Saturday, May 18, 2024

History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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Under the Stars by Lisa Benson

Under the Stars by Lisa Benson


























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Friday, May 17, 2024

Three elderly people in Pittsburgh, all of whom had heart problems, died suddenly after receiving swine flu shots.

From Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It by Gina Kolata.  Page 163.   

This was written in 1999, a near generation before Covid-19 and yet all the same misteps were made then as well.  Or, more properly, despite what we learned from the Swine Flu experience in 1985, we made all the same mistakes again in 2020, as if the CDC had learned nothing.

Three elderly people in Pittsburgh, all of whom had heart problems, died suddenly after receiving swine flu shots. All had gotten their shots at the same clinic. All had had shots from the same batch of vaccine. And, reported the Pittsburgh Press, that same batch of vaccine had been delivered to twelve other clinics in Allegheny County as well as to clinics in twenty cities across the country.

The media swarmed to the Pittsburgh clinic, and the next day, October 12, Dr. Cyril Wecht, the Allegheny County coroner, fanned the flames of fear, going before CBS television cameras and saying that a bad batch of vaccine “is definitely a possibility that must be considered.”

Allegheny County suspended its swine flu campaign. And so did nine states. The press began a national body count.

Some newspapers went over the top. The New York Post, for example, ran a story on October 14 headlined “The Scene at the Pennsylvania Death Clinic” that spoke of a seventy-five-year-old woman who “winced at the sting of the hypodermic,” then had “taken a few feeble steps and dropped dead.” On October 25, the paper suggested that Carlo Gambino, the mobster, had been killed by the Mafia using a swine flu shot as the deadly weapon.

As reports of the death toll proliferated, Dr. David Sencer, at the Centers for Disease Control, tried to stem the rising tide of fear. He held a press conference on the evening of October 12, saying that there was no evidence that the vaccine was at fault. The deaths were most likely only coincidentally associated with the vaccination. But the government would, of course, investigate. “We are setting up a program to look into this in great depth to reassure everyone that this is not a problem due to the vaccine but just some of the inherent problems of providing preventative services to large numbers of people, particularly those who are elderly and have underlying health problems.”

It was the start of a tug-of-war between the Centers for Disease Control and the Pennsylvania coroner.

The next day, October 13, Wecht announced that autopsies on two of the three people had shown that they had died of heart problems. But, he said, the vaccine may have spurred those deaths. “We know that substances injected into the vascular system directly produce a more exaggerated and certainly a more rapid reaction than when those same substances are injected into the body fat or muscle mass.”

The Centers for Disease Control countered with its own figures on the likelihood of coincidental deaths, noting that among people aged seventy to seventy-four, there are 10 to 12 deaths per 100,000 people per day. So, of course, when you immunize people of that age, some, by chance, would die the same day. But that does not mean they died because they were immunized.

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History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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Bruges at night, c.1900 by Edith Vaucamps

Bruges at night, c.1900 by Edith Vaucamps






























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Thursday, May 16, 2024

Party is the madness of many, for the gain of a few

A letter from Alexander Pope to Edward Blount (27 August 1714).  A good reminder that the slavering bombast of partisan politics, combined always in an effort to stampede the electorate away from something fearful or towards something wonderful (and "free"), has always been with us since the beginning of the modern era.  

I find myself just in the same situation of mind you describe as your own, heartily wishing the good, that is the quiet of my country, and hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

Jonathan Swift in his Miscellanies (1727) similarly notes in "Thoughts on Various Subjects"

Party is the madness of many, for the gain of a few.

We complain about the uniparty and the Establishment Parties but it has always been thus.  If there is government (as there needs must) there are the grifters and barnacles as well, riding a storm of created passion in the absence of ability and clarity of thought.

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Planning in a chaotic, dynamic and uncertain environment with incomplete information.

From Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It by Gina Kolata.  Page 163.   

Planning in a chaotic, dynamic and uncertain environment with incomplete information.  Sometimes the best course of action is to let nature take its course.  And sometimes it is not.  And no one knows in advance which will be which.  

At an American Legion convention in a Philadelphia hotel a group of people fell ill and twenty-six died of a mysterious disease. It seemed to be a respiratory disease. It looked, in fact, like the flu, and some doctors said publicly that the men might have died from swine flu. For four days, while television stations showed funerals of the Legionnaires and the new disease made headlines, it seemed that the predicted flu epidemic had begun.

