Is the COVID vaccine halal? Yes, that's a real question

Well, this is something that the COVID-19 vaccine developers probably didn't think too hard about, concerned as they were with saving thousands of lives. Is the vaccine halal?

You might think this is a minor consideration in the scheme of things, along the lines of "is the vaccine gluten-free?" or "is the vaccine macrobiotic?" But this is apparently a big deal for millions of Muslims (and Jews) across the world, for whom the consumption of pork products is considered deeply unclean and religiously unacceptable.

It turns out that a pork-derived gelatin is often used as a stabilizer in vaccines, and there have been high-level discussions in the Muslim world as to whether a pork gelatin ingredient which then undergoes a rigorous chemical transformation is still considered religiously impure - for the record, the consensus seems to be no, on the grounds that a greater harm would occur if the vaccines weren't used. But there will always be zealots who will take  their own path on this, I guess. Like we need more obstacles in the way of achieving herd immunity.

Currently, Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca have all confirmed that their vaccines do not use pork gelatin, but some of the other COVID vaccines are not yet certified gelatin-free. Personally, I'm vegetarian, but I'm sure as hell not going to insist on seeing the recipe before I get vaccinated. 

Some information (and misinformation) about the Great Conjunction

You've probably read about the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn which is due to happen tomorrow, when the two planets are so close together (at least from the persoective of Earth) that they appear almost as one very bright star in the night sky. You've probably also read that this is almost certainly the origin of the "Christmas Star" mentioned in the Bible, you know, the one that the three Magi followed to the birthplace of Christ.

But I got to thinking, hold on, if this Great Conjunction only happens every 400 years (or every 800 years, depending on what you read), then that would not coincide with the "Year Zero", not even close. So, why is this "fact" being bandied about in the less scientific media?

If you look at a more reliable source (like Space.com, for example), it turns out that there is all sorts of misinformation being propagated about the Great Conjunction. 

For one thing, the two planets will actually be about 6 arc minutes apart (about one-fifth of the apparent diameter of the moon), and so they will not actually be close enough to appear as a single star unless you really squint. They will, though, be closer than they have been for nearly 800 years.

Secondly, different reports say this kind of convergence only happens every 400 years (or, according to some sources, every 800 years). The last conjunction of the two planets was indeed on July 16th 1623, about 397 years ago, when they were about 5 arc minutes apart, although even this was only visible to the naked eye from tropical latitudes, where it was further distanced from the glare of the sun. The last time most of the world's population was able to view the conjunction was March 5th 1226, i.e. 794 years ago (which is presumably where the commonly-quoted 800 years metric comes from). This one had the two planets just 2 arc minutes apart, which would in fact have looked like one very bright star to the naked eye.

Previous occurrences would have occurred on July 3rd 769 (457 years before 1226, 4 arc minutes apart, but not easily visible because of the morning sun), December 31st 431 (336 years earlier, or 793 years before the 1226 occurrence, 6 arc minutes apart and easily visible), and March 6th 372 (just 59 years earlier, 2 arc minutes apart and visible). Future predictions of the event indicate that it can be expected in 60 years from now, then after another 337 years, then another 60 years, then 397 years more. So, this is not exactly Old Faithful!

What about the Great Conjunction as the "Christmas Star" that the Magi folowed to find the Christ child in his manger. Well, the best we can do is a rare triple conjunction in the year 7 BC (or 7 BCE, if you prefer). In that year, there was one conjunction on May 29th, another on September 30th, and a third on December 5th (all with varying degrees of proximity). This was certainly a very unusual occurrence, and may well have encouraged some ancient viewers to "follow" it. It was probably Johannes Kepler's calculation of this sequence of events in 1603 that probably started the whole Christmas connection.

At any rate, it would not have occurred close to the anecdotal birth of Christ ("Year Zero"), although it may have lined up quite well with the actual date of Jesus' birth, which most scholars put between 6 BCE and 4 BCE (although who knows how they would have used a star to find a cowshed near Bethlehem?)  One last point on that: there actually is no "Year Zero"; the year 1 BCE is followed by the year 1 CE.

So, get out and see the Great Conjunction tomorrow, weather permitting. It's a cool thing. Just don't expect it to look like the Star of Bethlehem on your Christmas card!

