TR EMERITUS

In the largest real-world observational study comparing natural immunity gained through previous SARS-CoV-2 infection to vaccine-induced immunity afforded by the Pfizer vaccine, people who recovered from COVID were much less likely than never-infected, vaccinated people to get Delta, develop symptoms or be hospitalized. Natural immunity appears to confer longer lasting and stronger protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization from the Delta variant compared to Pfizer-BioNTech’s two-dose vaccine-induced immunity, according to a new Israeli preprint study. The new data could play a key role in determining whether people who have previously had COVID need to receive both doses of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, Science reported. In the largest real-world observational study comparing natural immunity gained through previous SARS-CoV-2 infection to vaccine-induced immunity afforded by the Pfizer mRNA vaccine, people who recovered from COVID were much less likely than never-infected, vaccinated people to get Delta, develop symptoms or be hospitalized. The study, published Aug. 25 on medRxiv, was conducted in one of the most highly vaccinated countries in the world using data from Maccabi Healthcare Services, which enrolls about 2.5 million Israelis, or about 26% of the population. Researchers examined medical records of 673,676 Israelis 16 years and older — charting their infections, symptoms and hospitalizations between June 1 and Aug. 14, when the Delta variant predominated in Israel. The study, led by Tal Patalon and Sivan Gazit, with Maccabi’s research and innovation arm, KSM, found in two analyses that people who had never been infected with SARS-CoV-2 but were vaccinated in January and February were 6 to 13 times more likely to experience breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to unvaccinated people who were previously infected with SARS-CoV-2. Researchers noted increased risk was significant for asymptomatic disease as well. “This analysis demonstrated that natural immunity affords longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization due to the Delta variant,” the researchers said. “It’s a textbook example of how natural immunity is really better than vaccination,” Charlotte Thålin, a physician and immunology researcher at Danderyd Hospital and the Karolinska Institute, told Science. “To my knowledge, it’s the first time [this] has really been shown in the context of COVID-19.” In one analysis that assessed more than 32,000 people in the health system, the risk of developing symptomatic COVID was 27 times higher among the vaccinated and the risk of hospitalization eight times higher, Science reported. “The differences are huge,” said Thålin, although she cautioned the numbers for infections and other events analyzed for the comparisons were small. Scripps’s Eric Topol pointed out several limitations with the study, such as the inherent weakness of a retrospective analysis compared with a prospective study that regularly tests all participants as it tracks new infections, symptomatic infections, hospitalizations and deaths going forward in time. Michel Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University who researches the immune response to SARS-CoV-2, said the Israeli study confirms laboratory findings from a series of papers in Nature and Immunity by his group, and a study by colleague Dr. Paul Bieniasz –– whose team published a preprint earlier this month showing polyclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 should be resilient to future SARS-CoV-2 variants and may confer protection against future sarbecovirus pandemics. Nussenzweig said his group published data showing people who recover from a SARS-CoV-2 infection continue to develop increasing numbers and types of coronavirus-targeting antibodies for up to 12 months. By contrast, Nussenzweig said, twice-vaccinated people stop seeing increases “in the potency or breadth of the overall memory antibody compartment” a few months after their second dose. Public not getting whole truth about breakthrough cases A closer look at the data reveals public-health communication may be overstating the vaccine’s effect on transmission and understating the scale and risk of breakthrough infections, the Intelligencer reported. Said Dr. Michael Mina, a Harvard epidemiologist: The message that breakthrough cases are exceedingly rare and that you don’t have to worry about them if you’re vaccinated — that this is only an epidemic of the unvaccinated — that message is falling flat... "If this was still Alpha, sure. But with Delta, plenty of people are getting sick,” said Mina. “Plenty of transmission is going on. And my personal opinion is that the whole notion of herd immunity from two vaccine shots is flying out the window very quickly with this new variant."   Source: The Defender      Read More →

We have been given a preview of LHL’s National Day Rally speech when Lawrence Wong gave an interview to the BBC a week ago. (The BBC should be given the title of honorary Singapore state media since it seems to be very keen to play up the Government’s achievements, perhaps in return for subsidised or free rent on their studio in Singapore or other tie-up agreements). According to Wong, LHL’s speech “will look at the full range of measures to continue uplifting the incomes of Singaporeans, especially those at the lower end” The use of the word “continue” is strange because the PAP have essentially done all they can to depress the incomes of Singaporeans, except for the tiny handful of people at the top (essentially themselves and their spouses, relatives and/or friends). As I have written since 2011, the PAP’s development strategy is based on a simple economic model, first put forward by the Saint Lucian economist and Nobel Prize winner W. A. Lewis in the 1950s, “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour”. Since the days of Winsemius and Goh Keng Swee, PAP policies have focused on keeping wages down to encourage foreign investment. That was the reason they put forward for making independent unions illegal (the main reason was of course to ensure there were no independent power centres that could challenge LKY’s absolute rule, in accordance with the standard totalitarian leader’s playbook). Once the surplus