This morning I woke to find Geneva covered in a blanket of snow, and still snowing. Here are a few photos from my walk with the dog not too far from home.
Snowstorm in Geneva
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Vaccination is highly protective against Covid-19
As in Europe, the US is currently experiencing a surge in Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations driven by transmission among the unvaccinated. Two days ago, health officials in Vermont noted that 90% of Covid cases in Intensive Care Units are unvaccinated. Currently 74% of the Vermont population is fully vaccinated. This information allows us to do a simple calculation using only high school algebra to estimate the difference in risk of severe Covid infection among vaccinated compared to unvaccinated.
Continue readingGlobal, regional and country-level trends in religiosity and atheism: an update
In two earlier posts (here and here), I examined global, regional and country-level trends in religious belief and practice, and the prevalence of atheism. The analysis was based on data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and the European Values Study (EVS), covering the period 1981 to 2020. Earlier this year, I discovered that the World Values Survey dataset has been updated. Some data collected using a mobile phone app in the most recent US survey was incorrectly coded and this mainly affected the religiosity categories. Comparison of the US prevalences for religiosity show that the coding errors resulted in an overestimate of the atheist and non-religious categories as shown in the following table:
Comparison of religiosity prevalence estimates
for USA in year 2020
I have now updated the previous analyses using the 2021 release of the combined data for the WVS and EVS in the Integrated Values Surveys (IVS) 1981-2021 [1-3]. In carrying out these updates, I also addressed some definitional issues which have resulted in mostly slight changes to estimates for other countries. The details of the updated analysis are described elsewhere.
Continue readingBooster shots and the current Covid-19 Delta wave
Switzerland is now offering a covid19 booster shot to to the 65+ and at-risk who has had their two covid19 vaccinations at least six months ago. It may soon be extended to all adults. I had my third shot last Thursday with no side effects (not even a localized sore spot) and was surprised to receive a Pfizer booster after being fully vaccinated earlier this year with the Moderna vaccine. The mRNA in both vaccines encode the same S-2P protein which differs from the covid19 spike protein by two amino acids only. These stabilize the spike protein so that it can train the immune system before it enters the host cell. I’ve been reading up on booster shots and will try to provide a brief summary below. If you want citations and more detail on the studies, see my professional blog here.
A large study of 1.14 million Israeli adults, aged 60 years and over who had received two Pfizer doses at least 5 months earlier, found that a third shot reduces the risk of infection by the dominant Delta variant by a factor of 11 compared to fully vaccinated people who have had two shots. Receiving a different vaccine type as I did, further reduces the risk by around 30% or more. The booster shot lowers the risk of severe illness even more, by a factor of around 20 compared to those who have had two shots only.
Continue readingA fourth Covid-19 wave hits Europe and Switzerland has a second referendum to end vaccine certificate requirements
Covid-19 cases rose by 7% and deaths by 10% over the last week in Europe, as it enters a fourth (or fifth) wave and currently accounts for about two-thirds of infections reported globally. Belgium and the Netherlands, which have fully vaccinated 73-74% of their populations, have the highest new case rates in Western Europe, almost double those of Britain. The fully vaccinated rate is Switzerland is 64%, higher than the USA at 57% but lower than Australia now at 69%.
Some mushrooms found in the woods of the Netherlands
I have just returned from a week in the Netherlands. I spent five days at a retreat in the woods of Lage Vuursche, situated south of Amsterdam not too far from Utrecht. Wandering in the woods, I came across some beautiful mushrooms and fungi. I had not brought a camera on this trip, but took these photos using my phone.
Competing at the SDFPF Powerlifting Championship 2021
Last weekend, I competed at the Swiss Drug Free Powerlifting Championship 2021, held in Basel on 25 September. This was my first national powerlifting competition since competing in the last SDFPF Championship in February 2019. The 2020 Championship was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
During the pandemic I managed to lose around 10 kg bodyweight and competed this year in the 82.5 – 90 kg category at a body weight of 87.3 kg, almost 10 kg lighter than my weight of 96.5 kg in 2019. Despite my efforts to improve my squat and ensure that I squatted below parallel, I discovered by filming my squats in the week leading up to competition that I was only getting clearly below parallel around 50% of the time.
I opened my squat attempts conservatively at 90 kg, and succeeded in getting a below-parallel valid lift. However, I was disappointed to fail the next two attempts at 100 kg with inadequate depth.
For the other two lifts, I exceeded my anticipated results with a 100 kg bench press and 190 kg deadlift. These were both new Swiss records for the under 90 kg Master M6 age category (65-69 years), as was my powerlifting total of 380 kg. Below are short videos of the deadlift and bench press.
Afghanistan, the war on terror and the war on drugs
Watching scenes from Kabul airport recently felt like déjà vu for me. The Vietnam War ended in eerily similar scenes. I’ve been astonished to read more than one article that has described the events in Afghanistan as an unprecedented military defeat for the USA, or as a sign that the era of neoliberal intervention in foreign countries was over. If the USA did not learn anything from Vietnam, why would we assume it will this time when facts and evidence are even less valued than in the past. Several commentators have noted the intersection of the US war on terror and the war on drugs in Afghanistan. I have been engaged for nearly 20 years now in work to update global estimates of conflict deaths and global estimates of deaths attributable to drug use. I was curious to look a little more closely at relevant statistics.
Continue readingConquest of the Wall of Death
Not far down the corridor from my office in WHO was a floor-to-ceiling bronze relief sculpture showing the struggle of Man against Death. It was a gift to WHO from the Vatican in 1966, and was located very appropriately, given that a major focus of my unit was to monitor trends and improvements in death rates and their causes.
The trap bar deadlift
The conventional deadlift is done using a standard 20 kg barbell in powerlifting. Trap bars have a hexagonal shape which you stand in (which is why they’re sometimes called “hex bars”) with sleeves on the end that let you load weight, and they have handles on either side that allow you to grip the bar with a neutral grip.
During my 8-week wave cycling program for the squat, I had also been using the trap bar to do some deadlifting once a week during the last half of the program. Prior to that, I was doing Romanian deadlifts at about 60% of my conventional deadlift 1 rep max to work on improving hamstring strength. After I tested my squat 1-rep max, I also decided to see whether I could lift more than my current 1 rep max of 210 kg. The video below shows me setting a new personal best at 220 kg, and I felt I still had a little more in the tank.
Mountains and rivers 