1\ Ok, I have to do a thread on vaccine distribution, because it is just so insane

As everyone knows by now, governments around the world are paralyzed by vaccine logistics

Who should get it? In what order?

Does age trump race? Does profession trump health?
2\ What is enabling this political paralysis is the illusion, universally held by Very Decent People, that if we don't distribute in accordance with Equity (undefined bullshit word), then various needy people will be Priced Out, and Inequality Will Increase!
3\ Now, let's take a giant step back

This vaccine costs somewhere between $3 & $40 per dose

NOBODY in the US for whom COVID is an existential thread cannot afford this

The average welfare recipient's cable bill is 2x the cost of this vaccine

ANYONE who wants it can afford it
4\ So why isn't the obvious answer for Amazon and Walmart and whoever else to set up shop selling vaccines on a first-come, first-serve basis?

It's how we distribute food, and food is FAR more important than vaccines

And food is so plentiful that our poorest citizens are fat
5\ The answer is that there is no answer. Long ago COVID was politicized, and once you politicize healthcare, it's like trying to get the glitter off of dogshit.

You can't.
6\ There's a lesson here, of course. The reason you never, ever, ever want government involved in allocating resources is because politics paralyzes

People hate tradeoffs, and politicians get elected by pretending that there are no tradeoffs

"User pays" is political suicide
7\ Which is a shame. The beauty of markets is that they use prices to elicit distributed knowledge

80yo but already had COVID? You don't buy it

18yo but uncontrolled diabetes? You cash in your Gamestop credits to buy it

Prices economize resources
8\ My only hope is that a few of you who watched gov bungle COVID science will now watch gov bungle vaccine distribution and conclude:

"Hey, maybe gov shouldn't be involved at all in healthcare. Or in education. Or in telecom. Or in housing..."
9\ PS: my comment about food distribution wasn't rhetorical

Various govs through history have announced that food is "too important to leave to markets" and taken it upon themselves to distribute it

Which led without fail to...famine

And just so with vaccine distribution

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More from @ElonBachman

1 Jan
1\ Rumors of overwhelmed hospitals have become so lurid in South Africa that a chain of urgent care centers had to put out a press release denying the rumors

Let's step through the release
2\ First, the "sleeping on floors with no CPR being performed" stuff is a social media fantasy. It's not happening:
3\ General beds are at 60-91% occupancy

Some ICU wards are at full capacity

*If* they run out of capacity, they will divert patients to other facilities

This is so common in hospital systems that most hospitals have dedicated "Diversion" web pages for ambulances to consult
Read 5 tweets
29 Dec 20
1\ I'm reading "Age of Entitlement", which is a solid survey of post-1960s American culture

It stumbles fatally wherever it touches economics, so I can't recommend it in full

But it brought me a MAJOR epiphany about "political correctness" and its malignant offspring "wokeness"
2\ The puzzling thing about PC culture is how everyone follows it while simultaneously mocking it

Its absurdities are obvious and contemptible, the butt of a thousand jokes

Time and again, I've asked myself, "How does this movement spread if only a few crazies believe in it?"
3\ For a while I thought it was a case of institutions bowing to the pressure of loud college kids, merely to stay out of the papers

But watching society inflict real harm on itself by institutionalizing the new racism of "wokeness" made me question this simple explanation
Read 13 tweets
28 Dec 20
1\ Like many countries, South Africa is using the specter of "pediatric deaths" to justify a second lockdown

It's complete nonsense

In a country of 59 million, something like 30 healthy people under the age of 19 have died of COVID-19:
2\ By comparison, flu/pneumonia kill around 2,500 people in South Africa under the age of 14 every year

That's right, flu/pneumonia is about 100x more of a risk to youngsters than COVID-19
Read 4 tweets
28 Dec 20
1\ Good news: I found evidence that lockdowns work!

Bad news: they "work" at stopping tuberculosis testing in Africa

The red lines below show when South Africa imposed lockdown measures

TB testing fell in half:
2\ TB is no joke. In terms of life years lost, it's far worse than COVID-19

TB kills north of 400,000 annually in Africa and 1.5 million globally, with a heavy toll among the young and middle aged

EVERY YEAR
3\ Bizarrely, there is 100 years of medical guidance on TB, all of which says:

--Don't stay in side. Get people outside (so why are we closing parks and beaches?)

--Treat care homes like powder kegs (so why did we jam them full of hospital discharges?)

Read 4 tweets
27 Dec 20
South Africa is locking down again because "hospitals are overwhelmed"

This is a lie. There are 1,300 COVID-19 patients in ICU across the country's 600 hospitals.

That's about two ICU patients per hospital
A contact writes that an ambulance was turned away from 6 hospitals in KZN yesterday, & that hospitals are pulling docs out of retirement

Not sure what's going on. COVID numbers remain small.

Is this just bureaucrats mistaking each other's contingency plans for reality?
Total COVID-19 hospital occupancy in South Africa is lower today than at the prior peak in summer

Hospitals were never swamped in summer

So either South Africa is just lying about current COVID-19 caseload, or hospitals are full of other patients...
Read 6 tweets
22 Dec 20
1\ This thread commemorates those brave politicians who didn't let lockdowns slow them down

Send me other examples by DM, and I'll add them

First, Deborah Birx: retiring in disgrace after gathering 2 households and 4 generations for a Thanksgiving party

nypost.com/2020/12/22/dr-…
2\ Then there was Nancy Pelosi, who helped shutter a nation of small businesses before arranging to see her stylist

Hey, at least she liberally disinfected herself with vodka

edition.cnn.com/2020/09/02/pol…
3\ And who can forget Gavin Nuisance, gleefully presiding over the nation's longest and most severe lockdown, while breaking the law to dine at French Laundy

nypost.com/2020/11/18/gov…
Read 85 tweets

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