I found this post by Alex Berenson a bit distressing. Here’s the gist:

Last month, three scientists pointed out flu shots barely work and couldn’t be approved based on the standards used for vaccines like measles:

“After more than 60 years of experience with influenza vaccines, very little improvement in vaccine prevention of infection has been noted… our best approved influenza vaccines would be inadequate for licensure for most other vaccine-preventable diseases.” [emphasis added]

True. Several rigorous papers have proven that flu shots are placebos masquerading as public policy.

But the same scientists then compared our beloved and groundbreaking Covid vaccines to those pointless flu jabs:

As variant SARS-CoV-2 strains have emerged, deficiencies in these [Covid] vaccines reminiscent of influenza vaccines have become apparent.

Just who are these vicious anti-vax rebels?

Three researchers at the National Institutes for Health. Including one whose name may ring a bell: the now-retired Dr. Anthony S. Fauci.

Yet the Covid/flu shot comparison is only one of the article’s bombshells.

At its core, the piece raises the question of whether any vaccines can ever work well enough to matter against bugs like common coronaviruses, influenza, and RSV.

And that question hides an even more troubling one, one the authors do not ask: have our efforts to beat Sars-Cov-2 by driving our immune response in ways it was not designed to go caused dangers we are only beginning to understand?

I chose to be vaccinated—two primary courses and two boosters. I weighed the risks and benefits and decided it was the best choice for me. I don’t regret my choice but part of the reason for that may be that I did my homework and made my choice based on that. I have not gotten the additional booster because, once again, I evaluated the risks and benefits and decided that was the best course of action. I know several physicians around my age (not as healthy as I) who are doing the same thing.

Given that it appears to be the case that Sars-CoV-2 mutates sufficiently rapidly that we will never achieve “herd immunity” it seems to me that the risks and benefits are quite different from something like smallpox, polio, or measles. Additionally, at this point the long term risks of mRNA vaccines are unknown. We’ll know in due course.

I don’t believe the analogy with the flu vaccine is particularly good but even if it is, the effectiveness of the flu vaccine is extremely variable from year to year.

In some seasons (2010-2011) it was pretty effective. In others (2014-2015) it wasn’t very effective at all. I also find it worrisome that the trend in its efficacy appears to be going down. Is that because the efficacy of the vaccines is declining, our ability to find the right cocktail is declining, or just dumb luck?

Annual immunizations is a relatively recent phenomenon. It may be that it isn’t a particularly good practice. We’ll see.

I found this post at ARTNews by Francesca Aton fascinating. Apparently, an 1,800 year old shrine to Mithras has been found in Spain:

A sanctuary dedicated to the ancient god Mithras was uncovered by archaeologists excavating at the Villa del Mitra in Cabra, Spain. Remains of ritual banquets were found within the sanctuary.

Mithraism was a cult religion that became popular among the Roman Empire during the first century CE. Mithras was a Romanized form of the Iranian god of the sun and justice Mithra.

The Villa del Mitra, within the Roman city Licabrum, dates to the first century CE. The villa gets its name from a second century CE Mitra de Cabra sculpture, depicting Mithras sacrificing a bull (a symbol of death and resurrection), that was discovered in situ.

If you’re not familiar with the cult of Mithras, you should do a little research on it. It was spread throughout the Roman world via the legions. And, interestingly, Christianity stepped right into the gaps that the cult of Mithras had created. In a sense it’s with us today. The Holy Saturday rituals of the Catholic Church are just full of echoes of the cult of Mithras. The similarities between the New Testament stories of the birth of Jesus and the stories of the birth of Mithras are just too numerous and close to be coincidental.

For some that casts doubt on Christianity. It reminds me more of how the Jesuit missionaries to China in the 16th century rewrote the gospels, recasting the apostles as sages and highlighting the areas where Christianity resembled Confucianism or Taoism. They were exploiting ideas with which their audience was already familiar.

Since this is one of my hot button issues, it’s not surprising that Anthony King’s post at ChemWorld caught my attention:

Obesity is on the rise almost everywhere, with more overweight and obese than underweight people, globally. According to accepted wisdom, blame lies squarely with overeating and insufficient exercise. A small group of researchers is challenging such ingrained assumptions, however, and shining a spotlight on the role of chemicals in our expanding waistlines.

