~NYT on [Emmanual Todd & the Decline of the West](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/09/opinion/emmanuel-todd-decline-west.html)

Thoughts

The US has infant and maternal mortality problems, but is it this bad, or is it just Russia finally catching up?

• The CIA World Fact Book estimates 2023 Russia still behind at 6.6 infant deaths per thousand live births, versus 5.1 for the US. For comparison, it estimates 35 European countries are below 5 per thousand, and the US is on par with Poland.

• In contrast, Macrotrends data says Russia has edged ahead at 4.8, while it rates the US worse at 5.5. (US and RU data here.) That’s in line with Todd’s US number, and they claim to source from the UN World Population Prospects, so I’ll presume some overlap there. I don’t know the sources myself.

But here’s a combined trend using Macrotrend’s data, from 1960-2024 (omitting Russia’s disastrous 1950s). Even this data has the US slowly improving, so the story is Russia catching up.

Possibly relevant: birth rates are similar at 11 & 12 per thousand (Macrotrends).

Either way, Russia is close to the US now, and I’m surprised – my impressions were outdated. But this graph doesn’t seem cause for concern about the US. Comparison to peer democracies might. I’d have to read Todd’s book for the argument.

Other striking thoughts:

A specialist in the anthropology of families, Mr. Todd warns that a lot of the values Americans are currently spreading are less universal than Americans think.

Which thought continues:

In a similar way, during the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s official atheism was a deal-breaker for many people who might otherwise have been well disposed toward Communism.

And despite the US haing ~2.5x Russia’s population (per US Census):

Mr. Todd calculates that the United States produces fewer engineers than Russia does, not just per capita but in absolute numbers.

Though this may reflect his values for what counts as productive (my emphasis):

It is experiencing an “internal brain drain,” as its young people drift from demanding, high-skill, high-value-added occupations to law, finance and various occupations that merely transfer value around the economy and in some cases may even destroy it. (He asks us to consider the ravages of the opioid industry, for instance.)

Good essay by Peter Norton Why we need Strong Towns critiquing a Current Affairs piece by Allison Dean.

I side with Norton here: Dean falls into the trap of demanding ideological purity. If you have to read only one, pick Norton. But after donning your Norton spectacles, read Dean for a solid discussion of points of overlap, reinterpreting critiques as debate about the best way to reach shared goals.

This other response to Dean attempts to add some middle ground to Dean’s Savannah and Flint examples, hinting what a reframed critique might look like. Unfortunately it’s long and meanders, and grinds its own axen.

I suspect Dean is allergic to economic justifications like “wealth” and “prosperity”. But we want our communities to thrive, and valuing prosperity is no more yearning for Dickensian hellscapes than loving community is pining for totalitarian ones.

The wonderful, walkable, wish-I-lived-there communities on Not Just Bikes are thriving, apparently in large part by sensible people-oriented design. More of that please.

(And watch Not Just Bikes for a more approachable take on Strong Towns, and examples of success.)

In a recent newsletter, Jesse Singal notes that recent MAGA gains among Democratic constituencies should prompt progressives to pause and question their own political assumptions & theories:

It is quite a string of anomalies. A scientist would be prompted to look for alternate theories.

Singal suggests part of the problem is essentialism:

…activists and others like to talk and write about race in the deeply essentialist and condescending and tokenizing way… It’s everywhere, and it has absolutely exploded during the Trump years.

…both right-wing racists and left-of-center social justice types, [tend] to flatten groups of hundreds of millions of people into borderline useless categories, and to then pretend they share some sort of essence…

