Give Children Votes

Demeny voting is giving children votes to be used by their parents, until the children reach voting age. The interests of children are not always represented well in democracies and giving their interest some weight might lead to better policies.

Older people vote more often. And thus their policy preferences are more likely to be followed than those held by young people. No one under 18 votes so their policy preferences get very little attention.

You could argue that because children know so little and don't work we should not get their opinion on policies. Giving their votes to their parents gets away from this objection though. 

But why would you think parents know what policies are best for their children? We trust parents to pick food, bedtime, schools, clothes etc for children and in comparison to them picking a political candidate occasionally is minor. 

If giving children votes would result in more money for schools, less money for pensions etc then the people who want less money for schools and more money for pensions will stop it happening. Which means we should argue on the morality of giving them votes not the particular policies that are likely. Women supported alcohol prohibition more than men did. But women's voting was still the right thing to do even if some policy choices they initially supported were wrong.

The Irish birth rate is 1.75 kids per child. Below the replacement rate of 2.1. The extra .1 is because some small number of people won't make it to the age of having kids. No country that has ever dropped below 2.1 replacement level has ever risen back up again. Extra parental leave, free childcare, increase children support, free children medical care and loads of other things have been tried but none seem to have increased birth rate much. And they are all much more expensive than votes for kids.

Needle Phobia and Covid Vaccinations

Between 10-20% of adults are really scared of needles. Anti Vax people are really hard to persuade. But anti needle people might be easier. And a fair number of people claiming to be vaccine skeptics might just be shy to admit a fear of needles is a big factor.

"Avoidance of influenza vaccination because of needle fear occurred in 16% of adult patients"  Soon we will have enough vaccines for all adults but if 10-20% of them do not get vaccinated due to Trypanophobia thats a lot of unnecessary deaths and it makes reaching community immunity levels impossible.

Trypanophobia is classed as a phobia with a known process of medical treatment. The steps to get over it seem to be three types
1. Cognitive behavioural therapy, hypnotherapy and other psychological techniques 

2. Nice relaxing location. comfy seats etc for where the injections happen.

3. Topical cream to reduce pain on the injection site.

These are described here, here and here.

Tech people think there should be an app for everything. But in this case it might work. A Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) app that gradually helped people get over their fear of needles might really help increase uptake of the vaccine. There are loads of CBT apps out there. If you know a good one that deals with needle phobia please comment.

There will be vaccinations for covid that do not need needles in the medium term. But for the moment getting people over their fear is needed. 

The needle phobia apps I can find I can find are aimed at kids to explain to injections to them. Rather than steps to get adults over a fear of needles.

The vaccinations created and tested in under a year are amazing. And we are going to get a lot more of them soon. Helping people get over the common fear of needles is an important step if we want to get as many people vaccinated as possible.

Road Deaths in 2020

 During the pandemic people drive less. I would expect that to mean fewer deaths caused by driving. But that didn't happen in the US or IReland.

In the US deaths per KM are up significantly

For the first time since 2007, preliminary data from the National Safety Council show that as many as 42,060 people are estimated to have died in motor vehicle crashes in 2020. That marks an 8% increase over 2019 in a year where people drove significantly less frequently because of the pandemic. The preliminary estimated rate of death on the roads last year spiked 24% over the previous 12-month period, despite miles driven dropping 13%. The increase in the rate of death is the highest estimated year-over-year jump that NSC has calculated since 1924 – 96 years.

In Ireland 

In the period January - December 2020 there were 137 fatal collisions resulting in 148 fatalities on Irish roads. This represents eight more fatal collisions and eight more deaths (+6%) compared to provisional Garda data for the full year of 2019

There is an in depth comparison between 2019 and 2020 here but nothing in it jumps out as obviously hugely different to me. It could be the low total number of deaths in Ireland means this was just unlucky. "There were 1,407 fewer serious and minor injury collisions recorded in 2020," This 25% decrease in accidents implies the increase in deaths was unlucky.

But other countries do seem to have reduced deaths. 

The UK does seem to have had the expected decline

There were 1,580 reported road deaths, a decrease of 14% compared to the previous year. There were 131,220 casualties of all severities, a decrease of 16%. The reduction in casualties is broadly in line with the fall in motor vehicle traffic of 14% over the same period

France had the expected reductions

A total of 2,550 people died on the roads of mainland France, a drop of 21.4 percent from 2019...

Overall car deaths fell by more than average in 2020, which the agency said was due to motorists aged over 75 cutting down on trips more than the rest of the population. 

Germany Road Deaths declined as expected

In 2020, 2,724 people died in road traffic accidents in Germany. Based on provisional figures, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) also reports that this was a decline of 322, or 10.6%, on 2019 (3,046 fatalities).

Spain

The number of people dying in 2020 from car accidents fell by 870, or 21%

It looks like most countries did have drops in traffic deaths. The low numbers in Ireland mean that random events change the total more easily. The American increase is still quite strange though.

Rewild Irish Hills

We should not pay to keep sheep on the high hills of Ireland. 

Hill sheep are not very good money earners by themselves. The wool is more expensive to shear than its worth. The sheep have quite a hard life. And their meat is already not worth much. Hill sheep is kept going by subsidies and causes environmental harm. The subsidies are about 10 euro per sheep. The number of sheep increased after 1973 when we joined the EEC. If we paid the farmers not to keep the sheep the hillsides would rewild. Larger trees and bushes would regrow which would absorb carbon.