Australian COVID-19 vaccine produces ZERO side effects in human trials and provides protection against the virus in animals while reducing symptoms

A coronavirus vaccine being developed by Australian researchers has produced zero side effects in human trials so far and has shown promise with mammals.

The University of Queensland and Australian biotech giant CSL last month began injecting 120 Brisbane volunteers with a trial vaccine.

Hamsters in the Netherlands were also administered the drug.

Project co-leader Associate Professor Keith Chappell said the European animal trials, conducted by Dutch diagnostic testing firm Viroclinics-DDL, had proven to be a success.

'The neutralising immune response created by our molecular clamp vaccine in animal models was better than the average level of antibodies found in patients who have recovered from COVID-19,' Dr Chappell said.

He said the hamsters given the vaccine and Seqirus MF59® adjuvant had reduced lung inflammation after exposure to the virus.

No side effects have been reported so far on the human trial element taking place in Brisbane, although more clinical results are needed from the volunteers in suburban Herston.

UQ's Brisbane project is one of just 17 human trials for a potential vaccine happening worldwide, including in the US, UK and China.

Globally, more than 130 coronavirus vaccines are being developed but UQ's work has demonstrated great success in the pre-clinical development stage.

The good news from clinical trials has been revealed a week after Prime Minister Scott Morrison's government signed an in-principal deal with UK pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca to receive early supplies of a potentially successful vaccine being developed with Oxford University.

Should UQ successfully develop a vaccine in Australia, Dr Chappell said the biggest challenge would be in tasking CSL, formerly known as Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, with manufacturing sufficient quantities of the drug.

'One of the big challenges in the development of vaccines is the ability to produce them at sufficient scale for widespread use,' he said.

'We are working with CSL to ensure the production yield is as efficient as possible, and have every confidence they will be able to manufacture the millions of doses required to protect the Australian public.'

UQ is running clinical trials until mid-2021 - but, if successful, a potential vaccine could be rolled out at the start of next year for emergency use among the broader Australian population.

The Queensland vaccine has the advantage of being worked on in partnership with a manufacturer, CSL, meaning it could be mass produced quickly if successful.

The global Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness announced a partnership with CSL in June to fast-track clinical testing and potentially begin manufacturing should the trials prove successful.

CEPI gave UQ $15.16million to develop a molecular clamp vaccine platform that enables rapid vaccine design and production.

Another $10million came from the Queensland government, with the commonwealth chipping in another $5million in addition to the $10million that has come from philanthropic donors.

SOURCE 

***********************************

Could MOUTHWASH cut the spread of Covid-19? Scientists to study whether gargling Dentyl will destroy the virus after promising results

Researchers will test whether or not gargling with Dentyl mouthwash can help prevent the spread of Covid-19 amid claims it could fight the virus.

Covid-19 patients at Cardiff's University Hospital of Wales will take part in the research to find out if it has the potential to reduce the levels of the virus in saliva.

SARS-CoV-2 — the coronavirus behind the pandemic which has killed 800,000 people — is an enveloped virus with an outer fatty (lipid) membrane.

Studies have suggested agents found in mouthwash – such as low amounts of ethanol – could disrupt the membranes of other lipid viruses.

For instance, researchers say iodine mouthwashes have proved very effective against SARS and MERS, two diseases caused by similar coronaviruses.

Dentyl — which contains the anti-microbial cetylpyridinium chloride — is the only UK mouthwash brand to take part in the 12-week study.

Professor David Thomas is the lead author of the study, titled: 'The measurement of mouthwash anti-viral activity against Covid-19'.

He said: 'We are very keen to start this much-needed clinical trial as our review of the literature indicated that we need to look deeper into the possible positive impact that mouthwashes may play on the transmission of Covid-19.

'We believe this is an exciting opportunity to determine whether a compound that can inactivate an enveloped virus in a test tube may work in humans, actively shedding the virus in the mouth and throat.'

HOW COULD MOUTHWASH FIGHT COVID-19?

Coronaviruses belong to the class of 'enveloped viruses', meaning they are covered by a fatty layer that is vulnerable to certain chemicals.

Studies have suggested agents found in mouthwash – such as low amounts of ethanol – could disrupt the membranes of other lipid viruses, in the same way as UV rays.

For instance, researchers say iodine mouthwashes have proved effective against SARS and MERS, two diseases caused by similar coronaviruses.

Scientists in May called for urgent research into the use of readily available mouthwash to reduce the spread of the virus. 

Jerry Randall, chief executive of Venture Life, Dentyl's parent company, said: 'We are excited at the prospect that this long-standing, well-known mouthwash product could help in the fight against Covid-19.'

The launch of the study comes after a group of scientists in May called for urgent research into the use of readily available mouthwash to reduce the spread of the virus.

Publishing their review in the Function journal, the authors wrote: 'We highlight that already published research on other enveloped viruses, including coronaviruses, directly supports the idea that further research is needed on whether oral rinsing could be considered as a potential way to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2.'

Lead author Professor Valerie O'Donnell, co-director of Cardiff University's Systems Immunity Research Institute, said at the time: 'Safe use of mouthwash – as in gargling – has so far not been considered by public health bodies in the UK.'

She added: 'This is an under-researched area of major clinical need – and we hope that research projects will be quickly mobilised to further evaluate this.'

The completed research will be peer reviewed before it is published in around six months' time.

It comes after experts last month claimed iodine mouthwash could destroy Covid-19 and prevent or reduce its effects if someone is already sick.

Researchers at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain said the specific type of mouthwash can have 'significant virucidal activity'.

Testing on a small group of patients with Covid-19, they found using the mouthwash reduced the number of viruses that were in their saliva.

Lower viral loads — the number of viruses circulating through the body — have been linked to milder symptoms and faster recovery.

Iodine mouthwash is stronger than popular shop-bought products such as Listerine or Colgate, which typically don't contain the antiseptic chemical.

Instead, they are more commonly used by dentists. One brand that contains iodine is Betadine.

SOURCE 

************************************

The Republican Convention Is Proof: The Party of Bush, McCain and Romney Is Dead

The Democratic Party propaganda machine, more commonly known as the mainstream media, has been gushing over the establishment Republicans who appeared at the Democratic National Convention to denounce President Trump and endorse Joe Biden, but as last night’s Republican National Convention showed, the days of the Republican Party being a pale shadow of the Democrats are over. In 2020, as in 2016 but not for a considerable period before that, we actually have a choice, not an echo, as Barry Goldwater offered America way back in 1964.

As Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster demonstrates, the United States has been under the control of what is essentially a one-party system in two factions since at least the early 1950s. One of the most damaging aspects of the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first Republican president since the onset of the Great Depression, was his refusal to challenge the basic premises of the New Deal. That’s how we got into this fix.

The Eisenhower administration was generally a period of great prosperity. However, after twenty years of New Deal expansion of the government, it was widely expected by observers from both parties that Eisenhower would at least attempt to fight the leviathan and diminish the gargantuan and ever-growing federal government. Instead, he did little to halt the expansion of federal power. He resisted numerous measures that would have repealed or rolled back New Deal programs. He was determinedly bipartisan, going along with numerous Democratic initiatives, even when they involved the centralization that he warned against. In 1954, he stated his guiding philosophy: “I have just one purpose, outside of the job of keeping this world in peace…and that is to build up a strong progressive Republican Party in this country. If the right wing wants a fight, they are going to get it. If they want to leave the Republican Party and form a third party, that’s their business, but before I end up, either this Republican Party will reflect progressivism or I won’t be with them anymore.”

George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Paul Ryan couldn’t have said it better.

With the Republicans implementing large government programs, and the Democrats remaining the standard-bearers for an expanded federal government, voters had no choice but to accept it.

Even Eisenhower realized this. In 1964, three years out of office and a popular and respected elder statesman, he wrote an article for the Saturday Evening Post entitled “Why I Am a Republican.” In it, he declared:

I am increasingly disturbed by the steady, obvious drift of our nation toward a centralization of power of the Federal Government. And in this fact is found the primary reason why I sincerely urge all voters, no matter their present political affiliations, to take a fresh, thoughtful look at the basic Republican philosophy and Republican performance as compared to that of the Democrats. For the hard fact is that under many years of Democratic Party leadership our country has been lured into the ‘easy way,’ a path of federal expediency which, like a narcotic, may give us a false sense of well-being, but in the long run is dangerous to our future, our basic rights, our moral fiber and our individual freedom.