On August 5, the Centers for Disease Control completed its laboratory studies of the disease. Whatever was sickening these men, the data showed, it was not swine flu. (Later, the culprit turned out be a hitherto unknown bacterium that had gotten into the hotel’s air-conditioning system and was pumped throughout the building.) But even though Legionnaires’ disease, as the illness became known, was not swine flu, the message was not lost on Congress: if it had been swine flu instead, the criticisms of Congress would have been withering and the ensuing panic impossible to counter with arguments about liability insurance. If it turned out that the American people were denied a vaccine because Congress refused to give legal protection to the vaccine makers, it could be a political nightmare. So Congress acted quickly, passing a “tort claims bill” that required that any claims arising from the swine flu vaccine be filed against the federal government. The bill, which came before the Senate on August 10, was rushed through without hearings or a committee report. The next day, it went to the House of Representatives, where it passed even though many members had not seen the legislation.

Senator Harrison A. Williams, Jr., of New Jersey, said that the law broke new ground. “This is pioneering, in a sense,” he said. But, he added, “it is in response to an emergency.”

In the House of Representatives, Paul G. Rogers of Florida urged Congress to step in to help the vaccine makers. The federal government, he explained, has “asked the drug companies to produce this vaccine. We have told them how to do it. We have told them the dosage we want, what strength. We gave them the specifications because we are the only buyers, the Government of the United States. This is not the usual process of going out and selling.” But “if someone is hurt, we think people ought to have a remedy.”
On August 12, President Ford signed a bill into law committing the federal government to insuring the swine flu vaccine makers against claims that their product injured people.

A Gallup poll taken on August 31 found that 95 percent of Americans had heard of the swine flu vaccination program and that 53 percent planned to take part. Although officials at the Centers for Disease Control were disappointed—they were aiming for 95 percent participation—the poll nonetheless showed that the message had gotten through. An ominous flu could be on its way, a repeat of 1918’s epidemic, and the government was going to sponsor an unprecedented immunization program to protect Americans.

The first Americans were immunized on October 1. Ten days later, the first deaths occurred.

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History

 

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An Insight

 

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Let others waster their commercial life blood trying to coercively buy influence

From Tehran pressures for debt collection; Assad unable to pay by Enab Baladi.  Everything always eventually comes back to productivity as the basis of prosperity.  War and civil disturbances undermine productivity and destroy wealth.  War is expensive and someone has to pay.  

Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes are usually able to sustain war and war-like activities longer than consent based systems but that generally only makes the failure more crushing in the end.  Eventually the piper pipes the tune for payment and either the lender or the borrower (or both) end up having to acknowledge losses.

So it is with Syria, Iran and Russia.  They are all mixed up in Syria (along with intra-Syria factions and parties), destroying the country.  And have been for decades.  All those militia and armies are not cheap.  

At the end of April, the Saudi newspaper, Asharq Al-Awsat, reported from sources described as being well-informed in Damascus, stating that Iran has been pressuring the Syrian regime government to recover its debts since the latest visit made by Iranian President, Ebrahim Raisi, to Damascus in May 2023.

The sources added that Iran is pressuring the regime to recover debts amounting to 50 billion US dollars by obtaining investment projects, especially after the two sides signed a “Memorandum of Understanding for Strategic Cooperation” during Raisi’s last visit.

Tehran insists on implementing the numerous agreements signed between the two countries in order to repay the debts, according to the sources.

[snip]

Qaddour believes that Tehran feels aggrieved in Syria, as its presence there is deemed the most failed project it has led in foreign policy, aimed at protecting the regime’s rule without receiving anything in return, according to his expression.

The researcher also noted that Iran is still forced to provide more in Syria, without signs of getting something in return, making it an unproductive and negative economic investment.

Qaddour pointed to a dispute between the Syrian regime and Iran that has begun to surface, highlighted by Iranian pressures for larger investments on one hand, and unprecedented criticisms by regime loyalists regarding the Iranian presence in Syria.

[snip]

espite multiple commercial failures, Iran continues to strive to increase trade for various purposes, most notably to recover as much debt as possible and because of the importance of this exchange for its soft power needs, which are essential for developing long-term influence and economic relationships.