The irony.

~~~

Aside: I’m also reminded of a grad school story from Ruth.

Zeno: …Descartes is being an essentialist here…

Ruth: Wait, no, I think you’re being the essentialist….

_____: I’m sorry, what’s an essentialist?

Zeno: [short pause] It is a derogatory term.

(Yes, we had a philosophy teacher named Zeno. I’m not sure if the subject was actually Descartes.)

Alan Jacobs' Two versions of covid skepticism summarizes a longer piece by Madeleine Kearns. Both are worth reading.

To his quotes I’ll add the core folly Kearns charges both the Covidians and the Skeptics with:

Today it was this 2016 Jacobs piece I found from his tribute to Paul Farmer.

I have at times been in groups of people who know and respect the work of Care Net, but if in those contexts I mention my admiration for the work of Paul Farmer and Partners in Health, I am liable to get some suspicious looks. …

In other groups, people join enthusiastically in my praise for Paul Farmer — but become nervous when I mention my admiration for Care Net. …

And yet both Partners in Health and Care Net are pursuing the Biblical mandate to care for the weakest and most helpless among us. In so many ways they are doing the same work, and even are dedicated to the same goal — the preservation and healing of the lives of people made in the image of God. Why must we see them in opposition to each other?

Not just “if you write, give a damn”, but about us. This is about community and relationships. She’s tempted to outrage, but she lives there, and “outrage is where relationships go to die.”

Outrage doesn’t get curious about why. It mutes the Principle of Charity. It often reacts to imagined motive more than act. Witness Colin Kaepernick taking a knee.

To be sure, there is plenty of anti-Semitism about, and Maus is charismatic megafauna, worthy of defense. But,

The meeting minutes suggest that their objections to Art Spiegelman’s _Maus_ series had less to do with the subject matter and more to do with a purity narrative _that never seems to die_, no matter the zip code.

Around here, antisemitism tends to take far more flagrant forms,

The minutes show a board mostly committed to teaching the Holocaust, but deeply uncomfortable making main unit text contain, as Renki summarizes, “profanity, sexuality, violence and… a suicide scene.” They wanted to just fully redact eight words and an image, but were advised that might exceed “fair use”.

That’s like restricting Alice in Wonderland for promoting poison, but as Renki notes, purity culture is universal: my demographic doesn’t mind literary profanity, but we have put two prize-winning classics on the Top 10 Banned Books list, for violating other norms.

Back to Kimball Coe:

This seems so very Catholic:

Also worth reading, Will Wheaton’s response to a question about Joss Whedon.

Watching Sydney’s Delta cases repeat the early-phase exponential growth of Melbourne, ADSEI’s Linda McIver asks:

Would our collective understanding of covid have been different if we were all more data literate?

Almost certainly, and I’m all for it. But would that avoid

watching Sydney try all of the “can we avoid really seriously locking down” strategies that we know failed us, … like a cinema audience shouting at the screen,

Not necessarily. Probably not, even, but that’s OK. It would still be a huge step forward to acknowledge the data and decide based on costs, values, and uncertainties. I’m fine with Sydney hypothetically saying,

I might be more (or less) cautious. I might care more (or less) about the various tradeoffs. I might make a better (or worse) decision were I in charge. That’s Okay. Even with perfect information, values differ.

It’s even fine to be skeptical of data that doesn’t fit my preferred theory. Sometimes Einstein’s right and the data is wrong.

What’s not okay is denying or ignoring the data just because I don’t like the cost of the implied action. Or, funding decades-long FUD campaigns for the same reason.

PS: Here is Linda’s shout suggesting that (only) stage-4 lockdown suppressed Delta:

The July 5 Lancet letter reaffirms the authors' earlier skeptical view of LabLeak. They cited some new studies and some older pieces in favor of Zoonosis. Summary of those sources below. (This post was originally a CSET-Foretell comment.)

(Limitation: I’m summarizing expert arguments - I can evaluate arguments and statistics, but I have to rely on experts for the core biology. )

