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David Fickling Profile picture
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7 Jul, 4 tweets, 1 min read
This is ... not a smart way of inducing compliance with lockdown measures from people who are chafing at lockdown measures:
"Flout the public health orders we're making and you'll get the let-it-rip policy you always wanted."
It only makes sense if you think anti-mask types have the same perception of risk from Covid as the rest of us, so will remain compliant for self-preservation reasons.

Pretty obviously, that's not what's been happening.
Kerry Chant: <spends the best part of an hour trying to encourage compliance to ensure an end to lockdown>

Brad Hazzard: Hey, do what you want and the outcome will be the same, LOL nothing matters.

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More from @davidfickling

David Fickling Profile picture
1 Jul
This is very good on Australia's vaccine communication mess:

theguardian.com/australia-news…
I'm quite struck by this passage, which seems overconfident to me.

Nearly 1,000 people have died of Covid in Australia. We had multiple days of 20+ deaths *in Victoria alone* last winter. Image
Public health experts are trying to communicate age-specific risks in the best way possible so I have huge sympathy.

However, anecdotally so many people I speak to are *terrified* of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Communication isn't working effectively if that's the outcome.
Read 4 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
30 Jun
Does the head of Harvard's endowment understand how short-selling works?

Because this idea of using short positions as carbon offsets makes no sense to me.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
He's arguing that shorting an emitter's stock puts pressure on the company to change similar to activist investing, and raises its cost of capital.

I bet short-sellers wish it was that easy!
To the extent short-sellers have any effect on a company's cost of capital, it's by *bringing fresh information to the market* about its risk profile.

But you don't need the Harvard endowment to tell you that heavily emitting companies have a Net Zero problem! We all know this.
Read 7 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
24 Jun
If you think about the core business of a physical commodity trader — arbitrage of time, place and quality — this makes a lot more sense.
Storage (owning a lot of oil tanks, or taking advantage of price rises while your tankers are steaming across the seas) has long been key to the business.
The storage opportunity in a renewable economy is enormous, whether it's buying cheap midday solar and holding it for the evening grid load peak or doing the same on a seasonal basis for summer or winter cooling and heating loads.
Read 5 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
20 Jun
High costs and disruptions in the shipping industry aren't likely to vanish quickly as the pandemic fades:

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
The immediate problem is that shipping containers are in the wrong place, piling up in North America and Europe because hard-pressed vessels have been returning to port empty so as to save time.

This shows up in the differential container rates for outbound and return voyages:
That price dislocation is a good thing, giving container lines a strong economic incentive to move boxes to where they're most needed.

Compare the price gap that's opened up on ex-China routes to the stability of the transatlantic passage on that chart:
Read 9 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
19 Jun
Something I don't think is widely understood is that the U.S. Department of Defence has for generations been one of the single biggest drivers of vaccine development and deployment globally.

Far more important than the Gates Foundation or any pharma company, IMO.
This arguably starts with George Washington inoculating the Continental Army against smallpox during the Revolutionary War.

But then later, yellow fever, adenovirus, typhoid, hepatitis A and B, meningococcal, influenza ... the list goes on.
It doesn't really make much sense for private companies to invest in vaccine development because thr business model — one shot and you're protected, ideally for life — is just terrible from a profit point of view.
Read 4 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
15 Jun
Is a nuclear power plant on the edge of China’s 60 million-strong Pearl River Delta megalopolis on the verge of an emergency? It doesn’t look like it — but that doesn’t mean there’s no cause for concern:

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… via @bopinion
@bopinion The worrying thing in this incident isn't the leak of nuclear fission products, but the leak of information.

It shouldn't require CNN, the U.S. Department of Energy, and a French utility to tell the world what's going on at a Chinese power station.
@bopinion The most important part of the CNN report, IMO, isn't the raw information about a nuclear fuel leak (which seems pretty routine) but the insight we get about how nuclear regulation appears to be conducted in China:

amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/06/14…

https://t.co/S5QVtEoykH
Read 7 tweets

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