That meant that both parties endorsed a rapidly expanding federal government, higher taxes, and more state interference in the daily lives of Americans. His 1964 article suggests that, by then, he had seen the error of his ways. But by then, it was too late.

Eisenhower’s “Modern Republicanism” reduced the Republican Party to a faint echo of the Democrats. Democrats would formulate grand proposals that generally involved a massive expansion of government spending and control, and instead of challenging these proposals at their foundations and arguing against them on principle, Republicans would merely quibble that they could be implemented more cheaply and efficiently. Eisenhower ensured that even when Republicans were in the majority, they continued to have a minority mentality: the Democrats were setting the agenda for the country.

There would be pushback against this assumption within the Republican Party, but the dominant mainstream of Republicanism ever since Ike has been to say “Me too” to the Democrats, rather than “I object.” Eisenhower didn’t originate the idea of making the Republican Party a pale copy of the Democratic Party, rather than a genuine principled opposition: FDR’s opponents Alf Landon, Wendell Willkie, and Thomas E. Dewey would likely have done much the same thing, but they lost and he won, so Eisenhower must be credited as the primary architect of what is essentially a single party in two factions that has, for the most part, governed America since the 1950s.

Rating America’s Presidents shows that while Ronald Reagan gave some pushback to this one-party rule, it has not been until the presidency of Donald J. Trump that it has been seriously challenged. The two-party system is back, or more precisely, the one-party system is facing off against one determined individual who is attracting an increasingly large following. This November will be decisive for the question of whether the one-party elites will in the future exert their hegemony unchallenged, as they did for so long.

SOURCE 

********************************

IN BRIEF

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo breaks with tradition, speaks from Jerusalem (Washington Examiner)

Republicans push hard against abortion (Washington Examiner)

Joe Biden gets no convention bounce (Reuters)

Two shot dead, one injured in Kenosha during "protests"

Wisconsin governor declares state of emergency after Kenosha riots

Ex-NSA chief: "I haven't seen any lessening of [the Russian] commitment to achieving that goal of weakening our institutions. You're seeing a consistency over time. And in fact, it predates the 2016 election." (NPR)

UN Security Council rejects U.S. demand to "snap back" Iran sanctions (AP)

World Health Organization declares Africa polio-free (Time)

Irony: Houston's anti-gun police chief looking to hire officers who have been "defunded" (The Truth About Guns)

Jerry Falwell Jr. will get $10.5 million in compensation after resignation (The Washington Post)

Policy: Until cities end riots, federal authorities stand ready (The Heritage Foundation)

*************************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

**************************

Australian COVID-19 vaccine produces ZERO side effects in human trials and provides protection against the virus in animals while reducing symptoms

A coronavirus vaccine being developed by Australian researchers has produced zero side effects in human trials so far and has shown promise with mammals.

The University of Queensland and Australian biotech giant CSL last month began injecting 120 Brisbane volunteers with a trial vaccine.

Hamsters in the Netherlands were also administered the drug.

Project co-leader Associate Professor Keith Chappell said the European animal trials, conducted by Dutch diagnostic testing firm Viroclinics-DDL, had proven to be a success.

'The neutralising immune response created by our molecular clamp vaccine in animal models was better than the average level of antibodies found in patients who have recovered from COVID-19,' Dr Chappell said.

He said the hamsters given the vaccine and Seqirus MF59® adjuvant had reduced lung inflammation after exposure to the virus.

No side effects have been reported so far on the human trial element taking place in Brisbane, although more clinical results are needed from the volunteers in suburban Herston.

UQ's Brisbane project is one of just 17 human trials for a potential vaccine happening worldwide, including in the US, UK and China.

Globally, more than 130 coronavirus vaccines are being developed but UQ's work has demonstrated great success in the pre-clinical development stage.

The good news from clinical trials has been revealed a week after Prime Minister Scott Morrison's government signed an in-principal deal with UK pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca to receive early supplies of a potentially successful vaccine being developed with Oxford University.

Should UQ successfully develop a vaccine in Australia, Dr Chappell said the biggest challenge would be in tasking CSL, formerly known as Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, with manufacturing sufficient quantities of the drug.

'One of the big challenges in the development of vaccines is the ability to produce them at sufficient scale for widespread use,' he said.

'We are working with CSL to ensure the production yield is as efficient as possible, and have every confidence they will be able to manufacture the millions of doses required to protect the Australian public.'

UQ is running clinical trials until mid-2021 - but, if successful, a potential vaccine could be rolled out at the start of next year for emergency use among the broader Australian population.

The Queensland vaccine has the advantage of being worked on in partnership with a manufacturer, CSL, meaning it could be mass produced quickly if successful.

The global Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness announced a partnership with CSL in June to fast-track clinical testing and potentially begin manufacturing should the trials prove successful.

CEPI gave UQ $15.16million to develop a molecular clamp vaccine platform that enables rapid vaccine design and production.

Another $10million came from the Queensland government, with the commonwealth chipping in another $5million in addition to the $10million that has come from philanthropic donors.

SOURCE 

***********************************

Could MOUTHWASH cut the spread of Covid-19? Scientists to study whether gargling Dentyl will destroy the virus after promising results

Researchers will test whether or not gargling with Dentyl mouthwash can help prevent the spread of Covid-19 amid claims it could fight the virus.

Covid-19 patients at Cardiff's University Hospital of Wales will take part in the research to find out if it has the potential to reduce the levels of the virus in saliva.

SARS-CoV-2 — the coronavirus behind the pandemic which has killed 800,000 people — is an enveloped virus with an outer fatty (lipid) membrane.

Studies have suggested agents found in mouthwash – such as low amounts of ethanol – could disrupt the membranes of other lipid viruses.

For instance, researchers say iodine mouthwashes have proved very effective against SARS and MERS, two diseases caused by similar coronaviruses.

Dentyl — which contains the anti-microbial cetylpyridinium chloride — is the only UK mouthwash brand to take part in the 12-week study.

Professor David Thomas is the lead author of the study, titled: 'The measurement of mouthwash anti-viral activity against Covid-19'.

He said: 'We are very keen to start this much-needed clinical trial as our review of the literature indicated that we need to look deeper into the possible positive impact that mouthwashes may play on the transmission of Covid-19.

'We believe this is an exciting opportunity to determine whether a compound that can inactivate an enveloped virus in a test tube may work in humans, actively shedding the virus in the mouth and throat.'

HOW COULD MOUTHWASH FIGHT COVID-19?

Coronaviruses belong to the class of 'enveloped viruses', meaning they are covered by a fatty layer that is vulnerable to certain chemicals.

Studies have suggested agents found in mouthwash – such as low amounts of ethanol – could disrupt the membranes of other lipid viruses, in the same way as UV rays.

For instance, researchers say iodine mouthwashes have proved effective against SARS and MERS, two diseases caused by similar coronaviruses.

Scientists in May called for urgent research into the use of readily available mouthwash to reduce the spread of the virus. 

Jerry Randall, chief executive of Venture Life, Dentyl's parent company, said: 'We are excited at the prospect that this long-standing, well-known mouthwash product could help in the fight against Covid-19.'

The launch of the study comes after a group of scientists in May called for urgent research into the use of readily available mouthwash to reduce the spread of the virus.

Publishing their review in the Function journal, the authors wrote: 'We highlight that already published research on other enveloped viruses, including coronaviruses, directly supports the idea that further research is needed on whether oral rinsing could be considered as a potential way to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2.'

Lead author Professor Valerie O'Donnell, co-director of Cardiff University's Systems Immunity Research Institute, said at the time: 'Safe use of mouthwash – as in gargling – has so far not been considered by public health bodies in the UK.'

She added: 'This is an under-researched area of major clinical need – and we hope that research projects will be quickly mobilised to further evaluate this.'

The completed research will be peer reviewed before it is published in around six months' time.

It comes after experts last month claimed iodine mouthwash could destroy Covid-19 and prevent or reduce its effects if someone is already sick.

