The More Transmissible U.K. COVID-19 Variant Could Make the Pandemic a Lot Worse

CovidBlackboardDreamstimeWirestock

Researchers in the United Kingdom identified a new variant of the coronavirus earlier this month—one that appears to be around 56 percent more transmissible than the more common strains that have been afflicting humanity for the past year. While we have seen no evidence that this strain causes more severe illness, it could nevertheless ramp up the deleterious consequences of the pandemic dramatically.

London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine epidemiologist Adam Kucharski offers some simple calculations to illustrate why a COVID-19 variant that is 50 percent more transmissible is likely to be a bigger problem than a variant that is 50 percent more deadly.

Kucharski begins by assuming that the basic reproduction number (R0) of COVID-19—that is, the number of people on average to whom an infected person will pass along the disease—is 1.1. If R0 is above 1.0, the virus will continue to spread. When R0 is below 1.0, the virus will stop spreading. As it happens, the R0 for the U.S. has indeed been hovering around 1.1 recently.

Kucharski then assumes an infection fatality rate (IFR) of 0.8 percent. While calculated IFRs vary considerably among the various states, this assumption is similar to Indiana’s roughly calculated IFR of 0.73 percent in late November.

So assuming an R0 of 1.1, an IFR of 0.8 percent, a generation time of 6 days and 10,000 infected people, Kucharski calculates that we would expect 129 eventual new fatalities after a month of spread. Increase the IFR by 50 percent, and that changes to 193 new fatalities after a month. Keep the IFR at 0.8 percent and increase transmissibility by 50 percent, and the number of new fatalities after a month jumps to 978.

Those are just illustrative calculations. Kucharski’s key message is that “an increase in something that grows exponentially (i.e. transmission) can have far more effect than the same proportional increase in something that just scales an outcome (i.e. severity).”

In a preliminary and not yet peer-reviewed study, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine epidemiologist Nick Davies and his colleagues warn, “The increase in transmissibility is likely to lead to a large increase in incidence, with COVID-19 hospitalisations and deaths projected to reach higher levels in 2021 than were observed in 2020.” But there is a way to blunt a resurgent pandemic: vaccination. “It may be necessary to greatly accelerate vaccine roll-out to have an appreciable impact in suppressing the resulting disease burden,” they conclude.

Since the new more transmissible variant has already spread outside of the U.K., it is unlikely to spare the U.S. Our public health authorities need to “stop dawdling and make sure COVID-19 vaccines are available to everyone sooner rather than later.”

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Israeli Man Dies After Receiving COVID Vaccine As 5K+ “Health Impact Events” Reported In US

Israeli Man Dies After Receiving COVID Vaccine As 5K+ “Health Impact Events” Reported In US

Following a handful of reports, including one involving a priest from the Philadelphia area who volunteered as a trial participant, about patients who received a vaccine dying in the weeks following the second dose, one man in Israel has died 2 hours after receiving the vaccine.

According to reports in the Israeli press, a 75 year old man from Beit Shean died Monday morning from a hear attack about 2 hours after receiving the vaccine.

The patient has received the vaccine at 0830 in the morning, then waited for the customary time at the health clinic before he was released to his home after reportedly feeling well. Some time after that, the man lost consciousness, then was pronounced dead.

The Israeli Health Ministry released a statement on the death: “A 75-year-old man from the north of the country suffering from active heart disease and malignant disease, who has undergone a number of heart attacks, was vaccinated this morning against the coronavirus and died at home shortly after the procedure.”

An investigation into the man’s death has been ordered by the Director General of the Ministry of Health, Prof. Hezi Levy, who has appointed a case investigation committee to be led by the head of the MoH’s Safety and Quality Division.

News of the man’s death follows reports that 5K out of the first 215K recipients of the vaccine in the US reported some kind of “adverse health impact event”, which could be anything that seriously limits an individual’s ability to function and/or complete daily tasks. These events should be severe enough to require medical attention, but exact details are unclear.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 12/28/2020 – 17:20

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Are We Really Going To ‘Build Back Better’ After A “Dark Winter”?

Are We Really Going To ‘Build Back Better’ After A “Dark Winter”?

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”

– J.R.R. Tolkien

With all the talk about dark winters from Biden, Harris, Fauci, tyrannical Democrat governors, pandemic hysteria medical “experts”, and the corporate media paid to propagate the vital narrative, my mind was naturally drawn to the words of J.R.R. Tolkien and his Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is a story of good versus evil, with a foreboding mood of darkness and doom.

