To those saying that those who have got their public health advice wrong earlier in the pandemic should put up their hands and apologise... a little cautionary lesson from another sector

A short 🧵

1/

First they came for the 🐟

And John Redwood said the 🇬🇧 fishing industry would adjust

Then they came for the 🐖 farmers and 🐷 exports

And they said don't worry, it's just teething problems

Next they came for the 🦪 exporters

And there the Minister wrote a letter saying 🇪🇺 was wrong, when his officials knew 🇪🇺 was right

Then the 🧪 industries worried about the 💷 of making a new database to replace REACH

They're still waiting

The 🚛🚚 operators fear that a load of vehicles are returning to 🇪🇺 empty, and volumes are down

We do not recognise the numbers, the 🇬🇧 Government says

OK, so it's a fortnight away - the "Digital Party Conference" of the CDU to decide who the next party leader will be

And whoever wins this is going to have a good chance of being Chancellor, succeeding Merkel after the election in September this year

There are three main candidates in the running - all middle aged men from Nordrhein Westfalen
- Friedrich Merz
- Armin Laschet
- Norbert Röttgen

So who's going to win?

For ages it looked like Laschet was the clear front runner. Prime Minister of Nordrhein Westfalen (NRW), and with a kind of folksy-beergarten manner, it looked good for him.

But then came COVID, and in the first wave it looked like NRW was pushing to open up too early, and questions started to be raised as to whether he would be up to the job...

Laschet's star is falling

The candidate profiting is Merz. The comeback kid at 65 years of age would take the CDU more to the right - which seems to be what a slew of the 1001 delegates (esp those from the states of eastern Germany) want. That despite the pragmatic line of Merkel being +popular than ever.

"Red wall voters will not forgive Boris Johnson if he sells out to get a trade deal with Brussels, polls show"

It's in The Sun. Harry Cole wrote it...

So let's dig a

The poll was done by @SavantaComRes and the PDF of the results is here:

P. 57
If this 'no deal' scenario occurs, to what extent would you be
more or less likely to vote Conservative at the next General Election?

+ likely, total: 20%
no difference: 41%
- likely, total: 32%

P. 59

I don't actually know what these questions mean

"The UK establishes a new relationship with the EU that is based on EU law" What *is* that?

"The UK maintains political alignment with the EU after the Brexit Transition Period, such as a common foreign and security policy" What is political alignment? And does CFSP work?

"The UK cannot pass its own laws and ensure its courts enforce them" Oh come on.

OK then.

So the new CDU Party Leader #CDUvorsitz is known - it's Armin Laschet.

This 🧵 will explain why he won, explain what he means, and outline what happens next.

1/20

At the CDU's party congress today, the three candidates - Laschet, Friedrich Merz & Norbert Röttgen - gave 15 min speeches

That was the first signal of what was to come... Today we saw the very best of Laschet - playing the reliable, careful person, not heavy on detail

2/20

Merz by contrast gave an ill focused speech, and did not make a single reference to Merkel or AKK, the outgoing party leader. He seems to have learned nothing

Röttgen, long the outsider, gave a speech with a lot more detail - especially on green issues and the future

3/20

1001 Delegates - these were the results

Round 1 🗳
Merz 385
Laschet 380
Röttgen 224

Round 2 🗳
Laschet 521
Merz 466

About 1/3 of Röttgen's vote went to Merz, 2/3 to Laschet

4/20

It's important to emphasise how absolutely *average* Laschet is in the CDU. If you were to imagine your archetypal CDU politician it would be him. Not to edgy, not too sharp, not too radical, not too conservative, not too dashing... it would be him

5/20

@br0oklynzo0 @KatyMontgomerie @ElPolloDiabloX @AbigailShrier @chadfelixg Okay, so you haven't read the study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, you've read a Guardian story about it.

I have now read the study, and I teach critical appraisal as part of my job, so let's dive into it a bit.

@KatyMontgomerie @ElPolloDiabloX @AbigailShrier @chadfelixg First things first, the sample size in this study is tiny. 46 people. Plus, the point of comparison was "all women and men under the age of 30 in the Air Force between 2004 and 2014" rather than a longitudinal group.

