Virus questions - and the Swedish exception

1. Is there a link to particular pre-existing conditions, including diabetes, pre-diabetes and metabolic syndrome?
2. Is there a link to particular prescription drugs taken routinely for conditions more common among older people?
3. Is there a link to secondary bacterial infections and drug resistance.
4. Are there links to smoking and air pollution?
5. Are there occupational links?

Sweden is taking the opposite approach to most other countries. Anders Tegnell, state epidemiologist, seems to be advising that the disease be allowed to take its course, to achieve herd immunity as soon as possible, with older people self-isolating as best they can. This is a gamble as the health services could be overwhelmed. Emergency field hospitals have been prepared by the military. The benefit is that, in the absence of a vaccine, it will not be necessary to take preventative action against further waves of infection. The next four weeks will show whether the policy has worked. In the meantime, things are continuing almost as normal, with even swimming pools and gymnasia being kept open, though people are keeping out of restaurants and bars.

What is government for?

The reactions of different governments to the epidemic have highlighted, yet again, that the time is now overdue to ask fundamental questions about the purpose of government. How about this as a starting point: that government should confine itself to doing what no other body can do? In this connection we have to bear in mind that disputed areas such as teaching, and care of the sick and poor, were, before the Reformation, carried out under the umbrella of the Catholic Church.

Following on from there is the need for debate on how the expenses of government should be paid for. The present tax system is essentially a structure of fines and penalties for successfully engaging in legal economic activity. That cannot be good for the moral health of the nation, since taxes are the fiscal expression of the relationship between  individual householders and the government.

A useful starting point for this discussion is Adam Smith’s chapter ‛On the sources of revenue’, in the original text, not an edited version. Smith’s is not the last word on the subject, but libertarians and others on the political right will find it surprisingly uncomfortable.

Efter viruset?

Snart kommer det att bli fler och fler folk som blev smittade och deras sjukdom har gått över. Då kan de varken bli smittade eller smitta någon annan. Det finns tyvär hittils inte någon prov tillgängligt. Detta virus är också lurigt för att många får inga symptomer alls eller bli bara lite snuvigt. Är det viruset eller hasselpollin eller vanligt förkylning?

Min tänke är att om man har utan tvekan har blivit infekterad av viruset så verkar det vara säkert att gå omkring två veckor efter sjukdom har gått över. Vi behöver råd av myndigheterna.

Brottslingers rättigheter till anonym - varför?

En rapport i Goteborgs Posten handlar om en rättegång någonstans ‘i Skåne’. Tre tjugoåringar blev dömda till fängelse för bombning i Lund och Göteborg. De yrkeskriminalla hör i huvudsak hemma i Angered, en av Göteborgs förorter.

Såg männens ansikte egentligen pixellade ut? Hade männen inte namn? Varför har män dömda till allvarligt brott rättigheter till anonym? Trots pixellade ansikten är det inte så svårt att dra slutats on dessa män och deras ursprung och tillhörighet.

Situation är löjligt.

The atmospheric engine

I have been following a discussion on this website which is trying to shed some light on the carbon dioxide climate change theory, which seems to be based on spurious assumptions. The carbon dioxide claim is that the earth is warmer at the surface than it would be in the absence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, from which it follows that an increase in concentration of this gas would lead to global warming, which must now be stopped as a matter of urgency. The alternative theory is that the temperature at the surface of the earth is simply determined by the  action of gravity on the atmosphere in response to the heat it receives from the sun.

It is common knowledge that the atmosphere gets thinner, and that the atmospheric pressure and temperature get, lower, the higher you go. Think of the conditions at the top of Mount Everest. The atmosphere is an ocean of compressible gas resting on the solid surface of the earth; as a great over-simplification, it can be considered as an assembly of columns of air about 25 km tall, with a temperature of about 15 degrees C at the base and around minus 15 to minus 30 at the top, where it merges into outer space; the fall-off in temperature with height is known as the ‘lapse rate’. At ground level, the pressure is that due to the mass of a layer of air on top of it, approximately 25 km tall, which is the same as a column of mercury 75 cm tall, which adds up to quite a lot. The air is, as a consequence, relatively compressed – 15 lbs per square inch in old money. At the top of the atmosphere, the pressure can be considered to be zero.

