Morning roundup

The closing of the browser tabs brings a few worthies:

• Andrew Gelman goes through the paper that had claimed to show that cities with a stronger response to the 1919 flu had subsequently stronger economic growth - it looks rather like the data doesn't show much.
• What do you do if you're convinced that the rest of the world is getting something important seriously wrong and that shouting about it now won't do much? Put it up in hashed form so you can counter "nobody could have known" later.
• I have heard two separate and independent accounts of very bad use of the government's requisitioning powers. I've put out OIA requests about the use of those requisitioning powers to Civil Defence, MoH, and the DHBs. I'll let you know what I hear back. 
• From the "things very likely to be inframarginal" file - Covid-19 may also be present in semen, so it could maybe also be sexually transmitted. 
• Google's Sidewalk Labs gives up on Toronto because of the NIMBYs. If the government's looking at expedited RMA processes for big and interesting projects, well, Google has a big and interesting project.
• Kate MacNamara breaks a few illusions about NZ's pandemic response for a Canadian audience.
• Physicists have come up with a new solution to Xeno's paradox. I tend to prefer the brute force solution: walk to the end of the room, notice it didn't take infinite time, then get back to work. 
• Global trade has a very long history. The pandemic brings a protectionist turn, but the gains from trade are too big to ignore for long.