braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-note…

Things that went whizzing by that I want to remember: Is there any reason not to take this as a reasonable, non-stupid, rational, calm take on the issue?

Lindsay Beyerstein: Covid: Why a Natural Origin Story Is More Likely: ‘It took 15 years to... 1/
...trace SARS definitively to bats.... Even if you’re doing the most sophisticated gain-of-function research you could possibly be doing, you have to start with a virus that’s at least close.... As far as anybody knows, the closest strain the WIV had is a bat virus called... 2/
...RaTG13 that’s 96 percent similar to Covid–19, but the gulf between 96 percent and >99 percent is vast.... If RaTG13 were used as a backbone for Covid–19, Rasmussen told me, you’d expect to see big chunks of exact similarity with coherent chunks of new information added... 3/
...in…. Instead… Covid–19 differs from RaTG13 by over 1,000 point mutations…. Given that Covid (or its direct ancestor) must exist in nature, it’s more likely that it got out naturally (like SARS and MERS) than that it took an undetectable detour through a secure... 4/
...biolab..."

Add to this the fact that most of those enthusiastically pushing the lab-leak theory have a track record of being bad actors…

newrepublic.com/article/162689… 5/END

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More from @delong

1 Jul
braddelong.substack.com/p/podcast-hexa…

PODCAST: "Hexapodia" Is þe Key Insight XX: Five-Item Grab-Bag: Vaccination & Votes; NIMBYism & California Growth, Aversion to UI, Google’s Quality, & Wilhelmine Germany & Contemporary China... 1/

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braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-note…

First: All I am asking is þt people remember þt þeir model & forecast are a model & a forecast—þt neiþer are “reality”. In þe public discussion, þe right line is: The risks are much greater on þe downside þan þe upside. FULL STOP. More opens... 1/
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&:

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braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-note…

Cecilia Rouse & al.: Distinguishing Between Signal & Noise in Recent Jobs Data: ‘The onset of the COVID–19 pandemic resulted in historically large job losses, and its retreat this spring has allowed millions of Americans to return to work. On... 1/
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...of the pandemic shock—as well as heightened measurement error due to the challenge of collecting statistical data amidst a pandemic. These considerations warn against placing too much weight on any single data point in assessing the current state of the economy, even... 3/
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30 Jun
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There is a disturbingly strong historical analogy to the Republican Party’s transformation into a cult of personality: the Communist Party of China under Mao Zedong. At the CPC’s Lu Mountain Plenary Meeting in 1958, Marshall Peng Dehuai pointed out... 1/
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29 Jun
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Briefly Noted: For 2021-06-28 Mo
Things that went whizzing by that I want to remember: First: A Platonic Dialogue: Polemarkhos: Look at this! Is this still true?... 1/
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Nikeratos: The grifters and the grifted—both are, to me, astonishing to watch.

Thrasymakhos: How so?

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...are by not praising him every day. And the grifted buy it.

Polemarkhos: And on the other hand, actually getting a vaccine and so not being willing to fight the virus with your bare hands alone—that demonstrates that you are some kind of a… near-eunuch… what is the... 3/
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<braddelong.substack.com/p/hoisted-from…>

HOISTED FROM Þe ARCHIVES: Right from þe Start?: What Milton Friedman Can Teach Progressives (2007)
Trying to be sympathetic-but-fair to Friedman & to Ebenstein...

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...subsidy (for that is what buying up banks’ Treasury bonds for cash at their normal valuation constitutes)? And, if Friedman’s detailed study of the banking sector led him to make an exception from laissez-faire for this industry, who is he to say that a similarly... 3/
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