To those of us of a conspiratorial nature, according to those who conspired to overthrow a duly elected president for four years and are currently conspiring to steal the presidency through blatant election rigging and mail-in ballot fraud, we believe the darkness engulfing our nation has been initiated by the billionaire globalist evildoers marshaling dark forces in their Mordor on the Potomac.

The globalist elites, along with the Deep State and social media tyrants of Silicon Valley are rich, influential, and arrogant. They have stepped out from the shadows and are now blatantly flaunting their capture of our government, electoral systems, financial systems, mainstream media, social media, and medical complex.

They have gauged the intellectual, ethical, and mathematical aptitude of the masses and found them wanting. They have no fear of significant pushback as they commit treason by stealing a presidential election, trashing the Constitution, destroying small business owners, impoverishing what remains of the middle class, and imposing totalitarian restrictions upon a compliant obedient populace.

A nation once populated by independent minded, self-reliant, frontiersmen has rotted from within, as the country is now populated by millions of weak minded, submissive, docile sheep, allowing themselves to be bullied and propagandized into paralysis, while texting, tweeting and facebooking their every mindless thought to their followers.

Unless the Trump forces can prove fraud on a multi-state basis or are willing to take the drastic step of utilizing the September 12, 2018 Executive Order regarding foreign interference in elections as justification for using the Insurrection Act in overturning the fraudulent outcome of the election, the end of the nation as we know it will have arrived. Losing the two Senate runoff elections in Georgia would greatly accelerate the decline.

If more Americans had the ability and/or desire to think critically, rather than choosing to be willfully ignorant and entranced by their electronic gadgets, they would understand how they are being manipulated and played by global elites, corporate fascists, billionaire totalitarians, and a corporate media using a common narrative as propaganda to mold their minds and play upon their emotions. It is not a coincidence when common phrases and narratives are propagated by those pulling the strings behind the scenes of this Potemkin village of villainy.

It has never been more apparent than during this year of pandemic hysteria. Phrases like “dark winter”, “lockdown”, “build back better”, “we are all in this together” (we’re not), “flatten the curve”, “social distancing”, “stop the spread”, “self-quarantine”, “contact tracing”, “new normal”, “remote learning”, “black lives matter”, and of course “The Great Reset”, have been introduced into our vocabulary as a means of controlling, dehumanizing, and invoking fear among the population.

Biden’s handlers have had him fear mongering with the “Dark Winter” jargon since October, as their plan was to not pass a relief bill for poverty stricken unemployed workers and small businesses; ramp up testing to extraordinary levels using a PCR test guaranteed to produce millions of false positives; and classify the deaths of thousands of very old people as Covid deaths, no matter what they really died from; all to seize power over the government.

The propaganda of “Dark Winter” is designed to scare the population into submitting to lockdowns, canceling Thanksgiving and Christmas, begging for the Big Pharma vaccines, and allowing totalitarian mandates from Washington DC, state capitols, and localities to be executed without resistance. With the unceasing support of left-wing media outlets, the use of dire warnings by your overlords isn’t based upon facts, but a purposeful effort to appeal to the emotions of the non-critical thinking masses.

When doing a search regarding “Dark Winter” you find a conspiracy theorist bonanza. Operation Dark Winter was the code name for a bio-terrorist simulation conducted in June 2001 by John Hopkins, high-level government officials and the media regarding a widespread small-pox attack scenario. The similarities to the release of a virus from a Chinese bio-weapon lab in Wuhan are a little eerie.

The findings from this simulation should be familiar to anyone who has been paying attention for the last ten months. Dark Winter outlined the possible breakdown in essential institutions, resulting in a loss of confidence in government, followed by civil disorder, and a violation of democratic processes by authorities attempting to restore order. Shortages of vaccines and other drugs affected the response available to contain the epidemic, as well as the ability of political leaders to offer reassurance to the American people.

State government leaders wanted to invoke mandatory quarantining and border control. The lack of coordinated healthcare response exacerbated the fear of the population and overwhelmed the capacity in hospitals. The most pertinent finding from the simulation was information management would be the critical element in manipulating the crisis. They would need to manage the narrative to convince the population lockdowns, mandatory vaccinations, and disease containment measures were good for society, and most importantly, the government knew what was best.

It seems those who believe they know what is best for the world – Gates, Soros, Schwab, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Dorsey, Obama, Clinton, along with other Deep State operatives – have put these lessons to good use. They understand the power of Bernays’ propaganda techniques, combined with modern day technological algorithms and psychological manipulation, along with population dumbed down by decades of government school indoctrination where they were taught to feel rather than think.