Cell July 9: Four novel SARS-CoV-2-related viruses sequenced from samples; RpYN06 is now second after RaTG13, and closest in most of the genome, but farther in spike protein. Also, eco models suggest broad range for bats in Asia, despite most samples coming from a small area of Yunnan. The upshot is that moderate looking found more related strains, implying there are plenty more out there. Also, a wider range for bats suggests there may be populations closer to Wuhan, or to its farm suppliers.

May 12 Virological post by RF Garry: Thinks WHO report has new data favoring zoonotic, namely that the 47 Huanan market cases were all Lineage B, and closely-related consistent with a super-spreader; however, at least some of the 38 other-market cases were Lineage A. Both lineages spread from Wuhan out. Zoonosis posits Lineage A diverged into Lineage B at a wildlife farm or during transport, and both spread to different markets/humans. LabLeak posits Lineage A in the lab, diverging either there or during/after escape. Garry thinks it’s harder to account for different strains specifically in different markets. And the linking of early cases to the markets, just like the earlier SARS-CoV. A responder argues for direct bat-to-human transfer. Another argues that cryptic human spread, only noticed after market super-spread events, renders the data compatible with either theory.

Older (Feb) Nature: Sequenced 5 Thai bats; Bats in colony with RmYN02 have neutralizing antibodies for SARS-CoV-2. Extends geog. distribution of related CoVs to 4800km.

June Nature Explainer: tries to sort un/known. “Most scientists” favor zoonosis, but LL “has not been ruled out”. “Most emerging infectious diseases begin with a spillover from nature” and “not yet any substantial evidence for a lab leak”. Bats are known carriers and RATG13 tags them, but 96% isn’t close enough - a closer relative remains unknown. “Although lab leaks have never caused an epidemic, they have resulted in small outbreaks”. [I sense specious reasoning there from small sample, but to their credit they point out there have been similar escapes that got contained.] They then consider five args for LL: (1) why no host found yet? (2) Coincidence first found next to WIV? (3) Unusual genetic features signal engineering (4) Spreads too well among humans. (5) Samples from the “death mine” bats at WIV may be the source. In each case they argue this might not favor LL, or not much. Mostly decent replies, moving the likelihood ratio of these closer to 1.0, which means 0 evidence either way.

Justin Ling’s piece in FP: I’m not a fan. As I’ve argued elsewhere, it’s uneven at best. Citing it almost count agains them. Still, mixed in with a good dose of straw-man emotional arguments, Ling rallies in the last 1/3 to raise some good points. But really just read the Nature Explainer.

I think collectively the sources they cite do support their position, or more specifically, they weaken some of the arguments for LabLeak by showing we might expect that evidence even under Zoonosis. The argument summaries:

Pro-Z: (a) Zoonosis has a solid portfolio; (b) There’s way more bats out there than first supposed; (c) There’s way more viruses in them bats; (d) Implicit, but there’s way more bush meat too;

Anti-LL: Key args for LabLeak are almost as likely under zoonosis. Although not mentioned here, that would, alas, include China’s squirreliness.

Based on these I revised my LL forecast from 67% ➛ 61%. The authors put it somewhere below 50%, probably below 10%. Fauci said “very, very, very, very remote possibility”. That seems at most 1:1000, as “remote” is normally <5%. Foretell and Metaculus are about 33%, so I may be too high, but I think we discounted LL too much early on.

Lates NAS newsletter quotes their outgoing editor, Daniel Saarewitz, from 25 years ago:

“The resulting disaffection can fuel social movements that are antagonistic to science and technology.”

Arnold Kling: 2021 book titles show epistemological crisis.

This may fit with a historical pattern. The barbarians sack the city, and the carriers of the dying culture repair to their basements to write.

Though some of this goes back at least to Paul Meehl.

HTT: Bob Horn. Again.

Michele Norris describes how Germany faces its Nazi past, as a model for how America could face slavery. It turns out they have a long word for it, Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung,

an abstract, polysyllabic way of saying, ‘We have to do something about the Nazis.’

V24g took awhile to get started, and it’s messy and imperfect, but it’s real. Norris lists many examples. One:

Cadets training to become police officers in Berlin take 2½ years of training that includes Holocaust history and a field trip to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Her source:

“[P]olice fatally shot 11 people and injured 34 while on duty in 2018, according to statistics compiled by the German Police Academy in Münster.

