Vaccine Efficacy

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An Imperial College of London study of the efficacy of the various Wuhan Virus vaccines, led by Oliver Watson, indicates that around the world, 20 million lives were saved in the first year of the vaccines’ availability. In the US, according to the study, some 1.9 million lives were saved by the vaccines.

Using data from worldometer‘s Coronavirus Web site, that works out to a bit over 2% additional lives saved given a case (not given an actual infection) in the US, which is a good improvement, especially for those 2%. But it’s also only a 2% improvement, and it comes against an already low mortality rate for the virus, other than for those with serious comorbidities and/or who are older than 85-ish.

And the study doesn’t appear to break out lives saved by health or age category, so the improvement could be even less for those who start out largely healthy and not in geezerdom.

That puts the probability of gain down in the region where it’s also useful to consider the probability of deleterious side effects from the vaccines.

“Rights” and Precedent

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There is considerable discussion concerning whether a constitutional right to an abortion existed and was taken away by the Supreme Court’s just released ruling on Dobbs or whether, as Justice Alito emphasized in his Dobbs opinion for the Court that such a right never existed, it was merely the creation of Roe and then claimed again in Casey.

And therein lies the point of this post.

There is no right to an abortion contained in our Constitution, whether couched in the 14th Amendment or in any other part of the document—not literally, not figuratively, not encompassed in any penumbra.

Nevertheless, the claimed right has been, and rightly so, the law of the land since the 1973 Roe ruling, as are all Supreme Court rulings the law of the land from the moment of publication of the ruling. But it’s not a very durable law.

That’s a problem with Court rulings, a problem closely analogous with Presidential executive actions: Executive Orders and the like. Any “right” created by a Court ruling can be withdrawn by a subsequent Court ruling, just as any Presidential executive action can be withdrawn by a subsequent President.

The rights acknowledged in our Constitution, in contrast, can only be undone by a supermajority of us American citizens, through a supermajority of our States.

A Supreme Court precedent should be deeply respected. However, as Justice Clarence noted in his Gamble v United States concurrence,

In my view, the Court’s typical formulation of the stare decisis standard does not comport with our judicial duty under Article III because it elevates demonstrably erroneous decisions [whosever view of erroneous, I add]…over the text of the Constitution and other duly enacted federal law.

And [emphasis added]

This view of stare decisis follows directly from the Constitution’s supremacy over other sources of law—including our own precedents.

By their nature, no precedent can be the final word, else we’d have neither Brown nor Citizens United nor Janus, and we’d have only war to which to resort regarding rulings like Dred Scott and the war organizations like Ruth Sent Us and Jane’s Revenge currently threaten over Dobbs, that politicians like Chuck Schumer threatened if Court rulings didn’t go his way, that Cori Bush and Maxine Waters currently threaten, and that Federal government officials like Merrick Garland and Joe Biden indirectly threaten with their refusal to enforce Court rulings of which they personally disapprove.

Voice Mimicry

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Amazon is bragging about a new capability it’s developed for its Alexa service. It’s bad enough that Amazon can eavesdrop on private, often highly personal, conversations through its Alexa device.

Now the device can mimic voices—including those of deceased persons—and Amazon says, with a straight face, that this is so cool.

On the other hand, so much for voice recognition as part of a two- (or more) factor authentication regime.

And, here’s another forger’s tool brought to market.

I suppose this might be an improvement in certain circles….

A Grievous Error

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board had one in its piece last Wednesday. In that opinion, the Editors touted the gun control “compromise” then-soon to be passed by the Senate (and actually passed the next evening). One of the things of which the Board is so enamored is this mandate:

The state laws must contain due-process protections—including the right to an in-person hearing, to know the evidence used to justify a red-flag order, and to have counsel present.

Noting Orwellian here.

It isn’t possible for red flag laws to have due-process protections. The accused’s weapons are confiscated solely on the accusation of another, and the accused must then prove his own fitness in order to get them back—a process that takes weeks, at best. On his success, it then takes additional weeks to months actually to get his weapons returned. So much for the government’s requirement to prove the charge.

That’s the destruction of the accused’s due-process, not the protection of them.

Red flag laws also are destructive of due-process protections for related persons. If another, unaccused, is in the same household and legally owns weapons, those are seized too, all in the name of denying the accused any access at all. That ancillary person then must then go into court and defend her possession, taking weeks to do so, and taking additional weeks to months actually to get them back. So much for the government’s requirement to prove the unrelated person’s unfitness to have her weapons.

That’s the destruction of the related person’s due-process.

No, He’s Not

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Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm—who thinks it’s laugh out loud hilarious that the Biden administration could impact the cost of energy to us Americans—made the patently erroneous claim that President Joe Biden (D) is doing everything he can to reduce [gasoline] prices for American families.

Oil is a global market, and so Biden is helpless alone?

High school economics: increase the supply of something relative to demand for it, and prices for that something come down. Conversely, reducing supply relative to demand drives up the price.

Oil is a global market, and until January 2021, not only was the US a major player in its production, we were a net exporter of oil (and of natural gas) and essentially energy independent.

However, acting on his campaign promise to eliminate the oil and natural gas industries, Biden canceled a major oil pipeline project that would have fed refineries producing (among other things) gasoline, imposed regulations that made it difficult to build other pipelines, stopped issuing oil and gas leases on Federal lands and waters, outright canceled leases in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, is sitting on thousands of permits necessary to act on remaining leases, and generally inhibited our ability to produce oil and natural gas.

The Biden administration policies also (deliberately, I say) make oil and natural gas and gasoline companies reluctant to build or even to reopen additional refineries, much less restart or drill new oil and natural gas wells so those potential refineries would have something to refine.

The Biden-Granholm reduction in the supply of American oil—and so their reduction in the global supply of oil—is what’s responsible for today’s high gasoline prices.

Biden alone can, indeed, impact the cost of energy to us Americans. He’s already done it negatively. He could just as easily (or maybe not—there’s a serious trust problem now) impact the cost positively by getting his administration out of the way of the American energy industry.

And that’s just for starters.

Both Biden and Granholm know this full well; they know that Biden absolutely is not doing everything he can to reduce prices for American families. Not for gasoline, not for energy generally, and not for any of the inflationary forces in our economy.