@KatyMontgomerie @ElPolloDiabloX @AbigailShrier @chadfelixg So no matching for age, background, or physical condition. The result of these is that you're going to get a lot of statistical artefacts.

@KatyMontgomerie @ElPolloDiabloX @AbigailShrier @chadfelixg Second of all, there were three points of comparison here and you're ignoring two of them. The researchers measured for push-ups and sit-ups as well, both of which showed physical advantage removed entirely by hormones. Which means you're cherrypicking.

@KatyMontgomerie @ElPolloDiabloX @AbigailShrier @chadfelixg So what do you get when you have a tiny sample size and cherrypicked results? That's right, you get noise in the data. Take a look at the results graph from this paper you haven't read.

I’m deeply saddened to learn that Dr Joseph Sonnabend, one of the most important figures in the history of AIDS, died yesterday. I spent time with him in 2018 for one of the last interviews he ever gave. Let me tell you about this man and what he did:

Sonnabend was one of the first doctors to raise the alarm. In 1979, while running a sexual health clinic in Greenwich Village, he wrote to the NY Health Dept to warn them of the symptoms he was seeing: low white blood cell counts, enlarged lymph nodes. He didn’t get a reply. 2/

So he kept speaking out. When a patient of his developed a very rare cancer – Kaposi’s Sarcoma – he linked up with a dermatologist at NYU who said that over a dozen gay men had it. Sonnabend knew there was something very wrong. He started working at the lab at NYU — for free. 3/

It was soon after this in 1981 that the New York Times famously reported “Rare Cancer Found In 41 Homosexuals”. The next decade would kill most of Sonnabend’s patients and friends — and all of his lovers. What Sonnabend did was to fight for every single of them. 4/

Want to know who was the first to publish advice to wear a condom? That was Sonnabend. In 1983 he co-authored the first safe sex leaflet to fight AIDS: “How To Have Sex In An Epidemic”. 5/

Pathways to Public Policy Careers for those interested and looking for global opportunities

Public policy is made when a governing body attempts to address an issue of widespread public concern, such as health care. The process often runs in cycles and can take years.

■After new laws are created, Policy Implementation occurs, often involving federal agencies, state and local governments, bureaucratic entities, and NGOs. Courts get involved as laws and policies are challenged on a variety of fronts.

■Analysis and Evaluation occurs throughout the cycle and involves many players. Policies may be changed — and the cycle begins again.

What is the best advice for someone pursuing a career in public policy?

People often find their way to public policy careers because of an

interest in a particular substantive area. Public policy work can be found in virtually any subject area.

Your ears should perk up when you hear the words “Center for,” “Institute,” “Association,” and “Foundation” because they represent potential employers.

Public policy majors work in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, such as a government agency or advocacy group.

Continuing education, such as a certification or fellowship, can also advance your career as someone interested in public policy and politics.

A staple of anti-lockdown conspiracism in yoga/wellness is that public health measures are oppressive, authoritarian, and stifling what it means to be human. Masks suppress identity and speech. Vaccines assault the sovereign body. Influencers must rise up against tyranny! /1

Ironically, pandemic management in economies where yoga/wellness is lucrative has been a neoliberal, choose-your-own-adventure mess in which centre-right governments barter with public health to enact a patchwork of half-measures that punish the poor and marginalized. /2

The goal is not universal health rights, or protecting medical systems, or saving as many lives as possible. The goal is to return to business-as-usual, using public health as a pit stop on a productivity race off a cliff. The ice caps aren’t melting fast enough, I guess. /3

Right-leaning governments, like influencers, have assessed the COVID threat with the magical bias of limitless optimism. Then they work to normalize COVID casualties as a new cost of doing business. *This* is what alt-healthers and Qamoms call “socialist”, or “communist”. /4

Centre-right governments and wellness influencers share a goal: get back to the optimism of making productivity heroic and consumption virtuous, without any reflection on structural issues of injustice, or what universal health care funding and standards would look like. /5