence of sophisticated “aliens” on other planets.
Neuroscientists
Have Followed a Thought as It Moves Through The Human Brain
Graph/pics of the Week:
EXTRA [controversial
or non-market-related] FARE:
Video of the Week Month
Year:
Nate Hagens: Earth and Humanity: Myth and Reality
This video is a condensation
of 15+ years work exploring the human predicament. This talk outlines some core
myths and stories in modern culture and contrasts them to our underlying
biophysical (biological and physical) realities. There will be a web portal in
near future going a bit deeper on these topics for use in education and
outreach on societal interventions. Here is the chronological myth order and
time stamp. They can be watched in any order, but this order makes the most
sense (so we decided).
0:04 — Introduction
2:20 — Myth #33: The Experts
Have ALL the Answers
4:16 — Myth #32: Humans Are
Separate From Nature
6:45 — Myth #31: Humans Are Mostly
Selfish
12:17 — Myth #30: More Is
Better
18:12 — Myth #29: “Someday
I’ll Have enough”
21:18 — Myth #28: We Care
About the Future
23:38 — Myth #27: Everyone
Has Their Own Truth
26:37 — Myth #26: Truth
Matters
29:31 — Myth #25: Energy Is
Merely a Commodity
34:28 — Myth #24: The
American Dream is Based on Hard Work and Cleverness
36:05 — Myth #23: Oil: The
USA Will Be the Next Saudi Arabia
41:46 — Myth #22: We Can
Always Get More Resources if We Have More Money
44:42 — Myth #21: Renewables
Can Power THIS Civilization
50:55 — Myth #20: In the
future we wont need oil due to Peak Demand!!
55:01 — Myth #19: We Can
Achieve Net Zero!! (by 2050 or any date)
59:54 — Myth #18: As Earth
runs out of resources, We’ll Colonize Outer Space!!
1:02:26 — Myth #17: Growth
Is Forever
1:05:04 — Myth #16: GDP Is
the Right Goal for Society
1:10:56 — Myth #15:
Overpopulation Is the Main Driver
1:15:21 — Myth #14:
Technology Will Solve It
1:21:16 — Myth #13: The
Environment Is Part of the Economy
1:24:04 — Myth #12: The
Natural World Is Ours
1:27:03 — Myth #11: Climate
Change Is the Core Problem
1:32:44 — Myth #10:
Billionaires and Politicians Are in Charge
1:38:56 — Myth #9: Financial
Markets Give Us the Right Signals for the Future
1:43:22 — Myth #8: Stimulus
Is Permanent
1:48:37 — Myth #7: We Need
to Crash the System to Get a Fresh Start
1:52:43 — Myth #6: The Use
of Nuclear Weapons Is Unthinkable
1:57:03 — Myth #5: Fossil
Fuel Companies Are at Fault
2:03:01 — Myth #4:
Capitalism Is to Blame
2:07:54 — Myth #3: Humans
Are Bad
2:11:37 — Myth #2: We Face a
Shortage of Energy
2:14:17 — Myth #1: We Are
Doomed
2:19:56 — Interventions (and
Wild Ideas)
Regular Fare:
Portrait of the United States as a Developing Country
Dispelling myths of entrepreneurial exceptionalism, a
sweeping new history of U.S. capitalism finds that economic gains have always
been driven by the state.
Wealth does not trickle down. Regulation does not
stymie wages. And we do not live in a meritocracy.
Will 2020 Prove to Be the Beginning of the End of
Modernity?
Daniel Hannan – Lord Hannan of Kingsclere – is today
among Britain’s wisest and most articulate champions of classical liberalism.
He’s also today very pessimistic about the future of
liberalism. This pessimism is on full display in this recent video.
I ardently wish that I found his stated reasons for
pessimism to be unpersuasive, but this wish is not granted. Hannan’s pessimism,
to me, seems warranted. I urge you to watch the entire video. At under seven
minutes, it’s short.
…
Modernity is not normal; it has been around for a
paltry 0.1 percent of humans’ time on earth. And the reason modernity is not
normal is that liberalism – the source of the division of labor and, thus, of
modernity – is not normal. We humans are not genetically encoded to be liberal.