According to the study, after 2015, Iran sought to establish itself in all the main sectors in Syria; despite its significant efforts in this area, the actual success and level of its control vary from one sector to another, amidst ongoing and continual Iranian attempts to increase its positioning in each one individually.

The study indicated that, generally, a common characteristic distinctively marks Iranian economic directions in Syria, which is the success in concluding agreements but failing to materialize them, due to three main factors: Russian competition, the impact of western sanctions, and Syria’s weak economy.

This has something of the hallmarks of China's Belt and Road Initiative.  Also the World Bank.  Funneling money from a repressive regime into dysfunctional states to buy influence and prestige is usually undertaken under the guise of bold commercial visions and expectations and end in commercial failure and the evaporation of capital into graft and failure.  

Two lessons over the past fifty years that most of the OECD have still not fully absorbed:

1)  Let other people fight their own wars.  Stay away from them and from nation building.

2)  There is no substitute for enlightened self interest expressed in free markets based on consent.  Don't waste money trying to buy influence and power in dysfunctional countries.  It doesn't work and you lose your money.  At best.

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You want the truth? Assume the opposite of what is reported.

I have posted a couple of times on the obvious unreliability of mortality data from Gaza for several months (see The virtuousness of blatant misandry and Basic stats, historical knowledge, and situational awareness beats propaganda all the time as examples.)  Now the UN has acknowledged what was known and knowable months ago.  That they have been relying on false data provided by Hamas which dramatically overstate conditions in Gaza.

Hamas-UN Bullshit Blood Libel by Robert F. Graboyes covers the details of the update.  The subheading is The United Nations casually concedes the falsity of its incendiary Gaza casualty data.  He has lots of links to additional sources including, Lifting Hamas’s ‘Fog of War’ Reveals a Very Different Conflict
by Seth Mandel.  

From Mandel:

It’s possible, then—perhaps even likely—that the IDF has achieved a civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio of around 1.5-1, an unheard-of level of precision and civilian protection in urban warfare.

Mandel further notes:

If that’s the case, it should cause the Biden administration to rethink its hypercritical posture toward Israel. Except—and here’s the bad news—the Biden administration already knew this information. Again: The missing 11,000 or so casualties were largely based, according to Hamas, on media reporting. In other words, rumor—not unidentified corpses. This was not a secret. The Biden administration and the UN were both well aware of Hamas’s method of fabrication. Which means President Biden has been knowingly using false numbers to crucify Israel in the court of public opinion and to justify withholding weapons from our ally during wartime.

Like all news in recent years, this story about Gaza mortality rates seems to follow a familiar pattern.  Reports are made based on known-to-be-suspect or unreliable sources which are treated as facially true.  Immediately, those with some numeracy and/or statistical knowledge as well as those with some domain knowledge and/or historical knowledge, raise counterarguments to the naive initial reports.

The informed objections are promptly ignored and or called into question based not on technical inaccuracy, but on putative motivated thinking.  Weeks, months, or years later, the initial reporting is turned completely on its head and the arguments made by the skeptics are sustained.  

And we ignore that the entire public discourse was substantially shaped by lies propagated, or at least amplified, by the legacy mainstream media and by academia in concert with activist NGOs and the like.

It increasingly seems like the safest epistemic rule of thumb for newly reported news is to assume that the very opposite of that being reported is the truth.

I know a charming woman who in her youth was completely flummoxed by economic theory.  Perplexed to the extent that she adopted an uncommon epistemic approach when taking economics exams.  Her rule was - Whatever she thought the answer ought to be, write the opposite.  As a measure of her understanding of the underlying theory of economics, it was a mockery.  As a mechanism for achieving perfect scores, it was abysmal.  

But as a means of actually passing the exams?  It worked.  To her delight and to the distress of her professors.  

Feels like we are in a similar epistemically topsy-turvy world when it comes to news reporting these days.  

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Gavin in his study at St John’s, ca. 1920 by Stephen Bone

Gavin in his study at St John’s, ca. 1920 by Stephen Bone























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Wednesday, May 15, 2024

"Let Newton be!" and all was light.

The proposed epitaph for Sir Isaac Newton by Alexander Pope.

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.