… “In Minnesota alone, where Mr. Floyd was killed, police fatally shot 13 people.”

And on the 40th anniversary of the end of WW2, West German President von Weizsäcker, son of a chief Nazi diplomat, said:

We need to look truth straight in the eye. …anyone who closes his eyes to the past is blind to the present. Whoever refuses to remember the inhumanity is prone to new risk of infection.

In a long post on sustained irrationality in the markets, Vitalik Buterin describes his experience wading into to 2020 election prediction markets:

I decided to make an experiment on the blockchain that I helped to create: I bought $2,000 worth of NTRUMP (tokens that pay $1 if Trump loses) on Augur. Little did I know then that my position would eventually increase to $308,249, earning me a profit of over $56,803, and that I would make all of these remaining bets, against willing counterparties, after Trump had already lost the election. What would transpire over the next two months would prove to be a fascinating case study in social psychology, expertise, arbitrage, and the limits of market efficiency, with important ramifications to anyone who is deeply interested in the possibilities of economic institution design.

There’s a skippable technical section. His take-home is that intellectual underconfidence is a big part of why these markets can stay so wrong for so long.

But nevertheless it seems to me more true than ever that, as goes the famous Yeats quote, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

Yesterday I commented on a cousin’s post sharing a claim about 9 reported child vaccine deaths. I looked up each death in VAERS and noted two were actually gunshot wounds, 3-5 were special cases, so only 2-4 were notably concerning. I suspect this didn’t help: she quickly deleted my comment.

David Broniatowski says I shouldn’t be surprised. He argues that both debunking and censorship are counterproductive. Remember,

Russian Twitter “troll” accounts weaponized demeaning provaccine messages as frequently as vaccine refual narratives when conducting a broad campaign to promote discord in American society.

What to do instead? The hard work of opening “collaborations with public health partners”, and especially with physicians, who are generally trusted. This is of course harder. And I’m not a physician so that’s out.

Open letter from David Broniatowski:

The vaccine rollout in the USA has slowed driven, in part, by the fact that the most eager and confident citizens have now been vaccinated. The hurdle now is no longer one of vaccine supply, but rather, demand. In two new editorials, and a podcast, all in the American Journal of Public Health, I make the case that:

1. Debunking misinformation is insufficient to convince hesitant people to vaccinate. Rather, we must listen to their concerns and communicate the gist of vaccination in a manner that accords with their values.

2. Blanket removal of online content by Facebook, Twitter, and Google/YouTube may be counterproductive, driving hesitant people to seek out information on alternative platforms. On the other hand, social media platforms are excellent tools for microtargeting and can help public health agents to reach people who are the most hesitant. We can use social media, in combination, with traditional methods, to build relationships with the most hesitant people and increase their likelihood of vaccinating.

Together, these strategies can help us cross the threshold of herd immunity to end the pandemic.

Podcast is here. [<- Link may not render, but it works. -ct]

Surprisingly, fact-checking prompted Iran’s Supreme Leader to retract his mistaken claim about Iran’s economy.

It’s probably the first time in the past three decades that Ayatolla Khamenei admitted to a mistake and corrected himself.

A glimmer of hope in a social media world that treats fact-checking as evidence for the false claim. (Though before the retraction, state media photoshopped an infographic to try to bolster the claim.)

So…

Anyone know if Biden has corrected any of his (relatively rare) 4-Pinnochio claims from his first 100 days? [List.]

Or the former US President on his 3,294 unique 4-Pinnochio claims, 94 from the first 100 days? [Full dataset here].

Sullivan on SAT

Killing the SAT Means Hurting Minorities

While I’m thinking of Sullivan, this from his newsletter, regarding a conversation on his podcast:

When you regard debate itself as a form of white supremacy, you tend not to be very good at it.

Psychic AI