They know if they can successfully market their desired narrative through plugging paid “expert” opinions, unceasing mainstream media messaging, social media promotion of the narrative and suppression of counter-narratives through censorship, and politicians mouthing what they are told to regurgitate by their puppeteer controllers, they will achieve their objectives.

You can even use their own technology to prove their duplicitous intentions. Google Trends reveals the phrase “Dark Winter” was virtually non-existent until October 2020. The Deep State public relations leeches running Biden’s campaign did some psychological testing on potential propaganda victims and found having Biden, his minions, and co-conspiratorial media utter this phrase thousands of times per day would invoke enough fear to convince the plebs to stay locked down, masked up, and pleading for the vaccine.

The message was designed to scare enough people into voting for Biden, that the election rigging wouldn’t seem as blatant as it became. The “Dark Winter” narrative peaked in the weeks following the election but is now being revived as part of the Big Government/Big Pharma marketing campaign to shame and fear the ignorant masses into compliantly getting injected with an experimental Big Pharma vaccine, with unknown long-term effects.

So, what is the ultimate purpose of this propaganda campaign? There are no coincidences when it comes to the narrative being utilized to manipulate the minds of the masses during this deliberately over-hyped pandemic. Is the virus real? Based on personal anecdotes of numerous people who have had this China flu, it most certainly makes some people extremely sick and contributes to the deaths of some people. Most people barely notice any symptoms.

People less than 70 years old and in relatively good health have a 99.7% chance of not dying from this flu. Even those over 70 have a 94.6% chance of surviving if they get this flu. This flu contributes to the deaths of the very old and very sick, probably shortening their lives by months, not years. Maybe that is why the study done by a doctor at Johns Hopkins showing no excess mortality in the U.S. during 2020, needed to be scrubbed, deleted and memory holed – it revealed the pandemic hysteria narrative to be false. Amazingly, reported flu cases are down 98%, with no deaths, and deaths from heart disease and other respiratory ailments have plummeted. What a coincidence.

Based on the positivity rate from the mass testing, it appears 10% of the population has had or has this flu. There have been 326,000 deaths classified as Covid since March. We know this is a grossly exaggerated number because the medical industrial complex is highly compensated by the government with your money to classify deaths as Covid. Actual data shows only 6% of the total deaths are from Covid alone.

Also, for those incapable of critical thinking, a case is not a sickness. Most people testing positive (due to faulty PCR tests) don’t know they even have this dreadful disease. And now that everyone entering a hospital for a procedure gets tested, a positive test means they are classified as a Covid hospitalization. The “masking saves lives” narrative is a complete and utter joke, as proved by any factual analysis – which will be immediately suppressed by Facebook, Twitter, and Google.

How many tik-tok nurse dance routines does it take for people to realize the “hospitals at capacity” narrative is bullshit? We also know for a fact over 40% of all deaths have occurred in long-term care facilities, thanks to best selling author on leadership and Emmy award winner Andrew Cuomo and his fellow left wing totalitarian governors – Newsom, Wolf, Murphy and Whitmer. As the election approached, the daily testing was ramped from 1 million to over 2 million because the “Resistance” needed cases to surge and make it appear the situation was getting dramatically worse to help steal the election.

All part of the plan, along with the necessity of mass mail-in ballot voting because it was too dangerous to stand in line at polling places, but perfectly safe to be in massive lines at Wal-Mart, Target and Costco. And now we have the full press “life-saving” vaccine marketing campaign, on par with the rollout of version 6,875 of the Apple iphone, designed to enrich Pfizer, Moderna, Astra Zeneca, and the other dozen Big Pharma mega-corporations and their billionaire benefactors.

The televised vaccine injections by politicians, Hollywood actors, Fauci, and other “important people” are broadcasted breathlessly by the vacuous bimbo and brainless male model talking heads on CNN, MSNBC and the other propaganda media to convince the ignorant masses they need to blindly comply to save themselves from a horrible disease with a 99.7% survival rate.

The concerted effort to scorn, ridicule, censor and disallow any discussion about the tremendous effectiveness of Hydroxychloroquine + Zinc + Zpack in curing this virus is another example of the Big Pharma profits mantra as the dominant theme. This perfectly safe and effective treatment only costs a few bucks and doesn’t enrich the pandemia crowd, so it had to be squashed. How many people died because politicians banned this treatment until after the election?

Ivermectin, generally used to treat parasite infestations, has also proven to be highly effective in treating Covid-19, but you will never hear Fauci or a MSM talking head admit this is true. There are billions to be made. And if cases begin to peak, just announce a new “mutant” strain with no proof or data, and the fearful masses will again beg the government to keep them locked down. There is a population to control – and reduce.