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Panic as the basis of lawmaking

From Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It by Gina Kolata.  Page 162. 

A reminder that there is the science of medical discovery.  There is the commerce of vaccine production.  And there is the legislation of risk.  Successful public health involves the Venn diagram intersect of all three.

Even in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which wanted to indemnify the companies, there was dissension in the ranks. One staff member, who worked for Cooper, the head of that department, told Neustadt and Fineberg why he and others objected to having the government rather than the vaccine makers be held liable for vaccine-related injuries: “Behind these arguments for indemnification, there were a number of assumptions which were untested and unsupported by facts. For one, it was contended that if the manufacturers were not indemnified, they would all stop making vaccine. But the number of companies in this business had been diminishing for a long time for reasons totally unrelated to liability. We just couldn’t buy this—that continued liability would drive them out. And then there were other unsupported assumptions, just sort of out there, loping across the plains.”

As the vaccine makers met repeatedly with lawyers for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, they became increasingly frustrated. One company lawyer explained: “We would open every meeting with a heartfelt refrain for the HEW lawyers: ‘We need legislative relief. Nothing short of that is going to do it. Chairman Rogers [Paul G. Rogers, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment] is willing to put it in a bill. We need legislative relief.’ That was our first paragraph at every session. It fell on absolutely deaf ears.”

Inevitably, vaccine production was delayed.

On May 21, a leading vaccine maker, Merrell National, told the chief lawyer for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare that the company would not provide the swine flu vaccine unless the federal government provided indemnification. On June 10, the insurers for Parke-Davis and for Merrell National told the companies that their liability coverage for the swine flu vaccine would expire on July 1. The only solution would be for Congress to pass a law requiring the federal government to insure the vaccine makers.

On July 15, Merrell said it would be stopping its vaccine production entirely and that it would not even purchase eggs after July 20.

Congress held hearings. The insurance companies did not budge. They simply could not assume the risk for the vaccine makers, they insisted.

The vaccine manufacturers, in the meantime, were making the swine flu vaccine in bulk but were not putting it in vials so it could be distributed. It “would take weeks to package the vaccine, delaying even further the start of an immunization campaign that now was beginning to seem hopelessly mired down.

The impasse lasted until August 1, when a swine flu scare spurred Congress to act.

At an American Legion convention in a Philadelphia hotel a group of people fell ill and twenty-six died of a mysterious disease. It seemed to be a respiratory disease. It looked, in fact, like the flu, and some doctors said publicly that the men might have died from swine flu. For four days, while television stations showed funerals of the Legionnaires and the new disease made headlines, it seemed that the predicted flu epidemic had begun.

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Fishermen at Sea, 1796 by Joseph Mallord William Turner

Fishermen at Sea, exhibited 1796 by Joseph Mallord William Turner.  Painted when he was 21 years old.

From Wikipedia:

The work measures 36 by 48.125 inches (91.44 cm × 122.24 cm) and is in oils. Fisherman at Sea depicts a moonlit view of fishermen on rough seas near the Isle of Wight, and is a work of marine art. It juxtaposes the fragility of human life, represented by the small boat with its flickering lamp, and the sublime power of nature, represented by the dark clouded sky, the wide sea, and the threatening rocks in the background. The cold light of the Moon at night contrasts with the warmer glow of the fishermen's lantern. The chalk formations on the left of the work were traditionally thought to be the Needles on the western tip of the island; however, this has been contested, with some scholars suggesting that the chalk cliffs are instead the ones at the nearby Freshwater Bay.

The work shows strong influence from the work of artists such as Claude Joseph Vernet, Philip James de Loutherbourg, and the intimate nocturnal scenes of Joseph Wright of Derby, especially in its handling of light and shadow.
 



















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History

 

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An Insight

 

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Shore Pattern, c1950 by Alfred Joseph Casson

Shore Pattern, c1950 by Alfred Joseph Casson






















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Tuesday, May 14, 2024

History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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The Party, 1960 by Harrry Wingfield

The Party, 1960 by Harrry Wingfield


































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Monday, May 13, 2024

It is not my habit to read books their putative authors haven't read.

From The Dirty Little Secret Behind Jen Psaki's Memoir (and Most Every Other D.C. Book) by Stephen Green.  

Books their authors didn't write bought in bulk with other people's money to end up in landfills is maybe the most Washington thing ever.