Each column of air receives energy from radiation from the sun at its upper end, which passes through the column and is absorbed by the ground, which then heats up. This sets up what amounts to a heat engine. Heat engines work on the adiabatic principle. If you quickly compress the air in a bicycle pump it becomes warmer. The energy for this warming comes from your work. The same principle is applied in a diesel engine, where the temperature rises to the point where a small amount of fuel will burn if it is forced into the hot cylinder. This happens explosively and the piston is forcibly moved as the gas expands. This force can be transferred to a drive system and the energy can thereby be utilised in an engine. This expansion happens adiabatically ie the temperature falls as the gas expands.

This is more easily seen in a steam engine, where a puff of hot steam under pressure is admitted to the cylinder, and the steam expands and pushes the piston. What happens to the steam? It expands to several times its original volume and its pressure and temperature falls, so that it is on the verge of turning into water, which is what you see coming out of the chimney. This is an adiabatic process ie no energy is absorbed or released through the walls of the cylinder, due to the speed with which the expansion occurs. The energy in the hot steam, which was originally chemical energy in the fuel, has been used to make the wheels go round.

I cannot quite picture this myself but I assume that there is a similar process results in the relatively high temperature at ground level and the existence of a lapse rate; the radiation energy flux arriving at the edge of the atmosphere, passes through the atmosphere to the surface, where it is absorbed and heats the surface. This effectively sets up a heat engine, resulting in the lapse rate described.

On this theory, the carbon dioxide effect on Venus might be attributable not to the IR absorption effect but to the higher density of CO2, which has a molecular weight of 44 compared to the average molecular weight of air which is about 29 ie the molecules of CO2 are 1.5 times heavier. If this is the case, the war on carbon is an expensive and futile diversion.

Västänken - ett värdelös projekt

Skattebetalarnas pengar kastas i Göteborgs leran. Tre linjer, från Uddevalla, Älvängen och Alingsås sammankopplas av Västlänken till bara en linje, mot Kungsbacka. Någon ordentlig tidtabell kan inte ordnas som erbjuder tillräckliga möjligheter för olika resmål. Hur många resenärer vill egentligen åka mellan, t ex, Bohus och Mölndal, eller Stenungsund och Kungsbacka? När Västlänken är slutligen klart, de flesta resenärer tvärs över stan kommer i fortsättningen att bli tvungna att byta tåg vid Göteborg C.

EU sham tax avoidance measures

The EU’s tax haven agenda is a show of futile and cynical window dressing put there to impress the gullible while doing nothing fundamental about the problem, which is systemic. If a tax is vulnerable to avoidance and evasion, it will be avoided and evaded. The EuroTax, VAT, is a perfect example, with leakage rates of over 30% in some EU member countries. It has been known for the past three centuries that taxes on real estate ie land, cannot be avoided or evaded; land cannot be hidden or moved to a tax haven. Those responsible for EU tax policy have no excuse for not understanding this, since land value taxes were widespread in Europe before World War One, the fundamental ideas having been rediscovered in modern times by the French Physiocrats and Henry George. The ideas of Henry George were picked up with enthusiasm in Germany and Denmark.

EU trade power

The main effect of the EU exercising its trade power will be to cause scarcities and higher costs within the EU. Goods and services currently procured from the UK will have to be replaced with supplies from elsewhere. In Ireland, this will result in higher transport costs, and even if the UK government were sensible enough to allow tariff free entry of goods from the EU, this would still result in a reduction of the volume of goods imported, due to the changes in EU-Sterling flows.

The EU negotiators seem to imagine that they are doing the British a favour by allowing people in the EU to purchase UK products. Their view of trade and economics resurrects the mercantilism which dominated in the seventeenth century but had been rebutted by the eighteenth, though not before mercantilist policies had led to the ruin of Spain, Portugal and France; the persistence of mercantilism was an important contributory factor to later nineteenth century colonialism and the First World War.