They expect you to believe the 95% vaccine success rate after 9 months, when they haven’t achieved a 40% success rate with the annual flu after decades. And they absolutely know the long-term effects of a product they just produced with far less testing than has been done to test the safety of previous vaccines. Five years from now when negative impacts begin to reveal themselves, they will say “how could we have known?”.

And since the mega-corporation Pharma companies have been granted immunity from liability for their negligence, their hundreds of billions in profits will be safe. How long before Fauci is sitting on the Boards of Pfizer and Moderna, collecting six figure board fees? It is fascinating how the WHO suddenly changed their definition of herd immunity on their website to say that it can only be achieved through vaccinations, which is categorically untrue.

When you realize the breadth of this conspiracy of billionaire oligarchs, the UN, WHO, CDC, corrupt politicians, Big Pharma, the entire medical complex, corporate media, and feckless bureaucrats, to plunder the wealth of the masses and implement their command-and-control agenda, you might understand Mencken’s rage.

In Part Two of this article I will lay out Klaus Schwab’s master plan to reset the world in the warped vision of the globalist elites. In Part Three I will use the wisdom of J.R.R. Tolkien to try and map a path through these dark times.

*  *  *

The corrupt establishment will do anything to suppress sites like the Burning Platform from revealing the truth. The corporate media does this by demonetizing sites like mine by blackballing the site from advertising revenue. If you get value from this site, please keep it running with a donation. 

Tyler Durden
Mon, 12/28/2020 – 17:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/37UpCZm Tyler Durden

The More Transmissible U.K. COVID-19 Variant Could Make the Pandemic a Lot Worse

CovidBlackboardDreamstimeWirestock

Researchers in the United Kingdom identified a new variant of the coronavirus earlier this month—one that appears to be around 56 percent more transmissible than the more common strains that have been afflicting humanity for the past year. While we have seen no evidence that this strain causes more severe illness, it could nevertheless ramp up the deleterious consequences of the pandemic dramatically.

London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine epidemiologist Adam Kucharski offers some simple calculations to illustrate why a COVID-19 variant that is 50 percent more transmissible is likely to be a bigger problem than a variant that is 50 percent more deadly.

Kucharski begins by assuming that the basic reproduction number (R0) of COVID-19—that is, the number of people on average to whom an infected person will pass along the disease—is 1.1. If R0 is above 1.0, the virus will continue to spread. When R0 is below 1.0, the virus will stop spreading. As it happens, the R0 for the U.S. has indeed been hovering around 1.1 recently.

Kucharski then assumes an infection fatality rate (IFR) of 0.8 percent. While calculated IFRs vary considerably among the various states, this assumption is similar to Indiana’s roughly calculated IFR of 0.73 percent in late November.

So assuming an R0 of 1.1, an IFR of 0.8 percent, a generation time of 6 days and 10,000 infected people, Kucharski calculates that we would expect 129 eventual new fatalities after a month of spread. Increase the IFR by 50 percent, and that changes to 193 new fatalities after a month. Keep the IFR at 0.8 percent and increase transmissibility by 50 percent, and the number of new fatalities after a month jumps to 978.

Those are just illustrative calculations. Kucharski’s key message is that “an increase in something that grows exponentially (i.e. transmission) can have far more effect than the same proportional increase in something that just scales an outcome (i.e. severity).”

In a preliminary and not yet peer-reviewed study, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine epidemiologist Nick Davies and his colleagues warn, “The increase in transmissibility is likely to lead to a large increase in incidence, with COVID-19 hospitalisations and deaths projected to reach higher levels in 2021 than were observed in 2020.” But there is a way to blunt a resurgent pandemic: vaccination. “It may be necessary to greatly accelerate vaccine roll-out to have an appreciable impact in suppressing the resulting disease burden,” they conclude.

Since the new more transmissible variant has already spread outside of the U.K., it is unlikely to spare the U.S. Our public health authorities need to “stop dawdling and make sure COVID-19 vaccines are available to everyone sooner rather than later.”

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What Did We Learn in 2020?

TrumpFauci

So what did Peter Suderman, Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Nick Gillespie learn about over these godawful last 12 months? Among the lessons confessed on today’s Reason Roundtable podcast: that there’s nothing noble about a “noble lie,” that “personal responsibility” has more meanings than are evident upon first glance, that we have given teachers unions enough power for them to derail their own gravy trains, and that (more thankfully!) humans are resilient and resourceful creatures.