This is where I endorse George Will's comment (lightly paraphrased) about a political memoir from many years ago that he critiqued without having read: "It is not my habit to read books their putative authors haven't read."

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History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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The words change but the fear and the aversion always remain the same.

There has in the past couple of years, been a diligent effort to introduce the concept of "Christian Nationalism" into the public discourse.  As usual, the effort seems political motivated, arising from murky NGOs and Foundations and succored through legacy mainstream media and cratering academia but with little uptake.  So far.  

Clearly, the left partisans want to link "Christian Nationalism" with the similarly unobvious "Far Right" and link those with terrorism and any other manifestation of opposition to the gilded Mandarin Class and their hobby horse approach to governance.  

The principal challenge for the legacy media has been that there is no there there.  What is "Christian Naitonalism"?  Who, specifically, are "Christian Nationalists?"  Show me names and faces.  

But nothing.  There is mere vaporous accusations about loose concepts.  Its the same with "Far Right."  Who is "Far Right?"  Rarely are names offered and when they are, they are almost always patently absurd.  It would be fair, given the absence of specific evidence, to assume that the whole thing is a mere political dodge.  

Because the inverse is easy to answer.  Who are the "Far Left?"  Well, at least the Democratic Socialists of America such as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Cori Bush.  How about the Squad?  DSA members with greater violent rhetoric.  In addition to the DSA members, probably; Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley,  Jamaal Bowman, Greg Casar, Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, and Delia Ramirez. 

Beyond Congress, the Far Left would include BLM, OWS, ANTIFA, the BDS movement, and the various pro-Hamas supporters.  

The Far Left is real with specific identifiable individuals and movements and actions (often violent).  The Far Left clearly exists.  All the gaseous nattering about a putative "Christian Nationalism" and "Far Right" so far seem, thankfully, to be projection and gaslighting.  

More at The Smear Campaign Against ‘Christian Nationalists’ by Ralph Reed.  The subheading is The label is ‘assigned’ to Americans who believe there is a link between faith and freedom.  

It strikes me, however, that the slandering of evangelical Christians is more than a campaign strategy or proof of secularism’s triumph. Stripped of its academic jargon and pretense, it is a fashionable but insidious bigotry that seeks to marginalize and disqualify from our civic discourse tens of millions of Americans who take their faith seriously.

Perhaps.  But beyond the sheer ideological instrumentality of this manufactured issue, I think this has less to do with religious bigotry than it has to do with the deeply ingrained Anti-Americanism and Class hatred on display in the past decade or so.  Examples.  

So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy towards people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. - Barack Obama, fundraiser 2008.

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. - Hillary Clinton, fundraiser, 2016.

There seems an atavistic drive to other those citizens who disagree with policies and governance adhored by the Mandarin Class.  Making up new names such as "far right" and "Christian nationalist" seems simply of a piece with the broader worldview of that Mandarin Class.  They are always afraid of free citizens whom they regard with disdain as peasants.   The words change but the fear and the aversion always remain the same.

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Data Talks

 

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Doing the research job journalists refuse to do. It took seven seconds.

A disappointing and profoundly uninformative reporting from Canada Re-Criminalizes Public Drug Use in British Columbia by Ian Austen.  The subheading is A province that was a global pioneer in harm reduction took a step back after a political backlash.  It feels like Austen is deliberately holding back on critical information in order not to criticize a favored policy.  Or possibly, it is just badly written and edited.  

British Columbia passed some drug reform legislation, seems to think the outcomes have been less than what was anticipated and has now recriminalized drugs.  That's the basic story.  For an informed news consumer, what you want to know, in roughly this order, is:

What was the nature of the original reform?

When did it occur?

What were the measures of success?

What have been the outcomes to date?

Have there been unintended consequences?  

What are the changes being proposed?

It is strikingly difficult to get this information from Austen's report.  There is a dearth of hard facts and explicit writing and there is a surfeit of unsupported opinions. 

What was the nature of the original reform? - Paragraph 1:  "A program allowing people in British Columbia to possess small amounts of drugs, including heroin and cocaine, without fear of criminal charges."  Lacks specificity.  What emerges is that the original reform allowed for public use of drugs in addition to possession.  

