COVID-19: FOR HOW MUCH LONGER?

In this weekend's FT TIM HARFORD THE UNDERCOVER ECONOMIST ASKS 'COVID-19: HOW CLOSE IS THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL?

'IN THE UK, Margaret Keenan receive a first dose of vaccine on December 8, but it needs a couple of weeks to prove much protection. She and her fellow first-day vaccinees were much safer by Christmass...The UK had vaccinated (with the first dose) about 1 per cent of its population by Christmas, but funeral directors will not notice the effect of that until Valentine's Day.'

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Toby Young's slip-up on Twitter

SOME weeks ago Toby Young, editor of the Lockdown Sceptics website, tweeted: 'New study suggests more than five million Britons have had the coronavirus. Given that -50,000 people have died from it, that means an IFR [infection fatality rate] of 0.1%.'

Tim Harford, the UNDERCOVER ECONOMIST in the Financial Times [19th, DECEMBER 2020] wrote 'There was just one small problem with that tweet: the arithmatic.' Young duly clarified: 'That last tweet was wrong... had a brain fart. If 5 million Brits have been infected and -50,000 have died, that equals an IFR of 1%.'

Tbat suggests that Young's second tweet admits that the virus is 10 times more deadly than he had thought. Meaning that rather that anticipating one death per thousand infections, his updated calculation suggests we should expect 10.

Tim Harford admits that it is easy to slip-up with decimal points, and thus to make false statements about Covid-19. He argues that the 'strongest arguements in favour of lockdowns is the kind of information peddled by some lockdown sceptics.' He writes: 'When you see demonstratably false claims that most people who died with Covid-19 did not die of it, that we are seeing a "casedemic" founded on false postives or most infections are asymptomatic throughout - that's the point you think: gosh, maybe we really can't be trusted after all.'

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David Graeber (1961-2020): ethnographer, anthropologist and the study of everyday life

David Graeber (February 12, 1961 – September 2, 2020

David Graeber, anthropologist and anarchist author of bestselling books on bureaucracy and economics including Bullshit Jobs: A Theory and Debt: The First 5,000 Years, has died aged 59.

On Thursday Graeber’s wife, the artist and writer Nika Dubrovsky, announced on Twitter that Graeber had died in hospital in Venice the previous day. The cause of death is not yet known.

Renowned for his biting and incisive writing about bureaucracy, politics and capitalism, Graeber was a leading figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement and professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE) at the time of his death. His final book, The Dawn of Everything: a New History of Humanity, written with David Wengrow, will be published in autumn 2021.

THE GUARDIAN

Sian Cain

Thu 3 Sep 2020 16.18 BST

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AS an ethnomethodologist I immediately recognise the anthropological approach of David Graeber. For example in an essay he asks:

'If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police?'

IN the 1990s, members of our Ethnography group John Lee and a colleague at Manchester University did some research work on queuing in France and found that although people didn't queue in a line at metro stations in Paris etc. there was none the less a pattern with rules that could be applied without any formal enforcement. I notice that in Spain that people didn't form lines at stalls in the market place but when approaching a stall simply asked the question 'Quien es el ultimo?'. Once that was known it was not necessary to stand in a rigid line and one could freely chat and wait one's turn.*

In the UK there are regional differences and Northerners will, I think, notice a difference between people using the Underground in London and between folk waiting for the No.11 bus in say Chelsea. The Underground will seem a rougher experience for the first time user I think.

The Spanish experience will also vary according to where you are and what context: villages and small shops have slightly different customs. In Morocco, I noticed that people sleep in the bus stations over night before catching an early morning bus. Tickets were often not on sale in advance of the bus ariving because touts would buy them up and offer them for resale at a premium. And when the bus arrived at Rabat bus station a wrestling match would break out as to who could get to the front. When this happen once to me and I was forced to wait flexing my muscles I ostentatiously took off my jacket and handed it to my wife; whereupon an observant man selling the tickets quickly arranged that we got a seat on the next bus.

TIM HARFORD the 'Undercover Economist on the FT' has examined the problem of queuing thus:

Mathematicians reckon the odds are against you. If you choose a queue at random, there will be a line on either side of you, and thus a two-thirds chance that one will be faster.

Economists take a more sophisticated view. David Friedman, for instance, argues that the relevant discipline is financial market theory. Choosing the right queue is like picking the right portfolio of shares: if it were obvious which shares were good value, they wouldn’t be good value any more. If it were obvious which queue would be quickest, everyone would join it. Naive attempts to “beat the market” will fail.

Then there is “efficient market” theory – you can’t out-perform a random choice of shares because public information is immediately incorporated into share prices. In truth, most markets are not efficient and thus it is possible for an informed decision-maker to beat them. Even if supermarket queues were efficient, no queue would be a superior bet, because expert supermarket customers would quickly join any queue that was likely to be quicker.

More likely, queues are not efficient because few have much to gain from becoming expert queuers. Some have other considerations, such as minimising the distance walked, while others shop rarely, so the calculations are more trouble than they are worth.

