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Tony Yates Profile picture
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5 Jan, 4 tweets, 1 min read
What is the Gupta causality? 1. Covid Research Group ideologically disposed against lockdowns, caring not about the evidence. 2. Look for similar credentialled scientist. 3. Govt pressured to give platform to said scientist to placate CRG....
4. Fact of sceptic's access and influence over govt makes sceptic newsworthy+BBC charter worry, leads to platform amplification. 5. Amplification takes us back to 3, with more pressure for govt to listen to the advice.
Something similar was at work with the pro Brexit economists and trade commentators in the pre and post referendum period.
I got to spectate part of the dynamic at @CommonsTreasury where Gigi Foster had been invited [obvs via CRG] to mouth things that the CRG members [eg @SteveBakerHW ] wanted mouthing. Including the trope that the infection fatality rate was 0.1%.

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Tony Yates Profile picture
5 Jan
The titbits I get fed about the debate over a hypothetical post indy monetary policy in Scotland make it seem like a lot of nonsense is being talked on the indy side.
One could say 'it is doable, with some institutional risks, to set up a new central bank and do independent inflation targeting, with credible political backing, and the reservoir of econ and cb expertise, and history of inflation targeting itself.'
However, SNP don't want to say this, as it - rightly - fears that people fear the risks of setting up a new currency. Even though IMO this is a perfectly sensible and doable option.
Read 32 tweets
Tony Yates Profile picture
4 Jan
If someone warns me that it will rain tomorrow, I will tell them that I will not put up my umbrella today, but I will put it up tomorrow. The umbrella is not needed now; I can stay dry unaided. But tomorrow I will need it.
Johnson/Hancock are explaining that they think tighter measures will be needed in the near future. But they are inferring that from the fact that cases are rising now. Meaning that existing measures are insufficient now. Meaning that there is no rationale for not acting now.
So covid19 is not like the umbrella example. If you don't really grasp the mechanics of viral spread, 'yeah we are probably going to have to tighten up soon' might sound sensible. But it isn't.
Read 4 tweets
Tony Yates Profile picture
4 Jan
There's a lot of silliness in this Telegraph piece, but the basic q that we will - not yet, but some time off - have to decide whether to go for eradication, or suppression at some 'tolerable' level of deaths seems sensible to me.
A while back I did some rough calculations using South Korean data on age related risk to flu and covid and worked out that to equalize the covid mortality risk to the flu mortality risk we normally tolerate without restrictions, you'd have to vaccinate everyone >40yrs.
For this reason the article is premature, as it will take a long time to vaccinate that number of people.
Read 8 tweets
Tony Yates Profile picture
3 Jan
There's some very careful econometric evidence showing that lockdowns, mask mandates do work; that without them virus prevalence would have been greater.
There's equally good evidence that it's not lockdowns causing the economic harm, but virus prevalence itself.
The successful countries [New Zealand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, South Korea....] all locked down strenuously and now enjoy recovered economies and provide good circumstancial evidence of the path we could have followed.
Read 5 tweets
Tony Yates Profile picture
1 Jan
Delaying the 2nd doses of the Pfizer vaccine seems like a poor gamble.
It's hard to calculate the odds, because there is not good data about the performance of the vaccine under the proposed changed regimen.
In this situation, one way to think of it is using the framework of robustness, devised by engineers, stolen by economists and others.
Read 9 tweets
Tony Yates Profile picture
30 Dec 20
Baffling incompetence by the govt. they have had a long time to concoct a plan and revealing it will help businesses and workers figure out what they still have to endure.
What can we infer from the absence of a published plan? 1) what they think they can do does not look good and will lead to heavy criticism. 2) there is no plan. 3) there is a plan, but publishing it will deprive them of the tactic of drip feeding for news bumps.
It seems telling to me that we can't most of us feel the cranking up of the gears in local authorities, GP practices and hospitals. The most visible sign of urgency is a @DavidGauke thread about general election staffing models.
Read 4 tweets

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