Therefore, Hannan argues, there is every reason to expect that we humans will
revert to our historical norm – the norm that is in our genes.
The reaction to Covid-19 is powerful evidence that our
primitive instincts remain alive and ready to reestablish their dominance over
the happy accident that is the culture, and resulting institutions, of
liberalism.
Hat-tip, nakedcapitalism: “More reasons “trust the science” is such a pernicious slogan.”:
Misinformation in and about science. PNAS
Abstract
Humans learn about the world by collectively acquiring
information, filtering it, and sharing what we know. Misinformation undermines
this process. The repercussions are extensive. Without reliable and accurate
sources of information, we cannot hope to halt climate change, make reasoned
democratic decisions, or control a global pandemic. Most analyses of
misinformation focus on popular and social media, but the scientific enterprise
faces a parallel set of problems—from hype and hyperbole to publication bias
and citation misdirection, predatory publishing, and filter bubbles. In this
perspective, we highlight these parallels and discuss future research
directions and interventions.
ESG Fare:
Can We Have Both
Industrial Civilization and a Habitable Planet?
"Companies are involved
in these activities to make money. ... What they're actually talking about is sustaining
high-energy ways of life at the expense of the natural world." —Bright
Green Lies, trailer
Not long ago I wrote about
the problem of stopping climate change, or at least mitigating its worst
results, and concluded:
The climate crisis threatens
to end our economic system not only if it's ignored. It threatens to end our
system if it's addressed.
This is the Catch-22 that
makes the coming climate crisis different from a meteor strike, for example. In
the meteor case, the current economic order is destroyed only if the meteor
lands. Diverting its impact preserves the economic status quo.
Not so the climate. In that
case, preserving the economic status quo guarantees collapse, as does the
meteor strike, but addressing it effectively also guarantees a different
economic and political order, since the current economic and political system
cannot address it at all. Quite a dilemma for those presently in charge.
Is the Ruling Class the Problem, or the Economy
Itself?
But I think the problem is greater than that; it can't
be fixed only by changing the economic order and removing the current ruling
class from power. The problem that needs to be fixed is, in fact, modern life
itself — specifically, "high energy" life. Watch the trailer for the
new film, Bright Green Lies, to see what I mean.
…
The true facts about supposedly renewable energy are
hard, and worse than inconvenient. The first truth is that industrial
civilization requires industrial levels of energy. The second is that fossil
fuel—especially oil— is functionally irreplaceable. Scaling the current
renewable energy technology, like solar, wind, hydro, and biomass, would be
tantamount to ecocide. … Third, solar, wind, and battery technology are, in
their own right, assaults against the living world. From beginning to end, they
require industrial-scale devastation: open-pit mining, deforestation, soil
toxification that’s permanent on anything but a geologic timescale, extirpation
and extinction of vulnerable species, and use of fossil fuels. In reality,
so-called “green” technologies are some of the most destructive industrial
processes every invented. They will not save the earth. They will only hasten
its demise.
Brink of a fertility crisis: Scientist says plummeting
sperm counts caused by everyday products
ESG Tweets of the Week:
Alex Steffen:
The harsh truth about "green business" is that thousands of senior
sustainability professionals have spent the last two decades trading loud
support of minor incremental actions for career advancement... while denouncing
rapid, disruptive action as unrealistic.
Ben See: What
newspapers still won't scream about is when Earth system feedbacks like thawing
permafrost are taken into account, emissions must be slashed to zero in the
2020s for any hope of a reasonable chance of staying below potentially totally
catastrophic levels of global warming.
Mark
Cranfield: Climate discourse is far too "solutions" based. We
should be trying to protect ourselves. I can't see that people grasp the
enormity of what we're facing. It will easily extinguish humanity, could
destroy all complex life. It's going to transform our earth into an alien
planet.
Torrance
Coste: I have a lot of problems with the way forests in B.C. are managed,
but clearcutting landscapes and grinding millions of trees into pellets to burn
for electricity is the most astonishingly shortsighted and idiotic thing I've
ever heard.
COVID Fare:
Socializing risk and privatizing gain for fun and
profit.
“Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.” The
true mRNA vaccines theft isn’t entrepreneur-inventors who face robbery by the
public sector — rather, those “entrepreneurs” have enjoyed billions in public
subsidies, and now insist they owe nothing in return….. Pharma’s claim that it
doesn’t owe us anything in return makes no sense, even by the companies’ own
logic. They say that markets produce wonders because they reward canny
risk-taking with vast fortunes. By that logic, the public — who assumed the
majority of the risk in developing vaccines — are the angel investors in this
high-tech unicorn, and the pharma companies are the VCs who came in with some
late capital to help scale up a sure thing.
Vanden Bossche: Cautious
suggestions on a way out of a mismanaged Covid-19 pandemic
Is the Pfizer vaccine as effective as claimed?
The barriers to academic publication for work that
challenges the ‘official narrative’ on Covid-19
How the CDC is manipulating data to prop-up “vaccine
effectiveness”
New policies will artificially deflate “breakthrough
infections” in the vaccinated, while the old rules continue to inflate case
numbers in the unvaccinated.
Message To Doctors By Ontario College of Physicians
& Surgeons Shows Desperation to Silence Them
We are a broad and diverse group of Canadian physicians from across Canada who are sending out this urgent declaration to the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons of our various Provinces and Territories and to the Public at large, whom we serve.
On April 30, 2021, Ontario’s physician licensing body,
the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), issued a statement
forbidding physicians from questioning or debating any or all of the official
measures imposed in response to COVID-19. 1
The CPSO then went on to threaten physicians with
punishment – investigations and disciplinary action.
We regard this recent statement of the CPSO to be
unethical, anti-science and deeply disturbing.
As physicians, our primary duty of care is not to the
CPSO or any other authority, but to our patients.
When we became physicians, we pledged to put our
patients first and that our ethical and professional duty is always first
toward our patients. The CPSO statement orders us to violate our duty and
pledge to our patients in the following ways:
1. Denial of the Scientific Method itself: The CPSO is
ordering physicians to put aside the scientific method and to not debate the
processes and conclusions of science.
We physicians know and continue to believe that
throughout history, opposing views, vigorous debate and openness to new ideas
have been the bedrock of scientific progress. Any major advance in science has
been arrived at by practitioners vigorously questioning “official” narratives
and following a different path in the pursuit of truth.
2. Violation of our Pledge to use Evidence-Based
Medicine for our patients: By ordering us not to debate and not to question,
the CPSO is also asking us to violate our pledge to our patients that we will
always seek the best, evidence-based scientific methods for them and advocate
vigorously on their behalf
The CPSO statement orders physicians for example, not
to discuss or communicate with the public about “lockdown” measures. Lockdown
measures are the subject of lively debate by world-renown and widely respected
experts and there are widely divergent views on this subject. The explicitly
anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration (PDF ) was written by experts from
Harvard, Stanford and Oxford Universities and more than 40,000 physicians from
all over the world have signed this declaration. Several international experts
including Martin Kuldorf (Harvard), David Katz (Yale), Jay Bhattacharya
(Stanford) and Sunetra Gupta (Oxford) continue to strongly oppose lockdowns.
The CPSO is ordering physicians to express only
pro-lockdown views, or else face investigation and discipline. This tyrannical,
anti-science CPSO directive is regarded by thousands of Canadian physicians and
scientists as unsupported by science and as violating the first duty of care to
our patients.
3. Violation of Duty of Informed Consent: The CPSO is
also ordering physicians to violate the sacred duty of informed consent – which
is the process by which the patient/public is fully informed of the risks,
benefits and any alternatives to the treatment or intervention, before consent
is given. …
160+ experts slam COVID vaccines as ‘unnecessary,
ineffective and unsafe’ in powerful letter
Doctors for COVID-19 Ethics emphasized serious health
implications of the vaccines for both the healthy and ill, saying that the
shots “are not safe, either for recipients or for those who use them or
authorize their use.”
They pointed to risks of “lethal and non-lethal
disruptions of blood clotting including bleeding disorders, thrombosis in the
brain, stroke and heart attack,” “antibody-dependent enhancement of disease,”
autoimmune reactions, and potential effects of “vaccine impurities due to
rushed manufacturing and unregulated production standards.”
