COVID and Culture: Countries with Strict Social Norms Fare Better
- Did the harsh penalties work? It appears they had an effect in most places, but not in all. Perhaps some countries didn't have the ability or willpower to enforce them. Whatever the reason, they certainly didn't work everywhere. Note the following graph (based on data from the European CDC) which includes the major countries of Western Europe. The UK and Spain are doing just as poorly as the U.S.

If strong-arming your countrymen into following lockdowns doesn't work, what does? New research in The Lancet Planetary Health suggests culture might. Led by Dr. Michele Gelfand, the team examined the relationship between what they call "cultural tightness" -- by which they mean countries that have strict social norms -- and the severity of COVID. Cultural tightness/looseness is obviously a subjective quality, but the authors utilized data from a system that tried to quantify it using statements like, "There are very clear expectations for how people should act in most situations." Using this method and plotting COVID cases and deaths as a function of cultural tightness, the authors found that countries with "loose" social norms had five times as many COVID cases and more than 8.5 times as many COVID deaths as countries with stricter social standards.

If the authors are correct -- and their results certainly confirm what many of us suspected -- it suggests that the best way to fight a pandemic is to have a culturally tight society, which likely leads to more cooperation. But, of course, there are major downsides to a culture with strict social norms. These cultures tend not to be particularly friendly to women or various minorities. So while we lament the lack of cooperation and cultural tightness in Western civilization that allows a virus to spread, we can simultaneously celebrate the cultural looseness and subsequent entrepreneurial spirit that allows a cure to be discovered. –

Daily new confirmed Covid-19 cases per million

No, COVID mRNA Vaccine Won't Cause Alzheimer's or Prion Disease
- The COVID pandemic has made this painfully clear. Among the most pernicious myths is one that claims the mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are a form of genetic engineering, a lie that is being perpetuated by none other than fraud doctor Andrew Wakefield.

Now, a new myth has reared its ugly head. A paper written by a well-known anti-vaxxer named J. Bart Classen and published in a scientific journal -- if we can even call it that (because it's not indexed in PubMed) -- claims that the mRNA vaccines that target coronavirus could cause prion diseases like Alzheimer's. It's total garbage. –

- There's no actual evidence. Yet, from that, he concludes that the vaccine may be worse than the disease. For good measure, he mentions that the coronavirus and the mRNA vaccines both might be bioweapons released by the U.S. government. Hopefully, he notified Fox Mulder. –