ALB
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Is there a statisticians in the house? What does it mean to say that a vaccine is 50 (or whatever) percent effective? Does it mean that it “works in only 50% of cases”?
Does it means that 50 of those who have the vaccine jab will get the virus? Or that anyone who has the jab is only 50% protected (ie has a 50/50 chance of getting it)? Or are these the same?
According to this,
“When we talk ‘vaccine effectiveness,’ what we’re talking about is, ‘How effective was the vaccine at preventing actual disease?’ ” explains scientist L.J. Tan, chief strategist of the nonprofit Immunization Action Coalition.
In other words, Tan says, “If you vaccinate 100 people, 50 people will not get disease.””
But does that mean that 50 of those vaccinated will get the disease or just that they could get it? And how do you know which group of 50 you fall into?
Still, it seems that you increase your chances of not getting it even if the effectiveness is 50% (or less, for that matter).
But, as I said, is there a statistician in the house?
I had the Pfizer jab on Wednesday and I am still alive.
Before the Covidiots and the anti-vaxxers jump to their prejudged conclusion wait for the facts to emerge:
Useful reminder that everybody not living Oop North is well off living in leafy suburbs surrounded by golf courses. There’s deprivation in the South too. In fact everywhere. This article suggests that this is why the new variant started there:
That disproves the theory (held among others by currency cranks) that loans are supply-led, by banks creating them. In fact, it’s the other way round. The level of bank lending depends on the demand for loans, obviously viable demand (ie that will be repaid with interest) and this depends on the prospect of the borrowers making enough profit to repay the loan with interest. Apparently at present there is not enough demand for viable loans for banks to meet. As that link says:
“Perhaps banks have learned their lessons from the last crisis too well. After being bailed out with public money and taxed with tough oversight, they have little reason to lend to borrowers who might not repay. Meanwhile, many business owners don’t actually want to borrow on terms banks are prepared to offer. The Federal Reserve found that even before Covid-19, less than half of small businesses had used a bank to raise money in the past five years. Of those who applied for financing, around half got what they asked for.”
The central bank can make as much money available as they like to commercial banks in a bid to increase lending and so economic activity but, as the old saying goes, you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. The banks won’t drink because there are not enough viable borrowers and there are not enough viable borrowers because there are not enough prospects for profit-making. Result: banks use the extra money to speculate on the stock market driving up prices there.
On the face of it this is against the new UK-EU trade agreement, which provides for a level playing field. But there is a let-out clause — it must be demonstrated that any change gives the UK a competitive advantage. Since most of those affected will be low paid workers on two-day or zero hour contracts (who will have their already meagre holiday pay cut) they won’t be working in industries that export to the EU. The EU is therefore unlikely to invoke the clause that allows them to retaliate by imposing tariffs.
In any event, it shows that the Tories are still openly the party of the rich. But it’s a measure which, if implemented, could cost them votes in the ex-Red Wall seats. So maybe it won’t be.
This isn’t pure UBI of course and Yang himself at least in this quote calls it only “basic income”.
It’s not universal as it won’t be paid to everyone living in New York and it’s not unconditional in that you have to be poor to get it and presumably will have to be means-tested to prove this. It is possible that once you meet this condition there will be no other conditions such as seeking a job or being sick. No doubt it will replace some existing benefits.
So Yang is clearly on the tweak the poor law wing of the “U”BI movement. It’s not clear that he is on to a vote-winner here as many workers with a job resent money being given to those who are not working.
Relevant comment in Granthan’s prediction by Simon Nixon in today’s Times (of London). He says that there is no doubt that there is a bubble (pointing the soaring price of Bitcoin among other things but
“the big question is whether it is possible for the current bubble to burst without triggering a crisis. Jeremy Grantham, the founder of GMO asset management and one of the most respected Wall Street watchers, earlier this month likened the current situation to the South Sea Bubble or the global financial crisis of 2008. But not all market corrections result in crises; neither the stock market burst of 1987 nor 1994 led to a deep recession.”
A point to bear in mind.
Another conspiracy theory circulating is that the Democratic Party, representing the old gang establishment, let it happen so that they could discredit Trump and get rid of him for good.
In any event, that woman Pelosi’s publicising the fact that she had contacted the chiefs of staff to ask them to stop Trump pressing the nuclear trigger was pure theatre. Trump is not that mad (his main concern is himself). Also, as an Isolationist (another reason why the establishment hated him) he was in principle against involvement in further military adventures. It is much more likely that Biden would press that button or start a war as his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, is said to be in favour of military intervention on so-called “humanitarian” grounds (as the bombing of Serbia under Milosevic in 1999).
Compare those results with the 2.4% obtained by the leftwing third party candidate, former Vice President (under FD Roosevelt) Henry Wallace, for the Progressive Party in the 1948 US presidential election.
No wonder “progressives” prefer to bore from within the Democratic Party.
“At last, people are told to wear masks at all times outdoors. About time!”
Where? Sounds like fake news.
Vegans could take the next steo and become nutarians — as long as they only eat nuts that have fallen to the ground.
Talking about words, it seems that many of those who say they support UBI haven’t understood what the U stands for : Universal or, sometimes, Unconditional.
All proposed pilot schemes and the actual ones that have been done have not been universal but have targetted a particular group such as those who are unemployed or who are on other welfare benefits. Which of course means that they are neither universal nor unconditional.
No scheme has yet experimented to see what would happen if everybody living in a particular area, even (in fact especially) those with jobs, were to receive a regular unconditional payment from the state for, say, a year. After all, this is what UBIers propose should be done nationally and permanently.
What this means is that most of its advocates are just proposing a change in the poor law system.