Other topics gnawed on in today’s discussion: President Donald Trump’s about-face on corona-stimulus, the yin and yang of Soul/Wonder Woman 1984, and whether we should abort baby L. Ron Hubbard in the woods.

Audio production by Ian Keyser and Regan Taylor.

Music: “Nowadays” by Teo Laza.

Relevant links from the show:

2020: An Awful Year With a Legacy We Won’t Soon Escape,” by J.D. Tuccille

Trump Gets None of His Demands in the Spending Bill but Signs It Into Law Anyway,” by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Employed, Middle Class Americans Don’t Need More ‘Free’ Stimulus Money,” by Eric Boehm

Trump Threatens to Sink COVID-19 Relief Bill Unless Congress Cuts Wasteful Spending, Spends More on $2,000 Stimulus Checks,” by Christian Britschgi

COVID Relief Bill Includes $25 Billion in Rental Assistance, 1-Month Extension of the CDC’s Eviction Moratorium,” by Christian Britschgi

Congress Legalizes Smokey Bear Impersonations,” by Billy Binion

Congress Blocks School Choice in New Stimulus Package,” by Eric Boehm

Giant New Spending and COVID-19 Relief Bill Also Creates 2 New Museums and a Library, References Dalai Lama Controversy,” by Robby Soave

The FDA Could Double COVID-19 Vaccine Availability Immediately,” by Ronald Bailey

Trump Administration Should Immediately Launch an Operation Warp Speed for COVID-19 Testing,” by Ronald Bailey

Americans Are Sick of Arbitrary COVID-19 Restrictions,” by Jacob Sullum

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What Did We Learn in 2020?

TrumpFauci

So what did Peter Suderman, Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Nick Gillespie learn about over these godawful last 12 months? Among the lessons confessed on today’s Reason Roundtable podcast: that there’s nothing noble about a “noble lie,” that “personal responsibility” has more meanings than are evident upon first glance, that we have given teachers unions enough power for them to derail their own gravy trains, and that (more thankfully!) humans are resilient and resourceful creatures.

Other topics gnawed on in today’s discussion: President Donald Trump’s about-face on corona-stimulus, the yin and yang of Soul/Wonder Woman 1984, and whether we should abort baby L. Ron Hubbard in the woods.

Audio production by Ian Keyser and Regan Taylor.

Music: “Nowadays” by Teo Laza.

Relevant links from the show:

2020: An Awful Year With a Legacy We Won’t Soon Escape,” by J.D. Tuccille

Trump Gets None of His Demands in the Spending Bill but Signs It Into Law Anyway,” by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Employed, Middle Class Americans Don’t Need More ‘Free’ Stimulus Money,” by Eric Boehm

Trump Threatens to Sink COVID-19 Relief Bill Unless Congress Cuts Wasteful Spending, Spends More on $2,000 Stimulus Checks,” by Christian Britschgi

COVID Relief Bill Includes $25 Billion in Rental Assistance, 1-Month Extension of the CDC’s Eviction Moratorium,” by Christian Britschgi

Congress Legalizes Smokey Bear Impersonations,” by Billy Binion

Congress Blocks School Choice in New Stimulus Package,” by Eric Boehm

Giant New Spending and COVID-19 Relief Bill Also Creates 2 New Museums and a Library, References Dalai Lama Controversy,” by Robby Soave

The FDA Could Double COVID-19 Vaccine Availability Immediately,” by Ronald Bailey

Trump Administration Should Immediately Launch an Operation Warp Speed for COVID-19 Testing,” by Ronald Bailey

Americans Are Sick of Arbitrary COVID-19 Restrictions,” by Jacob Sullum

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The CDC’s Rules Let Teachers, Lawyers, Media Jump to the Front of the COVID Vaccine Line

sipaphotoseleven319615

Education sector “support staff members,” corporate tax lawyers, and magazine fashion editors will all jump to the front of the coronavirus vaccination line ahead of the general population, under recommendations issued in late December by the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Self-interest dictates I should probably wait until after I get my immunity-producing doses before raising any questions about the prioritization. The government’s allocation strategy is such an inviting target, though, that it’s hard to resist taking, er, a shot.

How did we get here? On December 20, a government committee of highly educated, mostly academic experts known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted about who should get the vaccine first. The committee has 15 voting members. Twelve of them are medical doctors. One is a lawyer. Nine—a majority—are affiliated with universities, including Stanford, Vanderbilt, Baylor, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Naturally, the committee of doctors decided that the first vaccines should go to healthcare workers. That might seem like common sense—emergency room or intensive care doctors treating Covid-19 patients deserve to be protected against the risk of catching the disease in the workplace. Healthcare workers, though, is a big, catchall category. It includes everyone from Beverly Hills plastic surgeons conducting elective cosmetic surgery to “administrative staff,” which might be the billing clerk in the plastic surgery practice, or some hospital accounts-receivable bookkeeper or fundraiser with no patient contact.