Is carbon pricing really a conservative idea?

I seem to have read many times recently that "carbon pricing is originally a conservative idea". Just a few examples here, here, here and here. 

Interestingly, both Right-Wingers/Conservatives/Republicans and Left-Wingers/Liberals/Democrats seem to claim this, the Left presumably in an attempt to sell a tax that is unpopular in most conservative jurisdictions, and the Right presumably in an attempt to take some credit for a policy that seems more and more inevitable. (Incidentally, "carbon pricing" is the preferred label these days, on the grounds that "carbon tax" is an automatic turn-off for all conservatives.)

A carbon tax doesn't seem particularly conservative to me, though, and I have struggled to find any good proof of the claim. One article suggests that the idea originally came from right-of-centre economists like William F. Buckley Jr. and Milton Friedman, although the evidence seems dubious and tangential to me. Another article notes that Canada's first carbon tax was brought in in 2008 by the British Columbia Liberals, "the equivalent of a conservative administration in most parts of the country", but this is not to say that the BC Liberals espoused small-c conservative policies, just that BC politics is so far to the left of most of the country that the Liberals are as right-wing as the province goes.

Given that there is pretty much consensus across the board that carbon pricing is the best, easiest and most efficient method of cutting our greenhouse gas emissions, then maybe the best way of looking at it, as this article concludes, is that carbon pricing is neither conservative nor liberal in itself, just smart.

Nasty campaign against Canadian Hong Kong-style restaurant is baffling

Here's a good example of the political fragility and thin-skinnedness that seems to have taken hold in recent years. 

A "Hong Kong-style" restaurant in Richmond Hill has been receiving hate mail and graffiti vandalization over a sign on their door asking people to wear a mask to "prevent an unidentified virus pneumonia in Wuhan". The owner of the restaurant is a Canadian resident originally from Hong Kong, and the abusive online posts and graffiti are almost exclusively from Canadians originally from mainland China, people who are apparently objecting about being discriminated against by the notice in some way, and against some inferred support for Hong Kong independence. 

There has been a rash of spurious negative reviews of the restaurant online, in an attempt to destroy its reputation and economic durability. Yelp has had to temporarily disable posts to the restaurant's listing. In what appears to be a concerted and organized campaign, many fake orders have also been called in, playing havoc with the restaurant's ability to survive in these trying times. Police are investigating the graffiti daubed on the restaurant as a hate crime.

Now, granted, the notice is a bit strange, or at least badly-worded (wearing a mask in a Canadian restaurant is not going to prevent anything in Wuhan). But it is hardly offensive, not even as offensive as Donald Trump calling COVID "the China virus". It seems like the very use of the word "Wuhan" has been taken by some people as a veiled attack on the Chinese Communist Party and, by extension, the Chinese people and Chinese policy in Hong Kong. That's a bit of a stretch, really.

And anyway, when did support for democracy in Hong Kong, or even criticism of of China's national politics, expressed in an independent and democratic third country, constitute grounds for hate crimes? This seems like a bizarre overreaction, and entirely unwelcome and insupportable in Canada. 

If these people are so supportive of China's oppressive and autocratic regime, why did they even leave and settle in a country with policies and values entirely antithetical to such views. It has left me scratching my head and inwardly seething.

Republicans have a solution for the future: voter suppression

Some Republicans in America, smarting from their recent pressential election loss, have a plan for the future: make it more difficult to vote.

With the changing demographics in traditionally Republican states like Georgia and Texas leading to a worry that these states will become reliably blue states in the future, "no-excuse" mail-in voting is increasingly being seen as the problem (even though, in the past, it was largely Republicans that took advantage of mail-in ballots). 

A record 160 million people voted in the US during the last election and nearly half of them voted by mail, with another quarter voting in person but early. This was unprecedented, and largely a result of the raging pandemic, but some Republican strategists see both the absolute number of votes and the proportion of mailed votes as a direct threat to the hegemony the Republican Party has enjoyed in the southern states for decades 

Their solution? You guessed it: make mail-in voting more difficult, by throwing more and more obstacles in its way, by requiring an excuse and/or increasing the ID requirements, for example. So, rather than tailoring their political message to the new demographics, these southern Republicans prefer to rely on a tried and trusted strategy, good old voter suppression. 

