February 3: It’s now OK(ish) to say Covid vaccines kill

In which, the vaccine narrative (finally) starts to turn, some (potentially) good news on the economy, and America fills a strategic hole in the Pacific.

It’s now OK(ish) to say Covid vaccines kill

Mere months ago, to say that Covid vaccines were posing health risks to broad swaths of the public was a conspiracy theory that got you banned from social media and polite society for the mere suggestion of it.

Fast forward to this week and you’ve got a leading mRNA vaccine researcher at MIT saying unequivocally that these vaccines are very dangerous, and the data backs him up: 2022 was the most deadly pandemic year in Canada (post mass vaccination of the population), and excess death rates for young people continue to be high in highly vaccinated countries. 

Readers of this newsletter will recall that multiple times in the course of the pandemic I commented on shutdown and vaccine mandates indicating that the cure had become worse than the disease. I’d say this clinches it: Our policy decisions made the pandemic worse.

The Biden administration has appeared to belatedly (and reluctantly) get the memo, announcing this week that the federal state of emergency over Covid will end in May. 

Don’t worry, you fans of executive overreach, they’ll have another public health emergency going by then (see below).

One man’s inflation is another’s debt management

Inflation was the theme of concern last year amongst economists and ordinary people (AKA applied economists) alike.

Efforts to cool down inflation in the US led the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates little by little, with the latest increase of a quarter point coming this past week. 

And you know what? It appears as though those efforts are bearing fruit as inflation continues to cool and jobs get added to the US economy (though the tech sector continues to shed jobs). Globally, the IMF has adjusted its 2023 projections to not include a global recession. 

That’s all good news. Sounds like we’re achieving the objective of slowing inflation, but what about some unintended consequences?

Turns out, when you raise interest rates by even a little bit, it jacks up the minimum payment on the national debt. Last year, America’s “credit card payments” totaled more than the defense budget (think north of $800 billion).

So, when Congressional Republicans are digging in on raising the debt ceiling, you can understand why. Raising the ceiling in an inflationary economy with interest rates going up means dramatically expanding the cost of paying down that debt, which means: new taxes or steep spending cuts in order to accommodate such an increase in the debt payment.

So, there’s room for guarded optimism on the economy, but it's not all clear skies yet.