American Vaccine Inflation

by philg

I can’t figure out why Science hasn’t converged on opposite sides of the Atlantic regarding vaccines. Let’s leave COVID aside for the moment since one’s level of coronapanic is inevitably a political decision. Let’s look at the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine. The technocrats in the UK say that Science told them this is for people 75-79 and for pregnant people of any age:

(Of course, by Massachusetts standards, the best protection for a 28-week-old baby is abortion care, legal at every stage of pregnancy and “on-demand” through 24 weeks.)

What does Science say on the western side of the Atlantic? The RSV vaccine is for people aged 60-130+ (CDC):

The NHS says that the flu vaccine is for those 65+. The CDC?

Everyone 6 months and older in the United States, with rare exception, should get an influenza (flu) vaccine every season.

An indestructible 15-year-old is, therefore, never more than a year away from a flu shot in the US while he/she/ze/they is 50 years away from his/her/zir/their next flu shot in the UK.

Let’s turn now to coronapanic. In the U.S., Science says to get one shot at age 6 months and then keep getting injected regularly:

In the UK, the Sacrament of Fauci starts at age 75. In other words, a person must be 150X older in the UK compared to in the US to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. There are usually some error bars in Science, but does anyone know of an example where there is a factor of 150X between a Scientific result in the US versus somewhere else in the world?

Related:

  • Lost in the coronapanic shuffle, an April 2020 paper from the Annals of Internal Medicine: “The Effect of Influenza Vaccination for the Elderly on Hospitalization and Mortality” (Anderson, Dobkin, and Gorry). They looked at the UK where hardly anyone gets a flu shot under age 65 and almost everyone gets one at age 65. “Turning 65 was associated with a statistically and clinically significant increase in rate of seasonal influenza vaccination. However, no evidence indicated that vaccination reduced hospitalizations or mortality among elderly persons.” (in other words, the flu shot might prevent a few days of illness, but it doesn’t reduce the death rate)
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You need a 275 knot airplane if you’re based in South Florida

by philg

A recent email to a friend in the aviation world:

Florida isn’t the greatest for 150-knot GA. If you fly for two hours you end up in a place that looks almost exactly like the place where you live (flat, palm trees, a beach nearby, etc.). It’s not like going from BED to MVY, BTV, or BHB where the differences are dramatic after a short flight. If you assume that passengers can’t tolerate more than about 2 hours in a light plane you probably need to be going at least 275 knots so that you can make it to Chattanooga and the beginning of the mountains within 2 hours. I guess that means a Piper Meridian is the minimum if you want to get a family of non-pilots interested in a trip?

[The airports listed above are Bedford, Maskachusetts, Martha’s Vineyard, Burlington, Vermont, and Bar Harbor, Maine. That reminds me to wonder the status of the lawsuits about the cruel and unusual punishment suffered by the asylum-seekers in being flown for free from Texas to MVY. “A federal judge says migrants can sue the company that flew them to Martha’s Vineyard” (state-sponsored NPR, April 2024). State-sponsored NPR did an article in 2023 about an MVY migrant living in a free apartment and receiving cash “under the table”. What are the migrant’s damages? He can’t demand reimbursement for the high housing costs in Maskachusetts because he’s not paying anything for housing. He can’t demand reimbursement of income tax being charged by Maskachusetts that he wouldn’t have had to pay in tax-free Texas because he isn’t pay any tax in MA.]

The map below shows the distance to the nearest mountains. Another reason why the Florida lifestyle isn’t cheap!

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Kamala Harris is happy that the danger to our democracy persists

by philg

Six days ago (i.e., a couple of months since the first attempted assassination of Donald Trump) Kamala Harris said that Donald Trump is “a danger to … our democracy”:

Today, another American apparently took Joe Biden and Kamala Harris at their respective words and tried to save our democracy with a rifle. Kamala Harris says “I am glad [the danger to our democracy] is safe”:

Color me confused!

Related:

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Hispanic Heritage Month at the science museum

by philg

I hope that everyone has fully prepared for National Hispanic Heritage Month, which starts today.

Friend’s daughter at the Boston Museum of Science: “Why are all of the signs in Spanish when everyone here is white or Asian?”

From August 2021, when Marjorie Taylor Greene was suspended from Twitter for falsely saying that the vaccinated righteous could still be infected by SARS-CoV-2 and transmit the virus (CBS), “Museum of Science, Boston Announces Vaccination Mandate for All Staff, Volunteers”:

The Museum of Science, Boston, one of the world’s largest science centers and New England’s most attended cultural institution, announced today a requirement that all employees and volunteers are to be vaccinated against COVID-19, effective September 13. The policy is in response to overwhelming scientific evidence of the vaccination’s safety and effectiveness in combating COVID-19.

