Vaccines, Lock-downs and Passports

 Vaccines, Lock-downs and Passports

Effect of Vaccines

     Our colleagues on the continent seem to be looking to the vaccines as a way of curbing a rampant spread of the virus. It might be worth pointing out that in Great Britain there was no discernible beneficial effect of the vaccination programme on daily new cases; only on daily deaths, which they have enormously reduced. What is needed to curb in infection is stricter lock-down.

     From 5th Jan 2021 till 28th Feb the semi-log plot of Log10 (daily cases) shows a monotonic decline with a halving time of 17 days. Since 1st March there seems to be a new slower rate of decline -- t(0.5) = 125 days. The epidemiological R number must be getting very close to 1.0. Perhaps this is the result of a return of children to schools,  or perhaps a general relaxation of vigilance; an unexpected negative effect of vaccination. (See my previous posts to understand these calculations.)

Fig. 1 Plot of Log (base 10) of daily case vs Days in 2021.

    I was hoping to see a slowing effect on transmission towards the end of January as the numbers of people vaccinated reached 9 million, but perhaps that was naive. The over-75-year-olds were always taking pretty good care of themselves; so the vaccinated people never were the 'spreaders'. They were, however, contributing to the hospitalisations and deaths. 

     Fig. 2 shows a semi-log plot of the logged death data averaged over the preceding 7 days, in order to smooth out the enormous dependence of number on day-of-the-week. There was a lag during January, while the lethal effects of December and Christmas took their toll. But from the beginning of February there has been an accelerating fall in daily mortality. The March data (pink squares) show a halving time of 11.2 days. And the decline is still quickening.  

Fig. 2. Smoothed plot of Log (base 10) of Daily Cases vs Days in 2021

Lock-downs

     Transmission can be controlled quite effectively in the absence of vaccine, but it takes discipline. If everyone took the precautions that the vulnerable and careful people have been taking for the last 12 months, the daily number of new cases should drop suddenly to zero in the space of 5 - 7 days. Britain has never got anywhere near that degree of discipline. 

Vaccine-passports and Lock-down

     There has been some talk of letting people into pubs if they show a card that confirms that they have been vaccinated. Many seem to favour the idea; many are opposed.

     Once everybody in the country has been offered a vaccination, it does not seem necessary to request a passport. Those who wish to remain un-vaccinate will be taking a risk. But that is up to them. They should pose little threat to others who are vaccinated. 

(See also: Variants of Concern
Covid Epidemiology part 5
Pandemic and new variants
SARS-CoV2 Continued
COVID-19 Epidemiology part 2)

Fractional Reserve Banking and Asymmetric Risk

Have banks sufficiently reformed? 

    I see one issue to be 'fractional reserve banking', and a second to be 'asymmetric risk'. (This essay is a re-posting from March 2012)

    The pressure on bankers to over-lend is what brought about the recent sub-prime mortgage debacle. So we must reduce the temptation to make risky loans. And increase the penalties for bad loans. There seems to me to be no reason why banks should keep the interest when they lend money they do not own. So my first simple suggestion is that the tax rate on profits from lending should be related to the capitalisation of the bank. When a bank lends 10 times its capital, 90% of the interest it receives should be taxed away, leaving it only 10%. If it lends twice its capital, it retains half the profit. Simple!

    It may be objected that when a bank lends out money, albeit money that it does not own, it runs the risk of not getting it back, and the interest is the compensation for that risk. That argument fails if the banks are bailed out by the state.

    Banks operate to match loans to clients. If a loan defaults, the bank must certainly loose its share of the loan (10% or 50% in the above examples), but maybe should bear a stiffer penalty. The 19th century mechanism was to let the over-extended banks fail, and then to lock up the board of directors for debt, or fraud. That worked well enough to inculcate 4 generations of prudent banking and 130 years without a serious bank run; but the hardship to hundreds of thousands of innocent depositors is now regarded as intolerable, and governments tend (it seems) to step in to supply the missing money. 

