Britain's worst economic crash for 300 years - wait, what?

I've read a few times recently that, in 2020, Britain suffered its worst economic crash for three hundred years. Now, everybody knows what happened in 2020 - it has affected the rest of the world too - but what the hell happened in 1709 that was so bad?

Well, apparently it was The Great Frost, which mainly affected Britain and France, but presumably also various other countries nearby. All of Europe at that time was in the grip of the Little Ice Age - you've probably seen pictures of people skating on the River Thames - and the winter of 1709 was the single worst year, the coldest European winter in the last 500 years, to the extent that crops failed to an unprecedented degree.

It's difficult to believe that a bit of bad weather was enough to set the country back more than the Great Depression of the '30s (although Britain was much less affected than the US), the 2008 recession, more than even than the COVID-19 lockdown. But bear in mind that, in 1709, Britain (and the rest of the world, for that matter) was a pre-industrial, pre-globalization, agrarian economy, so any hit to crop harvests was all but catastrophic.

With a third wave looming, Canadian provinces stick to the same tired old script

Here we are, déjà vu all over again.

As the second wave of COVID-19 starts to sputter here in Ontario and Canada as a whole (but is by no means over), the premiers start to open things up economically, laying the groundwork for a new and potentially even more brutal third wave. 

The same thing happened in the summer: cases came down pretty low, and all of a sudden restaurants were open, malls were packed, and hairdressers and nail salons were doing brisk business, all directly against the express advice of a plurality of health advisiers and experts. Unlike Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam and others, which kept strong restrictions and travel bans in place until the numbers of new cases reached ZERO (as long ago as May 2020!), Canada left a simmering number of infections to regroup and build up until a second (and worse) wave very quickly established itself.

Well, despite strident warnings, it's going to happen all over again. Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and Alberta are all opening up, and plan to open up much further in short order. Yes, cases are still on a general downward trajectory across most of the country, although there is a still ober 3,000 cases a day, a third of them in Ontario. Meanwhile, the new variants (no longer so new - we know all about them) from the UK, South Africa and Brazil are already here and ready to run rampart. Newfoundland, which has done pretty good job thus far of keeping a lid on the spread of the virus, is in full panic mode, as the new variants spread faster than anyone could have imagined. And it's coming to a mall near you!

The medical establishmemt is doing its best to warn against unfettered liberalization, now of all times, using language like, "we're playing chicken with COVID", "opening indoor dining is a mistake, plain and simple", "the prudent thing to do would be to go slow and see what happens after a few weeks", "this is not the time to really begin pulling back on restrictions", etc, etc.

I understand that the premiers have to weigh lockdowns with mental health considerations and the health of the economy (and the latter seems to be more top of mind for most conservative premiers). But the bottom line is that, if we open up now, a third wave will break upon us, before the second is even over, complete with full lockdown and even more severe restrictions than we have now. And then how will the economy be looking?

The world's biodoversity hotspots

I like maps. Here's a nice map, courtesy of Conservation International, which shows how the world's biodiversity hotspots, making up just 2.4% of the earth's landmass, supports about 50% of the world's plant species and 42% of all known vertibrate species. 

In terms of threatened wildlife, these relatively small areas areeven more important, providing a home to 79% of threatened amphibians, 63% of threatened birds, and 60% of threatened mammals.

There are a few (to me) unexpected areas within these special places, including the Mediterranean, the mountains of Russia, the Horn of Africa, and the Caribbean.

The other thing a map like this brings home: all the conservation work we do here in Canada is going to have little or no impact on world biodiversity. But, hey, we do what we can in our own 'hood.

How is drug decriminalization actually supposed to help?

The province of British Columbia is looking to become the first province in Canada to decriminalize drugs. Not just cannabis, which has been legalized (not just decriminalized) for over a year now in Canada, but ALL drugs, including heroin, cocaine and all the rest. The province needs the permission of the federal government to do so, and the two are in negotiations as we speak.

Just to be clear, decriminalization usually refers to the conplete removal of criminal penalties for drug use and possession, and is not to be confused with legalization, which completely removes all legal detriments to a previosuly illegal practice. Thus, under decriminalization, the practice remains technically illegal, but the punishment is drastically reduced or removed. Defelonization is another related term, meaning that drug possession penalties are reduced from the level of a felony to a misdemeanour, and is therefore a less drastic step than decriminalization.

The decriminalization lobby is strong, and highly committed to the probity and effectiveness of its position. But how exactly is decriminalization supposed to help?

Organizations like the Drug Policy Alliance lay it out for us. Decriminalization would usually seek to eliminate criminal penalties for drug use and possession (at least as regards "small quantities", however that might be defined), as well as the possession of drug equipment like syringes, and to eliminate penalties for small-scale low-level selling of drugs. It supporters claim that such a policy change would reduced jail populations and costs, and free up law enforcement resources and allow them to concentrate on more appropriate activities. 

But it would also, proponents argue, prioritize health and safety over punishmemt for drug users and, crucially in my opinion, reduce the stigma associated with drug use. This, it us argued, would encourage drug users to come foward and seek treatment and other supports, and to remove barriers to evidence-based harm-reduction practices like drug-checking and heroin-assisted treatment.

Now, to me, you don't bring in this kind of radical policy just to save law enforcement costs - we could save lots more by completely abandoning our police forces, although I know there is a contingent who would happily do just that! But if it is actually true that addiction and harm reduction programs can be substantially aided, then that might well be a good reason to go down that route. 

