EclectEcon

Ommadawn

Diagonally Warped in a Parallel Universe, Part 2

Surf's Up

Pikachu

Cabaret

Ringing in the New Year (2022)

Posted by EclectEcon on February 19, 2022 at 08:14 AM in Snow Stomp Art | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 06, 2022

I'm Beginning to Wonder about Covid Vaccines

I know this is sacrilegious, but despite the fact that I'm triple-vaxed, I am beginning to have some doubts about whether continuing to push vaccines is an efficient way to deal with Covid.

First, there is increasing evidence (which I raised here) that being vaccinated doesn't necessarily protect people from being infected with Omicron. Vaccines probably slowed transmissions of the Delta variant, but increasingly public health authorities and others are asserting that being vaccinated or previously infected won't protect us much, if at all, from getting the Omicron variant of Covid.

Second, in what sounds like backtracking, public health authorities are now telling us [paraphrased] "but people who are vaccinated are less likely to die, end up in the ICU, or end up in the hospital." Maybe, but how substantial is this effect?

In Ontario, 90% of the population is fully vaccinated; 70% of the people in hospital with covid have been fully vaccinated, and this percentage has crept up slightly since my earlier posting on this topic. The vaccines look as if they have some impact on keeping people out of hospital, but not a substantial impact.
In Ontario a month ago, only 38% of the people in ICUs had been fully vaccinated, and so it looked as if the vaccinations do indeed reduce the seriousness of the disease for those who are infected. But as of today, 51% of the people in ICUs have been fully vaccinated. That's a substantial jump in the past month. Vaccinations probably help, but not nearly to the extent that people are suggesting.

And now we read that possibly Vitamin D (a dirt-cheap supplement!) may do an even better job of protecting us from being affected seriously if we do contract covid.

Patients with vitamin D deficiency (<20 ng/mL) were 14 times more likely to have severe or critical disease than patients with 25(OH)D ≥40 ng/mL (odds ratio [OR], 14; 95% confidence interval [CI], 4 to 51; p < 0.001).

Let me summarize this: people with a vitamin D deficiency were 14 times more likely to be hospitalized, put in ICUs, or die than people who had what is regarded as an ideal level of vitamin D.

If we're going to "follow the science", maybe it's time to start paying more attention to scientific results. I don't know if the study I've cited here is correct, mostly correct, or flawed in some way. But it certainly would be an inexpensive and easy way to help deal with covid, especially compared with the prices of future MRNa vaccines.

If gubmnts really want to spend money dealing with Covid, they should spend it on generic vitamin D supplements for seniors' homes and schools; and employers should provide vitamin D supplements for people working inside all day. But really, if individuals want to protect themselves from Covid, they should pony up the money themselves. As I said, this stuff is dirt cheap (e.g. 240 tablets for $5 at Amazon for a 2-4 month supply).

Update:

A friend sent me this link. The summary is cautious but supportive:

In summary, current evidence supports the links between vitamin D and COVID-19 and the benefits of vitamin D supplementation for managing or treating this condition. [emphasis added] Most of the literature reports improved COVID-19 prognosis and outcomes with sufficient vitamin D concentrations, with or without supplementation, with some reporting no significant differences based on vitamin D levels and/or no improvements following supplementation. Some even report a decreased incidence of infection as a result of prior supplementation. Future research should focus on establishing the mechanism/s for this link, as well as optimising treatment doses for maximum benefit to patients once infected. In the meantime, vitamin D deficiency should be corrected wherever possible since vitamin D supplementation is safe and the potential for toxicity is strongly outweighed by the potential benefits in relation to protection from COVID-19.