And unlike the stock market, which a financial wizard can make more efficient by outweighing the foolish decisions of small traders, in the supermarket a single expert queuer has a limited effect on the distribution of queuing times.

I can advise you to steer clear of elderly ladies with vouchers, but more advice would be self-defeating. Too many of your rivals would read it.

First published at ft.com.

Many on the left, including some anarchists, would regard this focus on queuing as trivial. Yet the queue is central to most people's lives. In some cases in some countries it has led to riots.

Yet, Davd Graeber, the anarchist, has written: 'The truth is we probably can’t even imagine half the problems that will come up when we try to create a democratic society; still, we’re confident that, human ingenuity being what it is, such problems can always be solved, so long as it is in the spirit of our basic principles — which are, in the final analysis, simply the principles of fundamental human decency.'

* How NOT to Queue in Spain

If there was one thing that would set aside a Brit from say a Spaniard more than anything else it would probably be their attitude to queuing.

Whether a Brit examining the etiquette of queuing in Spain, or - worse still - a Brit berating a foreigner´s lack of understanding of queuing etiquette in the UK one thing is clear : Queuing etiquette is - or lack of it - is quite possibly the one thing that will drive a mild mannered granny into in a raving psychotic.

I was having a conversation on this subject with my intercambio language exchange partner the other day : What exactly is the etiquette with regards to queuing in Spain, and ditto with the UK ?

Juanjo explained to me that there wasn´t any etiquette when it came to queuing in general in Spain. In smaller Towns and Villages it may be considered polite to let the elder generation go first in certain circumstance, however, in shops it was usual practice to simply ask "¿ Quien es la Ultima ?" - which means " Who is last one [in the queue]? ".

It seem that this is time honoured tradition that has served generations of Spaniards perfectly well for generations, ensuring that the last person to enter a shop knows who the customer to be served in front of them is. That way everybody knows there place and is free to wander off or chat with friends etc...

The system only becomes problematic when in wanders clueless Guiri and either jumps his place, or fails to inform the person entering the shop behind him, where his place in the queuing system is.

As far as said Guiri is concerned, the fact that there is not a linear column of people stretching neatly away from the counter, means that there is in fact no queue.

And because said Guiri is both unaware of the existence of the etiquette he alone is responsible for the total collapse of law and order in the local Panaderia, and quite often leaves the shop frustrated at the "bunfight" that he has just caused (see what I did ? that Grammar school education wasn´t for nothing ...) and convinced that the very concept of queuing in Spain does not exist.

Juanjo conceded that as far as getting served in a bar, restaurant or market stall was concerned then queuing, as us Brits would know it, didn´t exist, and he just laughed when I asked about the etiquette of queuing for public transport.

(Have you ever wondered why you never see bus loads of Spaniards at Alton Towers ?)

On the subject of Public transport, Juanjo told me he was almost lynched once whilst on a business trip to the UK when he saw his bus approaching whilst walking with colleagues towards the Bus stop. Worried that the Bus wasn´t going to hang about longer than was necessary to let the passengers get off he sprinted down the pavement and leapt onto the Bus - seemingly ignoring the column of passengers waiting in the rain. His British colleagues did the decent thing and let him do so, casually joining the end of the queue, and letting each of the passengers shoot him their best icy glare in turn whilst waiting their turn in the queue.

I explained that I wouldn´t have been at all surprised to hear that there would have been queues of British women waiting quietly in a queue to take their place for a lifeboat on the deck of the Titanic.

Even when waiting in the Casualty department of A&E you still see some people at the triage station smiling sheepishly as the duty nurse decides that the 9" nail that they have embedded through their eyeball warrants them jumping further along the queue than the guy who just stubbed his toe.

It´s a disease we Brits are born with and will more than likely never be cured.

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Walking the Covid tightrope: a Bluffer's Guide

Taking a chance on exposure to Covid-19

TIM HARFORD at the end of August in his Financial Times column measured the risks of going outside and the perils of the pandemic on the street. A friend of his asked: 'What I want is a survival guide for life in the age of Covid,' The man is in his sixties and has barely left home since March mostly because of the risks of travelling on the underground seem too great. Yet the man knows that his instincts may be wrong.

Tim Harford writes: 'The typical English resident, then, has a 44 in a million chance each day of being infected. In the US, the midpoint of epidemiological models suggests around 150,000 new infections a day, or 450 per million people per day, about 10 times the risk in England. In South Korea, despite the recent spike in confirmed case, the risk of infections is probably closer to 1 or 2 per million people per day.'

These averages include folk who take precautions, people who work in exposed professions and everyone inbetween. So Mr Harford says he can only guess how much his friend's risk increases if he should decide to venture outside. Yet he estimates that for his friend Covid-19 currently presents a background risk of a one in a million chance of death or lasting harm, every day. And he claims that the 'risk of death alone is one in 2m.'.

Finally Tim Harford FT article concludes: 'But simply existing in a country where the virus is uppressed but circulating is not so risky. It depends on age, gender, geography, behaviour and much else. But on average it is half a micro-mort a day-similar to taking a bath, a going skiing, or a short motorbike ride, and consideringly less risky than a scruba dive or a skydive.'