“Contrary to claims that blood disorders
post-vaccination are ‘rare’, many common vaccine side effects (headaches,
nausea, vomiting and hematoma-like ‘rashes’ over the body) may indicate
thrombosis and other severe abnormalities,” the experts said. “Clotting events
currently receiving media attention are likely just the ‘tip of a huge
iceberg.’ Due to immunological priming, risks of clotting, bleeding and other
adverse events can be expected to increase with each re-vaccination and each
intervening coronavirus exposure,” Doctors for COVID-19 Ethics added. “Over
time, whether months or years, this renders both vaccination and coronaviruses
dangerous to young and healthy age groups
… “Just as smoking could be and was predicted to cause
lung cancer based on first principles, all gene-based vaccines can be expected
to cause blood clotting and bleeding disorders, based on their molecular
mechanisms of action,” they said. “Consistent with this, diseases of this kind
have been observed across age groups, leading to temporary vaccine suspensions
around the world.” “Since vaccine roll-out, COVID-19 incidence has risen in
numerous areas with high vaccination rates. Furthermore, multiple series of
COVID-19 fatalities have occurred shortly after the onset vaccinations in
senior homes,” the doctors said. “These cases may have been due not only to
antibody-dependent enhancement but also to a general immunosuppressive effect
of the vaccines, which is suggested by the increased occurrence of Herpes
zoster in certain patients.”
“Regardless of the exact mechanism responsible for
these reported deaths, we must expect that the vaccines will increase rather
than decrease lethality of COVID-19,” they continued. The group stressed that
the jabs remain technically experimental – a fact that legally precludes
mandatory vaccination in many cases: “The vaccines are experimental by
definition. They will remain in Phase 3 trials until 2023. Recipients are human
subjects entitled to free informed consent under Nuremberg and other
protections
An
exclusive interview with Dr Roger Hodkinson
Dr Hodkinson is a pathologist by training, with a
wealth of knowledge in infectious disease, virology and evidence-based
medicine, who was educated at Cambridge University and University College
Hospital Medical School in London, before moving to Canada in 1970 and training
at the University of British Columbia. … And now, despite describing the
vaccines as “incredibly smart theories”, Dr Hodkinson has issued another
impassioned plea, calling for a halt to the rollout in order to carry out
further investigations.
…
He said: “I’m a serious evidence-based career
pathologist who has done everything in pathology at national and provincial
levels and I take evidence-based science very, very seriously. I’m not a
conspiracy theorist, I’m not an anti-vaxxer, I’m none of the above. But when I
see certain things in the literature that could – underlined – have serious
potential long-term sequelae, I think it’s my duty to stand up and blow the whistle and say
‘hey, stop the train, have you seen this? It needs to be looked at. I hope it’s
wrong but show me the data’. “The data I’m talking about is well-described in
the literature, that of the significant expression of the ACE 2 receptor in
both the placenta and the testes.
….
And he added: “It’s not even a conspiracy theory as to
what’s in the vaccines. These are incredibly smart vaccine theories which are
being used and they may well be incredibly successful in other future
vaccination programmes. The science is remarkable and I take my hats off to
them.
“But it’s a new technology and these adverse events
that are being recorded not least of which by the way the deaths shortly
following vaccination, which have taken off remarkably. “The deaths that are
being reported are an order of magnitude greater than previous vaccine
programmes and that should get people’s attention. We are trying to save people
here. But it looks like we’re actually killing people.”
CDC: Reports of heart inflammation in teens after Covid-19
vaccine
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is grappling
with another public relations challenge after the disclosure that heart
inflammation, known as myocarditis, has hit some teens and young people after
Covid-19 vaccination.
….
As with nearly every report of vaccine adverse events,
CDC typically says the illness may be coincidental and not related to
vaccination, and -- in the event it is related -- the risk of the vaccine
outweighs the benefit.
However, experts say the calculation is different when
it comes to the risk vs. benefit for young people and Covid-19 vaccines. That's
because scientists say the vast majority of children and young people fight off
Covid-19 without having any symptoms at all, then are presumed to be immune.
Further, many scientists say evidence shows young people do not routinely
transmit Covid-19 infection to others.
…
The CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices
is closely monitoring for Covid-19 vaccine adverse events. However, the CDC
group's credibility took a major hit earlier this year when it was revealed
that the entire scientific team had signed onto false information about what
studies showed about Covid-19 vaccine effectiveness in people who already had Covid-19.