UK businesses will have to find new customers, within the UK or abroad. Since the UK will be importing more from the rest of the world, without the restrictions imposed by EU membership, the demand for UK products will arise naturally as a consequence of increased sterling balances held in the rest of the world.

Stupidityvirus epidemic

The EU/UK trade negotiations are beginning to look like what in Swedish is known as snopp fäktning. The British position can be summarised as ‛if you do not stop shooting yourself in the feet, we will start to shoot ourselves in the feet’. Shooting its own people in the feet is standard operating procedure in the EU, which takes care of its powerful and vocal producer interests at the expense of everyone else. The UK government is, on account of its free trade traditions, slightly better in this respect. I wish British commentators, and politicians generally, would, for a change, look at the situation from our (I am on the continent) point of view. From the way so many are talking, anyone would think that we (in the EU) only buy British because we feel sorry for them.

The EU is doing us no favours with its negotiating position of threatening to apply tariffs and restrictions on imports from the UK. Here in Gothenburg there is one shop which specialises in British decorating products including Farrow and Ball, and Little Green. Restrictions will affect both the shop and its customers. There are no equivalent replacement product. Another local shop sells popular UK ceramic tableware brands as a major line. Our local garden shops sell brands like Spear and Jackson. Ditto the tool shop. Microbreweries and home brewing supplier use and stock British hops, malt, yeast and sundries. Fisherman’s Friends are popular. Although most of our fish is locally caught, and quite a lot of it from the Baltic and from lakes (pike, zander and perch), there will be a bit of a shortage of fish and prices will rise. Then there is the general issue of spare parts and consumables. The list goes on and on.

The EU’s negotiators are adopting a position which will make a lot of things scarce or dearer. They are shooting us in the feet. Ireland will be particularly badly hit because 25% of its imports are sourced from the UK and it will cost more to transport alternatives from mainland Europe; it is a long way through the Straits of Dover and round Land's End. The end result will be that the EU, already unpopular for a raft of reasons, will become even more unpopular.

The current UK negotiating position is equally absurd. The ‘threat’ is that the UK will cut itself off from EU suppliers, which from us includes SKF ball bearings made from high quality Swedish steel made from the very pure ore from the Kiruna mine.

There is a financial side to this as well. If the UK is unconditionally open to imports from the EU (and everywhere else), then sterling balances accumulate in the supplier countries, which will boost exports from the UK. It seems to be little appreciated that imports prime the pump for a country's exports by creating foreign held balances in its currency.

The best thing the UK government could do would be to announce that it will just open the doors to imports from the EU (and everywhere else), whatever the EU does. If the EU negotiators are sensible they will follow suit. If they do not, and they probably will not, since being sensible is not their style, there are soon going to be complaints from consumers, businesses and manufacturers in the EU who find their supplies have been cut off by order of Brussels.

Invandrare stängde ut ur Sveriges naringsliv

Traditionellt fick invandrare tillträde till naringslivet genom själv driva yrke t ex torghandel, skräddare, snickare, heminreddare, rörmakare, där bra språk kunskap behövs inte. Retailjättar som Tesco och Marks and Spencer började som pyttesmå affär och i bodar i torg. Nu är det nästan omöjligt att börja som småskalig egetföretagare - Sveriges skattessystem dvs inkomsskatt, MOMS och arbetgivarensavgift - utan tröskel - knacker dem ner med alla byråcrati, blanketter, och belastning med tilllkostnader. Systemet kunde likaväl har formats för att stänger ut invandrare ur näringslivet - så är effekten.

Häromveckan pratade jag med en skomakare i stan som kommer snart att gå i pension. Fragade varför han inte kunde anställa en ung kille och lära honom yrket så att affären kan fortsätta i framtiden? Sväret var att det skulle kostar för mycket pga skatt, avgift, försäkring, under träningsperioden. Resultatet: en arbetslös kille och trasiga skor gå inte att repareras men måste kastas.