And what does this say about the trucker convoys that are protesting vaccine mandates? I'm not enthused with what they're doing, but they probably have an important point to make: vaccine mandates probably don't pass any reasonable cost-benefit test at this point.... especially Canada's mandate at the US border, which was unnecessary, given the US policy already in place.

personal notes:

for nearly a decade, I've been taking 1000-2000 IUs of vitamin D each morning and each evening.
If a 4th booster is made available for seniors, yes, I will get it. Why? because I just don't know what research to believe at this point.
For those of us with major concerns because we live in households with major health issues, the vaccines seem to be having little-to-no impact on transmission of the virus. And so we must look after ourselves. We do that by taking vitamin D, by isolating, and by wearing N95 masks when we go out.
I'm open to being convinced my reading of the situation is incorrect.

Posted by EclectEcon on February 06, 2022 at 04:17 PM in Health and Medicine, Science | Permalink | Comments (2)

February 03, 2022

A Birthday Cake for Laura and Elise

Our daughter-in-law's birthday was yesterday, and our granddaughter's birthday is today. It seemed appropriate to make a birthday cake snowstomp art for them today.

Here are some photos Ms. Eclectic took while I was out making the cake.

Posted by EclectEcon on February 03, 2022 at 09:05 AM in Snow Stomp Art | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 25, 2022

Tecumseh -- Abandoned by the British

The big loser in the War of 1812 was Tecumseh and the First Nation coalition he led, trying to keep settlers from moving into their territories. In the process, the Brits abandoned him in SW Ontario.

Here's a series of photos taken by Ms. Eclectic from our condo window as I tried to draw Tecumseh in the snow on the lawn of our condo:

Unfortunately I was off-balance a bit when I tried to add a face, and it came out looking as like a poor imitation of a Picasso face. Fortunately for the blog, I can use a photo app to mostly remove the face. Unfortunately for our neighbours, I can't remove it from the snowstomp art on the lawn.

My previous snow stomp art:

Tecumseh

Ommadawn

Diagonally Warped in a Parallel Universe, Part 2

Surf's Up

Pikachu

Cabaret

Ringing in the New Year (2022)

Posted by EclectEcon on January 25, 2022 at 10:50 AM in History, Snow Stomp Art | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 12, 2022

Are the Covid Data Being Cooked?

What am I missing?

The Ontario Science Table (either a gubmnt agency or close to that) reports the following cases in Ontario according to vaccination status:

So per 100,000 in the population, 70.1 fully vaccinated people tested positive for Covid-19, but 101.9 unvaccinated people tested positive. Fully vaccinated people were considerably less likely to test positive for the virus.

Meanwhile, the gubmnt of Ontario website that reports data shows the following for the same date:

What's the difference in the data or the reporting???

The Science Table shows the vaccinated are less likely to be infected (or, more accurately, to have tested positive in test results reported today). But the gubmnt of Ontario website shows (as I reported in my previous post) that the infection rate is higher among the fully vaccinated than among the unvaccinated.

As I said, what's the difference in the data or the reporting?

Posted by EclectEcon on January 12, 2022 at 03:05 PM in Current Affairs, Health and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 07, 2022

How Much Do Vaccines Help with Omicron?

With the early variants of Covid-19, all the evidence suggested that vaccines helped slow the transmission of the virus. People who were vaccinated were less likely to test positive for the virus, and case counts were dropping. Here are the data for Ontario up through early December.

But then things changed in early December 2021, and by Christmas, a larger percentage of those fully vaccinated were testing positive than among those partially vaccinated or not vaccinated at all!

The first reaction of some of my anti-vax or skepti-vax friends was "Wow, those vaccines didn't help; in fact, they made people worse off!"

Some other friends and I tried to decide what happened. How could it be that people fully vaccinated were more likely to test positive for Covid-19 than people who weren't vaccinated?

