Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here.
John Quiggin 
Daring to ask about the origins of SARS-COV-2:
https://biosafetynow.org/raina-macintyre-daring-to-ask-about-the-origins-of-sars-cov-2/
And also:
https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/visual-timeline-proximal-origin/
My personal opinion is the time will come when we know for certain that SARS-COV-2 was created in a lab. The evidences of that and the evidences of a comprehensive cover-up and misdirection campaign are becoming stronger all the time. Truth comes out, eventually. Raina MacIntyre has not called it yet but states:
“Our paper, published today in Risk Analysis, does not give a definitive answer, but uses the modified Grunow Finke tool to provide a probability of natural or unnatural origin. Knowing what a touchy topic this is, we were fairly conservative in our paper, and still found a reasonable probability that the origin of SARS-COV-2 is unnatural. In other words, however the scores may be reasonably changed by different scorers, there is a credible probability SARS-COV-2 arose from a laboratory. It may also have arisen naturally, and we may never obtain definitive proof either way, unless we find a natural host or get a confession, but what our research shows is that we should not dismiss a lab leak as a fringe conspiracy theory.” – Raina MacIntyre
The abstract of the paper states in part:
“Using published literature and publicly available sources of information, we applied the mGFT (modified Grunow–Finke assessment tool) to the origin of SARS-CoV-2. The mGFT scored 41/60 points (68%), with high inter-rater reliability (100%), indicating a greater likelihood of an unnatural than natural origin of SARS-CoV-2. This risk assessment cannot prove the origin of SARS-CoV-2 but shows that the possibility of a laboratory origin cannot be easily dismissed.”
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/risa.14291
In the AFR this morning :
A hedge fund is betting on a La Nina event this year that will result in higher rainfall in Australia and a drier US. This should raise cattle prices in Australia from their current lows because the supply of beef (already low) in the US will fall whereas Australia has lots of beef at low prices. The fund is going long on Australian beef producers and short on US producers.
An interesting bet. Climate change is obviously being factored into equity prices but so too are shorter term climatic events over a year or so.
I checked: The Bureau of Meteorology in Australia recently forecast the probability of La Nina this year (starting quite shortly) as 80%. The US authorities forecasted a La Nina event as long ago as last December.
Harry Clarke
Our just elapsing El Nino period (supposedly associated with droughts) produced record floods. Is there any certainty what La Nina will produce? I would suggest not. As well as the ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation), there are other cycles which affect Australian weather: the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), the Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO) and the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). On top of that throw in a global weather system spinning out of balance from runaway climate change, ocean warming and other factors. It certainly is just betting without having any idea of what the odds really are.
The benefits and costs of immigration need to be spelt out clearly to stop politicians from making this issue all about value judgements. The money benefits include the boost to GDP, an increase in the labour supply, the increased government spending to support immigrants, the transfer of savings into Australia and the wealth transfers into Australia. The money costs include: the increased social security payments to immigrants; the increased spending on health facilities and schools; the increased spending on infrastructure in areas with migrant intakes; and the increased subsidies related to new migrants.
Then there are the social benefits. They include: the wider cultural diversity inherent in new migrants from a broader ethnic base; the increased pool of talented people in the arts and sciences; an overall increase in the birth rate; emotional gains to existing migrants from family reunification inside Australia; and better mental health for migrants worried about family members in difficult situations overseas. Now there are other social benefits but the ones outlined are a start.
The social costs are more widely known thanks to the use made of them by politicians in election campaigns. They include: a general inability to get affordable rental accomodation in major urban areas; the rise in hate crimes; the social discord caused by underlying racism in some communities; traffic congestion in certain parts of some cities; overcrowding on public transport; the strain put on public hospitals; loss of employment by unskilled members of already settled ethnic groups; increased strains on public schools both in terms of numbers and literacy education; and the use of new arrivals to ferment political unrest and division.
Now the valuation of money benefits has to be left to econometricians. Census data is valuable here but gives an at best ex post estimation. As for the estimation of money costs, some of this is presented in the annual budget papers and the rest relies on complex econometric modelling. It all can be done but requires sustained funding and expertise at the highest level.
More difficult is the valuation of social benefits. These tend to be long run benefits and this makes any estimates subject to constant revisions. A great deal of expertise is needed here, as is secure and long term funding.
