RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/deadly-cost-of-lockdown-policies

Many years ago, one of my duties as a young surgical intern was to fill out death certificates for recently deceased patients. Under “cause of death,” Part I asked for the immediate cause, other conditions leading to it, and the underlying cause. Part II asked for “other significant conditions contributing to death but not resulting in the underlying cause given in Part I.” If you think this is confusing, you’re right. Did the post-operative patient found dead in bed really die of a heart attack, a pulmonary embolism, or some operative complication, like bleeding? Where do you list their colon cancer or hypertension?

The task has not gotten any easier during the Covid-19 pandemic. People are still dying of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and accidents. But now there is a new respiratory illness to account for. Not every decedent who tested positive for the virus that causes Covid-19 died from it—in fact, the disease is mild for most people. Conversely, some deaths due to Covid-19 may be erroneously assigned to other causes of death because the people were never tested, and Covid-19 was not diagnosed. Nearly everyone dying of Covid-19 has concurrent health problems—the average decedent has 2.5 co-morbid conditions—and hypertension, heart disease, respiratory diseases, and diabetes are among the most common. The presence and interaction of these co-morbid conditions is what sometimes changes Covid-19 from a relatively benign disease into a killer. But co-morbidities can also cause death regardless of Covid-19.

A common way to distinguish the mortality burden of a new infectious agent from other causes of death is to estimate the excess deaths that occurred beyond what would be expected if the pathogen had not circulated. A recent study of 48 states and the District of Columbia estimated 122,300 excess deaths during the pandemic period of March 1 to May 30, compared with expected deaths calculated from the previous five years. Deaths officially attributed to Covid-19 accounted for 78 percent of the total; approximately 27,000 deaths (22 percent) were not attributed to Covid-19. A second study, using the same database with different statistical methods for the period March 1 to April 25, found that 65 percent of 87,000 excess deaths were attributed to Covid-19.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-7-9-energy-production-and-consu

Over the past several days, you have probably seen multiple articles reporting on reverses suffered in the U.S. courts by developers of pipelines to transport oil and natural gas. In one case, a Federal District Court even ordered an existing, operational pipeline to shut down pending further environmental review. The multiple court decisions have been covered in the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, CNN, and every other large news source that you can think of.

Meanwhile, on June 19 the BP oil company issued its annual Report titled “Statistical Review of World Energy,” this version covering the year 2019. I’ll bet you haven’t seen anything in the news about that one. I make that bet because, aside from one article in Forbes magazine, every piece that I can find covering the BP Report appears in some sort of specialized or industry publication.

If you just see what appears before you in your news feed, you could be forgiven for getting the impression that producers of fossil fuels are on the run and will shortly be driven from the scene. But if you take the time to look, you can find the real picture in the BP Report. In summary, world production and consumption of fossil fuels continue their steady and inexorable aggregate growth (although with ongoing substitution of natural gas for coal). Despite all you have read about plans to reduce or eliminate CO2 emissions, in fact those emissions continue to grow from year to year. Production from “renewables” also has been growing, but at a pace insufficient to result in any reduction in use of fossil fuels. Indeed, it’s not clear that any amount of increases in intermittent wind and solar sources can result in reductions in use of fossil fuels, since the wind and solar sources require full backup from dispatchable sources. Meanwhile, the market shares between and among the energy sources barely shift from year to year.