“Healthcare personnel” are in the CDC’s phase 1a. Educational sector support staff are next in phase 1b. That could include people who are currently working from home and who ordinarily have little or no direct contact with students—say, the employees who answer telephone questions about retired professors’ pension benefits.

The next phase, 1c, encompasses the “media” and “law” categories. Like healthcare personnel, these groups are so broad that they include essential frontline workers but also some others whose prioritization is difficult to justify.

Journalists covering the pandemic by doing on-the-scene reporting from nursing homes or hospital intensive care units probably do have a strong case to be vaccinated relatively early. So do criminal defense lawyers meeting clients in prisons or jails, or making frequent in-person courtroom appearances.

The “media” and “law” categories, though, also include the copyeditors at Vogue and the big-firm lawyers who rarely show up in court but spend their time instead writing memos and helping companies minimize their taxes. Their Covid-19 risk seems pretty small, or at least small enough that it’s hard to see the rationale for those workers leapfrogging ahead of the general population.

A cynic might suspect the vaccine committee put lawyers and journalists early in the queue as a way to avoid getting sued or attracting negative press coverage.

It turns out that there is a mechanism in capitalism for allocating scarce goods. It works pretty well—better than allowing a government-appointed committee to decide who gets what when. It is called “price.”

When sellers are free to adjust prices upward to meet demand, scare goods wind up in the hands of those who value them most. If a coronavirus vaccine dose cost $1,000 or $2,000 instead of “free” or “$20,” a hospital might decide that it is worth vaccinating the intensive care nurses immediately. At that price, the same hospital might decide to wait for a while before vaccinating the accounts-receivable bookkeeper.

Some worry that under a free market approach like this, the Beverly Hills plastic surgery billing clerks and corporate tax lawyers will get vaccinated before the emergency room doctors in inner-city hospitals or public defenders visiting clients in jail. That’s a reasonable concern, but it’s better addressed by targeted subsidies than by a total suspension of the price mechanism in favor of broad-brush categories like “law” or “media.”

A nice thing about temporarily high prices—whether for a Tesla or an iPhone or a Manhattan apartment—is that they tend to spur production, either of that product or of close substitutes.

The coronavirus vaccine was created by a combination of private-sector ingenuity at Pfizer and Moderna and government spending and planning at Operation Warp Speed. The Trump administration has showed openness to using commercial vendors such as CVS and McKesson to administer and distribute the vaccine. Letting a committee of academic physicians rather than a market decide who gets the shot first is a departure from the private sector-led approach that has driven America’s success so far.

It may seem like the most important thing America has to give the rest of the world right now is the vaccine. An even more valuable export, though, would be confidence that free markets and capitalism work better than communism, cronyism, and state-run central planning. It might mean journalists or lawyers wait a week or two longer for this vaccine.

The net long-term result, though, would be that more shots and goods of all sorts wind up faster in the arms of those who can use them best.

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WHO Chief Scientist Warns “No Evidence COVID Vaccine Prevents Viral Transmission”

WHO Chief Scientist Warns “No Evidence COVID Vaccine Prevents Viral Transmission”

Once again, the WHO has stepped in to offer some confusing comments about the coronavirus vaccine, warning that there is “no evidence to be confident shots prevent transmission” and that people who receive the vaccine should continue wearing masks and following all social distancing and travel guidelines.

The comments were made by WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan during what appears to have been a virtual press conference held Monday.

A clip of the offending line has begun circulating on social media.

“At the moment, I don’t believe we have the evidence on any of the vaccines, to be confident that it’s going to prevent people from getting the infection and passing it on,”

Of course, a close look at the research released by Pfizer and Moderna shows the studies haven’t actually tested whether the vaccines actually prevent transmission of the virus; the goal of the trials was to see whether vaccinated patients presented with COVID symptoms at a rate that was substantially less frequent than individuals who hadn’t been vaccinated. That’s pretty much it. Though the data might hint at lowering transmission rates, that’s still tbd, apparently.

Some on twitter scoffed at the comment.

The doctor went on to explain that there’s no evidence to suggest that those who have been vaccinated wouldn’t be a risk if they traveled to a foreign country, say Australia, with relatively low COVID rates.

