Charles Kenny Profile picture
Sep 24, 2020 8 tweets 3 min read Read on X
A short thread on liberty and public health in the US, with snakes (guest appearance by a worm).
The rod of Asclepius, symbol of medicine –here on a CDC logo (l). Clinical parasitologist Rosemary Drisdelle thinks the rod might originally reference a treatment for the guinea worm –healers remove the worm from your leg by slowly winding its tail end around a match stick (r).
Public health has long been a factor in the expansion of government power: restricting the travel of goods and people, keeping the sick in their homes or sanitariums, mandates from pasteurization through sewage treatment to trash removal, wild animal control...
Which brings us to the Gadsden Flag, symbol of the fight against tyrannical government from the US Revolution. Public health has sometimes been used as an excuse to attack liberties & exclude or incarcerate ‘undesirable’ groups: prostitutes, homosexuals, foreigners, the poor...
Ensuring public health while avoiding discrimination is at the heart of successful infectious disease response. And because infection crosses state and international borders, it takes federal leadership –as Franklin’s pre-revolutionary image has it, join or die.
The struggle to protect both health & liberty (& need for fed leadership) is illustrated by planes. We don’t want people packed together in 1 space for a long time. But for US, right now, what is the logic for tighter restrictions on international air travel than domestic travel?
In Covid-19 snakes have gone from early suspect source to unadvised experimental use as a prophylactic. Their real role is metaphorical...
... public health measures are vital to control disease (wear a mask, stop going to bars, social distance) but a dark history of liberty unnecessarily denied demands we should be constantly vigilant against their use as tools of discrimination. (/end).

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More from @charlesjkenny

Jul 10, 2023
Welcome to 15 Leading CEOs & Chairs Joining the World Bank's Private Sector Investment Lab! I'm sure they'll help bring the masses of private investment to help meet the Sustainable Development Goals that the Bank’s International Finance Corporation...

worldbank.org/en/news/press-…
...IFC Advisory Facilities, the Bank’s Private Sector Advisory Services Department, its Public Private Partnership Legal Resource Center (and PPP Knowledge Lab), its Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility, its Global Infrastructure Facility...
...and its Private Infrastructure Development Group, to say nothing of the ACP-EC Energy Facility African Capacity Building Foundation, African Catalytic Growth Fund, African Water Facility, DBSA Development Fund DEVCO FEMIP Support Fund....
Read 7 tweets
May 8, 2023
. A thread and blog on what I thought was a really promising World Bank Group effort to support privately provided renewable power in Africa which turns out to be not what it seemed, and lessons for the IFC, the World Bank and donors.

cgdev.org/blog/ifc-and-d…
Scaling Solar combines World Bank technical assistance and IFC financing to support private solar projects in Africa and beyond. Ex prez Jim Kim did a TED talk that lauded it,

Ex IFC CEO Philippe Le Houérou said Scaling Solar demonstrated solar was the cheapest energy solution in Africa.

ifc.org/wps/wcm/connec…
Read 12 tweets
Apr 14, 2023
Great to see this from World Bank Executive Directors Wempi Saputra Erivaldo Alfredo Gomes and Abdoul Salam Bello, expressing what representatives from a large swath of World Bank client countries want from World Bank reform efforts.
"[T]he Bank must refrain from compromising countries’ “ownership” of policies ... the Bank must ensure that concessional loans or grants aimed at [GPGs] do not lead to higher borrowing costs or trade-offs between middle-income countries and low-income countries."
"While some financial innovations have shown promise, it is important to consider their full effects. For example, raising hybrid capital could increase the Bank’s borrowing costs at a time when clients are facing historically high interest rates and unsustainable debt burdens"
Read 4 tweets
Apr 12, 2023
The World Bank's Updated Evolution Roadmap for presentation to the governors at the Spring meetings is a somewhat underwhelming advance on the version sent to the Board in December....

consultations.worldbank.org/sites/default/…
...there's more detail on stretching capital but it basically suggests it can raise a little more at no cost to borrowers or some more than that at a high cost to borrowers.

So you'd think there'd be details on a large capital increase to fund new mandates. But not really.
There are worrying statements about IDA's financing capacity in FY24/25, with some nods towards fixes, but limited ambition.

Doubtless all of the above reflects an impression that asking for more would go nowhere.
Read 5 tweets
Apr 11, 2023
It is World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings week. Rich countries have a lot of distance to move if their demands for reform aren’t going to end up pushing the IFIs towards greater irrelevance. A thread...
The World Bank can lend more with existing capital, but the amounts that can be raised absent risking higher borrowing costs aren’t huge.

If rich countries want the Bank to do more on climate (when this isn’t a priority for clients) they should give it a large capital increase to do so.


https://t.co/J8gSPHXzivcgdev.org/blog/do-client…
cgdev.org/blog/spring-me…
Read 19 tweets
Mar 9, 2023
"German universities should expand English language courses to recruit more international students and help fill labour shortages, the country’s academic exchange service has said. "

thepienews.com/news/boost-eng…
"Foreign workers must increase to 40,000 per year during the next four-year parliamentary term – twice the current level – according to the Confederation of Finnish Industries."

euractiv.com/section/politi…
Read 22 tweets

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