When did it occur? - Paragraph 10: "The decriminalization of the possession of small amounts of drugs was a three-year exemption that started in January 2023."  We have to wait all the way to paragraph 10 to discover that this was to have been a three year experiment but that the consequences have been so negative that they are intervening at the seventeen month mark of the thirty-six month trial.  

What were the measures of success? - Paragraph 5:  "The goals of decriminalizing possession were to enable police officers to focus their time on large drug distributors rather than users and encourage users to be open to treatment."  And that is all that is said.  There is no information about whether there was an increase in arrests of large drug distributors nor whether there was an increase in users seeking treatment.  A curious silence suggesting that neither outcome was achieved.  

What have been the outcomes to date? - Paragraph 4:  "The province’s coroner estimated that there were a record 2,511 toxic drug deaths last year. Drug overdoses from toxic substances kill more people ages 10 to 59 than homicides, suicides, accidents and natural diseases combined in British Columbia, according to the provincial coroner’s office."  See below.  They expected deaths to decline under the new policy and they instead rose 11%.  

Have there been unintended consequences?  Paragraph 11:  "but public use appears to have spread beyond the neighborhoods where it was most common before decriminalization."  The article does not discuss whether decriminalized drugs has led to increased crime.  Yet another curious omission.  
 
What are the changes being proposed? - Paragraph 1: "At the request of the province and after a public backlash, people in British Columbia are no longer permitted to use drugs in public places."  

By focus and heroic interpretation, what appears to have happened is something roughly like this.

British Columbia has a well established drug problem manifested in drug overdose deaths and public nuisance crimes.  Under the auspices of harm reduction, the government passed legislation seventeen months ago removing penalties for owning and public use of small amounts of drugs.  Public drug usage spread geographically and the number of drug overdose deaths set new records.  

Because of the spread of public use of drugs and because of the rise in drug overdose deaths, the government has modified the three year experiment at the halfway point by making it illegal to use drugs in public.  Drug ownership and private use of drugs remains legal.

Of the nineteen paragraphs in the article, nine of them are by advocates for the original drug reform program despite its failure to accomplish the stated goals.  Zero paragraphs are devoted to anyone opposed to the original decriminalization or supportive of the recriminalization of public drug use.  

Austen's reporting culminates with a drug reform advocate's argument:

Mr. Mullins also disputed that public drug use had become a substantial problem in British Columbia since decriminalization.

“There is no data or evidence that there’s any actual danger to people,” he said. “So it’s all about feelings and these feelings are being whipped up by conservative politicians.”

A final claim made despite the fact that the decriminalization led to a wider public use problem and higher number of deaths despite the policy being about harm reduction.  

What is it we ought to know that Austen has not shared?

For one thing, what has been the rate of increase in drug deaths? - Austen tells us that in the first full year of the reform program, that total overdose deaths rose to a record 2,511.  But a sense of scale is important and missing.  Were there 2,490 deaths in 2022 and it rose to 2,511 in 2023 (a minor rise) or was it something much greater.  

Let's try some investigative journalism.  Typing in "Drug overdose deaths in British Columbia in 2022" into Google, I get from BC Gov News:

The number of deaths being investigated by the BC Coroners Service in 2022 is the second-largest total ever in a calendar year, and only 34 fewer than the 2,306 deaths reported to the agency in 2021. Toxic drugs were responsible for an average of 189 deaths per month in 2022, or 6.2 lost lives each and every day.

Now we have some data context.  Drug overdose deaths by year:

2021 - 2,306
2022 - 2,272
2023 - 2,511

Deaths were falling before the reform under the Harm Reduction policy and then they increased 11% in the year following the reform.  Crudely and simplistically, one could argue that the Harm Reduction reform led to an additional 239 deaths.

Kind of important information that would have provided important context to the article, lending support for why the government was so focused on an intervention only halfway through the three year experiment.  An 11% increase in deaths when it was anticipated that they would fall is certainly an alarming trend.

Interestingly, Austen hardly deals with crime statistics at all other than "concerns from small businesses about problematic drug use."  But drug problems and crime tend to go hand-in-hand.  Was there a rise in violent or property crimes between 2022 and 2023?  Hard to tell.

Canadian crime statistics seem to come a year in arrear and I am not seeing full data for 2023 yet.  But looking at news accounts, both violent crime and property crime seem to have jumped in 2023 after some years of decline so perhaps that is a factor as well.