Museum president Tim Ritchie spoke about the importance of the Museum setting an example as a trusted community resource:

“In early 2020, we closed our doors because the world was fighting a pandemic about which we had little knowledge and against which we had limited defense. Now, thanks to the wonders of science, we have the tools and expertise to eradicate this virus from our communities. We just need to act together.

Also… “Pride Celebration Weekend” at the museum for kids:

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New York Times: After welcoming 50 million non-European migrants, Europe is poor and needs more government spending

by philg

“Europe’s ‘Reason for Being’ at Risk as Competitiveness Wanes, Report Warns” (New York Times, 9/9/2024):

Europe must increase public investment by nearly $900 billion a year in sectors like technology and defense, according to a long-awaited report published Monday in response to growing anxieties about the continent’s economy lagging behind that of the United States and China.

Mr. Draghi said that the European Union needed additional annual investment of up to 800 billion euros ($884 billion) to meet the objectives he laid out in his report. That is equivalent to about 4.5 percent of the European Union’s gross domestic product last year. By comparison, investment under the Marshall Plan from 1948 to 1951 was equivalent to about 1.5 percent of Europe’s economic output.

Conditions that contributed to the continent’s prosperity have changed substantially since the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Cheap Russian gas is no longer available, and energy prices have soared. Those prices have come off their peak, but European companies still pay two to three times more for electricity than U.S. companies, the report found.

We are informed that low-skill migrants make developed countries rich. Europe has welcomed nearly 50 million non-European migrants (source through 2020).

Why does Europe need more government spending, as a percentage of GDP, to become rich if it was already enriched by low-skill migrants?

Related:

  • “Our giant welfare state” (Washington Post, 2014), in which we learn that only the French spend a larger percentage of their GDP on government hand-outs
  • Heritage Foundation on Germany, finding that it spends 50 percent of GDP on government (higher than the U.S., but the U.S. percentage is distorted because we don’t include nominally “private” spending on health care (which is so regulated and mandated by the government that I think it should be included))
  • Heritage on France (60 percent of GDP spent by the government)
  • Heritage on Poland (45 percent of GDP spent by the government)
  • Heritage on Taiwan (18 percent of GDP spent by the government (and 82 percent by TSMC?))
  • Heritage on South Korea (26 percent of GDP spent by the government)
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Back to school at Brown University

by philg

We’ve got a mole inside Brown this year. Here’s “Clouseau’s” report on how freshman year started… (not in quote style for readability):

Before classes began, all students were required to read an 86 page report on Brown’s relationship with slavery (TLDR: Slavery was bad and institutions founded 100+ years before the Civil War have connections to it) and attend a seminar discussing it. We have a responsibility to “center discussions of identity” in all disciplines.

During the seminar, the facilitator (a humanities professor) and my fellow students spent 80 minutes hammering Brown and the Antebellum North for their profiteering relationship with slavery, and the group was adamant that they would not have similarly stood by had they been on campus in 1850. The group concluded that the Complicit North eventually fighting a war to end slavery was “largely performative” with respect to combatting the practice.

One place the group did passionately feel Brown was repeating its past mistakes was by refusing to divest from Israel despite the “genocide” (facilitator’s phrasing) in Gaza. Everyone agreed that we had to “free Palestine” — and hundreds of students waved Palestinian flags at the opening convocation this afternoon to emphasize the point. Ironically, 40% of Brown students say they are [2SLGBTQQIA+; our mole hatefully neglected some of these letters]; I guess what happens to members of that community under Hamas does not qualify as genocide.

Anyway, classes start tomorrow. My [STEM class with more than 100 students] has already mandated we use “they/them” pronouns for all students.

[Aerial photo by Tony Cammarata. June 2020 from a Robinson R44 helicopter. Campus shut down for coronapanic.]

  • 4:02 PM Convocation begins
  • 4:03 PM National Anthem
  • 4:04 PM Acknowledgment that we are on stolen Narragansett land

Questions that were not answered:

  • Why are we singing the anthem of a country that is a product of theft?
  • Who had the land before the Narragansett? Was it light, heaven and earth, animals, and then thousands of years of Narragansett rule before the settler-colonialist Rhode Islanders came along?
  • What is being done to return the stolen land? Why is the school actively buying up more instead of giving it back?
  • If the majority of students identify as progressive, why were they chatting through the land acknowledgement, to the point that it was difficult to hear the speaker?