Researchers at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain said the specific type of mouthwash can have 'significant virucidal activity'.

Testing on a small group of patients with Covid-19, they found using the mouthwash reduced the number of viruses that were in their saliva.

Lower viral loads — the number of viruses circulating through the body — have been linked to milder symptoms and faster recovery.

Iodine mouthwash is stronger than popular shop-bought products such as Listerine or Colgate, which typically don't contain the antiseptic chemical.

Instead, they are more commonly used by dentists. One brand that contains iodine is Betadine.

SOURCE 

************************************

The Republican Convention Is Proof: The Party of Bush, McCain and Romney Is Dead

The Democratic Party propaganda machine, more commonly known as the mainstream media, has been gushing over the establishment Republicans who appeared at the Democratic National Convention to denounce President Trump and endorse Joe Biden, but as last night’s Republican National Convention showed, the days of the Republican Party being a pale shadow of the Democrats are over. In 2020, as in 2016 but not for a considerable period before that, we actually have a choice, not an echo, as Barry Goldwater offered America way back in 1964.

As Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster demonstrates, the United States has been under the control of what is essentially a one-party system in two factions since at least the early 1950s. One of the most damaging aspects of the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first Republican president since the onset of the Great Depression, was his refusal to challenge the basic premises of the New Deal. That’s how we got into this fix.

The Eisenhower administration was generally a period of great prosperity. However, after twenty years of New Deal expansion of the government, it was widely expected by observers from both parties that Eisenhower would at least attempt to fight the leviathan and diminish the gargantuan and ever-growing federal government. Instead, he did little to halt the expansion of federal power. He resisted numerous measures that would have repealed or rolled back New Deal programs. He was determinedly bipartisan, going along with numerous Democratic initiatives, even when they involved the centralization that he warned against. In 1954, he stated his guiding philosophy: “I have just one purpose, outside of the job of keeping this world in peace…and that is to build up a strong progressive Republican Party in this country. If the right wing wants a fight, they are going to get it. If they want to leave the Republican Party and form a third party, that’s their business, but before I end up, either this Republican Party will reflect progressivism or I won’t be with them anymore.”

George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Paul Ryan couldn’t have said it better.

With the Republicans implementing large government programs, and the Democrats remaining the standard-bearers for an expanded federal government, voters had no choice but to accept it.

Even Eisenhower realized this. In 1964, three years out of office and a popular and respected elder statesman, he wrote an article for the Saturday Evening Post entitled “Why I Am a Republican.” In it, he declared:

I am increasingly disturbed by the steady, obvious drift of our nation toward a centralization of power of the Federal Government. And in this fact is found the primary reason why I sincerely urge all voters, no matter their present political affiliations, to take a fresh, thoughtful look at the basic Republican philosophy and Republican performance as compared to that of the Democrats. For the hard fact is that under many years of Democratic Party leadership our country has been lured into the ‘easy way,’ a path of federal expediency which, like a narcotic, may give us a false sense of well-being, but in the long run is dangerous to our future, our basic rights, our moral fiber and our individual freedom.

That meant that both parties endorsed a rapidly expanding federal government, higher taxes, and more state interference in the daily lives of Americans. His 1964 article suggests that, by then, he had seen the error of his ways. But by then, it was too late.

Eisenhower’s “Modern Republicanism” reduced the Republican Party to a faint echo of the Democrats. Democrats would formulate grand proposals that generally involved a massive expansion of government spending and control, and instead of challenging these proposals at their foundations and arguing against them on principle, Republicans would merely quibble that they could be implemented more cheaply and efficiently. Eisenhower ensured that even when Republicans were in the majority, they continued to have a minority mentality: the Democrats were setting the agenda for the country.

There would be pushback against this assumption within the Republican Party, but the dominant mainstream of Republicanism ever since Ike has been to say “Me too” to the Democrats, rather than “I object.” Eisenhower didn’t originate the idea of making the Republican Party a pale copy of the Democratic Party, rather than a genuine principled opposition: FDR’s opponents Alf Landon, Wendell Willkie, and Thomas E. Dewey would likely have done much the same thing, but they lost and he won, so Eisenhower must be credited as the primary architect of what is essentially a single party in two factions that has, for the most part, governed America since the 1950s.

Rating America’s Presidents shows that while Ronald Reagan gave some pushback to this one-party rule, it has not been until the presidency of Donald J. Trump that it has been seriously challenged. The two-party system is back, or more precisely, the one-party system is facing off against one determined individual who is attracting an increasingly large following. This November will be decisive for the question of whether the one-party elites will in the future exert their hegemony unchallenged, as they did for so long.

SOURCE 

********************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

**************************

Belarus ("White Russia") may be better than you think


Belarus and Poland

Some Russian friends of mine who still have relatives throughout the former Soviet Empire and who live well there speak favorably of Belrarus.  And I have myself noted some desirable aspects of Belarus in previous postings. That all becomes of particular interest at the moment as the world is noting protests in Belarus against dubious elections maintaining despot Alexander Lukashenko in power

So it is interesting that Economic historian Martin Hutchinson (below) says Belarus is much more capitalistic than either California or China.

Matin makes two points that many would jib at. He likes it that  Belarus has no lockdowns against the coronavirus.  That however is pretty close to becoming the informed medical opinion now

He likes that Belarus has much higher interest rates than Western countries.  That may seem perverse but history is on the side of Belarus.  Past great capitalistic flourishings worldwide have been accompanied by similar rates.  And present historically low rates in the West have mainly sufficed to create the punishingy high real estate prices we see in the USA and elsewhere.

Something he does not note that many people might like is that the roads are good but traffic jams are few. Belarus has an extremely good and comprehensive public transport system. So people get more exercise by walking and can do so without wading through vehicular pollution. It's a Greenie dream in action. Greenies would also like that over 40% of its 207,600 square kilometres (80,200 sq mi) is forested.

Many conservatives would like that Belarus is also the only country in Europe officially using the death penalty.  It is a Christian country.

Climate skeptics would like that most of its electricity is thermal generated and that they have a nuclear power station under construction.

The population of Belarus is almost wholly white so there is no disgruntled black minority to go on city-wrecking sprees, something of interest in the current American context.

See my previous comments on Belarus here


The world economy has come a very long way from the small-government, unregulated free-market model so celebrated by Adam Smith and other classical economists. Today, even in countries that claim to be committed to capitalism, taxes, monetary policy, regulations and state spending have produced huge distortions. To illustrate how huge, I thought I would compare the economic models of three jurisdictions: California, the high-tech Mecca supposedly a beacon of freedom, China, the state-controlled behemoth that claims to have a new and better economic model, and the universally despised “Communist” dictatorship of Belarus.

It must be very difficult to be a true capitalist in California. Yes, you have a support system of a myriad of other capitalists around you, and if you start with a remotely plausible business plan venture capitalists will throw money at you, but actually running a business, as distinct from merely financing losses, is extremely difficult. Real estate costs, both corporate and personal are extremely high if you are in the San Francisco Bay area, so you begin with a huge cost disadvantage against those of your competitors who are located somewhere else. The most important cost disadvantage, of course, is that you must pay people far more money than they may be worth so they can live in the Bay area.

High accommodation and staff costs are a natural economic disadvantage, but California also abounds in unnatural ones, entirely contrary to free market principles. For a start, the state has the highest tax rates in the United States, with a top income tax rate of 13% on top of the Federal 37% plus a Medicare tax of a maximum 3.8%, for a total of 53.8% marginal income tax rate. The state is in the process of voting to increasing the state income tax further to 16%, which would give a top marginal tax rate of 56.8%, a level at which it becomes barely worth working at all (I speak from experience of the high British marginal rates in the 1970s and 1980s). With the state keeping more than half its richest citizens’ marginal earnings, California’s claim to be a capitalist economy is already quite weak.