FollowTheArgument on Inferring Political Orientation From a Single Picture reviews a recent paper showing algorithms can do this an astonishing 70% of the time, beating humans (55%) and a 100-item personality inventory (66%).

It’s still possible it’s latched onto some irrelevant or fragile feature set, but (a) they cropped close to the face, (b) they controlled for age/sex/race, (c) they cross-validated, and (d) they tested models from facebook on photos from other sites, and verce visa. Given the 2,048 features extracted by the facial image classifier, even regression did as well.

It seems ~60% is easily-named transient features like head-tilt, facial expression, etc. Leaving the rest as-yet-unnamed.

It’s tempting to go to physiognomy, but consider the following things humans do specifically to signal their affiliations:

• Makeup amount and style
• Beard type
• Earrings, other jewelry
• Hair style

What’s fascinating is how poorly humans do. But then, that result might be very different if the subjects were trained cold-readers.

Republicans embracing “class”

FTA also covers Scott Alexander’s Modes Proposal. Good read.

Muse of Seuss

I’ve been musing about all the Seussing. Social media discussions, and reading the spectrum on Flip Side (recommended).

I’m not especially qualified, but it seems to me:

• Liberals are right the board’s decision probably isn’t cancellation. (It depends on motivation, which we’re likely to get wrong.)
• But eBay’s action is cancellation. It’s illiberal, and wrong. It’s also downright silly given what eBay still sells.
• Conservatives make a strong case that most of the alleged offenses really weren’t – see Cathy Young’s take for why anyone thought so. If I Ran the Zoo being a notable exception.

Worth reading in entirety, Alan Jacobs reflects on an essay by Douthat:

Such a system, predictably, was terrible at generating the kind of outward-facing, evangelistic conservatives who had made the Reagan revolution possible.

He ends by saying Antonin Scalia was the sole survivor of the Old Republic, making Amy Coney Barret the Last Jedi.

(OK, Douthat doesn’t use Star Wars. But Sunstein did. I just blended them.)

Where Douthat muses on Trump’s loss, Ian Leslie reflected on Biden’s victory over both Sanders and Trump:

It's worth spending a bit of time on what it means to be moderate.

Turns out Leslie has a new book, Conflicted:

Disagreement is the best way of thinking we have. It weeds out weak arguments, improves decision-making, leads to new ideas, and, counter-intuitively, brings us closer to one another. But only if we do it well - and right now, we’re doing it terribly.

Looking forward to it. Mercier & Sperber demonstrated that disagreement is how groups think, and that under the right conditions, they vastly outthink people.

For some gentle advice on How to Think, try Alan Jacobs' book by that name. We all cover the philosophy & cognitive science. Jacobs tackles the human component:

[We describe] argument as war ... because in many arguments there truly is something to be lost, and most often what's under threat is social affiliation. [My bold.]

What to do?

6. Gravitate, as best you can, in every way you can, toward people who seem to value genuine community and can handle disagreement with equanimity.

January 6 moved Randy Pherson at Globalytica to ask if there is an active insurrectionist movement in the US.

Before clicking, at least quickly decide whether you would rate these as High, Medium, or Low (image from his post):

Then click to see ratings from a dozen of Pherson’s colleagues - probably professional or retired analysts.

Just re-found this @ayjay essay in an old tab.

The question I would ask churches that are re-opening without masks or distancing, but with lots of congregational singing, is: How do you think infectious disease works, exactly? How do you think COVID–19 is transmitted? What’s the theory you’re operating on?

I still know people using an incoherent mix of, well, all of these:

• There is no real pandemic.
• It’s a Chinese bio-weapon.
• Masks (etc.) don’t work.
• There’s easy and effective treatments.

Sam Rocha, In America Magazine

This was a sobering take on possible downsides of Universal Basic Income. HTT Bryan Caplan.

A friend notes that the US has a long of equating vaccines and public health with commie conspiracies. This from 1955, citing US Rep. Clare Hoffman.

What do today’s anti-vaxxers think of the polio vaccine?

~ ~ ~

Among the saner anti-vax objections is the observation that any prior exposure could lead to an overactive immune response in a later exposure – a leading explanation for the 1918 lethality. The careful objectors say simply, “we don’t know it won’t”. True, though I’d be curious whether their odds are notably different from pro-vaxxers. (Do they both agree we’re x% sure it won’t, and just value that differently, or do they have very different x?)