Most difficult is the valuation of social costs. This is a political minefield. Finding researches who can set aside their own political bias and ethnic prejudices is hard enough. But even clinical scientific studies face strong headwinds. Few governments want accurate information in this area that is indisputably unbiased. Funding is often provided only with strings attached and conditions imposed. Even if this was made the subject of a royal commission, the outcome would be deliberately delayed. Any recommendations, not to the liking of the government at the time, can be buried in red tape.
The whole process would be worthwhile for many reasons. For one it would stop politicians from getting things wrong so many times without benchmarks. It would take the fake news and erroneous claims out of public debates, or at the very least expose them as such. Then there are the forecasting advantages of knowing what net benefits are available at any level of immigration intake in a certain time period.
Overall it is worth all the effort and funding. The political will may be the hardest thing to find. Still it is worth proposing.
“Throughout history there’s been many unnatural epidemics. And generally, the scientific community has denied them or covered them up …”, Prof. McIntyre explained.
Hear the podcast interview by Radio 2GB Afternoons host Michael McLaren with UNSW Infectious Diseases Expert, Professor Raina McIntyre, broadcast this afternoon (Mar 18).
Or read her book Dark Winter: An insider’s guide to pandemics and biosecurity.
The response to the C-19 epidemic has fully established the principle that the circulation of capital is more important than the circulation of airborne disease. I say “fully established” because the pressure on the WHO (mainly from the USA) to permit the untrammelled circulation of respiratory diseases began in earnest during the 2009 swine flu pandemic, caused by the H1N1/swine flu/influenza virus. Simply put, it’s more important to the rich that they continue to make money than that the population should be protected from disease.
Respiratory disease and airborne disease outbreaks have been singled out for this (non-)treatment because otherwise required measures inconveniently (for capital) require public health measures that limit large concentrations of people in unhealthy spaces and places. The issues could be remedied (new safe air-systems and other measures) at cost to existing dominant capitals, but these dominant capitals prefer to not to pay these costs. New businesses could arise, of course, if we sought to make ourselves safer from airborne disease but the dominant capitals stand in the way of this progress.
So I would say, we must expect more airborne pandemics, from new pathogens or mutations of existing pathogens and these pandemics will not be adressed by the full possible suite of public health measures. They will be permitted to burn through the populations of all countries. This will not prove to be sustainable in the long run but when has this system ever been concerned about sustainability? This system has normalised the destruction of its workforce and the destruction of the next generation.
https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2023/jun/excess-retirements-covid19-pandemic
and;
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2023-01-31-covid-19-leading-cause-death-children-and-young-people-us
Ikonoclast, Your arguments exaggerate issues to the point where they become stretched. Rather than a “capital” conspiracy theory the simple point is that there are tradeoffs between economics and health. This is self-evident from the fact that we do not spend all our GDP on health nor invest unbounded amounts in saving the individual lives of those who are ill. Nor do we slow traffic speeds to zero to prevent all traffic accidents or ban surfing on West Australian beaches because shark attacks sometimes occur there. We live comfortably with risks that might kill us.
There are always trade-offs between economic welfare and health that are socially appropriate because the value of human life is not infinite. The tradeoffs shift in weight towards economics because Covid, for most people, is a minor inconvenience that we can partially offset with vaccinations. In addition absolute control of the virus is either impossible or so socially and economically costly that only a few seek it.
Some people still wear masks in public places and take other virus avoidance measures. One couple I know seldom leave their home. That is fine. With preexisting health conditions and simply because people place a high weight on their health that sort of caution makes sense to the individuals concerned.
Most of us prefer to live with Covid than for governments and medical ideologues to impose drastic controls on complete containment. That isn’t selfishness or capital normalising “the destruction of its workforce”. It’s what most citizens want.
Harry Clarke
Harry Clarke,
We perforce live with risks that might kill us when we are unable to mitigate those risks at all or we are unable to mitigate at affordable costs, to individuals and/or to governments. When mitigating risks becomes feasible and affordable, we pay the relatively modest amounts necessary to mitigate the risks. The rise in car safety is a case in point. Seatbelts, better brakes, better steering and suspension, better chassis and panel engineering (crash resistance) and airbags were progressively implemented along with better road engineering (though we might still doubt the latter on many Australian Highways).