My first thought was something like the Peltzman Effect: People who were fully vaccinated felt freer to take more risks of exposure to the new variant. Many times I heard people say, "It's okay, I'm fully vaccinated." The fully vaccinated felt freer to go to restaurants and bars, to hold house parties, to get together with friends, to attend major sporting events. And, it turned out, being fully vaccinated wasn't very good protection against contracting the Omicron variant of the virus. At the same time (in Ontario), people who were not fully vaccinated were not allowed to go into restaurants, pubs, theatres, major sporting events, etc. The regulations imposed by the provincial gubmnt led to a separation of people: the vaccinated felt freer and were allowed to take more risks; meanwhile, the unvaccinated were not allowed to take the same or as many risks. [This regulation variant of the Peltzman Effect was suggested in email exchanges with my former colleague Jason Childs (Univ. of Regina)].

So if being vaccinated doesn't slow the transmission of the Omicron variant of Sars-covid-19, what good are the vaccinations? If people who are fully vaccinated are more likely to get the virus, what's the point of being vaccinated? I've been asked these questions by several friends and relatives, and with good reason. Public health officials, Pfizer, Moderna, and others promoted vaccinations early on by emphasizing that we needed to get vaccinated to stop the spread of the virus. And it hasn't been working with Omicron.

And so now we're hearing urgings that sound very much like very early public health advice: do this to flatten the curve. Flattening the curve is NOT what public health authorities were emphasizing last summer or this past fall when they were telling everyone to get vaccinated. In fact I don't recall their even mentioning "flatten the curve". The cynic in me sees this as 'backtracking'.

So what is the evidence? Has the vaccination helped to flatten the curve? Has the vaccination helped reduce the likelihood that people who are vaccinated will become seriously ill?

Here are the latest data for Ontario again:

Roughly 90% of the population over the age of five in Ontario has been fully vaccinated, but only about 2/3 of the people in hospital (but not the ICU) were fully vaccinated. It seems likely that the vaccines have, indeed, reduced the likelihood that people infected by the virus will have symptoms serious enough that they need to be in hospital. [But as many people point out, the case counts are so high that hospitalizations are reaching new high numbers despite the vaccinations.]

The data for Intensive Care Units present an even stronger case for vaccinations:

90% of Ontarians are fully vaccinated, but only about a third of the patients in ICUs were fully vaccinated.

It looks as if vaccinations help reduce the seriousness of the disease.

Update: See this from Reason [Note: the numbers don't match up with those cited above.]

Ontario public health authorities report that as of yesterday, 2,093 and 288 people are being treated for omicron variant infections in hospitals and intensive care units (ICUs), respectively. The hospitalization rate per million among unvaccinated people stands at 532.7; it's 105.9 for folks vaccinated with at least two doses. This means that the reduction of hospitalization risk for those inoculated with at least two doses is 80.1 percent.

The ICU occupancy rate per million is 135.6 for unvaccinated people and just 9.2 for those who have gotten two doses of COVID-19 vaccines. So vaccination reduces the ICU risk by 93.2 percent.

An analysis by the United Kingdom Health Security Agency (UKHSA) similarly found that "the risk of being admitted to hospital for Omicron cases was lower for those who had received 2 doses of a vaccine (65% lower) compared to those who had not received any vaccination." The risk "was lower still among those who had received 3 doses of vaccine (81% lower)."

----

Personal note: I'm fully vaccinated and boosted, and I will seek a fourth vaccination when they become available to my demographic cohort in Ontario. Also, I stay home as much as possible, and I wear an N95 mask. There are several reasons:

The Delta variant hasn't completely disappeared, and the evidence strongly suggests that the vaccines provided considerable protection against it.
The evidence suggests that those of us who are vaccinated will suffer less if we do become infected.
We have considerable comorbidities in our household. If the virus gets in here, it could have quite serious effects.

Posted by EclectEcon on January 07, 2022 at 01:00 PM in Health and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (2)

January 02, 2022

Ringing in the New Year

It snowed all night and so I went out to ring in the new year this morning. I've done better, but I still like it.

My previous snow stomp art:

Ommadawn

Diagonally Warped in a Parallel Universe, Part 2

Surf's Up

Pikachu

Cabaret

Posted by EclectEcon on January 02, 2022 at 10:34 AM in Snow Stomp Art | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 29, 2021

Twenty Thousand New Infections Each of the Next Few Days in Ontario?