The Advisory Committee incorrectly claimed that
studies showed the Covid-19 vaccines were effective in people who have already
had Covid-19. In fact, the opposite was true.
When the false information was flagged by Rep. Thomas
Massie (R-Kentucky), CDC officials admitted the error and promised a correction
but continued to disseminate the false information on its website and to
medical professionals. Eventually, when a correction was made, it was so
confusing that it seemed to double down on the original mistake.
The Danger Of Claimed 'Statistics'
Let’s say that a “bad thing” is likely to happen to 50
in 100,000 people, that is, 0.05%. This is quite rare. Let’s say you do
something with 30,000 people. You’d expect to see 15 bad things to happen.
Well, let’s say you see three bad events. How confident are you that you just
reduced the risk by 80%? If your answer is “not very” you’re wise. If you go
cheering in the streets you’re stupid. Now might you try that thing that
appears to be 80% effective? Sure, provided the risk of it doing something else
that’s bad (which you don’t want to have happen) is also vanishingly small. But
it’s one thing to try, and other to rely or make public policy based on those
numbers. Remember that for any individual you are a trial of one; you’re not a
trial of 100,000 or 330,000,000. … Be careful assuming the risk of the drug is
the same in everyone because it probably isn't, just as the risk of the condition
is probably not the same in everyone too.
Existing affordable drugs could rapidly reduce
Covid-19 cases and deaths in India
The COVID-19 humanitarian calamity unfolding in India
is on a scale not seen in this pandemic. This is an extraordinary situation –
and it may benefit from an extraordinary response.
There exist affordable, readily available and minimally
toxic drugs approved for non-COVID-19 use which show remarkable promise in
preventing or treating the new coronavirus. Deploying these drugs in India is
likely to rapidly reduce the number of COVID-19 patients, reduce the number
requiring hospitalization, supplemental oxygen and intensive care and improve
outcomes in hospitalized patients.
Some of these drugs are being tested in large-scale
randomized clinical trials in the US and abroad but in most cases, definitive
efficacy data is pending. With the current COVID-19 situation in India, we do
not have time to wait for results of these studies. Importantly, currently
available safety and outcomes data on these drugs is strong enough that it is
time to incorporate them into national practice guidelines. Indian authorities
should issue such guidelines on the most promising drugs for each stage of
COVID-19. By so doing, physicians will be encouraged to use these
interventions. The resulting real world data from a few healthcare settings in
select cities should be tracked in real time and guidelines suitably revised.
If such measures were adopted, we could see effects in 3-4 weeks. This strategy
might be unusual but it is not unheard of: France has the Temporary
Recommendation for Use, a “regulatory instrument which aims to allow, on a
temporary basis, the use of a medicinal product to allow its effectiveness to
be evaluated on the basis of its use."
The choice of drugs is critical. We have worked
closely with personnel at the Food and Drug Administration and have connected
with the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health to
evaluate the merits of repurposed drugs. Based on a mechanistic rationale, data
in animal models, human retrospective analyses, clinical trials (some randomized,
others not) and anecdotal human data, we created a prioritized list of
interventions that hold the greatest promise and that could be deployed at
scale. For instance, there is strong data from a randomized trial and a
real-world study that administering fluvoxamine sharply reduces the need for
hospitalization in COVID-19 outpatients. Moreover, anecdotal unpublished data
in over 400 acutely ill COVID-19 patients from several community practitioners
suggests that administering fluvoxamine and ivermectin together may be even
more efficacious.
Intervention as early as possible after symptom onset
is key. Ivermectin is already listed as a “MAY DO” on the ICMR and Indian
government guidelines for treatment of acute mild COVID-19 and we suggest that
fluvoxamine be added in this category. Also, ivermectin in the prophylactic
setting merits serious consideration. For the hospitalized, there are
treatments currently used for other conditions that might reduce the need for
ventilator support and lower the risk of death. These include inhaled
adenosine, cyproheptadine and dipyridamole. For ideas for which there is rather
limited human data, the government should offer pre-approved pilot protocols
and funding for rapid implementation in select centers rather than issue a
recommendation for use.
