The Post-Partisan Emporium

Why hide what happens in the first two weeks after vaccination? Hiding part of the data leads to wrong conclusions There have been numerous papers published showing how well the vaccines protect people after the second dose. Some of this effect is an illusion. The effect happens as a result of inaccurate measuring and a phenomenon called  survivorship bias . Survivorship bias  happens when a group is compared at two time points, but the members of the group change between the time points. It would be like assessing the quality of a swimming school which favours the technique of throwing people into the middle of the ocean, leaving them for a couple of hours and claiming credit for how well the remaining students can swim. After two hours, the only people left would be the ones who could already swim and possibly a few who learnt to swim the hard way! The poor souls who drowned in the interim don’t even make the count. Attributing the remaining people’s swimming ...

The excuse?  "testing costs" of the unvaxxed! Nevada on Thursday became the first U.S. state to impose a surcharge on workers who have not gotten a COVID-19 vaccine, though the penalty doesn’t take effect until the middle of next year. All but two members of the state’s Public Employees’ Benefit Program Board (PEBP) voted during a meeting to approve a surcharge of $55 a month on unvaccinated workers. The approved proposal also stipulates a surcharge of $175 a month for workers’ spouses, partners, and dependents 18 and older. That could be adjusted down the road. The surcharges will go into effect on July 1, 2022. They’ll help offset the costs of COVID-19 testing, Laura Rich, executive officer of the board, said. Testing costs through September were estimated at $3.3 million. The board did not analyze the cost of COVID-19 hospitalizations for the proposal because that would have made the surcharge for spouses and dependents “significantly higher,” Rich said...

Kiss Me... ... because I finally got around to doing another music thread.  

Thanks to Starfire for recommending this article... Is it possible that the world is approaching end times?   Gail Tverberg I frequently write that the world economy is, in physics terms, a dissipative structure that is powered by energy. It can grow for a time, but eventually it reaches limits of many kinds. Ultimately, it can be expected to stop growing and collapse. It seems to me that the world economy is showing signs that it has reached a turning point. Economic growth stopped in 2020 and is having trouble restarting in 2021. Fossil fuel energy of all types (oil, coal and natural gas) is  in short supply , relative to the world’s huge population. Ultimately, this inadequate energy supply can be expected to pull the world economy toward collapse. The world economy doesn’t behave the way most people would expect. Standard modeling approaches miss the point that economies require adequate supplies of energy products of the right kinds, provided at the right times of day and...