It becomes weaker still, when you realize that the state is also likely to introduce a wealth tax at 0.4% per annum, payable on all wealth above $30 million. Now you may think that $30 million is “riches beyond the dreams of avarice” but you are out of date, at least if you live around San Francisco. $30 million just about buys you an upper-middle-class house in that area, and then you must pay the state property taxes on the damn thing. In any normal jurisdiction, $30 million would be enough to retire on in considerable luxury, but not around San Francisco. Moreover, 0.4% per annum may not sound like much, but I would remind you that today 10-year U.S. Treasuries yield only 0.67%. That leaves you only 0.39% after Federal income tax (oh bliss, no state income tax) so your California wealth tax is robbing you of 105% of your remaining income – even before you account for inflation’s effect on your capital. Yes, you could put your money in riskier, higher-yielding assets, but those Argentine bonds and Neiman Marcus private equity investments did not turn out so well, did they?

Then there is regulation. Depending on your business, you will have already found out that U.S. regulation, when combined with that of an “activist” state like California, is among the most user-unfriendly in the world. German, British or Japanese regulators are well-organized pussycats by comparison. The recent Uber decision means you cannot employ contractors, they have to be full-time employees, with all the costs involved. And heaven forfend you should be in any business with global warming implications – if you’re an offshore oil driller you’re out of luck, and have been since 1969 in terms of getting new leases on state-controlled waters. And it’s not just the environmental regulations imposed on you, but the effect on you of those imposed on others; California regulations on electric utilities are so severe that the main utility has filed for bankruptcy, and many areas have been subject to brownouts in a recent heat-wave, because the heat-wave happened on a calm night, thus putting all the state’s solar and wind electric capacity out of action. Now I grant you, the early industrialists did not have electricity at all, but if you think California will let you set up a good healthy coal-powered steam engine to solve your energy problem, you’re dreaming!

Then there are the social restrictions. In California, you no longer have free speech, at least not if anyone records you; you will lose your job for even the mildest hate speech – and if you’re self-employed, the Twitterati will still find a way to make your life a misery. You may stay out of prison, but will still destroy years of your life and millions of your dollars in court cases.

Like California, China has restrictions on free speech – you cannot criticize the government, if you want to stay out of jail (in California, you can criticize the government, but there are innumerable other things you cannot say, and it is not always clear in advance what they are). China also has fairly high taxes – a top marginal rate of 45% — though not as high as California.

The main difference is that in China, you must include a committee of Party members in your company, who have the right to second-guess all your business decisions. In California, you do not yet have to do this, but the mandatory “diversity officers” and such are getting ever closer to this level of intrusiveness. Still, there are advantages to China – for one thing, you don’t need to worry about environmental regulation – it’s pretty clear most Chinese companies don’t, as they emit vast quantities of CFCs, for example, a pollutant removed from Western supply chains two decades ago.

In Belarus, you don’t have to employ Party members within your company, though you certainly have to clear management decisions with your local Party boss – who may come expensive. As in China or California, you have no rights of free speech, so there is only a modest differential between the three locations in that respect. Of course, Belarus and China are notoriously not democracies (Belarus has rigged elections, China doesn’t bother having them at all) but then if you’re a Republican living round San Francisco you might as well not have democracy either – none of your local legislators will be dedicated to the things you believe in.

On Covid-19, China has almost certainly falsified its statistics, and given it the opportunity to spread to humanity in the first place, while California has imposed all kinds of niggling restrictions on individual freedoms. On the other hand, Belarus’ president Alexander Lukashenko has suffered from the virus, played ice hockey throughout its prevalence, and recommends sauna baths and vodka as a cure. Advantage: Belarus, I fancy.

Tax-wise Belarus (like its neighbor Russia) is a truly capitalist state; the country has a flat income tax rate of 12%, and even offers a discount to 9% for workers in the tech sector. This is much more important than people think. Both Belarus and Russia are dominated by a few very large companies, mostly in natural resources, with heavy state involvement and part ownership by cronies of the long-term President. They are not very attractive as investments, even where you could invest in them.

However, below the radar screen, where the state is uninvolved beyond local payoffs, there are a large number of small entrepreneurial companies that do well because of the low corporate tax rate (18%) and low individual tax rates on the entrepreneurs who created them. Belarus being deeply unfashionable, there are no Western venture capital companies crawling over the country. What’s more, monetary conditions are more favorable for the creation of truly productive small companies than in either California or China; inflation was 5.2% in the last 12 months and the National Bank of Belarus’ refinancing rate is 7.75% — healthy levels and relationships between the two that we have not seen in the U.S. since the early 1990s.

Since Belarus has a highly educated workforce, especially in technical areas, and very low costs indeed – far below those of even China, let alone California – it is potentially a highly attractive place to start a business, if you can tolerate the local political system and its corruption. Oh, and the power grid works, at least better than California’s.

Belarus is a nasty dictatorship. But so is China; on balance, rather nastier (I prefer rigged elections to none at all). Even California these days is hardly the land of the free that it used to be. However, in terms of economic climate for a local business there is really no comparison. None of the three countries is a truly attractive free-market environment, but by far the closest to that ideal is Belarus.

SOURCE 

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More evidence that shutdowns are useless

Governments around the world have responded to COVID-19 with more or less harsh (but, of course, never complete) shutdowns of economic and social activity. The costs of these shutdowns have been enormous, obvious and undeniable, while the alleged benefits have been hypothetical and speculative. As experience with the virus accumulates, there is, I think, a growing consensus that the shutdowns have been worthless, or close to worthless.

Dr. Gilbert Berdine, an associate professor of medicine at Texas Tech University’s Health Sciences Center, assembles some revealing information in the form of this chart, which compares daily COVID deaths per million of population in Sweden, New York, Illinois and Texas. First, a note of caution. I don’t know, and I am not sure whether anyone knows, whether different countries (or even states) count “COVID deaths” in the same way. If American states follow CDC guidance, a “COVID death” does not mean that COVID was the cause of death. It means that a person 1) died, and 2) had COVID. Thus, gunshot victims have been counted as COVID deaths. Do European countries follow this extremely misleading practice, and do states follow it uniformly? I don’t know. With that caveat, here is the chart.



Dr. Berdine, writing for the Mises Institute, explains:

Sweden (blue dots) has served as a control group to compare policies intended to decrease deaths from covid-19. Sweden has been unfairly criticized for its policy despite having an outcome more favorable than places with authoritarian lockdown policies. Sweden did not close its schools. Other than stopping gatherings of more than fifty people, the Swedish government left decisions of closing businesses, using masks, and social distancing to the Swedish people.

Hardly anyone has been wearing masks in the Scandinavian countries, according to news reports.

Mortality attributed to covid-19 hit a peak value of 11.38 deaths per day per million population on April 8, 2020. … For all practical purposes, the covid-19 epidemic is over in Sweden. Almost certainly herd immunity has been achieved in Sweden irrespective of any antibody test results. … Whether covid-19 will reappear this next fall or winter remains to be seen.

Sweden has been abused internationally, much as South Dakota has been abused in the U.S., but the outcome in Sweden has been good, and in South Dakota, excellent. How about the American states shown in the chart?

New York (brown dots) has been a catastrophe. On March 20, 2020, a full lockdown was implemented. Nonessential businesses were ordered to close. Workers in nonessential businesses were ordered to work only from home. Pharmacies, grocery stores, liquor stores, and wine stores were deemed to be essential and allowed to remain open. Restaurants and bars could only deliver to homes. In addition to the lockdown, nursing homes were ordered on March 25, 2020, to accept patients positive for the covid-19 virus in transfer from hospitals. … By April 7, 2020, within three weeks of the nursing home order, a daily mortality of over fifty deaths per day per million population had been reached. This daily mortality rate was almost five times the peak rate observed in Sweden, where no lockdown was implemented.

The New York data clearly show that interactions among young and healthy people have a much different risk than interactions between the young and elderly and interactions among the elderly. By facilitating the transmission of the virus from hospitals to nursing homes, the rate of spread within the elderly population was maximized, and any possible benefit from lockdown of the young and healthy population was rendered moot. … The decline of deaths from the peak levels in New York, with its harsh lockdown, has followed roughly the same time course as what has been observed in Sweden without any lockdown. It is unclear whether the lockdown interfered with herd immunity or not. This will not be known until after the economy and schools are completely reopened for at least a month.

What is the conclusion?