‘There are at least 50 chemicals, probably many more, that literally make us fatter,’ says Leonardo Trasande, an environmental health scientist at New York University in the US. An obesogen is a chemical that makes a living organism gain fat. Notable examples include bisphenol A, certain phthalates and most organophosphate flame retardants. They can push organisms to make new fat cells and/or encourage them to store more fat. Almost all of us often encounter such chemicals every day.

This may even help explain some discrepancies in data. Obesity rates have tripled since the 1970s, ticking up in the US from 30.5% in 2000 to 42.4% in 2018. ‘Over the past 20 years, calorie consumption is flat, or gone down slightly [in the US],’ according to Bruce Blumberg, a cell biologist at the University of California Irvine in the US. ‘But obesity has gone up.’ And it is not just humans. Body weights of animals such as dogs, cats, rodents and non-human primates – in research colonies and living feral – are also reported to be increasing. Blumberg and others are on a mission to persuade clinicians and others to take contributions to obesity from chemicals more seriously.

Don’t get me wrong. I think that behavior is a factor. It’s just not the only factor and the cited article is an example of how that may be true. Contrariwise, I also think that the campaign against “fat shaming” is perverse. Obesity amplifies a wide variety of health problems. Even if it’s harder for some people to keep their weight down than others that doesn’t indemnify them against that. Quite to the contrary it means that they need to work that much harder and that life isn’t fair.

At OilPrice.com Felicity Bradstock observes:

Rising material prices over the last few years have sent EV manufacturing costs soaring, in an already expensive and highly competitive industry. Lithium, nickel, and cobalt prices have all increased in recent years, as shortages have been seen, and core battery components have also been hard to source due to supply chain constraints. Mounting pressures from governments, looking to reduce their dependence on major mining powers, such as China, are further complicating the situation by making automakers look for domestic suppliers or at least diversify their imports.

The future of the electric battery remains uncertain. As governments encourage a rapid transition away from fossil fuel-powered vehicles to EVs, no one is quite sure whether the battery manufacturing industry can keep up with the demand. A range of challenges continues to threaten output, with huge investments required to develop the mining operations and gigafactories needed to support battery production around the globe. Yet, progress remains slow considering the ambitious targets set out for EV production by governments worldwide.

Different people tell different stories. One story being told is one of enormously rapid technological advance and they attribute declining prices in batteries (and increasing capacity) to that. Another story is that battery production has been enormously subsidized, particularly by China. In that story the profits on the T-shirt or iPhone you bought are paying for the cheaper higher-capacity battery you see. There hasn’t been a major breakthrough in battery technology make it into production since the 1980s. Incremental technological and production improvements, yes, but no breakthrough technology. Maybe we’re due; maybe not.

In the meantime I hope someone can explain to me how demand rising faster than supply, slow improvements in technology and production, and shortages of labor and materials do not translate into higher prices.

The editors of Financial Times remark on the U. S. economy:

Financial markets are finding it hard to price in all these risks. Conflicting views mean asset prices will be particularly sensitive to new data and comments by Fed officials. For investors, the surprising jobs numbers highlight the risks of taking aggressive positions when uncertainty remains high — and of cherry-picking data to fit a narrative. Making sense of the US economy after recent shocks requires a degree of humility. The Fed, meanwhile, needs to remain steadfast in its aim to get inflation back down to target and ensure its communications are clear, at the same time remaining alive to financial stability risks as markets oscillate and reprice positions. Whether the landing for the US economy is soft or hard, there will be plenty of turbulence on the way there.

We cannot simultaneously have “soft landing” and a “hard landing”. We do not have “Schröodinger’s economy”. Scott Sumner’s observations about the Fed’s actions may be relevant. I take the liberty of a lengthy quote:

Monetary policy is about aggregate demand. Fiscal policy is about efficiency. The profession made a huge mistake in conflating the two policies.

PS. There are a few signs the economy might actually be speeding up:

Vacancies at US employers unexpectedly increased at the end of 2022, illustrating a solid appetite for labor that the Federal Reserve sees as one of the last hurdles to bring down inflation.

The number of available positions climbed to a five-month high of just over 11 million in December from 10.4 million a month earlier, the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, showed Wednesday. The increase was the largest since July 2021 and mostly reflected a jump in vacancies in accommodation and food services.