According to my social media, a popular version of the objection is that something is so wrong with the vaccine that half the vaccinated population dies in 5 years, from overreacting to the common cold, or some variant of “gray goo”. This appears to be as informed as the polio-vax scare above.

A stronger version would be that we recreate 1918, but bigger. Suppose SARS-COV-3 appears in 2048, and has a similar relationship that Spanish flu (1918) had to Russian flu (1889): those who got COV-2 (or its vaccine) have a hyperactive immune response. In a world where we don’t vaccinate now, maybe 1/3 of the population gets COV-2, and so suffers heightened mortality in 2048. In the world where we vaccinate everyone, the whole population faces heightened mortality in 2048.

A great deal turns on “heightened”. Like meteor strikes, the main force comes from an exceedingly rare worst-case event. If it’s worth spending on meteor defense, shouldn’t we “spend” to avoid a vaccine own-goal, however unlikely?

It’s worth remembering some things about 1918:

• The priming seems mostly to have affected those exposed in early development, not universally. Hence the peak mortality at 28 years old.
• Even that mortality was 5-10%, not 90%. (And I’m pretty sure case fatality, so infection mortality would be more like 1-3%.)

So the bookends choice looks more like:

1. Do nothing. COV-2 infects about 1/3 of the planet, and ~12M people die. So, about 10M more than now. COV-3 does something similar, but infection mortality is 1-3% among 28-year-olds, so globally we lose up to 1% of them. (Unless we’re prepared for it, and prevent secondary infections.)

2. Vaccinate. COV-2 stops relatively soon, so maybe 5M total (using Metaculus' forecast for end of 2021.) COV-3 does something similar, but now peak infection mortality among 28-year-olds olds is more like 3-9%, so globally we lose 1-3% of them. (Unless we’re prepared for it.)

Scenario 2 is bleak enough - and you can tweak it to be worse. But in this 1918-specific version, it’s mostly an argument against vaccinating the pregnant and very young. Two groups we already tend to exclude.

But that’s just one scenario. Presumably whatever happens won’t look exactly like 1918. We don’t know what it will look like. But we do know we can probably save 7M lives now by vaccinating. The weight of the “what if” scenarios might be a good argument for limiting vaccination to some degree (just in case), but seem a poor argument against not doing it at all.

Thought exercise: suppose the fastest, cheapest, best way to immunize the population was via GMO corn? I assume it would have no effect on the arguments. But would it shift the battle lines?

[Edit: the thought exercise is not intended as a desirable alternative. It’s here to pump intuition among pro-vax but anti-GMO folks, as the argument outlined above seems similar to anti-GMO arguments. ]

[Edited 2021-02-02 to shorten and include Alexis' suggestion. -crt] [2021-05-23 Updated the CDC “excess death” numbers at the end. tl;dr they went up even more than required. 84,715 for the week of Dec. 26.]

In The Vaccine’s Race Against Time, Andrew Sullivan remembers his experience at the end of the US AIDS epidemic, and reminds us that “plagues … often finish strong.” It’s a good read.

At my church’s weekly service, we used to have general prayers like, “For all those suffering from COVID-19”. But since late autumn it seems we’ve had more specific prayers for parents, siblings, kids struggling with it. Half a dozen in recent weeks. Maybe dropping off now - let’s hope.

Happily the US is vaccinating, if unevenly. Sullivan urges us to continue other measures, because deaths after the cure are all the more tragic. Happily, my VA in-laws have had their first dose. So have many healthcare and at-risk friends nearby. However, my CT elders are still waiting.

Numbers

Whatever you think of the daily COVID counts, total deaths is pretty solid. And there are over 400K excess deaths (all causes) for 2020. That’s a lot. As expected, the December deaths rose to match April’s, despite some foolish (or malicious) contrarian claims in early November.

CDC Excess Deaths Count
Now (January 31, 2021)	Last month - detail

A remaining puzzle

Lag?

One answer is regular lag. Based on past lag, we expect the top bars to get another 2,000 or so as more certificates flow in. That would still keep them roughly on par with April. So that won’t do.

Special lag?