The data suggest that lockdowns have not prevented any deaths from covid-19. At best, lockdowns have deferred death for a short time, but they cannot possibly be continued for the long term. It seems likely that one will not have to even compare economic deprivation with loss of life, as the final death toll following authoritarian lockdowns will most likely exceed the deaths from letting people choose how to manage their own risk. After taking the unprecedented economic depression into account, history will likely judge these lockdowns to be the greatest policy error of this generation.

That is what I think, too.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

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Blood pressure drug taken by millions of Britons cuts the risk of dying from coronavirus by a THIRD, research shows

Experts found that Covid-19 patients who have been prescribed the medication were 33 per cent less likely to die or be admitted to intensive care.

The drugs – Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and Angiotensin Receptor Blockers (ARBs) – are used to treat high blood pressure, heart attacks and diabetes.

More than six million people in the UK take them regularly, and the new study shows they can boost coronavirus survival chances in patients taking them for high blood pressure.

Researchers at the University of East Anglia pooled data from previous studies looking at 28,872 patients in hospital with Covid-19.

One quarter of the patients were taking ACE inhibitors or ARBs, including one third of patients with high blood pressure.

The study showed that patients with high blood pressure were 33 per cent less likely to die or be placed on a ventilator if they were taking ACE inhibitors.

More research is needed to see if the drugs could treat coronavirus in patients who do not have high blood pressure.

Experts said the findings are hugely reassuring for millions of patients on the medication.

It follows fears that ACE inhibitors may in fact worsen Covid-19 as they reduce blood pressure by increasing levels of ACE2 receptors on the surface of a patient’s cells.

Covid-19 uses the same receptor to lock on to cells and invade the body. Lead author Dr Vassilios Vassiliou suggested the drugs may reduce the risk of dying from Covid by keeping blood pressure under control and decreasing inflammation in the body.

He said: ‘We can now very conclusively say that if you are being prescribed this medication you should keep taking it and it will not increase death or critical events, in fact it could save your life.’

He added that ACE inhibitors and ARBs may also reduce the severity of coronavirus among patients who take the medication for other conditions, such as diabetes or kidney failure.

‘For patients who were taking the medication but did not have high blood pressure we could see a trend towards them having better outcomes but it didn’t reach statistical significance. We can say it was definitely not harmful.’

He added: ‘We have shown that patients who have been prescribed the medication before they got Covid are better off.

'We do not have any evidence that if somebody got Covid-19 today and you gave them the medication they might be better off.’

The most popular versions of the drugs are Ramipril, Losartan, Lisinopril and Candesartan, according to NHS data.

SOURCE 

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Coronavirus: How fishermen landed a vital clue on Covid immunity

In May a fishing vessel headed out into Puget Sound, off Seattle, hoping for a good haul. When it returned, it brought back something far more valuable – an answer to the most important question facing the world.

On that ship, a study claims, was the first good evidence that being infected with coronavirus conferred immunity.

After setting off, one of the sailors came down with Covid-19. The vessel returned to port, where the health authorities discovered that 103 crewmates had also been infected.

Before sailing, all those on board had been screened, both for live infection and antibodies. Although this testing did not pick up the infected sailor, it picked up something else. Six tested seropositive, showing they could have had the infection. Of those, three had high levels of neutralising antibodies.

When the ship returned to dock, the authorities discovered that the three with a high level of antibodies were among the minority of 18 crew who had not been infected. It is possible that the other three, who did get infected, were false positives.

Among those who had not had it, more than 85 per cent were infected. Among those who almost certainly had, and had a strong reaction, none were.

By showing that a decent level of antibodies offers protection, the findings strongly suggest that the leading vaccine contenders will do as well.

“It would have been catastrophic for the world if we had not seen this,” said Alex Greninger, from the University of Washington, who published the research before peer review in Medrxiv.

The presence of neutralising antibodies has been one of the targets of vaccine trials. “It is a big deal to show if those antibodies are protective,” he said.

SOURCE 

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Kamala Harris Is a Fraud

Joe Biden's new running mate is neither a truth-teller nor a moderate.

If first impressions were serious ones, Kamala Harris might already be in trouble. In her first speech as Joe Biden’s running mate, she came out of the gate with a reckless disregard for the truth – which tells us that Biden’s influence must already be rubbing off. (When he was younger and far more nimble, he managed to tell four fully formed lies in the space of just 124 words.)

“The president’s mismanagement of the pandemic,” Harris railed earlier this week, “has plunged us into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.”

“False,” replied National Review’s Kyle Smith. “The pandemic and its associated lockdowns, not the president, are responsible for the economic contraction. … And it’s questionable to compare the current crisis to the Great Depression, which was not only deep but lasted more than a decade.” (Thanks to FDR’s policies, we’d add.)

As for those lockdowns, The Wall Street Journal editorial board saw through the Democrats’ scheme more than two months ago. “The state lockdowns are starting to ease and the U.S. economy should slowly begin to recover,” the editors wrote. “But it’s worth noting that the states opening most slowly are big states run by Democrats that represent something like a third of the U.S. economy. This means a slower recovery for those states and the U.S.”

Next, Harris blamed the Trump administration for our shuttered schools. “Just look where [Trump and Mike Pence] have gotten us,” she complained. “Millions of kids who cannot go back to school.”

Wrong again, Smith rightly said. “It is not Donald Trump’s decision whether kids go back to school, because the federal government does not run schools, but he has urged the schools to reopen. The primary reason kids cannot go back to school is opposition from teachers’ unions.”

We all know this to be true — that the teachers’ unions are adamantly against reopening — and for purely partisan political purposes. And here again, the Journal called them out: “The reopening of public schools poses an economic conundrum: If the schools aren’t open, many parents will lack child care and be unable to return to work. If parents can’t work, the economy can’t recover. Teachers unions are thus in a position to hold the economy hostage.”

Having thus attempted to hang the school closings on President Trump, Harris did further violence to her credibility with this ridiculous comparison: “Six years ago, in fact, we had a different health crisis. It was called Ebola. We all remember that pandemic.”

Huh? Since when does a handful of Ebola cases constitute a “pandemic”? According to the CDC, only 11 people in the entire U.S. were treated for Ebola during Harris’s imaginary pandemic.

SOURCE 

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Trump Considers a Cut in the Capital Gains Tax

President Donald Trump has suggested cutting the capital gains tax as part of the economic recovery from COVID-19. And indeed, cutting capital gains taxes could help spur new businesses, increase the availability of funds for existing businesses, and encourage innovation and entrepreneurship.

Reducing taxes on capital gains also could be a good thing for the recovery from the pandemic, but doing it right will be important.

Without decisive spending cuts, the threat of future tax increases will erode the benefits of near-term tax cuts and other policy options may be better suited to support the recovery.

When you sell an investment, such as a share of a company, the government charges a capital gains tax on the increased value. The top long-term capital gains rate currently is 23.8%, with lower rates for lower income levels.

Investment income is taxed twice: once when you earn it as wages, and a second time on any investment earnings. If your money is invested in a corporation, the corporate income tax takes another slice of your investment.

This system makes it more expensive to invest in the future and encourages Americans instead to spend their money today, which reduces overall levels of investment and economic growth.

Our tax code’s built-in bias against saving for the future is partially mitigated by having a lower tax rate on capital gains and dividends than the top income tax rate of 37%. The lower rate is a necessary, pro-growth feature of our tax code. A key promise of Democrats is to tax capital gains as ordinary income, raising the tax significantly. 

Because the capital gains tax is assessed at the time of realization–when the asset is sold–it creates an incentive to hold the asset to defer paying taxes. This has the side effect of encouraging investors to hold appreciated assets longer than they otherwise would for fear of having to pay tax on the gain, creating a “lock in” effect.

This “lock in” has real economic costs when investors hold assets due to fear of taxes rather than belief in a smart investment choice.

These “malinvestments” mean that Grandma still might be holding onto that $100 of Disney stock she bought in 1957 when the company went public. Her investment is now worth over $300,000 and if she cashed out, she could owe more than $70,000 in taxes.

Maybe her dollars might be invested better in her granddaughter’s small business. Or perhaps a different publicly traded company.

Lock in and double taxation mean that high capital gains taxes reduce companies’ ability to raise funds for new investments through equity offerings. They also impose higher taxes on riskier investments, such as startups that run large losses in the initial years with a small probability of successfully making a profit in the future.

