presidente20's comments

Those numbers are wildly optimistic. I would like to see which studies you are quoting so I can review them.

Do you have a source for those numbers?

Not hypothetical. This is actively being discussed in several countries. Relevant because vaccine passports make even less sense if the vaccines don't work.

There's a good chance that the AZ and Sinopharm vaccines don't work as well.

>It's biology folks? Read up about philosophy of science. Science has to be subjected to scrutiny and stand the test of time before we can be confident. Covid jab needs more time.

I think that's a false dichotomy. You're saying the success of vaccine A implies success of vaccine B? That because some people wrongly argued against vaccine A, I can't argue against vaccine B (even at such an early point)?

This is exactly the point. We have decades of evidence for most vaccines and you only need them infrequently. That's a world away from a 6m old vaccine that hasn't been through the normal approval process.

The infection rates for Covid and flu are in the same ballpark so the infection rate is basically irrelevant. So Covid to flu comparison is more like apples to apples. https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m3883/rr

So the earth is 4.5 billion years old and the BBC think 135 years is a suitable sample size?

Handed down. The austerity has been a condition of the bailouts from the ECB & IMF. The Greeks even voted against the terms in a referendum which was immediately overturned. In Italy the EU even went to the lengths of appointing their own man to oversee the terms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Monti#Prime_Minister_of_...

Fair point but I think the problem is that the brain drain is exacerbating the other structural problems in the eurozone.

Spot on.

I think that's an overly conspiratorial view. I agree with your analysis in part but I don't think the EU is doing these things deliberately to undermine, it's more that it's their philosophy (which IMO is counter to the interests of the average european).

No it wasn't. The point of the euro was mainly political - a step towards a single European state. Economically the benefits are reduced transaction costs and reduced currency risk between countries within the single market.

Not true. There are a number of important differences. The US gradually merged into a single currency over a long period of time. As a nation the states have a sufficiently integrated fiscal policy such that budget redistribution is possible. Furthermore the US has a common language and genuinely frictionless trade between states developed over many years. The Eurozone is a bunch of homogeneous economies glued together without fiscal integration or adequate redistribution mechanisms.

But that's rational isn't it? The expected outcome is much lower for someone from a working class background so play safe. You won't have access to connections or sound advice from mentors in the know. You're less likely to be going to a top school where you could 'get away with' a humanities degree.

Agree that I'd like to see more working class kids being ambitious and going for top schools, moving away from home etc but at least play safe and go for something with job prospects.

Good point. The one thing in the article I agreed with is that it's better to do a traditional humanities subject rather than a vocational one (like communications, operations management, business operations). The latter seem to narrow and subject to fashion.

Great point. I think there are some subtle things about Maths in particular and science in general that make it more educational. One is learning to accept and understand things that are at first counter-intuitive. When solving Maths problems I seem to recall that it was often easy to fool myself into a wrong solution due to faulty intuition. Maths trains you to distrust it, dig into problems, use logic and check/test your solution. Furthermore the hard feedback you get helps all the above. Discussing something or writing an essay on a topic which doesn't have a defined answer doesn't seem like a great educational experience even though the activity itself is valuable.

The article contains a number of flaws IMO. Its argument seems to be:

1. Graduates with any degree earn more money and have less unemployment. No doubt true, but how do you discount selection bias here? Given that it's on average the smarter / more diligent part of the population that goes to university a better question would be what's the value add of university (and then break down by faculty / degree)? Maybe their employment rate is higher due to the necessity of having to pay off their tuition fees :)

2. Some humanities people are successful. No doubt. Plenty of smart motivated folks take humanities subjects so it's not surprising that some of them are successful but I'd like to see some data on expected return across the board rather than cherry picked examples. Wildly successful people might be outliers anyway. Also if you're from a wealthy background you could probably do anything and still have a shot at being a CEO.

3. Most examples of jobs for humanities graduates given in the article are not really graduate jobs, e.g. after sales support for Uber (do you really need a degree for that?). Management roles perhaps, but the article doesn't delve into those jobs, presumably there was some sort of vocational experience involved before they were managers?

4. Critical thinking skills. I'm not convinced that humanities degrees do lead to better critical thinking skills. I am biased but it seems to me Maths and hard science subjects would hone your critical thinking much more (isolating variables, logic, understanding complex material) and it's not like Science grads don't read books on other subjects. The author demonstrates a complete lack of critical thinking skills IMO.

5. Understanding of statistics seems like a pretty valuable tool to bring to most occupations and it would be nice if journalists had that and I doubt you get that from Humanities.

6. Empathy? Seriously? You need a degree to develop empathy?

It's surprising that the BBC think it's surprising.