labour had been used up and women entered the labour force in sufficient numbers wages should have risen. This had started to occur in the 1980s when there was also a push to replace expats and FTs with Singaporeans. However natural evolution to a higher wage higher productivity economy did not suit the PAP presumably because the state’s ownership of the economy meant that the Government was more interested in increasing the profit share in national income and accumulating assets. As LHL’s family, PAP Ministers’ and MPs’ spouses and their relatives (Ho Ching being the most egregious example) and cronies managed most of these companies, they could pay themselves higher and higher salaries, usually in secret and without Singaporeans being able to find out. So instead the Government opened the gates to employing foreign labour, from a trickle in the 1990s to a flood from 2000 onwards until foreign workers and PRs comprised nearly half the workforce. With no minimum wage and competition from workers from very poor countries carrying high levels of debt that they had to pay off and unprotected by any effective labour laws or enforcement mechanisms, consumption and wages were depressed below 40% of national income.The PAP achieved their aim of posting high economic growth numbers, helped also by aiding and abetting MNC tax avoidance. (This resulted also in fake foreign investment figures, which Lawrence Wong is still trying to bamboozle gullible foreigners like BBC journalists as investment was driven by artificial booking of revenues in Singapore). But the Government’s strategy of becoming a low-cost low productivity economy did not help Singaporeans, who were essentially only able to make a living income by working the longest or second-longest number of hours in the developed world. Goh Chok Tong famously promised Singaporeans a Swiss standard of living in the 1990s Today many of our workers earn around a fraction per hour of the Swiss minimum wage. My back of the envelope calculations, based on Singapore’s statistics, suggested the median Singaporean worker earns less than half of what the median worker in London earns per hour and less than a third per hour of the median New York worker. In 2011 UBS’s survey suggested that Singaporean workers had the same purchasing power as workers in KL or Moscow and the PAP Government had UBS drop Singapore from its survey of global cities because it was too embarrassing. Going back to the 2009 Budget, I have criticized the PAP’s low productivity low cost long hours model which has been to the detriment of Singaporeans. Apart from the PAP elite and those with wealth from property the only people who have done well economically appear to be the expats and FTs, who of course do not have to do NS. Even an average mid-level PMET expat earns in excess of $300,000 p.a., while the median (admittedly lower than the average) gross monthly income from work (including Employer CPF which arguably should not be included) of Full Time Employed Singaporean Residents (including PRs who include many expats and other high earners) is only $4500 or about $60,000 p.a. including 13th month bonuses. Many of these so-called FTs will be less well educated than Singaporeans or have dubious degrees. Benjamin Glynn is just one example. I am winning the policy war since only last month the head of MAS, Ravi Menon, in a speech at IPS, called for Singapore to abandon its low-cost low-productivity model and recognise that it needed to become a high-productivity high-wage economy even if that involved higher costs for some services. So at the National Day Rally on Sunday, don’t expect PM Lee to admit that the PAP economic policies of the last 40 years have been a failure. Don’t expect him to say they have entrapped Singaporeans in a spiral pf low wage competition and ever longer hours with cheaper foreign workers and that they have served no purpose other than to build up the reserves, Government finances and the incomes of himself, his wife, PAP Ministers, MPs, spouses, relatives and cronies. Instead expect him to stealthily shift policy and steal the Reform Party’s policies on raising the cost of employing foreign labour and strengthening the Singaporean core though he is unlikely to take the most significant step of announcing a minimum wage. Instead expect his speech to have the usual breathtaking arrogance and presumption that his family owns Singapore in perpetuity coupled with fake facts and statistics to show how well you are doing. Don’t be fooled! The single most important step you can take to improve your lives is to get rid of the PAP clown car of LHL and his 4G Ministers.     Kenneth Jeyaretnam   About the author: I’m a Singaporean economist who became an opposition activist. I blog to provide an alternative to the porkies that the Pinkies tell. It just so happens that my alternative is the truth. That’s why I’ve never been sued in any civil or criminal court no matter how hard hitting my criticism. I’m quoted and interviewed and asked to speak across the world but largely censored in Singapore in an effort to silence my political opinions. The left hate me because they think I split their vote and because I eschew their outmoded economic models. Models that don’t work. The Right and the Conservatives hate me because I’m a liberal. I’m not sure what the middle think of me. I don’t think there are more than a handful of people in the middle, here in Singapore. I’m a Singaporean born and bred, dual heritage, my parents Singaporean established here before the State of Singapore was created. I’m not Eurasian. I read economics at Cambridge and could be broadly described as from the Keynesian school but I believe in interventions. I was formerly a successful hedge fund manager. After economics and politics my greatest interests are history, film and Makan. I run but I run so I can eat like a Singaporean      Read More →