At this point, it might be helpful for the WHO to produce some kind of clarification that either offers substantially more context to explain this remark.

But we suspect they won’t.

Why? Well, perhaps because that context might undermine certain government officials’ insistence that there’s absolutely no reason to question the efficacy, and potential side effects (both long-term, and short) tied to the new COVID-19 vaccines.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 12/28/2020 – 16:40

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/34QlM1u Tyler Durden

Will President Trump Make Recess Appointments During the “Fictitious” Inter-Session Recess on January 3?

On January 3, 2021, the 116th Congress will come to a close, and moments later, the 117th Congress will begin. There will be, for a fleeting instance, an inter-session recess. During this period, in theory at least, President Trump could make recess appointments. And those appointments would last until the the next session concludes in January 2022. Would such appointments be constitutional?

Noel Canning recounts that in 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt made 160 recess appointments between the end of one Senate session and the beginning of another Senate session:

Most notably, in 1905 the Senate Committee on the Judiciary objected strongly to President Theodore Roosevelt’s use of the Clause to make more than 160 recess appointments during a “fictitious” inter-session recess. S.Rep. No. 4389, 58th Cong., 3d Sess., p. 2 (hereinafter 1905 Senate Report). At noon on December 7, 1903, the Senate President pro tempore had “declare[d]” a formal, “extraordinary session” of the Senate “adjourned without day,” and the next formal Senate session began immediately afterwards. 37 Cong. Rec. 544 (1903). President Roosevelt made over 160 recess appointments during the instantaneous inter-session interval.

The Senate Judiciary Committee issued a reporting, finding that this instantaneous break was not a “recess of the Senate” for purposes of the Recess Appointments Clause. The report defined “recess” as:

“the period of time when the Senate is not sitting in regular or extraordinary session as a branch of the Congress …; when its members owe no duty of attendance; when its Chamber is empty; when, because of its absence, it can not receive communications from the President or participate as a body in making appointments.”

Were these appointments valid? Later, Justice Breyer’s majority opinion flagged TR’s appointments:

There are a few historical examples of recess appointments made during inter-session recesses shorter than 10 days. We have already discussed President Theodore Roosevelt’s appointments during the instantaneous, “fictitious” recess.

Alas, Justice Breyer did not definitively resolve this issue.

There may be others of which we are unaware. But when considered against 200 years of settled practice, we regard these few scattered examples as anomalies. We therefore conclude, in light of historical practice, that a recess of more than 3 days but less than 10 days is presumptively too short to fall within the Clause. We add the word “presumptively” to leave open the possibility that some very unusual circumstance — a national catastrophe, for instance, that renders the Senate unavailable but calls for an urgent response — could demand the exercise of the recess-appointment power during a shorter break. (It should go without saying — except that Justice SCALIA compels us to say it — that political opposition in the Senate would not qualify as an unusual circumstance.)

Again, the Court’s opinion does not distinguish between inter-session recesses and intra-session recesses. The three-to-ten day standard would seem to apply to both types of recesses. An instantaneous inter-session appointment would be “presumptively” unconstitutional.

In his concurrence (really a dissent), Justice Scalia uses the TR example for a different purpose: to show that at the turn of the 20th century, even the most aggressive President did not try to make an intra-session recess appointment. Rather, TR tried to squeeze the recess appointments into the fleeting inter-session recess.

That was where things stood when, in 1903, Roosevelt made a number of controversial recess appointments. At noon on December 7, the Senate moved seamlessly from a special session into a regular one scheduled to begin at that hour. See 37 Cong. Rec. 544; 38 Cong. Rec. 1. Roosevelt claimed to have made the appointments in a “constructive” recess between the two sessions. See Special Session Is Merged Into Regular, N.Y. Times, Dec. 8, 1903, p. 1. He and his allies in the Senate justified the appointments on the theory that “at the moment the gavel falls to summon the regular session into being there is an infinitesimal fraction of a second, which is the recess between the two sessions.” Extra Session Muddle, N.Y. Times, Dec. 7, 1903, p. 3. In 1905, the Senate Judiciary Committee published a report criticizing the appointments on the ground that “the Constitution means a real recess, not a constructive one.” S.Rep. No. 4389, 58th Cong., 3d Sess., p. 4. The report explained that the recess is “the period of time when the Senate is not sitting in regular or extraordinary session… when its members owe no duty of attendance; when its Chamber is empty; when, because of its absence, it can not receive communications from the President or participate as a body in making appointments.” Id., at 2 (emphasis deleted).