To be clear, it would be ideal to pursue large
clinical trials to test the efficacy of all promising interventions. A
randomized adaptive design could efficiently sift through the many
possibilities. It may be possible to rapidly set up parallel protocols in India
if government authorities can expedite the regulatory process and offer
funding. US trial investigators can be persuaded to provide protocols and
web-based data collection tools.
We hope that the Indian government will take advantage
of repurposed drug research and use temporary use authorizations or guidelines
to rapidly promote the most promising therapies at a national level while in
parallel aggressively encourage pilot studies and large-scale clinical trials
with shovel-ready protocols and funding. Given the current situation, India has
little to lose in piloting these approaches: the potential gains could benefit
not just the country but the world.
There's a reason the medical establishment dismissed
the lab leak theory
COVID-19: Discrepancy between 'cases' and 'illness'
The triage data confirms the real pandemic of spring 2020. I've still yet to see any better evidence that the (vast) majority of 'cases' (i.e. positive PCR test results) since the summer of 2020 have been false positives.
COVID Quotes of the Week:
Mittledorf: Putting together all the evidence: Knowledge
beforehand; Suppression of treatments and cures; Toxicity of the spike protein
which, if it had been made by nature, should have been benign; Inclusion of the
spike protein; Heavy promotion of scantily-tested vaccines; and Censorship of
scientists and doctors who question the vaccines’ safety... putting together
all this evidence, it is difficult to escape the inference that powerful people
and organizations have engineered this pandemic with deadly intent.
Lionel Shriver: I realize this risks the long arm of Big Tech reaching through my study window to clutch my throat, but: the case for masks making a better than negligible difference to the spread of COVID-19 has always been crap.
COVID Conspiracy Fare:
Thoughts On The
“New Normal” And The Things That We Are Losing As A Society…
The last two years have
greatly shaken America, and our country will never be the same as a
result. If you would have told someone
two years ago that in 2021 millions of people would run around wearing masks
all day and that the federal government would be relentlessly pushing a large
scale mass injection campaign, that person probably would have thought that you
were nuts. But now this is the “new
normal”. Our freedoms and liberties have
been permanently eroded, and now that they have gotten away with pushing the
envelope so dramatically, government entities on all levels will be ready to
flex their muscles again once the next major crisis comes along.
COVID Tweets of the Week:
Almost all
key info abt Covid was available in March 2020:
-how & where & where
virus is transmitted
-lockdowns fail to stop key
transmission hot spots*
-outdoor transmission v low
-IFR
-IFR age stratification
-asymptomatic transmission
low
-PCR tests unsuitable
diagnostic tool..
Geo-Political Fare:
Escobar: The
Disintegrated States Of America
I will not mince words here:
Russia doesn't need meeting with Biden (or whoever is running this POTUS
avatar), US establishment (large portion of it), on the other hand, needs this
meeting badly.
Andrew Bacevich: War as the Enemy
of Reform
Peter Koenig: Gaza – US and
the West Supports Israel’s Crimes Against Humanity – Understanding the
Never-Ending Conflict
Eric Zuesse: U.S. And Its
Allies Try to Split the World in Two
America is using its
post-WWII position of being the world’s hegemon, so as to compel every other
nation either to join them (as a banana republic or vassal nation) or else to
become their enemy by destroying them.
Canada Is in the
Business of Death and Destruction Too
Orwellian Fare:
Jim Quinn: This Was a Test,
and We Failed
I think Hunter S. Thompson
is being proven right by revelations becoming obvious daily. I’m a natural
skeptic, so I rarely believe anything I’m told without verifying facts,
analyzing data and understanding the motivation of those making declarations
and assertions.
For most of my life I thought I generally understood how the world
worked.
Doubts about my understanding began to creep into my mind between 2000
and 2008, as I watched my government
cover-up the truth about 9-11, use it to institute an Orwellian surveillance
state through the Patriot Act, invade Iraq based upon a false narrative of WMD
and links to 9/11, and watching those controlling the Federal Reserve create
the dot.com bubble and follow it up with a housing bubble – all done to benefit
Wall Street banks, billionaires, connected politicians, and Deep State
apparatchiks.