Separately, a friend’s daughter has been keeping up with friends from high school. Her friend who recently matriculated at Northeastern University’s London campus (5 percent acceptance rate) has been going to clubs… every night. Since there are no neutrally administered tests with unbiased grading (i.e., the professors grade their own students), there is no need to study. Her friend who has been at Fordham for three weeks has already had sex with three different men, which reminds me of a conversation I had with an MIT undergraduette circa 1990. She mentioned that her freshman year roommate had sex with 25 different men. I pointed out that “MIT is in session for only 26 weeks per year.” She responded, “She had a cold one week.”

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The Harris unrealized capital gains tax and Bidenflation

by philg

The Democrats’ latest tax schemes, recently highlighted by Kamala Harris, include collecting tax on unrealized capital gains. To me, one of the strangest things about the US tax system is that losses are taxed as capital gains so long as there is even the slightest amount of inflation. For example, if you bought a stock in January 2021 for $100 and sold it today for $110 more you’d have about $10 in today’s dollars terms under official CPI and closer to $80 if adjusted for house purchasing power (Zillow). Despite the loss on what turned out to be an unsuccessful investment, you’d owe federal and, perhaps, state tax on the sale. The current not-adjusted-for-inflation capital gains tax regime is, thus, rather cruel when combined with Bidenflation but at least you can choose when to pay the tax on your fictitious profit/real loss.

Related:

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Changing Perceptions of Jihad in New York City

by philg

It’s the 23rd anniversary of 9/11, described by Wikipedia as “Islamist terrorist suicide attacks”, and the first 9/11 anniversary since soldiers of the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”), UNRWA, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad invaded Israel (October 7, 2023).

At least on September 12, 2001, nearly everyone in the New York metro area apparently believed that jihad was bad. It is tough to find a statistic on how many Muslims lived in NYC in 2001, but at least their leadership came out against attacking civilians: “No political cause could ever be assisted by such immoral acts.” (Wikipedia).

Today, there are “1.5 million Muslims in the greater New York metropolitan area” (Wikipedia). Together with progressive Democrats (“Queers for Palestine”), at least some of these New Yorkers now say that attacking civilians as part of an “Islamic Resistance Movement” or “Islamic Jihad” is praiseworthy. “Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters — including A-list actress — shout ‘Long live the Intifada!’, pass out maps of pro-Israel locations to target in NYC” (New York Post, November 17, 2023):

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered at Union Square Friday – before joining another massive rally near Bryant Park and marching to locations listed on a troubling map that called for “direct action” to “globalize intifada.”

By early Friday evening, the crowd made at least five stops in Manhattan that the Palestinian-led community organization Within Our Lifetime called for followers to target in a since-deleted social media post Thursday.

Outside The New York Times building, one enraged protester holding a Palestinian flag appeared to say “Bomb the New York Times. Bomb the New York Times!”

Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon was in attendance and donned a playful Simpsons-themed bomber jacket to the protest, which also called out politicians by name.

She joined the crowd in chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – which is largely regarded as an antisemitic slogan that implies the decimation of Israel – before addressing the group herself.

“There are a lot of people that are afraid, that are afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country,” she said.

Some of the protesters held a banner that read “By any means necessary” – seemingly implying that Palestine should be freed at all costs, even violence.

The “by any means necessary” slogan presumably includes attacks on Israeli civilians, as featured on October 7, 2023 and, since at least 2001, via rocket attacks from Gaza and Lebanon (the rockets are generally targeted at cities, such as Tel Aviv). “By any means necessary” also includes, much to my surprise, taking and holding fellow Muslims hostage.

How widespread has the support for killing Israeli civilians been? As of November 17, 2023:

The Union Square event is one of hundreds of similar gatherings that took place in New York City and beyond this week, as tensions continue to simmer in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 sneak attack on southern Israel and Israel’s subsequent retaliatory bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Uptown at Columbia (France24):

At least New York City, therefore, has been transformed in just 23 years from a place where jihad is condemned to a place where jihad is celebrated. What would New Yorkers do today if a jihad were waged against civilian New Yorkers (targeted in some way so as not to affect Muslim New Yorkers) to “stop the genocide”, for example?

Associated Press video: “Palestinian men, women and children chanted in jubilation after terrorists crashed two planes into the World Trade Center causing them to collapse on Tuesday morning.”

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New York Times features an expert on parenting…

by philg

… who has never been a parent.

“I Love the Kids in My Life. And I’m Raising None of Them.” (Glynnis MacNicol, NYT, 9/7/2024):

I have no children of my own…

In America, there is a persistent, pernicious belief that the only way to be invested in a child’s life is to be a parent — and, for women, to give birth to that child. (Ella and Cole Emhoff, among others, would like a word.) In a country that offers so little support to parents, this often feels like a not-so-covert argument for taking women back to a time when they lacked control over their bodies and their finances.