In a move worthy of Margaret Atwood's Gilead, they are looking to go in the diametrically opposite direction to most of the civilized world, which sees ease of voting and increased enfranchisement as a social good to be encouraged.

Little Caledon wants to continue its egregious over-representation in Peel Region

Peel Region is just next door to Toronto. It mainly incorporates the two cities of Mississauga and Brampton, which are basically one big continuous conurbation (and, for that matter, continuous with the city of Toronto next door). But it also extends further north into more rural areas, most of which come under the township of Caledon. Mississauga is currently the sixth largest city in the whole of Canada, and Brampton now ranks as ninth. Caledon is, well, tiny in terms of population, although it has more than half of the total land mass of Peel Region.

There is a huge mismatch between the relatively dense, industrial cityscapes of Mississauga and Brampton, and the bucolic hills of Caledon. But that is always the case where a region or county incorporates both city and countryside, as they often do. Most local councils have the town/country, rich/poor dichotomy to some extent, and it obviously presents challenges in terms of democratic representation and equitable decision-making, especially given that regional councils are responsible for important decisions on shared services like policing, social programs and waste management.

The generally agreed solution, of course, is to allocate councillors according to relative populations, so that each councillor represents more or less the same number of residents. However, populations do change gradually, and representation can become mismatched. Working class and racially-diverse Mississauga and, particularly, Brampton have seen huge increases in population in recent years, tony and exclusive Caledon not so much, so that now each councillor in Brampton represent about 97,000 residents, councillors in Mississauga represent 65,000 people, while councillors in Caledon each represent a paltry 15,000. Caledon councillors therefore have over six times the clout on the regional council as Brampton councillors, and over four times as much as Mississauga councillors.

Given this disparity, Peel Regional Council is to vote on a motion that would allocate two additional councillors to under-represented Brampton and take away two from over-represented Caledon, leaving the total number of councillors the same but equalizing the representation a little. Makes sense, right?

Caledon, of course is not happy, as some of the excessive power it has enjoyed for years will be whittled away (although not entirely erased). What really caught my eye, though, was the claim by Caledon that it should be represented based on area rather than strictly on population. This is one of the most ridiculous claims I have ever heard, and the very fact of someone having uttered it would be grounds, in my mind, for taking away even more than two councillors, and equalizing the population representation even more equitably.

We need to be honest about the side-effects of COVID vaccines

We now have one COVID-19 vaccine being already administered, with a second one soon to follow. The challenge now is to get them to as many people as possible. With the side-effects from the vaccine receiving more and more attention (including viral fake news reports), that could become a problem.

Although an estimated 71% of people say they are likely to get the vaccine (this from an ongoing American survey), which is actually better than a couple of months earlier, that still leaves 27% who say they will probably or definitely never take it, a percentage that rises to 33% among Black people (why?) and, even more worrying, 33% among essential workers, and an astounding 29% among healthcare workers.

It doesn't help that there are already various strains of misinformation and conspiracy theories doing the rounds of social media - that the vaccine contains a nefarious microchip, that it contains fecal tissue, that it is a mild dose of the actual virus, that it will alter our DNA, that a nurse in Alabama died from taking the vaccine. But the biggest single reason that people are hesitant to receive the virus is the fear of side-effects.

And, unfortunately, there ARE side-effects: the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine causes fatigue in 59% of recipients, headaches in 52%, muscle pain in 37%, chills in 35%, and joint pain in 22%; the Moderna vaccine can be expected to cause fatigue in 68% of recipients, headaches in 63%, aches and pains in 60%, chills in 43%, and fever in 16%. These are not insignificant side-effects, and may even be mistaken for the symptoms of the virus itself, although none of the vaccines being developed make use of the actual virus, either in a live or dead form. 

In reality, side-effects are to be expected: they are a sign that the individual's immune system is being activated against the virus, but that may not allay some people's fears. The side-effects usually pass quickly - gone in a day or two - but they will be enough to seriously deter some people. A few more severe anaphylactic reactions have also been noted thus far: two in Britain (who already suffered from severe allergies) and one in Alaska (who did not). These too will further worry fence-sitters. 