Last summer there were days with fewer than 300 new COVID infections per day in Ontario. Today's data showed there were over ten thousand new infections reported, based on yesterday's tests, an all time high for the pandemic.

But the report had several additional disconcerting other items as well: the positivity rate was nearly 27% for all the tests done (nearly 60K reported yesterday) and there are nearly another 60K samples in the queue to be tested. See this.

Suppose the labs can crank up the test numbers and do as many as 80K tests/day (their previous high was 76K in one day last January). If those positivity rates hold up, then we're likely to see as many as 20,000 new infections being reported each of the next few days. That's double the current record.

Let's all hope that the early reports that Omicron tends to milder for most people are correct and apply to many, many people so that hospitals and ICUs don't get clogged up.

Update:

Wait a minute. The province reported a positivity rate of 26.9% on 59,259 tests. That suggests there were 15,941 positive test results. But the province also reported 10,436 new cases. Were some of those tests done on old cases? or what? or WTF, eh?

Posted by EclectEcon on December 29, 2021 at 12:40 PM in Health and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 28, 2021

Tikka Masala (with chicken)

This was pretty good. It'll be better the next time I make it.

The recipe is based on the recipe on the label of this sauce, combined with some valuable input from a friend.

Ingredients:

- Half a jar of Tikka Masala Curry sauce
- 1/4 large onion, chopped
- 3 tblspns butter
- 1 tspn chopped ginger
- 1 tspn chopped garlic
- 1 lb chopped chicken
- 50 ml water
- 150 ml water
- 1/2 cup chopped tomatoes
- 1/4 cup cream (or half & half)
- 1/8 cup vodka

Fry onion in butter until soft [I probably overcooked mine a bit because we got an Amazon delivery right about then]
Add ginger, garlic, and prepared sauce.
Add 50 ml water. Cook until water evaporates [I'd never run across this instruction before. It seemed to work fine.]
Add chicken, chopped tomatoes, and 150 ml water [I might add less water next time]
Simmer uncovered for 15 minutes.
Add cream and stir
Remove from heat and stir in vodka

Serve over rice.

Notes:

We were running low on half & half and are avoiding shopping for a few weeks (if possible), so we tried to mix up some dried skimmed milk powder, making it a bit thick, but that didn't really work as well as cream would. And the chicken we used was a bunch of leftover thighs and probably wasn't anywhere near a pound. We needed more.

But it was still very good.

Posted by EclectEcon on December 28, 2021 at 06:43 PM in Food and Drink | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 29, 2021

Cruising (for Murder)

The snow finally stopped last evening, and I decided to go out then to do my latest snow-stomp art, a cruise ship.

As winter arrives, many people would love to be on a cruise ship, especially in a warm-water environment (Covid-19 permitting).

Also, this Saturday, I'm appearing in a mystery dinner theatre show called "Cruising for Murder".

Ms. Eclectic took this first photo of me as I was shuffling and stomping through the wet snow:

The completed scene last night:

My previous snow stomp art:

Ommadawn

Diagonally Warped in a Parallel Universe, Part 2

Surf's Up

Pikachu

Cabaret

Posted by EclectEcon on November 29, 2021 at 08:13 AM in Snow Stomp Art, Theatre | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 08, 2021

What is the Burger-Elasticity of Supply for Blood?

Why hasn't a promotion been developed where a major fast food chain gives every blood/plasma donor a coupon good for a burger when they leave the blood donor clinic?

"Just bring this coupon to one of our franchises, and to thank you for donating blood, we'll give you a burger."

The promotion would be great for the blood donor operations, and it would likely not cost the fast food firms much (net) either, as people cashing in the burger coupon would likely buy more food and drinks.