BC would not be the first jurisdiction to try it, so some hard evidence is already available. The usually-quoted example is Portugal, which decriminalized drug possession as long ago as 2001. In the Portuguese case, decriminalization did not result in an explosion in drug use, which remains below the European average and well below US levels. More importantly, though, there has been a 60% increase in drug users pursuing treatments, the number of new HIV cases has fallen dramatically, and drug overdose fatalities fell by 80% over 14 years. Oh, and court cases and incarcerations for drug offence also fell dramatically, as might be expected.

So, from this analysis at any rate, decriminalization does seem to actually work, and does not seem to have have any unfortunate side-effects.

Trump impeachment trial proceeding at and Entian pace

The Trump impeachment trial - supposedly an expedited version of the long, drawn-out first impeachment trial of a year ago - has begun in Washington DC.

But all they've succeeded in achieving so far is to agree that the trial can in fact go ahead.

It put me in mind of a scene in The Lord of the Rings, when the Ents call a special high-level meeting and, after hours and hours of debate, they finally manage to agree that the two Hobbits are in fact Hobbits. Merry and Pippin can't believe that, after all that time, the main matter that brought the Ents together has not even been touched on.

The five doses/six doses débacle

This whole discussion of whether five or six doses can be extracted from each vial of Pfizer vaccine just boggles my mind.

The latest I have read is that Japan, which will start its vaccination program next week (and we think OUR vaccine roll-out has been slow here in Canada!), admits that it will end up throwing out millions of  the 144 million Pfizer doses it has ordered, just because it does not have anything like enough of the special "low dead space" syringes it need to squeeze out that final sixth dose.

Canada has recently come down on six doses per Pfizer vial, and is investing in more of the specialty syringes (which - go figure! - are now in short supply) in order to achieve that, thinking to squeeze more vaccine out of the available reduced supply from the company. But Pfizer has just turned round and said, well, in that case, we'll just send you fewer vials because the contract was for doses, not vials. The cheek!

In fact, in theory, it should be possible to get SEVEN doses out of the liquid in each vial, but no-one has figured out how to do that in practice. And anyway, it seems like there would be no point in trying...

Many questions spring to mind. Why is this only an issue with the Pfizer vaccine (or maybe it's not)? Could Pfizer really not arrange for six doses to be accessible to everyone, regardless of the syringes they happen to have? Did they know this was going to happen and just didn't bother to mention it (they have been selling the vials marked as containing 5 doses, but most countries were ordering syringes several months ago so this issue could have been pre-empted)? Does Pfizer also happen to sell the special syringes needed? 

People were suspicious and mistrustful of big pharma companies before the vaccine débacle. They are even more so now.

Starchitect engages in flights of BS

Architects don't half talk a load of crap. So do lots of artistic types, I know, but I've noticed in the past that architects are particularly prone to flights of BS.

Take, for example, the 91-year old Toronto native starchitect Frank Gehry, who has designed (at least in the back-of-an-envelope respect) a couple of new tower blocks for King Steeet West.

They are vaguely interesting tonthe extent that some sections are cantilevered and twisted somewhat, but essentially they are blue glass and steel monoliths such as comprise much of the rest of Toronto's downtown core, albeit in a part of downtown not yet totally dominated by blue glass and steel monoliths.

So, what does the great man find to tell the press about it? "I think the buildings have a level of humanity other buildings around them don't have," (er, nope, not really!), "and a respect for local surroundings" (er, definitely not!) King Street still has a fair few two-storey older buildings in its streetscape, which could be said to exhibit some degree of "humanity" and "respect", but these new planned edifices are just blue glass and steel monoliths - more interesting than some, not as interesting a others - so, please, don't talk to me about "humanity" and "respect"!

Gehry continues: "The idea was that the towers would speak to each other. And I wondered, could you create a void between the two that was strong enough to suggest a third building?" Wha'? They're just buildings, dude, separated by a space from one another, as building tend to be. Can you not just let them stand (or not) on their own merits, without lapsing into deep BS-isms?

Bubbles on top of bubbles

Massively overpriced Tesla has just thrown  $1.5 billion into purchasing the massively overpriced cryptocurrency bitcoin, in a classic example of one bubble huffing and puffing to blow up another bubble.

Well, when I say classic, that's probably not quite the right term, given that this has probably never happened before, at least not in this way.

Tesla has been recognized as dangerously overvalued for some time now, having surged five-fold over the last year or so. Per JP Morgan in December 2020: "Tesla shares are in our view and by virtually every conventional metric not only overvalued, but dramatically so". Clear enough?

I haven't written about bitcoin for some time now, but since that time it has also surged about five-fold and is considered dangerously overvalued. People seem to have pretty much given up on bitcoin ever operating as a serious financial instrument, and are just treating it as a game at this point.

So, Tesla deciding to buy into bitcoin instead of paying off some if its $11 billion in debt is a bizarro move by Tesla's ever-bizarro leader Elon Musk. You can look on it as predictably unexpected. But you would think that the stock exchange would throw up its metaphorical hands in horror, no? Instead, what actually happened? Tesla's share price went UP, and investors appear to be perfectly OK with the world's most overpriced company piling into the world's most volatile speculative investment.

Call me old-fashioned, but it all makes me very glad our savings are tied up in boring old blue-chip stocks.