Vaccine Speed | Malthus + Vice | What should children learn?
Last week, I had written some thoughts on the speed of the vaccine roll out vs NYC in 1947 but I delayed putting out a letter because of the snow in London. A day spent playing. Remember the simple joys. I reflect that rare events shine brighter in our memories for being rare. A little in the way some Chinese eaters (such as myself) like certain foods partly because they are rare items - like how a market trader tried to upsell me a virgin chicken in a wet market when I was young (which I relate in my Chicken Rice - one of my favourite foods - story here).
First an ask. If you could set a curriculum, things to study or think about and you could do anything, what would you set? What do you wish you had been taught or invited to learn about? What book would you leave lying about the house. Bonus points if relevant to a 9 year old or to an 11 year old autistic.
Particularly for our eldest, we have found ourselves on the home education path - and the philosophy that learning works best by following your child’s interests. But this is a little tempered by the fact that the world does consider certain items at “typical” and other items as “strange”. Plus you want to give children a broad range of topics so they can find the things they want to explore. Self-discovery seems to count more than directed ideas.
At current trends the vaccine rollout in the UK is going fast enough that 33m should be covered by end of March which should protect the cohorts responsible for 99% of deaths. UK last week did between 250k to 500k vaccines a day.
This is a good rollout vs most countries except Israel and UAE and much better than continental Europe. My simple model for when we might reach herd immunity is below.
That said, the roll out is still slower than New York City in 1947. NYC did 5 million vaccines in 2 weeks.
I thought it was interesting to have a look why. When I first wrote about it, I thought maybe it was a lack of imagination but that might only be one part of it.
Here’s a blog on the speed in 1947, where 5 million people were vaccinated against small pox in 2 weeks. Some areas of difference: higher trust in state capacity and medicine (no vaccine hesitancy and people queued up for vaccines), memories of war and militarization state, certain public-private partnerships (vaccines at major corporate HQs), vaccination sites open long hours all week, less regulation (eg no secondary batch testing in the supply chain, less bureaucracy for volunteers), (possibly) easier geography (only NYC).
Even Israel (number one in its roll out) which lauds itself on its digital health infrastructure didn’t match the speed of NYC in 2 weeks.
Rather than too long a critique, when the time comes to review the pandemic response, it would be great if we could learn what about history helped us and see if any of those factors could apply here and in the future. Given how much richer and how much more infrastructure we have, it shows NYC in 1947 had other soft and hard factors which made mass vaccination easier. Blog here (3 mins)
As a more hopeful counter point, here's my blog looking at the UK speed of vaccine rollout and as another week has past and the UK has kept up with 300k to 500k daily vaccines, the model estimate is looking on track, so that's by June heard Immunity and end of March, the at risk population.
I support the salon community, the InterIntellect. I’ve hosted a couple of salons and I recently went to one hosted by Tyler Cowen studying Malthus. We had a pre-read of 22 pages of Malthus and then a 2 hour discussion where I learnt quite a lot. In recreating a university salon environment, it’s been successful and I ended up learning and thinking (probably a bit too hard given my working week in the crazy work of investments).
My reading of what Cowen was arguing is that Malthus ended up wrong (for now), but mostly because we have found more constructive forms of vice. We haven’t descended into the London brothels, but have ended up on Youtube, video games and social media instead as a form of progress. Malthus’ time also seemed to have high quality thoughtful disagreements and if it wasn’t for Malthus’ work, Darwin wouldn’t have been inspired to think about evolution.
Link to interintellect events and the link to the Tyler Cowen event and Malthus extract.
Quick Links:
➳Where we are on climate. Wallace-Wells (a former?) climate alarmist (now just not as extreme) looks at the evidence that the central case is for 3 deg warming by 2100 (down from 4c but not 2c).
➳Circular economy: this business recycles chopsticks into furniture. How many more circular economy businesses are out there waiting?
➳How TikTok, gossip and marketing conspired to make 17yr old Olivia Rodrigo’s breakup song, Driver’s License, a major hit breaking spotify record. I noted it because I can’t drive.
➳Pianist virtuoso Igor Levit on why Beethoven’s Fur Elise is beautiful. Made me see an old thing with news eyes. Levit also did 50 concerts from his room over lock down. He had a touch of normality for a prodigy in his upbringing.
➳Interstitial times, on the difficulties of endings
➳Mark Carney on the purpose of markets, financial crisis, COVID and climate.
➳Amanda Gorman at the Biden inauguration. Poetry!
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I chat with Rebecca Giggs on her new book looking at humanity through the lens of the whale. There is video and a transcript. Self-recommending.
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Thanks for reading. Feel free to forward this letter to anyone you think might be interested in signing up.
Archive and repeat words below. Stay well, Stay safe, Ben
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Micro-grants. £10K for positive impact people.
➳Me on ESG investing / YouTube CFA UK
➳Micro-grants. £10K for positive impact people.