CoveragePost
July 15, 2022
Essay by Keith Rankin. A scientific hypothesis is a claim that is both plausible and ’empirically’ testable. A hypothesis is the first part of the process of pure science. The second part is to actually test such claims. Claims that survive the rigour of testing become scientific knowledge, a subset of ‘knowledge’. (Not all knowledge ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Science versus Narrative: Facemasks and other scientific matters" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/07/15/keith-rankin-essay-science-versus-narrative-facemasks-and-other-scientific-matters/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Science versus Narrative: Facemasks and other scientific matters">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
July 13, 2022
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Kathryn Ryan: “Why is there a six-month gap between boosters?” Siouxsie Wiles: “I can’t answer that for you. It doesn’t make sense based on the data that we have. … In Israel they got it at least four months after, for the over-60s at least. It was really good at preventing ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Covid Vaccine Policy Fail: Priority groups under-protected" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/07/13/keith-rankin-essay-covid-vaccine-policy-fail-priority-groups-under-protected/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Covid Vaccine Policy Fail: Priority groups under-protected">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
July 12, 2022
New Zealanders, and many others, are at present immunity-compromised. Influenzas and 'common colds' are being experienced more severely than usual; and we are seriously short of data about cases of these illnesses, and deaths of people with these illnesses.
CoveragePost
June 23, 2022
The charts below are all to the same scale. Strictly speaking, they show seasonal mortality rather than excess mortality. The zero percent baseline represents low-season mortality rather than average mortality.
CoveragePost
June 10, 2022
Analysis – Keith Rankin, 10 June 2022 Cuba’s demographic information, though slow to become available, at least exists and appears to be reliable. A week ago, Cuba released its 2021 mortality data. The result is shown in the chart above. To place this into context, there is also a chart for Brazil, using the same ... <a title="Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid and Cuba" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/06/10/keith-rankin-chart-analysis-covid-and-cuba/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid and Cuba">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
May 27, 2022
Essay by Keith Rankin. Problems make the world go round. Many of us – maybe the majority of workers, and certainly the majority of well-paid workers – earn our living addressing problems. A problem-free world would represent a major crisis for modern social-capitalism. (Yet standard economic theory continues to present the productive economy as a ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Narrow Vision: Subsidised Cars and Street Immunity" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/05/27/keith-rankin-essay-narrow-vision-subsidised-cars-and-street-immunity/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Narrow Vision: Subsidised Cars and Street Immunity">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
May 26, 2022
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Many of the reported counts of Covid19 cases and deaths now better reflect reporting variations rather than actual health data. These charts indicate the new stories that are increasingly falling under the international media radar. I show both the ‘bigger countries’ (with populations of more than half a million), and ‘all ... <a title="Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19 Country Update: Week ending 22 May 2022" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/05/26/keith-rankin-chart-analysis-covid19-country-update-week-ending-22-may-2022/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19 Country Update: Week ending 22 May 2022">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
May 20, 2022
Analysis by Keith Rankin. We know that New Zealand has one of the world’s lowest mortality outcomes, so far, in the Covid19 pandemic. (So has North Korea.) It’s still far too early to access the costs incurred – loss of utility enjoyed by actual and ‘would-have-been’ New Zealand residents – and is also too early ... <a title="Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19: New Zealand deaths coming into winter 2022" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/05/20/keith-rankin-chart-analysis-covid19-new-zealand-deaths-coming-into-winter-2022/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19: New Zealand deaths coming into winter 2022">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
May 13, 2022
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Modern ‘western’ governments are known as ‘liberal democracies’. While each political party in a liberal democracy has a ‘policy agenda’ which it would like to implement, only single-party governments have a realistic opportunity to fully implement their agenda; and they typically need multiple terms of single party (or near single party) ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Liberal Democracy in the new neonationalist era: The Three ‘O’s" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/05/13/keith-rankin-essay-liberal-democracy-in-the-new-neonationalist-era-the-three-os/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Liberal Democracy in the new neonationalist era: The Three ‘O’s">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
May 6, 2022
Analysis by Keith Rankin. The countries shown here have rates of Covid19 mortality comparable with each other, and – with one exception – have recent ‘excess deaths’ data. We should note that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has just released its world Covid19 mortality estimates for the pandemic so far, suggesting a death toll ‘from’ ... <a title="Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19: Deaths from March 2021 in Comparable Countries" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/05/06/keith-rankin-chart-analysis-covid19-deaths-from-march-2021-in-comparable-countries/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19: Deaths from March 2021 in Comparable Countries">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
May 4, 2022
Essay by Keith Rankin. There is more than one useful perspective on the present Russian war in Ukraine. None of these put the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin’s Russian war machine in anything other than an egregious light; Mr Putin is a geopolitical warrior of the worst order. He believes that he is waging a war ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Secession tribulations, and the United States’ Civil War" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/05/04/keith-rankin-essay-secession-tribulations-and-the-united-states-civil-war/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Secession tribulations, and the United States’ Civil War">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
April 21, 2022
Analysis by Keith Rankin. The new (though not unfamiliar to older New Zealanders) crisis of 2022 (and most likely beyond) has become, alternatively, a ‘cost of living’ or an ‘inflation’ crisis. The public discussion treats these two ‘enemies of the people’ as one and the same thing. But they are not. Indeed such conflation is ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Problem of Price Increases: ‘Cost of Living’ versus ‘Inflation’" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/04/21/keith-rankin-essay-problem-of-price-increases-cost-of-living-versus-inflation/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Problem of Price Increases: ‘Cost of Living’ versus ‘Inflation’">Read more</a>
