Seeking the Principles of Power and Danger

I recently starting posting to my Flickr account , which I've had for the longest time but never really used. Above is something I posted.

I have a new paper with  Ang Li  ( reseachgate here ) just published in  Preventive Medicine  on the impact of  No Jab, No Pay   and  No Jab, No Play  on vaccine coverage rates. We found that these policies, which removed non-medical exemptions from government benefits and childcare enrolments, were occasioned by an increase in vaccination coverage across states between 2-4% for one-year olds, 1-1.5% for two-year olds, and 1-3.5% for five-year-olds. We also found that the effect of the policy differed significantly depending on characteristics of the area. Areas that were characterised by either: lower socio-economic status, lower median income, more Family Tax Benefit recipients, or higher pre-intervention coverage had greater responsiveness to the policy changes. Variation in response to the policy changes across areas suggest the effect was largely led by lower-socioeconomic status parents who were nudged towards full vaccination, ...

I have a new paper with  Ang Li  ( reseachgate here ) just published in  Annals of Epidemiology   looking at the effects of graduating during economic downturns on mental health . We found that graduating during a time of increased unemployment is not good for either short-term mental health or long-term mental health. The scarring effect is particularly pronounced for men, people who don't receive government payments, and people with only vocational or secondary qualification. People with higher education seem to do better and graduating during downturns had less of a lasting effect. Title : Effects of graduating during economic downturns on mental health  Abstract Purpose This study examined the effects of economic downturns at the time of graduation on short-term and long-term mental health of graduates. Methods Using a large longitudinal dataset whose respondents graduated from their highest level of education between 2001 and 2018 in Australia, the study in...

. @ANGLIhere and my paper "Vaccine sentiments and under-vaccination" is now out about in the world and online for everyone to see: https://t.co/bEn4HBE75w — Mathew Toll (@MGHToll) November 18, 2020 New paper out co-authored with  Ang Li  on the issue of vaccine hesitancy and under-vaccination that looks at the factors associated with vaccine attitudes (very strongly agree with vaccines to very strongly disagree with vaccines) and vaccine behaviours around the MMR vaccine (full dosage, partial dosage, no dosage).  And the consistency between factors associated with attitudes and behaviours, showing when practical barriers impede the translation of positive vaccine attitudes into full uptake.  Title: “ Vaccinesentiments and under-vaccination: Attitudes and behaviour around Measles,Mumps, and Rubella vaccine (MMR) in an Australian cohort ” Abstract:  Objective The study aimed to examine the consistency in factors associated with attit...

A short  Goodreads Review of Sun and Steel  by Yukio Mishima that I wrote a little while ago. I have to say – I do not quite get the adoration that people have for this book on YouTube. People talk about it as a kind of masculine self-help book about mastering the “discipline of the steel”, weightlifting and weapons, and embracing your physical being and physical experience. The book does detail Mishima's journey to leave his room and transform himself through lifting steel, running, and fencing. Flirtations with the military, etc. Yet it isnt simply that, as the subtitle suggests "Art, Action and Ritual Death", it presents a worldview on relationship between word (spirit) and action (body) and their reconciliation in death. One of the notions that I was sympathetic to is that there is a problem of overindulging in introspection and the idea that the ‘surface’ of things might contain its own kind of depths (of experience) and that the ‘depth’ within oneself are a series ...

This post is a review I wrote of  Salvatore Babones 's book 'The New Authoritarianism'  for Good reads  a couple of years ago. I intended to write an extended post on the book for the blog but never did. So here is the original review: Babones offers an account of a “new authoritarianism”: an illiberal transformation of liberalism from the classical philosophy of individual freedom to a rights-based discourse that ‘empowers’ people on their behalf and removes rights from the realm of democratic contestation. This transformation of liberalism is underpinned by the authority (or rather tyranny in Babones's framing) of a new liberal expert class of professionals and managers that control liberal institutions, nationally and globally, and filter the range of policy options presented to the voting population. This is an intriguing thesis – elements of the argument have an logic that we have heard before. Garrett Hardin suggested that human right framework...

Society is underpinned by standards and expectations as to what social worlds should resemble and operate. But when the very foundations of that world are rocky and open to misuse and abuse, the society is left in a destabilized position. What remains is the question of how these worlds are tolerated in this destabilized form? Can they continue indefinitely in such a way? This place of discomfort is the abject, that which is contrary to everyday harmony. Often the locus of the abject can be expressed in violence. In the case of the Holocaust the abject impacted the individual Jewish people and the wider community of Germany and the world. The meaning that was derived to spark the violence and the meaning that remains are in stark contrast. Prior to the Holocaust the Jewish people were not abject to their community, but with a little guidance and propaganda they were led to a mass hysteria that the world hopes to never witness again. During Europe’s enlightened period the annihi...