…
What has occurred in the
last year has befuddled me, as the level of treachery, deception,
disinformation, and false narratives has reached excessive elevations,
indicating a sense of urgency and desperation by those wielding power over
society. It has been depressing and frustrating to witness the level of
obedient compliance by the majority of frightened sheep in this country, with
complete subservience to authoritarian dictates of their overlords.
…
The loss of this covid
cudgel is being rapidly substituted with these Big Pharma multi-billion-dollar
profit generating experimental gene therapies, disguised as vaccines. They
desperately want to condescendingly force the jab upon everyone and force
vaccine passports upon the masses as their new virtue signaling badge of
compliant obedience.
…
No matter how hard they try
to reinstall the fear, enough people are tired of this farce to derail further
attempts at lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccine passport requirements.
…
We have become a society of
emasculated liars, purposely deceiving ourselves because we are too cowardly to
admit we have been had by those ruling over us with an iron fist. As a society
we have decided resistance is futile and if we go along to get along
…
As I observe what is
happening over the last week or so, I fall back on the words of the patron
saint of sanity in a world gone mad.:
Is The Age Of Permanent
War Finally Over?
The Great Reset agenda seems
to be losing steam and those in charge of implementing it are losing conviction
(with the exception, perhaps, of the very top echelon in power). At the same
time, the ranks of people who are opposed to it and are willing to take a
stand, appear to be swelling.
Since the very start of the
great pandemic of 2020, something about the public health response didn’t feel
right. It was clear from the measures that were enacted and from measures that were
not enacted that their purpose had little to do with public health. Instead,
they seemed to further a different agenda. Soon we learned that this was all
connected to World Economic Forum’s hugely ambitious Fourth Industrial
Revolution or the Great Reset. But the agenda and the steps taken seemed
rushed, panicked and frankly, hopeless.
Propaganda and the Media — Part 3 – Establishing and Controlling the Narrative
New-ish Section – CaitOz Quotes of the Week:
Joe Biden is a corrupt,
murderous empire lackey. He is also a very normal US president. The same was true of Trump. The
same was true of Obama. The same was true of Bush. If you can’t see this, it’s
because propaganda and partisan politics have warped your perception of
reality. US presidents will always be evil because the US empire is evil and
only evil people will be allowed to participate in its operation.
There is no one government
in charge of all this; the official elected governments are not where the real power lies. The
actual power structure keeps itself hidden and unaccountable
Back in 2019 I wrote an
article titled "Things Are Only Going To Get Weirder", and from Covid
to the 2020 election to the steadily increasing regularity with which UFOs are
now mentioned in the mainstream media, that has indeed proved to
be the case. … Speaking of which, another weird thing we're
seeing is the roles between mainstream reporters and UFO enthusiasts being
almost reversed: we now see MSNBC pundits openly musing that "UFO's are
clearly real? And have been hanging around our airspace for a while?",
while influential UFOlogists like Steven Greer are warning that this is a hoax
by the US military to get a bunch of dangerous weapons into space.
Other Quotes of the Week:
Bill Mitchell: I have read Krugman try to
lead the “deficits are bad” chorus, then claim “deficits are good” to suit a
different time, but with both calls being inappropriate at the specific times
they were made. Now he is joining up with another serial offender Larry Summers
to ramp up the inflation mania and the overheating hysteria.
Kunstler: One of the forces at work
is our old friend from physics class: entropy, the god of disorder, randomness,
and uncertainty. He is very active lately in American affairs especially, to
the degree that we have no workable consensus for running this society, so that
all our standards and institutions are crumbling. It’s gotten so bad that we
don’t even get the news about the crumbling because The News is one of the
institutions that has fallen apart. Instead of events relayed in packets that
comport with reality, we get “narratives” uniformly concocted in bad faith,
that are knowingly in non-compliance with reality — which is as opposite as can
possibly be from what The News once aimed to do.
Those of us who believed the idiocy ended in November were shocked to learn it was only getting started. The pandemic hid the end of the cycle; upon reaching the false dawn, the euphoric masses went ALL IN the modern lifestyle - competitive self-destructionism. ... This era represents the Pyrrhic victory of opinionated bullshit over reality.
Other Fare:
Funny Fare:
Pics of the Week:
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