Latest Commentary
We need COVID measures we can trust
Winnipeg Free Press, April 8, 2022 It is curious that the only recent indicator I have seen that COVID-19 still stalks us is that Kyle Connor and Nate Schmidt of the Winnipeg Jets were placed in virus protocol last week. I do not know what Canada’s self-styled virologists in chief (Stefanson, Kenney, Ford et al)…
Time to rethink vaccine strategy
December 13, 2021 Omicron is on the prowl. While early indications are that it does not cause serious illness, it is very infectious. The current approach to enforcing vaccination mandates will not probably get us to 90-per-cent-plus of everyone over six being fully vaccinated, which is probably the level needed manage this disease. (Read more…)
Time to examine treaty annuities and the land
Sheilla Jone, Wayne Helgason, and Gregory Mason Winnipeg Free Press, December 29, 2021 The November Ontario Court of Appeal ruling that the Crown violated Robinson Treaty terms by failing to increase annuity payments highlights the necessity of understanding the link between annuities and the land as a step toward reconciliation. Because without reconciliation, Canada risks…
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Online learning is here to stay
Winnipeg Free Press, August 9, 2021 Fill in the blank. Virtual learning is to live learning as phone sex is to ______ sex. There you have it … a question from the 2021 Mensa test.(Read full Article)
This is one curve we shouldn’t have flattened
Financial Post, February 9, 2022 I was fooling around with some GDP data the other day, as we economists are wont to do, and when I put it on a chart and drew a couple of trend lines, I was shocked by how setbacks we’ve suffered since 2000 seem to have become permanent scars on…
Continue Reading This is one curve we shouldn’t have flattened
Exaggerations of vaccine risk dangerous
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
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.
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…
Continue Reading Want a COVID booster? Maybe you should pay for it.
Some problems with “evidence based” policy
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
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…