When it becomes possible to mitigate risks at costs lower than the economic and human welfare costs of not mitigating we (if we are wise) perform mitigations. The costs of mitigating and preventing need to be compared to the costs of not mitigating and not preventing. Where the costs of mitigating are not excessive (relative to not mitigating), then mitigating and containing the risk is a lesser cost to the economy and to human welfare than allowing the unmitigated risk.
Over the course of the pandemic, data has shown that framing the issue as containing COVID-19 vs saving the economy is a false dichotomy. Actually containing COVID-19 improves economic and human welfare and health outcomes. Containment costs (to technical elimination not technical eradication) and inconveniences to people were and still would be relatively low at technical elimination levels.
https://theconversation.com/data-from-45-countries-show-containing-covid-vs-saving-the-economy-is-a-false-dichotomy-150533
Earlier in the pandemic, John Quiggin discussed the technical issues and outcomes surrounding the issues of keeping the R0 (Reproduction number) of the pathogen below 1 and approaching 0.
https://economics.uq.edu.au/article/2022/05/living-covid-19
His key point was that snuffing out the potential exponential growth of the pandemic early and continuously was (and is) the correct approach. It is again a false framing to assert that keeping R0 below 1 (and hopefully approaching zero) is costly or difficult. It is just like stamping out an illegal campfire before it starts a bushfire. The costs of early and successful mitigation are low. High costs of mitigation occur after a negative phenomenon capable of exponential growth is permitted exponential growth or cyclically permitted exponential growth creating major infection waves. There are other epidemiological reasons for the pandemic wave behaviour too but that is beyond a short blog post discussion.
Of course, the die (or should I say the die-off?) is cast. Your side of the argument has won and most people have gotten everything they wanted or thought they wanted in this regard. However, the disease remains a costly risk both in economic human health and welfare terms. Australia’s mortality rate remains unduly high: more than 6pc higher than expected.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-20/mortality-rates-australia-covid-excess/103241640
The damage and costs to our economy and human health and welfare remain higher than the costs of a continual mitigation keeping national and region R0s below 1 for the grate majority of the time. We would now face a period of high costs to pull our R0 and case numbers back to a technical elimination level. It still be worth it except that Australia would face enormous pressures from the global neoliberal economic cabal to not re-enter the attempt to eliminate (within the nation). The global neoliberal economic cabal would deliberately destroy our economy, by various punitive measures, were we to attempt control.
Practically and feasibly, we can do nothing now unless the entire perception about the pandemic changes. Meanwhile, the pandemic continues unabated and for the most part unmitigated and unmeasured, especially but not only in third world countries. The runaway pandemicene, just like runaway climate change, is now fully locked in. I say this in part because the precedent is now established that we won’t fight new pandemics (unless our whole political economy changes radically). We will let novel pandemics rage “to protect the economy”. Of course, this will achieve the opposite; the incremental destruction of the economy and the incremental destruction of human health and welfare over a wide geographical range and over the long term. People are not going to enjoy the full flower (or fleurs du mal) of these phenomena. That last is ironic understatement by the way.
US petroleum geologist Art Berman tweeted Mar 20:
Per Statista, Russian oil refinery capacity in 2022 was 6.821 Mb/d
That’s around 13% of Russian refinery capacity offline.
And per EIA petroleum and other liquids statistics:
Russia production (Mb/d) _ Jul 2023 _ Aug 2023 _ Sep 2023 _ Oct 2023 _ Nov 2023
Total petroleum & liquids _ _10.617 _ _ 10.542 _ _ 10.572 _ _ 10.653 _ _ 10.685
Crude oil + condensate _ _ _ _9.985 _ _ _9.935 _ _ _ 9.941 _ _ 10.021 _ _ 10.051
NGPL _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 0.605 _ _ _0.580 _ _ _ 0.603 _ _ _0.605 _ _ _0.606
Refinery gain _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _0.028 _ _ _0.028 _ _ _0.028 _ _ _0.027 _ _ _0.028
Russia typically exports about 1 Mb/d of diesel-type fuel, making it one of the world’s top suppliers.
Looks like diesel fuel prices may be on the way up…