There could be extraordinary lag – prehaps due to volume, or holiday delays. But it feels ad hoc. In its favor, a 2016 paper found that it took 13 weeks to get to 84% of all-cause deaths, and twice that to get to 95%. Okay, but 4-6 weeks has worked most of 2020. Is there independent reason to think the reporting system has slowed? [Charles goes and checks.] Hm, yes. At least the CDC says so in their weekly report:

Longer delays in reporting of hospitalization and mortality data may occur due to the holidays and the large number of COVID-19 illnesses occurring in recent weeks.

Still… could it be something else?

Displacement?

Maybe COVID is displacing other deaths via a combination of: (1) Miscounting, (2) Harvesting, and (3) “On Balance”.

1. Miscounting: Yes, 3,000 people are dying daily of “PIC” – Pneumonia, Influenza-like illnesses, and COVID-19. But 1,000 of those are actually the usual (non-COVID) P and I, getting miscounted.

2. Harvesting: Maybe all 3,000 are COVID-19, but 1,000 would have died anyway within say 4 months.

3. On Balance: Yes, 3,000 die from COVID-19. Also, far fewer are dying of other causes, esp. (non-COVID) P and I.

Miscounting

Miscounting would be the most embarrassing for those involved. Can we test it? In it’s favor, the same weekly report quoted above says the ILI-net is receiving far fewer visits, as people avoid the usual doctor’s office and ER for diagnosis, or only go when they suspect COVID. We can also see essentially no influenza-coded deaths so far this winter (second chart).

ILI-net visits

Influenza-Coded Deaths (dark blue)

Still, maybe the sum of all non-COVID deaths will account for a portion of those 1,000. Testable.

Harvesting / On Balance?

In Harvesting, a younger, faster Reaper beats the old man to the punch. Same people die, just sooner, of a different thing. So fewer excess deaths than COVID-19 deaths. On balance, we get 3,000 daily COVID deaths, but an excess death count of only 2,000.

It need not even be the same people, as long as on balance the numbers match. COVID-19 is much more transmissible, so interventions that keep it around R=1 (as we have) would drastically curtail flu etc. That seems to have happened during Australia’s winter.

So…

I like to think the CovidTracking hospitalization & deaths counts are reliable. But that seems to imply a 50% rise in December’s CDC deaths count, vs. now when it basically equals April’s peak. [I meant 50% rise in excess deaths. But I was wrong. Area under the curve, not peak-to-peak. A 25% rise in excess deaths accounted for the 7,000/week extra.] So, after that exercise, what are my intuitive guesses:

• Regular lag: +2,000 deaths per week
• Extra lag: +3,000 more
• Miscounting, Harvesting, On balance: +2,000 total

[ Looks now like regular + extra lag just about covers it. ]

If that’s right we’ll see the December total death certificates peaks rise by ~5,000 cases. That still feels high.

Coda

In the meantime, I pray we stay well, avoid making others ill, and update our beliefs with new evidence.

It seems like the current crypto market may be a giant fraud.

This fits my mildly informed blockchain scepticism. I see few legitimate use cases. I’m not alone

I’ve never seen so many people searching so hard for a problem to go with their solution.

Blockchain is a cool technology, but mostly malign. As an article I read a couple of years ago (and can’t find) notes, it’s broken by design: a solution to a post-apocalyptic world where there are no trusted institutions. But the whole of civilization is building trusted institutions.

Found it! Kai Stinchcombe argues blockchain is “Somalia on purpose”. I’d say “dystopian by design”.

On top of that, the most popular algorithms are an environmental disaster, and this has been known for years. CO2 emissions from bitcoin mining offset greenhouse-gas reductions from the Paris treaty. They are at least 100,000x less efficient than normal visa transactions.

Just capturing a facebook post (screenshot) - I went into the internet archive to see what used to be on antifa dot com and when it started redirecting. The q folks of course see the redirect as strong evidence of some nefarious conspiracy. So, thoughts in screenshot.

~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~

I notice qnonymous.org is available cheap. If I made that point to whitehouse.gov, …. well probably no one would care. If they did care, the net effect would just increase total agitation, rather than to serve as a reductio. Unhelpful. Besides, if you start from the premise that the world is absurd, then a reductio loses its force.

But perhaps the best reason not to do this is that it does not arise from a principle of charity. On which point, why the original post?