The majority seeks support in this episode, claiming that the Judiciary Committee embraced a “broad and functional definition of `recess'” consistent with the one the majority adopts. Ante, at 2564. On the contrary, the episode powerfully refutes the majority’s theory. Roosevelt’s legal justification for his appointments was extremely aggressive, but even he recognized that “the Recess of the Senate” could take place only between formal sessions. If the majority’s view of the Clause had been considered plausible, Roosevelt could have strengthened his position considerably by making the appointments during an intra-session break of a few days, or at least a few hours. (Just 10 minutes after the new session began on December 7, the Senate took “a recess for one hour.” 38 Cong. Rec. 2.) That he instead strained to declare a dubious inter-session recess of an “infinitesimal fraction of a second” is powerful evidence that the majority’s view of “the Recess” was not taken seriously even as late as the beginning of the 20th century.

Yet the majority contends that “to the extent that the Senate or a Senate committee has expressed a view, that view has favored a functional definition of `recess’ [that] encompasses intra-session recesses.” Ante, at 2563. It rests that contention entirely on the 1905 Judiciary Committee Report. This distorts what the committee said when it denied Roosevelt’s claim that there had been a recess. If someone avers that a catfish is a cat, and I respond by pointing out that a catfish lives in water and does not have four legs, I have not endorsed the proposition that every land-dwelling quadruped is a cat. Likewise, when the Judiciary Committee explained that an instantaneous transition from one session to another is not a recess because the Senate is never absent, it did not suggest that the Senate’s absence is enough to create a recess. To assume otherwise, as the majority does, is to commit the fallacy of the inverse (otherwise known as denying the antecedent): the incorrect assumption that if P implies Q, then not-P implies not-Q. Contrary to that fallacious assumption, the Judiciary Committee surely believed, consistent with the Executive’s clear position at the time, that “the Recess” was limited to (actual, not constructive) breaks between sessions.

Scalia doesn’t actually say that TR’s appointments were invalid. Indeed, under Scalia’s reading of “the recess of the Senate,” an inter-session recess of any duration would suffice. Though, under the 1905 Senate Report’s functional definition of a “Recess,” a momentary lapse would not suffice. Here, Scalia’s opinion does not provide a clear answer.

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Newly Recorded COVID-19 Cases and Deaths Are Falling in the U.S.

CoronavirusEpidemicDown

Newly recorded COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States, which rose dramatically this fall, now seem to be declining. According to Worldometer’s numbers, the seven-day average of daily new cases fell by 18 percent between December 18 and yesterday. The seven-day average of daily deaths has fallen by 19 percent since December 22.

Daily new cases in the U.S. are still five times as high as they were in mid-September, while daily deaths are three times as high as they were in mid-October. But the seven-day average of daily deaths, about 2,200 as of yesterday, has dropped slightly below last spring’s peak after exceeding it for several weeks. The recent trends, assuming they continue, are a hopeful sign that the winter might not be quite as deadly as many people feared.

Back in October, for instance, Joe Biden said “the expectation is we’ll have another 200,000 Americans dead [from COVID-19] between now and the end of the year.” That implied a total U.S. death toll of about 423,000 by January 1. Per Worldometer, the current death toll is about 342,000. With four days to go in the year, it looks like Biden’s projection will be off by 70,000 or so.

Allowing for the lag between laboratory confirmation and death, the recent drop in fatalities corresponds with a decrease in daily new cases recorded in late November. Since newly identified infections are falling again, it is plausible that daily deaths will continue to fall as well.

But for how long? Since COVID-19 symptoms that might prompt someone to seek testing appear two to 14 days after infection, the increase in confirmed cases following the dip in late November is consistent with the fear that gatherings over Thanksgiving weekend would boost virus transmission. The impact of Christmas and New Year’s Day gatherings may not be fully apparent until mid-January or later.

The pessimistic take on the recent dip in daily new cases is that it simply represents a falloff from the surge associated with Thanksgiving, which suggests that cases and deaths will rise again as infections tied to Christmas and New Year’s Day celebrations show up in the official tallies. A more optimistic interpretation is that the dramatic increases in cases and deaths have encouraged wider and more consistent compliance with COVID-19 precautions.

Did the new legal restrictions imposed by many states also play a role? Maybe, although a comparison of the two most populous states seems inconsistent with that hypothesis. California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom has imposed a raft of new restrictions, has seen a smaller decline in daily deaths than Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott has taken a more lenient approach.

However you interpret current trends, they show that continued increases in new cases and deaths are not inevitable. The way Americans choose to behave in the months until vaccines are widely available will determine exactly how deadly the pandemic proves to be.

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