Politics are polluting the environment

May 9, 2018 by Gregory Mason

I was fuelling my sensible SUV this morning, while furtively admiring an adjacent monster pickup truck. When asked, the owner gushed about how she liked the oversized vehicle, praising “sight lines” while almost apologizing for the cost of a fill-up and the obvious waste implied by her vehicle choice.

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Exaggerations of vaccine risk dangerous

November 4, 2021 By Greg Mason

When I was 12, a friend offered to teach me a new card game. After explaining the basics, we started to play and I lost, as he mentioned another rule he had forgotten. I continued to lose as new and increasingly obscure rules surfaced. This is how I feel about COVID-19. New rules keep extending […]

A Nobel Price for methods, not results

November 4, 2021 By Greg Mason

This year’s Nobel laureates in economics received the award for coming up with creative methods for extracting causal insight from observational data. That may sound underwhelming but the three economists who were recognized have helped free us from the tyranny of randomized control trials (RCTs) as being the only route to understanding cause and effect.

Want a COVID booster? Maybe you should pay for it.

November 4, 2021 By Greg Mason

Though disheartening, the emerging consensus that the COVID vaccines offer declining immunity is hardly surprising. Some vaccines, such as those for polio, do offer long-term immunity; in contrast, influenza shots have become an annual ritual in many households. The possibility that COVID vaccines would require an annual booster has always been on the table. With […]

Some problems with “evidence based” policy

February 16, 2021 By Gregory Mason

One of the effects of COVID, is the ubiquity of evidence-based policy. Aside from coronavirus cranks, most accept that public health directives rest on science. However, evidence can be a cudgel when used to promote a specific policy and limit discussion under the assertion that “the science is settled.” This seems to have happened with […]

Vaccine plan in peril as third wave looms

February 8, 2021 By Gregory Mason

A week before New Year’s Eve, I started to receive promotional material from restaurants, my gym and arts groups, gushing about how 2021 will be different. Life will be good again, and 2020 will be but a dream. That was then; this is now. The vaccine rollout has gone poorly, in Manitoba and elsewhere in […]

Politics are polluting the environment

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