Austen seems clearly sympathetic to the Harm Reduction policy and reluctant to acknowledge that the new law caused worsening consequences to both drug users and to the public.  Doing the simple Google research that Austen apparently did not wish to do, we can discover that the proposed decriminalization was a catastrophe (an excess 239 deaths) and did not achieve any of its goals.

That is useful information.  Why did the reporter not want to report it?

It invites speculation but all we can know is that factual reporting and truth seeking were not the journalistic product on offer. 

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Leaving Scapa Flow, 1940 by Eric Ravilious

Leaving Scapa Flow, 1940 by Eric Ravilious





















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Sunday, May 12, 2024

History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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The Prince Who Was Hidden, 1929 by N. C. Wyeth (American, 1882-1945)

The Prince Who Was Hidden, 1929 by N. C. Wyeth (American, 1882-1945)

































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Saturday, May 11, 2024

History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Al Mac's Diner, 1991 by John Baeder (American, b. 1938)

Al Mac's Diner, 1991 by John Baeder (American, b. 1938)


















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Friday, May 10, 2024

History

 

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A Small Dutch Ship Riding Out A Storm by Willem van de Velde the Younger (Dutch, 1633-1707)

A Small Dutch Ship Riding Out A Storm by Willem van de Velde the Younger (Dutch, 1633-1707)































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Thursday, May 9, 2024

History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor















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Data Talks

 

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Belisha Beacons

From Murder is Easy by Agatha Christie.  Written in 1939.

“Jimmy Lorrimer was one of Luke’s oldest friends. As a matter of course, Luke stayed with Jimmy as soon as he got to London. It was with Jimmy that he sallied forth on the evening of his arrival in search of amusement. It was Jimmy’s coffee that he drank with an aching head the morning after, and it was Jimmy’s voice that went unanswered while he read twice over a small insignificant paragraph in the morning paper.

“Sorry, Jimmy,” he said, coming to himself with a start.

“What were you absorbed in—the political situation?”

Luke grinned.

“No fear. No, it’s rather queer—old pussy I travelled up with in the train yesterday got run over.”

“Probably trusted to a Belisha Beacon,” said Jimmy. “How do you know it’s her?”

“Of course, it mayn’t be. But it’s the same name—Pinkerton—she was knocked down and killed by a car as she was crossing Whitehall. The car didn’t stop.”

“Nasty business,” said Jimmy.

“Yes, poor old bean. I’m sorry. She reminded me of my Aunt Mildred.”

Belisha Beacon - now there's a phrase I haven't hear in forever.  I first encountered them in England in the mid-1960s (where they originated in 1935).  I was of that age where you are learning all the rules of pedestrian safety.  Probably around six years old.  Hold Mama's hand.  Cross at the zebra crossing.  Look left, look right, look left again.  Look for the Belisha Beacons.  

Here is a picture of a contemporary crossing.  


































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I wonder if people in England still refer to them as Belisha Beacons.  I don't recall hearing the term the last time I lived there in 2003 nor in my many trips since then.  I'll have to ask my sisters.

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Lighthouse at Dusk, c1920 by Julius Olsson

Lighthouse at Dusk, c1920 by Julius Olsson





















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Only the political class breeding itself

From The Way Things Are and How They Might Be by Tony Judt and Kristina Božič from several years ago.  

Courage is always missing in politicians. It is like saying basketball players aren’t normally short. It isn’t a useful attribute. To be morally courageous is to say something different, which reduces your chances of winning an election. Courage is in a funny way more common in an old-fashioned sort of enlightened dictatorship than it is in a democracy. However, there is another factor. My generation has been catastrophic. I was born in 1948 so I am more or less the same age as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Gerhard Schröder, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – a pretty crappy generation, when you come to think of it, and many names could be added. It is a generation that grew up in the 1960s in Western Europe or in America, in a world of no hard choices, neither economic nor political. There were no wars they had to fight. They did not have to fight in the Vietnam War. They grew up believing that no matter what choice they made, there would be no disastrous consequences. The result is that whatever the differences of appearance, style and personality, these are people for whom making an unpopular choice is very hard.