When I was a teen, helping out at the Red Cross blood clinic in Muskegon, Michigan, many years ago, blood donors all were taken into a huge kitchen area where other volunteers cooked excellent, unique, and good-sized burgers for everyone who donated blood (and for the volunteers and nurses).

It was a treat, and I can still remember the unique smell and taste of those burgers. But it was costly in terms of the time of all the extra volunteers, the space needed to prepare and serve the burgers, and the food itself. Why not partner with a fast food chain instead? They would get the advertising benefits, and it might induce a few more people to donate blood more often (in economics jargon, though, I have no idea what the burger elasticity supply of blood would be).

An ideal situation would be to run the promotion in a few locations and compare before and after donation data with locations not running the promotion. If the blood collectors didn't run the comparison, the burger provider would likely want to have some idea about the effectiveness of the campaign.

It wouldn't have to be a burger, though. It could be a breakfast sandwich or a milkshake or some chicken nuggets or a specialty doughnut.

And maybe "Burgers for Blood" wouldn't be the best idea for the promotional slogan.

Posted by EclectEcon on November 08, 2021 at 07:55 AM in Economics, Health and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 03, 2021

Lest We Forget

It snowed last night!

And so I went out to do some snow-stomp art.

We rarely have snow that stays on the ground for even a few minutes this early in the season, and so I've never had the opportunity to pay tribute on November 11th this way.

My previous snow stomp art:

Ommadawn

Diagonally Warped in a Parallel Universe, Part 2

Surf's Up

Pikachu

Cabaret

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases

Posted by EclectEcon on November 03, 2021 at 07:51 AM in Snow Stomp Art | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 01, 2021

Ronny and the Night Clerk

My short story "Ronny and the Night Clerk" has just been published in issue 89 of the literary magazine, 34th Parallel.

The story is loosely based on two characters from my novel, 2605.

The magazine is not inexpensive: over $21 plus shipping for a print-on-demand hard copy of the 52-page issue (the electronic edition is less). The novel itself is only $15 from Amazon.com, in hard copy and less than $5 in Kindle format; but of course the novel doesn't contain the other stories and poetry in this current issue (#89) of the magazine

Here are the lead photo and catch lines (or whatever they're called). They did a nice job with them:

Posted by EclectEcon on September 01, 2021 at 10:00 AM in 2605, Books | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 07, 2021

Do or Did Lockdowns Work?

From this source (called Astral-Codex, written by Scott Alexander), which is a very long read but worth the effort, it looks as if stricter lockdowns probably would have been helpful early on if people had known they would work. It also looks as if continuing blunt lockdowns probably do not pass a reasonable cost-benefit test. Testing, tracing, and voluntary decisions look very good by comparison. Here's the summary, but be sure to look at the comments as well!

1: Various policies lumped together as “lockdowns” probably significantly decreased R. Full-blown stay-at home orders were less important than targeted policies like school closures and banning large gatherings. Talking about which ones were “good” or “bad” is an oversimplification compared to the more useful questions of when countries should have started vs. stopped each to be on some kind of Pareto frontier of lives saved vs. cost.

2: If Sweden had a stronger lockdown more like those of other European countries, it probably could have reduced its death rate by 50-80%, saving 2,500+ lives.

3: On a very naive comparison, US states with stricter lockdowns had about 20% lower death rates than states with weaker ones, and about 0.6% more GDP decline. There are high error bars on both those estimates.

4: Judging lockdowns by traditional measures of economic significance, moving from a US red-state level of lockdown to a US blue-state level of lockdown is in the range normally associated with interventions that are debatably cost-effective/utility-positive, with error bars including “obviously good” and “pretty bad”. It’s harder to estimate for Sweden, but plausibly for them to move to a more European-typical level of lockdown in the early phase of the pandemic would have very much cleared the bar and been unambiguously cost effective/utility-positive.