Freeing up domestic capital and reducing the tax penalty for entrepreneurs have the potential to be particularly helpful as the economy retools after this current crisis. 

The current high capital gains rate actually could be costing us revenue. The anti-realization incentives of the tax are so strong that under conservative estimates from Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation, the revenue- maximizing tax rate is 28.5%.

When factoring in state taxes, the total capital gains tax rate in states such as California and New York is over 30%, and in 2016, the U.S. average cumulative capital gains rate was 28.9%. Investors are so sensitive that high capital gains tax rates lead to lower revenues simply through investors’ behavioral responses.

The revenue-maximizing rate should not be confused for any measure of economic efficiency. Ideally, the tax rate on capital income should be zero. Anything above zero unnecessarily reduces jobs and productivity growth. This harms not just the investors but workers and consumers too.

The capital gains tax also applies to inflationary gains. Inflation isn’t a big deal for the investor who has seen high returns. In our Disney example, less than $1,000 of the $300,000 gain is inflation. But most investments don’t have such great returns.

Poorer-performing investments can be swamped by inflation. In some cases, the effective capital gains rate can be more than 100% during times of high inflation on low return assets. The Tax Foundation estimates that about a third of unrealized household gains are inflationary.

To this aim, Trump previously has talked about the need to index capital gains to inflation so that the tax system stops taxing these phantom gains. Indexing capital gains would increase fairness and could unlock meaningful new domestic investment resources.

Indexing capital gains should be done carefully through the legislative process, since the Constitution empowers only Congress to enact new tax policy. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel agrees “that Treasury does not have legal authority to index capital gains for inflation by means of regulation.”

Leaving new legislation to Congress is not only what the Founders envisioned but also has the economic benefit of being more permanent, which is essential to gaining the full benefit of any tax policy.

Congress may want to index other parts of the tax code to avoid opportunities for gaming and ensure administrative simplicity. This requires careful deliberation.

Congress also must weigh the economic benefits of different kinds of tax cuts. Reforms such as expensing and corporate income tax cuts can provide larger economic gains per dollar of reduced revenue.

A capital gains tax cut or indexing also will have little long-run effect if Congress does not also pair the reform with significant spending cuts.

Projected annual deficits of $2 trillion over the next decade will force Congress to cut spending, increase taxes, or risk fiscal collapse. Without decisive spending cuts, any tax cut is destined to be temporary.

Reducing taxes on capital gains could be a good thing. But without spending reforms, the necessity of higher taxes in the future likely will blunt the impact of otherwise good tax policy.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

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Sweden stands firm on face masks as Anders Tegnell refuses to copy other countries' strategy

With face masks mandatory on public transport in Denmark from Saturday morning, Sweden is now in the position it has been in so often during the coronavirus pandemic - alone.

The country, which chose not to close lower secondary schools, pubs, restaurants, and sports facilities at the peak in April, is again an outlier in not recommending the general public wear face masks.

Dr Anders Tegnell, the country's state epidemiologist, told the Daily Telegraph that he did not expect the Public Health Agency of Sweden to follow Norway, Finland and Denmark and drop its opposition to masks when it recommends new measures to Sweden's government at the start of next month.

"The main risk, I think, is that people will think: 'okay, I'm wearing a face mask. I don't need to take these other precautions'," he said, saying his agency believed social distancing and self-isolation of the sick were "much more important".

While he admitted there was no study showing that face masks did in fact reduce adherence to other guidelines, he pointed to the trajectory of cases in countries that have mandated them.

"There is now a continuous and even increased spread in a number of countries who implemented face masks, " he said.

"There is a belief that if you just have face masks, you can forget about everything else, you can run your subway with full trains and so on."

Norway last week recommended the use of face masks on public transport in Oslo, and Finland on public transport nationwide, putting Dr Tegnell's agency under growing public pressure to follow suit.

Scientific Forum Covid-19 Sweden, a group of 45 Swedish researchers critical of Sweden's strategy, argued last Sunday in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper that masks should be worn even by students and teachers in schools.

"The scientific data is clear at this point, with most studies  showing that face masks do limit the spread, and to my knowledge not a single study showing they increase the spread, so why are they so stubborn?" said Lena Einhorn, an author with a PhD in virology, who is part of the group.

But Jonas Ludvigsson, professor of clinical epidemiology at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, who on Monday attacked the group for cherry-picking and misrepresenting studies, said that the different approach Sweden had taken was best explained by the unusual independence of its government agencies.

"In the other Nordic countries, politicians often have a stronger role than the experts at public health agencies." Frode Forland, Dr Tegnell's Norwegian counterpart, told the Telegraph he believed Dr Tegnell had "a valid argument" against face masks.

"We've been stressing that it's still much more effective to keep distance than to wear a face mask," he said. "If you keep one metre's distance, the reduction of risk of infection is about 80 per cent, but if you wear a face mask it's about 40 per cent."

He estimated that even with the rising number of cases Norway is currently experiencing, about 70,000 people would have to wear a mask for a week to prevent a single infection. 

On Wednesday, Johan Carlson, the Director-General of the Public Health Agency and Dr Tegnell's boss, appeared to soften the agency's stance, telling a press conference that "the issue over face masks is not at all dead", and that the agency was working on a review of the available evidence before issuing a list of recommendations to Sweden's government on September 1st.

But Dr Tegnell said the agency was unlikely to recommend face masks to the general public across Sweden, unless the rate of infection increases dramatically.

"There might be a role for face masks if you have increased incidence in a limited geographical area and you want to do everything to stop it as quickly as possible," he said.

But he said that Sweden was seeing a downward trend in most regions of the country. "If that changes then of course we need to think about more measures, but its a bit unusual to install more measures when you are in a downgoing trend."

SOURCE 

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Lockdowns Don’t Work, Study Finds

Travel restrictions and containment measures had “no observed association” on the number of critical cases of COVID-19 or death rates for the virus, a new study has found.

Increasing caseloads were associated most with greater obesity, older populations, higher unemployment rates, low levels of national preparedness in early detection and reporting, and limited health care capacity, says the study published by The Lancet. Researchers examined data in 50 countries through May 1 for the study.

“As governments consider partially or completely lifting travel restrictions and containment measures, understanding the roles of these policies in mitigating infection is imperative to minimize the impact of second and third waves of outbreaks,” the authors write.

The study, “A Country Level Analysis Measuring the Impact of Government Actions, Country Preparedness and Socioeconomic Factors on COVID-19 Mortality and Related Health Outcomes,” was authored by Rabail Chaudhry, George Dranitsaris, Talha Mubashir, Justyna Bartoszko, and Sheila Riazi, and published in the Lancet online publication, Eclinical Medicine, July 21, 2020.

SOURCE 

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Bill Gates: America's Coronavirus Testing Is 'Garbage'

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates believes the majority of the United States' Wuhan coronavirus tests are "garbage," he told Wired.

According to the billionaire, our nation's testing system is deeply flawed because of testing reimbursement rates that are determined by the government.

"The majority of all U.S. tests are complete garbage, wasted. If you don’t care how late the date is and you reimburse at the same level, of course they’re going to take every customer. Because they are making ridiculous money, and it’s mostly rich people that are getting access to that," Gates explained. "You have to have the reimbursement system pay a little bit extra for 24 hours, pay the normal fee for 48 hours, and pay nothing [if it isn’t done by then]. And they will fix it overnight."

Gates helped fund a diagnostic testing program in Seattle. He said the results were quicker and the testing wasn't as intrusive. Instead of relying on a test that requires a swab from the turbinate – the very back of the nostrils – Gates' test utilized a cotton swab from the tip of a person's nose.

"There’s this thing where the health worker jams the deep turbinate, in the back of your nose, which actually hurts and makes you sneeze on the healthy worker. We showed that the quality of the results can be equivalent if you just put a self-test in the tip of your nose with a cotton swab," he explained. "The FDA made us jump through some hoops to prove that you didn’t need to refrigerate the result, that it could go back in a dry plastic bag, and so on. So the delay there was just normal double-checking, maybe overly careful but not based on some political angle. Because of what we have done at FDA, you can buy these cheaper swabs that are available by the billions. So anybody who’s using the deep turbinate now is just out of date. It’s a mistake, because it slows things down."