(While I’m doing my annoying “I told you so” routine, I might as well add that I ridiculed those who claimed two falling quarters of GDP meant we were in recession during early 2022. I don’t recall any previous recessions with record job openings.)

Tyler Cowen has a post discussing the possibility of the economy reheating, and has this to say:

Another possible pathway for these scenarios involves interest rates. During a normal disinflation, the Federal Reserve raises rates and keeps them high for a long period of time while the economy adjusts slowly — often passing through recession. But inflation has fallen more rapidly than expected, and so the market may expect the Fed to lower interest rates sooner than planned. And an expected cut in interest rates can encourage expansionary pressures just as much as an actual cut in interest rates.

It is a funny world in which slow inflation can cause faster inflation. It’s the logic of expectations that makes it possible, albeit far from certain.

Of course this would not be a case where low inflation is directly causing high inflation. Rather, if this happened it would be a case of the Fed looking at inflation when it should be looking at NGDP growth, and wrongly concluding that monetary restraint is no longer needed. Persistently excessive inflation is always and everywhere a monetary policy failure.

There is a rule of thumb which might be relevant. When your fudge factors are an order of magnitude larger than your measured results, check your assumptions. That’s presently the case with employment. As I’ve said before I use the “duck test” (if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s probably a duck). That would lead us to suspect the BLS is overestimating employment. If total employment has been mediocre rather than what the BLS has been reporting, I would think a “hard landing” would be more likely.

At UnHerd Thomas Fazi makes some pretty strong assertions:

Western citizens deserve to be told what is going on in Ukraine — and what the stakes are. Perhaps the wildest claim being made is that “if we deliver all the weapons Ukraine needs, they can win”, as former Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen recently asserted. For Rasmussen, and other Western hawks, this includes retaking Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 and which it considers of the utmost strategic importance. Many Western allies still consider this an uncrossable red line. But for how long? Just last month, the New York Times reported that the Biden administration is warming up to the idea of backing a Ukrainian offensive on Crimea.

This strategy is based on the assumption that Russia will accept a military defeat and the loss of the territories it controls without resorting to the unthinkable — the use of nuclear weapons. But this is a massive assumption on which to gamble the future of humanity, especially coming from the very Western strategists who disastrously botched every major military forecast over the past 20 years, from Iraq to Afghanistan. The truth is that, from Russia’s perspective, it is fighting against what it perceives to be an existential threat in Ukraine, and there is no reason to believe that, with its back against the wall, it won’t go to extreme measures to guarantee its survival. As Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, put it: “The loss of a nuclear power in a conventional war can provoke the outbreak of a nuclear war. Nuclear powers do not lose major conflicts on which their fate depends.”

At this point I think the preponderance of the evidence says that we are at war with Russia. At the very least we are sleepwalking into war as has been said about the major European powers in the run-up to World War I. An appeal to liberal values is fatuous. You cannot reasonably appeal to values you do not in fact have. I don’t think our genuine interests are as great as the liberal interventionists seem to. They are either fools or knaves as Jonathan Swift put it.

Just to be very explicit about the matter, here are some of the things that I believe:

• The United States should not use military force against any other country without a declaration of war by the Congress OR the Constitution should be amended and we should withdraw from the United Nations.
• We should not enter into any treaty without a committed intention of adhering to it. No “wink and a nod” treaties. I think that strongly suggests we should be much more reluctant to enter into treaties than we are at present.
• Engaging in covert military actions or diplomatic negotiations is not only inconsistent both with the letter and spirit of the Constitution it is inconsistent with being a liberal democracy.
• Being a liberal democracy places us at a disadvantage with more authoritarian countries. I still think we should be a liberal democracy.
• I think the president is obligated to enforce the law to the best of his ability. Even if he disagrees with it. Even if most of his caucus disagrees with it.
• I do not think the U. S. should be a “loose cannon”. I think our responses should be very predictable and constrained as above.
• I think that influence peddling schemes on the part of current or former elected officials should be taken extremely seriously especially when they involve other countries.
• I think that public employees unions should not be able to make political contributions either in money or in kind.
• I think the most pressing need at the federal level is major civil service reform.