It's hard to know how to counter these fears. I think all we can do is to be up-front and proactive, educate people honestly, and stress that the repercussions of not taking the vaccine (both for individuals, and for society as a whole) are way worse than a few chill and aches.

Canada's carbon tax is still the right way to go

There is a good, short, succinct article in today's Globe and Mail on how Canada's carbon tax is the best way to go to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. It is by Mark Jaccard, a professor at Simon Fraser University in BC, and an advisor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I think I can do no better than to reproduce it in full here.

Implementing effective climate policy is extremely difficult. Just ask any honest politician – if you can find one.

Climate-sincere politicians must motivate us to phase out our gasoline cars, diesel trucks and natural gas furnaces in favour of technologies using cleanly produced electricity, hydrogen and bioenergy. But this switch has upfront costs, such as the higher price of electric cars and home heat pumps. Many of us focus on these costs and forget the reduced energy bills that come with cleaner, more efficient technologies. This leads voters to short-sightedly punish politicians who dare promote tightening regulations and rising carbon taxes that are essential to get us to switch technologies, and to reward dishonest politicians who claim these policies are ineffective, economy-wrecking and punitive.

That’s why I was pleasantly surprised Friday when the Trudeau government told us the truth we don’t want to hear: that our carbon tax and regulations must increase significantly to achieve our 2030 climate commitment, the one initially set by the Harper government. Thus, the carbon tax must rise to $170 per tonne of carbon dioxide by 2030, a tax of 40 cents per litre of gasoline, to reflect the planetary destruction we cause when burning this fossil fuel.

We’ve heard lots of misinformation about carbon pricing, however. And we’re about to hear a lot more.

Some politicians claim that a carbon tax (or equivalent regulation) is ineffective. But climate policy experts know this is untrue. An easy way to spot dishonest politicians is if they set decarbonization targets without implementing essential carbon pricing or strong regulations.

Others claim that a carbon tax will hurt the economy. But carbon pricing is actually the cheapest way to decarbonize, as decades of evidence from Scandinavia confirms. Switching to electric vehicles and heat pumps, while your utility switches to zero-emission electricity, has negligible long-term effect on the family budget, which is why economists show GDP growing just as fast.

A related argument is that carbon pricing harms our industries because it significantly raises production costs relative to foreign competitors. This would be true if government required industry to pay a high carbon price for all emissions. Instead, climate-leading governments such as Canada’s apply the carbon price to only a fraction of industry emissions, thus incentivizing their reduction efforts without substantially increasing their production costs. And the government will also provide subsidies to industries that demonstrate global leadership. If the Canadian oil industry has difficulty exporting its “ethical oil,” it is because we are high-cost producers in a stagnant global market, not because of our carbon-pricing policy.

Others still argue that federal carbon pricing intrudes on provincial jurisdiction. Our Supreme Court will soon decide this issue, but heaven help us if it allows provinces to opt out of effective policies. Humanity has thus far failed on the climate change file because of how slow we have been in developing an international mechanism requiring all countries to act. If this global governance weakness is affirmed within federations such as Canada, the task gets even harder. Our national government must have the authority needed to meet our international environmental commitments.

And there are those who claim that our carbon-pricing policy is unfair, imposing higher costs on some. This concern may be valid in some countries, but Canada’s carbon pricing policy is obsessed with equity. It is revenue-neutral on a national basis, meaning that each province receives precisely the amount that carbon taxes would collect. It includes support mechanisms for the most vulnerable. And the carbon tax rebates received by most Canadians will exceed the carbon tax they pay. Only high polluters will be net losers, and these tend to be wealthy people who heat a primary and secondary residence, drive gas guzzlers and fly a lot.

Carbon pricing is fundamentally equitable because it rewards anyone who smartly decides, when renewing their vehicle or furnace, to take advantage of the subsides for electric vehicles, home insulation and electric heat pumps. After doing this, they’d pay zero carbon taxes. What is more equitable than financially rewarding those who decarbonize to avoid major climate costs to our children? One day we’ll appreciate the Trudeau government’s honesty and guts in hoping that enough of us will reject the false claims of climate-insincere politicians.