The Food and Drug Administration warned about false positives, saying approximately three percent of all tests aren't actually positive.

Since the start of the pandemic we have seen flaws in Wuhan coronavirus case numbers and deaths. Texas had to correct their fatality rate. In Orange County, California, 30,000 serology tests – used to detect whether or not a person has antibodies for the virus, suggesting they previously had an infection – were counted in the "cumulative tests to date" figures for five weeks. In Florida, Orlando's positivity rate was said to be 98 percent, when, in reality, it was only 9.4 percent. Part of the issue was the number of clinics and labs that were reporting 100 percent positivity rates.

SOURCE 

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Kudlow Says Another Lockdown Would Have 'Enormous' Human and Economic Cost

National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow says he “wouldn’t mind” seeing a return to a 15 percent capital-gains tax rate, while noting that President Donald Trump wouldn’t seek such a cut through an executive order.

“We are looking at middle-class income tax cuts and capital gains tax cuts to spur investment and jobs and liquidity,” Kudlow told reporters at the White House on Aug. 12

“In another era, we used to call them tax cuts 2.0. The president has never lost those thoughts,”  he said, while adding that Joe Biden, the president’s 2020 rival, would raise taxes if elected.

Kudlow said it’s imperative that legislators in Congress work to come up with a cut to capital gains taxes, adding that it’s “not part” of any Trump executive order or plans on future executive action.

White House officials “had the economic committee during the campaign,” Kudlow said. “We originally had a 15 percent capital gains tax rate. And I wouldn’t mind going back to that.”

“We’d like to take it back to 15 percent, where it was for quite a long time because it helps jobs, investment, productivity, and wages,” he reiterated. The capital-gains rate is currently 20 percent.

On Aug. 10, Trump stated that he’s considering a tax cut on the profit that results from the sale of a capital asset such as a stock, bond, or real estate. He didn’t specify how that could be carried out.

The president said at a press conference that he’s also looking at “an income tax cut for middle-income families.”

“We are looking at expanding the cuts that we have already done, but specifically for middle-income families, and you will be hearing about that in the upcoming few weeks,” Trump said, adding that a capital-gains cut will produce more jobs.

While remaining mired in talks with top Democrats about a pandemic relief measure, Trump took executive action to provide a federal unemployment benefit of $300 per week, with states paying another $100 per week. He also took action to suspend evictions for renters and homeowners, defer student loan payments, and suspend payroll taxes for people who make less than $104,000 per year.

Kudlow’s remarks on slashing the capital-gains tax mirror that of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who told Fox News earlier that there’s a need for “legislation to do what we want on that front.”

“That’s what we need now because of COVID. So I think for the next few years while we recover, we should reduce those capital gains,” he added.

Ian Lyngen, head of U.S. rates strategy at BMO Capital Markets, said in a note to investors that a cut to the rate “would require the support of Congress,” although a Trump executive order “allowing the indexing of capital gains to inflation might be a realizable objective.”

SOURCE 

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Why mail-in voting is a bad idea

With the COVID-19 pandemic still upending our normal routines and the 2020 presidential election looming, mail-in voting continues to be a point of fierce controversy.

Absentee voting is already available for those who cannot vote in person. People who are elderly, immuno-compromised, or otherwise worried about exposure to COVID-19 while voting may apply for an absentee ballot.

But many Democrats want to take that several steps further, by drastically expanding mail-in voting or implementing universal mail-in voting before Election Day. While allowing everyone to mail their ballots in instead of heading to the polls during a pandemic may sound like a good idea, it’s rife with potential for mistakes, complications, and fraud.

“Mail-in ballots are the ballots most vulnerable to being altered, stolen, or forged” writes Hans von Spakovsky, Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former Federal Election Commission member.

Votes cast by mail-in ballot are more likely to be lost or rejected over minor errors, such as a name or signature not exactly matching election officials’ files. “The U.S. Election Assistance Commission says that in the last four federal elections, 2.7 million mail-in ballots were misdelivered and 1.3 million were rejected by election officials,” von Spakovsky points out.

Many have criticized President Donald Trump for overstating the threat of voter fraud that comes with mail-in voting. But even those in favor of expanding mail-in voting acknowledge that it holds more potential for fraudulent activity.

Richard L. Hasen of the University of California, Irvine, School of Law, thinks mail-in voting could be done safely with new rules. But as he acknowledged to The New York Times, “election fraud in the United States is very rare, but the most common type of such fraud in the United States involves absentee ballots.”

Douglas A. Kellner, co-chair of the New York State Board of Elections, and a Democrat, told the Times, “if you analyze all the steps involved in a mail election you start to see where the weak points are for fraud.”

It’s true that five states — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington  — conduct their elections entirely by mail. They already have the systems and infrastructure set up to do so. Implementing the level of mail-in voting Democrats are suggesting for the whole nation before November is unrealistic.

Von Spakovsky believes it’s unnecessary to move the election date, an idea President Trump has floated on Twitter. But he doubts Congress, the only entity with the power to move an election, would do so. He notes that even during the Civil War and World War II, elections were not postponed.

“Despite the coronavirus pandemic, experience shows that we can vote safely in-person as long as election officials implement the safety protocols recommended by health experts in polling places—the same protocols we are all using when we go to the grocery store or pharmacy,” he said.

Email from Kerby Anderson: k.anderson@pointofview.net From Point of View Radio Talk Show

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

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Biden’s hollow reality show an appalling performance

In four days, no one addressed the question of China or the lawlessness still roiling US cities. This was a travesty of a political convention that spoke volumes about Joe Biden

Joe Biden has made his election pitch at last: I’m a nice guy, Trump’s a beast, vote for me. In these dyspeptic, bilious times, such bland reassurance might be enough. Then again, it might not.

The Democratic National Convention was a bizarre decline in American political culture. It mixed a striking lack of coherent content with an endless series of images that circled around a few key emotional themes.

Biden’s nominating speech did the same. Biden’s verbally erratic, gaffe-prone performances have led his advisers to mostly cocoon him in his basement. With Donald Trump taking up all the attention, and coronavirus raging, and most of the media rooting for him, that has worked.

It also kept expectations helpfully low. All Biden has to do is stand up straight and read his lines and it’s a triumph.

Biden delivered his address, the most important speech of his life, with confidence and passion. That a candidate can manage to read a 25-minute speech and get the intonations right is a good thing, but surely the lowest possible bar for a presidential candidate to jump.

The substance of the speech was appalling. Really there was not much substance.

The Democratic convention nearly drowned in schmaltz, most of it concerning Biden’s life. It is indeed tragic that Biden lost his first wife and their daughter in a car accident decades ago, and then an adult son to cancer. The way Biden responded to these tragedies is genuine testimony to his character and any campaign would use it.

But these tragedies, repeated endlessly at the Democratic convention, became the main plank on which Biden seemed to be running for president. That is not how a mature democracy operates. It is reality TV, celebrity politics. Democrats lampoon Trump as the reality TV show president but they stripped all substance from their own convention and turned it into the Biden family reality TV show.

Here is a telling fact. In four days, no one addressed the question of China, either its strategic or economic challenge.

Nor did anyone mention the violent crime and lawlessness still roiling big American cities and soaring murder rates in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests.

This was a travesty of a political convention.

Biden identified four crises his presidency would address: coronavirus, the worst pandemic in a century; the economic downturn, the worst since the Depression; racial injustice, where the call for change is more urgent than at any time since the 1960s; and global warming, where he thinks millions of jobs will be created in clean energy.

Yet Biden mentioned almost no policy of consequence.

For the virus he will have a national mask mandate and follow the science. For the economy he will provide $US2 trillion ($2.7 trillion) of infrastructure. For racial injustice he will ooze empathy. And for climate change, non-sequitur alert, there will be millions of jobs.

Biden does have policies on his website. But over four days not a single policy was discussed in any detail. Is the broad public utterly uninterested in policy?

For decades, the big nominating conventions have contained a lot of hoopla and showbiz. They have been declining in substance, partly because a convention centre full of delegates can be not only passionate but unpredictable when policy is discussed.

