A very curious paper (the original can be accessed here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3955345). This phrase is very odd: "...lower vaccination rates and those voting for Brexit, was easily the most statistically significant explanatory variable."It's odd, because Phalippou and Wu seem inexcusably to have muddled independent and dependent variables. Of the two, a lower vaccination rate could obviously be seen as a direct (and causative) indicator leading to death (ie, it is an independent variable), whereas the level of Brexit voting is not, because it's a dependent variable - dependent on the factors that lead to it. Volumes of research since the referendum have shown that the level of education was the primary indicator for voting for Brexit. The authors did include the level of education in their regressions but, and this is the odd thing, it didn't emerge as significant.Or, to put it more bluntly, and ignoring the flat earthers who are currently pestering this site, not having the vaccine is a pretty direct indicator for death from Covid, whilst voting for Brexit isn't in itself the cause of anything (other than the mayhem caused by the vote, that is, but that's a different issue).
Richard Carter ● 1239d