    Fine, but I see no reason why the insolvent/imprudent bankers should escape, as they seem to be doing. Have any gone to prison? Has anyone drawn up a list of directors who would now be bankrupt were it not for the state's intervention? Or a balance sheet of the money that must be repaid to the public by the banking sector, bank by bank? This failure is not only unjust, the risk-asymmetry is very dangerous. Gambling for the bank is (currently) a case of "heads I win, tails you lose". An idiotic situation. The money must be recovered, however long that takes.

    So my second simple suggestion is like the first: "tax or fine the banks".

 (See also: Higher tax bands
Estate and Wealth tax
Government Spending 2
Deficit Spending 1
Deficit Spending 2
Budget 2012
Positive Money
Positive Money 2
The Money Masters and Positive Money
Monetarism 1
Why tax? Why not just print money
Bank capitalization)

 One Justice or Many?

"Half of the decisions of the US supreme court are 'arbitrary'; you might as well toss a coin as go to the court."

Should the 9 judges of the USA Supreme Court all come to the same conclusion, or may they come to different conclusions? If they are not unanimous, are some right and some wrong?

      My attention was caught by Randall Kennedy's article in the London Review of Books 21st Jan 2021; in the context of the contentious nomination by Donald Trump of Amy Coney Barrett as a Justice of the Supreme Court in the last 2 months of his term as president. Should Trump have waited? Should justice depend on which president nominates the Judge? 

        Kennedy titled his piece "Cynical Realism" and claimed he was such a realist. But are we all so cynical as to suppose a Republican appointed judge will automatically disagree with a Democratically elected judge? Apparently, this type of political bias is a recent phenomenon in the USA, appearing strongly only in the last 10 years. For the preceding 2 centuries it was quite common for Republican presidents to nominate left-leaning judges, and vice versa. But of course, it becomes a race to the bottom: "If you are going to be like that, I shall too". 

In Britain, we have only had a Supreme Court by that name since 2009. Prior to that the law lords in the House of Lords served that function. Our court has 12 judges. And our system of nomination is different; a 'name' drifts up out of a professional body to the Justice Secretary, who passes it (if he wishes) to the Prime Minister, who passes it (if he wishes) to the Queen, who makes the appointment (if she wishes).  Judges are assumed to be impartial and unbiased.

It would be naive to suppose that this way of appointing judges makes the British Supreme Court judges less inclined to bias. Of course they will be biased. But it will be harder in the British system to find an obvious label for the bias (like a political party label).

In the USA, some 36% of Supreme Court decisions are unanimous (9:0), 51% of decisions have a unanimous or preponderant decision (9:0, 8:1, 7:2).   But 49% are evenly split (6:3, 5:4). That is where the problems arise. The general public are inclined to ask: "How can a decision be regarded as right when half the panel vote against it?".  A split verdict cannot justifiably be called the "Right" verdict. In fact it could be called "Arbitrary"; you could as well toss a coin and move on.  Such decisions produce a general feeling of dissatisfaction and disappointment; a feeling of cynical realism.

In Britain, though there are 12 judges on the Supreme Court, most cases are heard by only 5 judges, though occasionally 7 or 9. In all the dozen cases I picked at random from the last 4 years, the judgements have been unanimous. (And it may be added that in each case the judgement was to dismiss the appeal and uphold the decision of the lower court.)

Is it too simple-minded to think that there is indeed a right and a wrong answer? I think not. I believe the "right" decision is definable in terms of a sufficient number of sufficiently well trained and sufficiently deep-thinking judges? The Court should be sufficiently large and sufficiently unbiased to constitute a representative sample of such a "judiciary". Justices should know the case-law of previous decisions, and should be able to see the implications of a decision. Not just to the case in hand, but the future consequences of their decisions in terms of a heterogeneous society. Such a court should be asked to come, not to a majority, not even to a consensus, but to the "right" decision. As Quakers are enjoined to do in their Meetings for Worship for Business.

I would be inclined to lock the judges in a room (like cardinals during a papal election), and wait until they had achieved a unanimous (or at least a preponderant) decision. 

(See also: Capital Justice
The Evolving European Union
The rôle of the Citizen
Racists and Racism
Nationalism: the greatest enemy to human happiness

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