But they have normally involved high-production video clips introducing leaders, some of whom actually spoke about policies. Not this time. Rather, this convention focused on emotion, not reason. Each day, while concentrating on the main business of abusing Trump and sanctifying Biden, had a few sub-themes.

Women and Democrats were the sub-theme on day three while God made a comeback on day four. Biden is a Catholic, and the Democrats traditionally have a problem with religious voters, so a priest and a nun got bit parts. This is full of paradox and irony. Biden opposes Catholic Church teaching on most life issues, certainly on abortion, as is his every right. But his vice-presidential running mate, Kamala Harris, has a record of anti-Catholic posturing.

In 2018, in a hearing to confirm a Trump nominee, Brian Buescher, to a district court, she attacked Buescher for his membership of the Catholic charity Knights of Columbus.

The Knights are not a political or campaigning organisation. They are a legendary charity and do immense good work. But like all Catholic organisations they are pro-life rather than pro-abortion. Harris strongly implied that this membership therefore was unacceptable in a judge. That would mean any Catholic membership is unacceptable. This so annoyed Harris’s Senate colleagues, even the woke, that the Senate passed a resolution affirming there was no religious test for judicial office in the US.

You wouldn’t expect all that to get a run at the convention, but you’d think something of substance might have been discussed. Harris herself condemned the “structural racism” that she said characterised the US. She and Barack Obama painted a bleak picture of America and its history, but a bright picture of its future so long as Biden is elected.

Harris, like Biden, seems to have no fixed political convictions. Or perhaps more precisely, like Bill Clinton, she holds intensely whatever view she is expressing at any given moment, however it contradicts her past views.

But it is a dismaying indication of what a Biden presidency might actually be like that Harris rose to national notice through prosecuting the culture wars.

And while the Democratic National Convention almost drowned in the gross sentimentality that disfigures so much American life, and that does not lead to virtue or decency in public life but more often emotionalism and self-indulgence, there was still a good degree of nastiness evident.

Obama and many other speakers blamed Trump for more than 170,000 American deaths from COVID. That is an outrageous charge. Most analysts and many Republicans agree that Trump’s leadership in response to COVID has been poor. He got some things right, such as the early travel ban on China. But his messages have been confused and at times he has publicly contradicted the official advice from his own health authorities.

It is absolutely legitimate to criticise Trump, robustly and harshly, for such failures. But to blame him directly for 170,000-plus deaths is grotesque. It is a matter of record that when Trump imposed the travel ban on China, Biden was opposed, calling the ban “xenophobic” and saying it would do no good.

In any event, the US death rate is high — and Trump is at his irrational worst when he claims it is low by international standards — but it is still lower than European nations such as Britain, Sweden, Belgium, Italy and others.

Much of the moral charge Democrats and left-liberal cultural leaders make against Trump is undercut by the way they distort facts, and often enough lie, and the wide-ranging personal abuse they engage in.

Trump has been vulgar, crude and offensive on many occasions and therefore has little to complain about when people behave that way towards him. However, you cannot sell yourself as representing a higher moral standard of pristine decency if you engage debate on those same terms.

Moreover, the Democrats are abusive and dismissive of Trump’s supporters as well. Vice-President Mike Pence has surely never been seriously rude about anybody. Yet Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who hosted the convention’s fourth night, and former Democrat candidate Andrew Yang undertook a ghastly segment where they parodied Pence’s name, a lame joke Louis-Dreyfus returned to through the night. She variously called him poonce and ponce. This seemed a response to TV commentators getting the pronunciation of Harris’s name wrong. This is an entirely trivial matter, but can you imagine the storm of outrage that would follow if a senior Republican lampooned the Democrat vice-presidential candidate’s name?

The convention did achieve a number of positives for Biden.

It presented a united Democratic Party. In truth, the party is riven by ideological and geographical divisions. It suffers the same kind of contradictions that the Australian Labor Party faces and that confront many social democratic parties, the inner-city voter versus the outer-suburban and rural voter. What plays on climate change or identity politics in Manhattan or San Francisco doesn’t go so well in West Virginia or even suburban Michigan.

But Democrats certainly are all united in their desire to defeat Trump and get jobs in a Biden administration. Obama’s two secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, are all over Biden and had honoured spots in this convention. Both are said to be quite keen to return to a Biden cabinet.

Clinton was actually a pretty good secretary of state, but that was when she thought she would face a hawkish Republican opponent, like Marco Rubio, for the presidency.

Kerry was sublimely ineffective, authored the disastrous Iran deal, was useless in the broader Middle East, neglected Asia and over-invested in almost worthless multilateralism for its own sake.

A Biden foreign policy could well be worse even than that.

The convention also featured a lot of former Republicans, such as John Kasich, the former governor of Ohio, now endorsing Biden. The Democrats have gone to the left, not the centre, but their pitch to moderates and centrists is that Trump is unfit to be president. The hope is that the presence of these Republicans will give such voters “permission” to opt for Biden.

In policy terms it is almost impossible to glean anything of substance on how Biden might govern. The TV audiences were much smaller than for the parallel event four years ago. But Biden is like a football team, up on the scoreboard with 20 minutes to go. His strategy is to play mistake-free football and hope he’s still ahead when the siren sounds.

But the party revealed some things about itself. One was the almost demented emphasis on identity politics. Pete Buttigieg was the most intellectually impressive of the Democratic presidential candidates, denied the chance to consolidate the moderate vote because his party could not count its votes properly and he was wrongly marked as coming second in a crucial primary he actually won.

He happens to be gay and married. He ran on substantial policies but was happy to answer questions about his marriage and gay rights if asked.

But at this convention he was prevailed on to make the fact of being a gay candidate the main element of his speech. That is a step backwards from where Buttigieg was in the campaign.

The Democratic Party has moved a very long way left. Bernie Sanders was right when he said his radical agenda is now the mainstream of the Democratic Party.

Biden is still favourite, but the polls are tightening and the RealClearPolitics betting odds now have Biden at a 57 per cent chance of winning and Trump at 43 per cent. That means it’s a live contest.

If Biden becomes president he might be like Lyndon Johnson. Realising he would have only one term in his own right, Johnson took on the huge task of civil rights. Biden might do the same, perhaps on healthcare or some other domestic issue.

Or he might, like Calvin Coolidge, be a political lifer whose key talent is persistence and survival, who is ultimately somewhat astonished to end up at the top and just enjoys the ride.

We are not any wiser as to what kind of president Biden might be after this infomercial trivialising of American politics, this brain-rotting cotton candy of the mind, that was the Democratic National Convention.

SOURCE 

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IN BRIEF

Democratic National Convention Circus
Viewership tumbles 24% on first night of convention (Bloomberg)

Elizabeth "Fauxcahontas" Warren speaks at Native American Caucus meeting (Bongino.com)

Linda Sarsour, who raised funds for terrorist, featured as speaker (The Federalist)

DNC rejects #MeToo "reckoning" over Bill Clinton by gifting him with speaking slot (The Federalist)

Trump takes 700% more questions than Hidin' Biden in one month (Washington Examiner)

Senate Intel Committee says FBI gave "unjustified credence" to Steele dossier, Russia "took advantage" of Trump transition team (Fox News)

Postmaster general suspends changes to Postal Service to avoid any impact on election mail (NBC News)

Gov. Andrew Cuomo publishing book on his coronavirus (mis)leadership after lambasting Trump in DNC speech (Forbes)

Judge blocks Idaho law preventing biological males from competing in women's sports (The Daily Caller)

Yet another riot is declared in Portland on 83rd night of trouble: 200-strong mob of protesters torch city's famous Multnomah Building (UK Daily Mail)

Portland police identify suspect in brutal beating of truck driver (The Daily Wire)

Six arrested after George Washington statue toppled, vandalized near Los Angeles City Hall (KTLA)

New home construction surged 23% in July (UK Daily Mail)

S&P 500 hits all-time high despite COVID-19 devastation (New York Post)

Dangerously incompetent Scott Israel defeated in bid for reelection as Broward County sheriff (The Truth About Guns)

Never-before-seen photos of Bill Clinton getting massage from Jeffrey Epstein accuser released (The Daily Wire)

What corporate media won't tell you about Trump's historic Middle East peace deal (The Federalist)

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