I had an early morning breakfast with a friend of mine, who had left the security of a career in the SAF to become an entrepreneur. During this meeting, he mentioned that he felt that the problem in Singapore wasn’t so much the lack of talent but the fact that many people were simply ignored because they didn’t meet the official criteria of talent or were talented but unrecognized as such because they didn’t fit into the system. This conversation got me thinking about our rather complex relationship with the word talent. Singapore claims that it built its great economic miracle by making the most of its “human resources.” At the same time, the government consistently tells us that we need to be open to “foreign talent,” if we are to continue to be prosperous and that Singapore has to “import” talent because we simply don’t have the domestic talent to drive the economy of the future. I personally don’t have anything against the “importation of talent.” An important part of my life story is based on the fact that my mother married an American expat, who brought me around the world. If I look at back at my “career highlights,” I’m blessed because of the Indian expat community. I would have starved a long time ago if it wasn’t got the “expat” community. Having said that, I question if Singapore really lacks talent and if we do, why do we lack talent? Our education system is often blamed for this in as much as while our system produces “educated” workers, we don’t produce “leaders” in anything. To be fair, our universities are trying to change and have been running programs aimed at fostering a more “entrepreneurial” culture. However, whilst our universities are trying to get things moving, I’m inclined to agree with my friend. There are talented Singaporeans who were somehow squished out and were only able to achieve things outside of Singapore. Then, once they achieved outside of Singapore, they were either made to feel so unwelcome because had to break a rule to leave to pursue their talents or they are held up as examples of glorious government guidance (which is more often than not – untrue) to an extent that they end up loosing the edge that made them great in the first place. Think of Kevin Kwan of Crazy Rich Asians fame in the first group and Sim Wong Hoo and Joseph Schooling in the second group. Let’s look at the recently concluded Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics as an example. Let’s be honest, the Olympics were a disappointment and our “golden” boy didn’t even come close to being able to defend his title. By contrast, our Paralympics team did very well. We managed to get a gold medal thanks to Ms. Yip Pin Xiu. This wasn’t the first gold medal for Ms. Yip. She had claimed the gold in the 2012 Rio Games and in the 2008 Beijing Games. If you look at success at the international level over a period of time as a yard stick, Ms. Yip is probably the most successful athlete that Singapore has ever produced. Let’s Applaud the fact that a girl in a wheelchair is probably our most successful athlete. Yet, despite her success at three of the largest tournaments for disabled athletes, Ms. Yip remains a relative unknown in Singapore. It’s only in this Paralympic Games where politicians have mentioned Ms. Yip, which is contrasted with the way everyone rushed to have their photos taken with Mr. Schooling after the Rio Games. Why is that so? Could it be because Ms. Yip is “disabled” and therefore not looked upon in the same way as her more “abled” counterparts? Let’s look things this way. Singapore has far more successful at the Paralympics than in the Olympics. Every medal winner in the Paralympics has been a “home-grown” talent. There’s been a need to “import” talent for the Paralympics in the same way there has been for the Olympics. Who Won Our Paralympic Medals – Taken from Wikipedia. Whilst our Paralympic athletes have been more successful than our Olympic ones, nobody talks about the Paralympic ones. You could argue that this isn’t limited to Singapore in as much as the world focuses on the Olympics rather than the Paralympics. However, we have to question why we aren’t doing more to support disabled athletes. Why, for example do we think we need to award an Olympic Gold Medalist S$1,000,000 but value to the Gold of a Paralympian at only S$400,000. Sure, TV ratings may be greater for the Olympics but hey, let’s look at what we’ve gained there and what we do gain in the Paralympics. Why does Singapore focus so much on “able-bodied” athletes when it’s our disabled one who give us the real glory. Shouldn’t Singapore be focusing on its strengths and hey, becoming a “hub” for disabled sports would really put us on a map. Let’s be the guys who support those who go through greater challenges (Yes, Mr. Schooling’s story is amazing, when you think of the sacrifice his parents made so he could follow his dreams and develop his talents. However, Ms. Yip’s story is equally if not more amazing in that it’s miracle that a girl in a wheelchair can be a world class swimmer.) This “wrong” focus is not just limited to athletics. I recently got involved in a discussion with a former BBC reporter who posted something about how she was not hired when she moved back to Singapore because MediaCorp felt that viewers did not like “dark skinned” presenters. It goes without saying that MediaCorp have denied it, saying that they hire purely based on merit. Her comments can be found below: Leaving aside the merits of her claim, what is obvious is that it became very clear that MediaCorp had missed out on hiring some talented home-grown presenters. I noticed this back in 2013, when I had to arrange interviews for Raghuram Rajan, who was then Chief Economic Adviser to the Indian Government. Both BBC and Bloomberg chased me for the interview and it was a local born Sikh girl who interviewed him from the BBC and a local Malay girl who interviewed him for Bloomberg. Our local press felt it was beneath them to interview this highly acclaimed and internationally recognised economist on a Sunday because …. Their bureaus were shut. Luckily for the local news, I managed to speak to an Australian who then sent a lovely American girl down to interview him. It’s sad. We throw money at certain groups of people we consider to be good. We thrown money to get people from elsewhere. Yet we ignore some of our own people who don’t fit into our “idea” and “preconceived” notion of what is good. Sometimes it’s a boon for these people in that they end up at better places and go onto better things. However, it us a tragedy that we’re searching all over the world for people to suit our criteria of good when the talents were right under our noses.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be.      Read More →