Later Tim Harford following much publicity about the risk of taking a bath, has had to admit that he was wrong and that in truth one would have take a bath for a year to run an equivalent risk, but the risk of sky diving, and scuba diving is considerably more dangerous. What really worries Mr. Harford, the host on the Radio Four program 'MORE OR LESS' dedicated to understaning statistics, is the danger of the virous surging back; and he writes: 'We cannot afford to relax just yet, because we will be walking a tightrope this autumn.'

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The Lady U-Turns on Human Rights

Queen of the quick change!

ON the 27th, May, Tim Harford, the undercover economist, in the Financial Times writing on the virtues of changing one's mind wrote:
'The leaders of the US and the UK have become so proficient at changing directions that "U-turn" no longer seems adequate.  Donald and Theresa are spinning policy doughnuts.'
Trump, for example, has reversed direction on issues as varied as whether he would put Hillary Clinton in jail (yes, the no), whether he would force a vote on healthcare reform (yes, then no) and whether it was wise to attack Syria (no, then yes).
But, Mr Harford claims Mrs. May has gone further:
'Mrs. May has changed her mind on everything from Brexit to a bill of rights, energy pricing to nuclear power.  She reversed a 2015 manefesto commitment, reersed the reversal, and has now taken the unpresidented step of tearing pages out of her own manifesto just before launching it.  She offers a "strong and stable" slogan, a weak and wobbly reality, and a rich seam of irony.'
Now almost at the last minute before the eve of the election she has just stated, according to a current Guardian report:
'Theresa May has declared she is prepared to rip up human rights laws to impose new restrictions on terror suspects, as she sought to gain control over the security agenda just 36 hours before the polls open.  The prime minister said she was looking at how to make it easier to deport foreign terror suspects and how to increase controls on extremists where it is thought they present a threat but there is not enough evidence to prosecute them.'
Mr. Harford argues:
'Such changes of direction are what grown-ups do - and any well-run coutry should expect to see them regularly.  Unfortunately there is no sense that either Mr. Trump or Mrs. May have changed direction on anything because they have been  moved by new evidence on whether it works.  Instead, they promised what seemed popular, and flinched at the first glimpse that it may not be popular at all.'
It's not a very convincing way to proceed,, and gives the impression that these people will say anything to gain our votes.

The Economy in Microcosm

'A Long History of a Short Block'

 by Brian Bamford

IN a recent essay in the FT Weekend Magazine Tim Harford, the undercover economist, wrote that 'the nation state is a political unit, not an economic one', and while 'national authorities can impose a common interest rate, tax rates and regulations' through which political policy influences the economy, it can be argued that the natural unit of macroeconomic analysis is not the nation state, but the city, the region, and the surrounding areas.   

In posts on this NV Blog Les May has argued about the necessity of a National Health Service and national, if not international, standardisation of electrical supply such as equal voltages.  John Desmond has argued that a more local system would be possible in certain circumstances referring to Spanish sources  (see below Review of Anarchist Voices by Les May and other related posts).
New research by three development economists, William Easterly, Laura Freschi and Steven Pennings has produced a paper 'A Long History of a Short Block' in which they examined the economic development of a single 486ft. block of Greene Street between Houston and Prince Street in downtown Manhattan.  Easterly is well known for his scepticism about how much development can ever be planned, and how much credit can political leaders and their so-called expert advisers claim when things go well. 

William Easterly argues:

'Here's a block where there is no leader; there's no president or prime minister of this block', and Greene Street, he says, offers us a perspective on the more spontaneous, decentralised features of economic development.   

The study of the history of Greene Street offers a series swift and surprising changes.  The Dutch colonised Manhattan in 1624, but decided to cede what is now New York to the British in 1667, in exchange for guarantees over the possession of what is now Suriname in Latin America.  At that time this sugar-rich region looked a good thing, but now New York City's economy is a hundred times bigger than Suriname's. 

In 1850, Greene Street was a prosperous residential district with some households that would be millionaires by today's standards.  Two large hotels and a theatre opened, and prostitutes started to  move into the area.  By 1870, the middle-classes had shifted, and the block became the heart of New York City's largest sex-work districts. 

Towards the end of the 19^th century, perhaps because property values in the red-light area were low, entrepreneurs came in to build large cast-iron stores and warehouses for the garment trade.  Then Greene Street's luck ran out when this industry moved uptown after 1910, and property values collapsed.  Urban planners in the 1940s and 1950s suggested bulldozing the area and starting again, but a campaign by the neighbourhood successfully resisted this.  Property values revived as artists began to colonised Greene Street enticed-in by the low priced large and airy spaces.   

As a lesson of this Tim Harford suggests that getting the 'basic infrastructure right –  streets, water, sanitation, policing – is a good idea', but 'aggressive planning, knocking down entire blocks in response to temporary weakness, is probably not.'   In this sense central planning and predicting the process of economic development at a local level is 'a game for suckers'.