5: It’s harder to justify strict lockdowns in terms of the non-economic suffering produced. Even assumptions skewed to be maximally pro-strict-lockdown, eg where strict lockdowns would have prevented every single coronavirus case, suggest that it would have taken dozens of months of somewhat stricter lockdown to save one month of healthy life. This might still be justifiable if present strict lockdowns now prevented future strict lockdowns (mandated or voluntary), which might be true in Europe but doesn’t seem as true in the US.

6: Plausibly, really fast and well-targeted lockdowns could have been better along every dimension than either strong-lockdown areas’ strong lockdowns or weak-lockdown areas’ weak lockdowns. We should celebrate the countries that successfully pulled this off, and support the people trying to figure out how to make this easier to pull off next time.

7: All of this is very speculative and affected by a lot of factors, and the error bars are very wide.

Posted by EclectEcon on July 07, 2021 at 06:21 AM in Current Affairs, Gubmnt, Health and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 25, 2021

Covid Porn

It's almost like Covid-porn for me. I look at things on this site for far too long every day:

Israel has among the lowest number of cases, deaths, hospitalizations, etc., but according to the news, people there are concerned. This might be why:

Screen Shot 2021-06-25 at 4.40.33 AM.png

The transmission rate, presumably of the new variants, in Israel is astronomical. And it's pretty high for the UK. And that's despite the fact that both those countries have high vaccination rates, especially people who are "fully" vaccinated.

Fortunately, so far, in both the UK and Israel, hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths are still very low. Quite likely the vaccines are reducing (on average) the overall severity of Covid for those who catch it.

Unfortunately, the Delta variant is just beginning to make inroads in London, ON, and in Canada.

Not terribly reassuring for people with more serious additional health risks.

From the famous anti-war song by Country Joe and the Fish:

And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.

Posted by EclectEcon on June 25, 2021 at 05:09 AM in Health and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 03, 2021

Lockdown Photo #171

The pattern on some bedsheets

No photo description available.

Posted by EclectEcon on June 03, 2021 at 12:46 PM in Lockdown Photos | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 02, 2021

Lockdown Photo #170

The (slightly oxidized) mechanism under our dining room table that allows us to open and close the table to add or remove leaves. Taken from the top looking down after removing a leaf.

No photo description available.

Posted by EclectEcon on June 02, 2021 at 01:03 PM in Lockdown Photos | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lockdown Photo #169

Looking down into a Melitta coffee filter holder.

[Melitta coffee filters were mention in both of my first novels, 2605, and Susan's Story.]

May be a closeup

Posted by EclectEcon on June 02, 2021 at 08:43 AM in Lockdown Photos | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lockdown Photo #168

A dozen double-yolkers in the fridge.

No photo description available.

Posted by EclectEcon on June 02, 2021 at 08:38 AM in Lockdown Photos | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 01, 2021

Lockdown Photo #167

The charger for my Apple watch in a silicone stand from Ali Express. It reminds me of a Westminster clock my grandfather had.

No photo description available.

Posted by EclectEcon on June 01, 2021 at 12:58 PM in Lockdown Photos | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lockdown Photo #166

The 'latch' on the front of the plastic box that holds the wrist unit I use to take my blood pressure.

May be a closeup

Posted by EclectEcon on June 01, 2021 at 12:55 PM in Lockdown Photos | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lockdown Photo #165

One way we entertain ourselves is by doing crossword puzzles together. I have a very cheap international subscription to the Washington Post and print off new puzzles every once in awhile. This one is by one of our favourite creators of crosswords, Merl Reagle.

[tbh, we work together, and we always have our iPhones at the ready to look up things if we can't figure them out.]

Posted by EclectEcon on June 01, 2021 at 12:52 PM in Lockdown Photos | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lockdown Photo #164

Stacked roly-poly glasses we use for wine. It’s too easy to tip over stemmed wine glasses even when I’m not under the influence. We call them roly-polies, but I have no idea what the proper name is. The flat bottom and the low centre of gravity make them perfect for us.

May be an image of indoor