[snip]

We have had six, seven generations of leaders who came to power exclusively by political manoeuvring, which is historically very unusual. It’s like inbreeding: there are no external inputs, no new kinds of people, only the political class breeding itself. 

Judt was a self-described social democrat with early Marxist roots.  So it is interesting to note that this was written in March 25th, 2010, long preceding Trump.  A man accustomed to hard trade-off choices (from his business life) and a man with courage to challenge Judt's "crappy generation" of leaders.  

It is clear that the left has also become the staunch defender of the statist status quo and has fought tooth and nail against the reformer seeking to reestablish the Classical Liberal order undermined by the George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Gerhard Schröder, Tony Blair and Gordon Browns of Judt's generation.  

I am overstating the argument for emphasis but I think it makes the point.  Judt was firmly of the "crappy generation" and his criticism has turned out to effectively have been a criticism of his own people.

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Wednesday, May 8, 2024

Provencal Nude, 1949 by Willy Ronis

Provencial Nude, 1949 by Willy Ronis






























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Is the philanthropy aligned with the need?

From Philanthropic Cause Prioritization by Emily Oehlsen.  Over the past decade I have become increasingly concerned about the divergence between the interests and concerns of citizenry and those of the members of government, legacy mainstream media, education and the massive world of NGOs and Non-profits.  All of these entities are spending money and pursuing objectives that are frequently unaligned with those things which are important to citizens.  And often unaligned with reality.

This paper has an interesting example.




















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Subsidizing solutions which make a small problem bigger

From Are We Talking Too Much About Mental Health? by Ellen Barry.  The subheading is Recent studies cast doubt on whether large-scale mental health interventions are making young people better. Some even suggest they can have a negative effect.

File under "You get more of that which you subsidize."  And in an attention economy, talking about something as a crisis or danger is a form of subsidy.  The more you talk about a nascent or marginal problem, the more you are likely to create a real one.  See also, Trans movement and Sex Identification in general.

Now, some researchers warn that we are in danger of overdoing it. Mental health awareness campaigns, they argue, help some young people identify disorders that badly need treatment — but they have a negative effect on others, leading them to over-interpret their symptoms and see themselves as more troubled than they are.

The researchers point to unexpected results in trials of school-based mental health interventions in the United Kingdom and Australia: Students who underwent training in the basics of mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy did not emerge healthier than peers who did not participate, and some were worse off, at least for a while.

And new research from the United States shows that among young people, “self-labeling” as having depression or anxiety is associated with poor coping skills, like avoidance or rumination.

In a paper published last year, two research psychologists at the University of Oxford, Lucy Foulkes and Jack Andrews, coined the term “prevalence inflation” — driven by the reporting of mild or transient symptoms as mental health disorders — and suggested that awareness campaigns were contributing to it.

“It’s creating this message that teenagers are vulnerable, they’re likely to have problems, and the solution is to outsource them to a professional,” said Dr. Foulkes, a Prudence Trust Research Fellow in Oxford’s department of experimental psychology, who has written two books on mental health and adolescence.

Until high-quality research has clarified these unexpected negative effects, they argue, school systems should proceed cautiously with large-scale mental health interventions.

“It’s not that we need to go back to square one, but it’s that we need to press pause and reroute potentially,” Dr. Foulkes said. “It’s possible that something very well-intended has overshot a bit and needs to be brought back in.”

Barry goes on to note that there is still widespread support for interventions, even if they have not yet proven successful.  The researcher in the UK alludes to a core problem for any government program - it creates its own financial ecosystem in which all participants must assume success because of their own financial interests.

The results were disappointing. The authors reported “no support for our hypothesis” that mindfulness training would improve students’ mental health. In fact, students at highest risk for mental health problems did somewhat worse after receiving the training, the authors concluded.

But by the end of the eight-year project, “mindfulness is already embedded in a lot of schools, and there are already organizations making money from selling this program to schools,” said Dr. Foulkes, who had assisted on the study as a postdoctoral research associate. “And it’s very difficult to get the scientific message out there.”

My impression is that once again, we have taken a very marginal issue (a small percentage of young people do suffer real psychological problems) and we have built an immense and expensive edifice of stakeholders whose financial well-being and social status is largely dependent on the small problem being bigger than it is.  And because of that contra-incentive, we end up making the small problem bigger.




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