To understand the extraordinary commitment it takes to parent — because you see it firsthand — and decide to direct your own time elsewhere…

If he/she/ze/they has never been a parent, how can he/she/ze/they be sure that he/she/ze/they “understand” anything about being a parent?

Separately, I love that the editors allow “a country that offers so little support to parents” to be presented as a statement of fact. The U.S. provides 13 years of free education/daycare to parents who don’t want to deal with their kids. The U.S. also provides taxpayer-funded breakfast and lunch at school for parents who choose to not work or, as in Palm Beach County, to all parents. The U.S. forces the childless to work longer hours and pay higher taxes to subsidize parents with lower tax rates. The childless are even forced, under threat of imprisonment, to pay taxes to subsidize college and, new with the Biden-Harris administration, loan “forgiveness” (transfer to the general taxpayer). How is that “little support”? What more could the childless do for us parents? Buy us a new Honda Odyssey or Toyota Sienna every 3 years?

Circling back to the main theme, we’re informed that we should defer to experts selected by the legacy media and not commit the sin of “doing our own research”. And it turns out that the NYT-selected expert on parenting has some experience… as a babysitter.

Here’s the author in 2018 (a childless cat lady with no cats?):

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Is the camera on the iPhone 16 Pro different from the camera on the iPhone 15 Pro?

by philg

Almost as exciting to progressives as a new COVID-19 vaccine… Apple has announced the iPhone 16 (two cameras/lenses) and iPhone 16 Pro (three cameras/lenses).

For us photo nerds, plainly, the 16 Pro is the only device of interest. I can’t figure out what’s different, though. Here’s what Apple says:

With iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, the world’s favorite camera gets even more powerful. Powered by A18 Pro, the upgraded camera system introduces a new 48MP Fusion camera with a faster, more efficient quad-pixel sensor and Apple Camera Interface, unlocking 4K120 fps video recording in Dolby Vision — the highest resolution and frame-rate combination ever available on iPhone, and a smartphone first. The quad-pixel sensor can read data 2x faster, enabling zero shutter lag for 48MP ProRAW or HEIF photos. A new 48MP Ultra Wide camera also features a quad-pixel sensor with autofocus, so users can take higher-resolution 48MP ProRAW and HEIF images when capturing uniquely framed, wider-angle shots or getting close to their subjects with macro photography. The powerful 5x Telephoto camera now comes on both iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, allowing users to catch the action from farther away, no matter which model they choose. iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max now take spatial photos in addition to videos to help users relive memories with remarkable depth on Apple Vision Pro.

For still photography, it sounds as though maybe the wide angle camera will yield higher resolution results (but is the lens good enough for that to matter?).

There is some new camera software, which makes the phone work more like a legacy DSLR:

Camera Control — a result of thoughtful hardware and software integration — makes the pro camera system more versatile with an innovative new way to quickly launch the camera, take a photo, and start video recording. It has a tactile switch that powers the click experience, a high-precision force sensor that enables the light press gesture, and a capacitive sensor that allows for touch interactions. A new camera preview helps users frame the shot and adjust other control options — such as zoom, exposure, or depth of field — to compose a stunning photo or video by sliding their finger on the Camera Control. Later this fall, Camera Control will be updated with a two-stage shutter to automatically lock focus and exposure on a subject with a light press, letting users reframe the shot without losing focus. Additionally, developers will be able to bring Camera Control to third-party apps such as Kino, which will offer users the ability to adjust white balance and set focus points, including at various levels of depth in their scene.

But maybe this will also work with older iPhones?

The company claims that they’re going to automatically generate blather suitable for emailing (“Built for Apple Intelligence”), but there is no evidence that they’ve tackled the “fill out a shopping/shipping form” challenge.

I guess I will buy one to replace my iPhone 14 Pro Max (recently failed and required a $219 new camera module at the Palm Beach Gardens, Florida Apple Store (a model of customer service, I have to admit!)), if only to enter the glorious USB-C era that Android users entered 10 years ago and to lord it over Android users (“I have AI and you have nothing”).

What’s a good example of a recent photo that I couldn’t have taken without the cameraphone? Here’s one from Costco that can be captioned “Starlink is everywhere”:

And here’s the Big Bang Bar pinball machine, one of about 200 made, at the Delray Beach Silverball Museum:

It’s unlikely I would have carried a serious camera into these situations, so here’s a shout-out to the engineers at Kyocera who pioneered the camera phone in May 1999 (eight years before Apple released the iPhone).

Related:

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