As might have been expected, indeed, as might have have been the intention, Seymour Hersh’s “report” evoked substantial reaction from left, right, and center. Let’s focus on the response from TASS, the Russian news agency:

MOSCOW, February 9. /TASS/. Washington did not contact Moscow to attempt to clarify and discuss the situation after the article by the American journalist Seymour Hersh stating that the US was behind Nord Stream blasts was published, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday.

“No,” he said when asked a relevant question.

Speaking about whether Moscow plans to make inquiries to Washington itself, Peskov said: “As of today, Russia has already tried very hard in recent months to get an opportunity to participate in the investigation and get at least some additional information.” “Unfortunately, our attempts were rejected. We never received access to any information,” the spokesman stated.

“But obviously, our appropriate agencies still have this issue on the agenda,” he added.

while Pravda.ru quotes Igor Ananskikh, deputy of the Russian Duma:

Главные выгодоприобретатели в истории с подрывом “Северных потоков” — США и частично Норвегия. Об этом сообщил первый зампредседателя комитета Госдумы по энергетике Игорь Ананских, оценивая в интервью Pravda.Ru статью американского журналиста о причастности Вашингтона к теракту.
Читайте больше на https://www.pravda.ru/news/world/1799114-ananskikh_zapad_severnye_potoki/

Translation:

The main beneficiaries in the story of the undermining of the Nord Streams are the United States and partly Norway. This was announced by Igor Ananskikh , First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Energy , assessing in an interview with Pravda.Ru an article by an American journalist about Washington’s involvement in the terrorist attack.
Читайте больше на https://www.pravda.ru/news/world/1799114-ananskikh_zapad_severnye_potoki/

IMO Mr. Hersh has backed the administration into a corner. The report has been officially denied but, as has been admonished for more than a century, never believe anything about the government until it is officially denied. I think it’s incumbent on the administration to produce a culprit along with substantial evidence. I strongly suspect the Swedish government already knows who was responsible at this point but is being discreet.

Please note that I am not claiming that the Russian take is the correct one, only that it is the Russian take. Demurring from producing a credible alternative theory would be interpreted as a tacit admission that the United States cannot be deterred from attacking Russia directly which I do not believe is an impression we should wish to convey.

Tina Sfondeles and Tessa Weinberg report on the results of a WBEZ poll of the Chicago mayoral race:

All falling within the poll’s margin of error, Lightfoot, García and Vallas were essentially locked in a statistical dead heat when respondents were asked whom they would vote for if the Feb. 28 election were held today.

García led with 20%, followed by Vallas with 18% and Lightfoot with 17%. Businessman Willie Wilson trailed closely with 12% and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson with 11%. Just 2% said they’d vote for activist Ja’Mal Green, and 1% chose either Ald. Sophia King, 4th Ward, or state Rep. Kam Buckner. Ald. Roderick Sawyer, 6th Ward, drew no support. Another 18% said they were still undecided.

but

If no candidate wins a majority on Feb. 28, the two candidates who win the most votes square off in an April 4 runoff.

Voters were asked about seven potential runoff matchups — and Lightfoot fared poorly in the scenarios that included her.

In a hypothetical Vallas-Lightfoot contest, the former CPS chief led the mayor 48% to 35%.

That gap widened when voters were asked to choose between Lightfoot and García, with the Southwest Side congressman earning 54% of the vote compared to just 30% for the mayor.

When García and Vallas were pitted head-to-head, 47% of respondents chose García and 36% went with Vallas.

García, by far, had the most support in the Hispanic community, with 56% of Latino voters saying they’d support him. Black voters were split, with 26% supporting Wilson, 25% supporting Lightfoot and 16% in support of Johnson. For white voters, 38% of those polled said they’d vote for Vallas, followed by 16% for Lightfoot, 14% for Johnson and 10% for García.

That explains why I titled my last poll about the Chicago mayoral race as I did. IMO the best candidate is Willie Wilson. He’s the only candidate running who has the potential of getting substantial support from white, black, and Hispanic voters. I’m not sure which is worse: Wilson sparring with Chicago pols and the bureaucracy for four years or Vallas carrying water for them. I’m confident that Garcia would be worse than either of them—IMO he’s an empty suit. And, of course, Lightfoot’s re-election is a worst case scenario.