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:
Writing for IEEE Spectrum, Joanna Goodrich says that Deep Blue beat Kasparov because was just so fast.
The supercomputer could explore up to 200 million possible chess positions per second with its AI program.
But it wasn’t. Fast enough. Not really. IBM didn’t expect to win, just to lose less badly. Kasparov won the first game. Lost the second. Drew three.
In an account I read years ago (Pandolfini?), it came down to psychology. Deep Blue was doing better than expected, and K started to doubt his preparation or understanding.
Then Deep Blue played a move that spooked Kasparov into thinking it was far faster than it really was, and (uncharacteristically) he panicked and resigned.
But the machine itself had panicked. A bug made that move random.
This recent article roughly agrees with my decades-old memory, supplying the bit I forgot about it being a bug.
Sam Rocha, In America Magazine
Well, this seems backwards. Hopefully Janelle Shane will have a delightful and silly riposte.
Huh. My age group (45+) has about 25% more deaths this year - roughly the same excess % as for 85+. Just based on eyeball and spot-check, but I’m surprised - I expected to have much lower % increase than 85+. CDC chart
CDC total deaths snapshot: December weekly #s gained about 4,500 vs. two weeks ago: there are now 4 weeks right near 80K, slightly above the highest April week.
That’s bad. But still hard to square with covidtracking deaths being 50% higher than in April.
Week of 26-Dec is now at 81,406, up by ~1K. The week of 2-Jan is higher now, above 82K, gaining 1-2K.
#### Update 23-May
December totals are now about +26K versus April, or about +6,500/week. That’s pretty much all the discrepancy I was concerned to explain.
That further supports the live CovidTracking numbers from last autumn.
“Either we can all be cold… or we can live in Florida.”
The thing I read today was Yudkowsky on r/WallStreetBets - I did not know that.
Essay worth reading in its entirety: The Great Reinforcer by Stuart Ritchie.
To be sure, out of the gloom of the pandemic came some incredible advances – the stunning progress made on vaccines chief among them. But these bright spots were something of an exception. For those of us with an interest in where science can go wrong, the pandemic has been the Great Reinforcer: it has underlined, in the brightest possible ink, all the problems we knew we had with the way we practice science.
Acknowledging stunning successes in the science of COVID-19, he reviews our regrettable and predictable failures. And hitting a little too close for comfort, notes how much harm comes from a desire to help.
It seems flu counts really are extraordinarily low. Sure, we’re missing cases because people aren’t getting tested as much, but of lab tests done, positivity is down 100-fold.
A good column by our SVP for technology & innovation.
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:
So the bookends choice looks more like:
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.)
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. ]
So, we tried this. It’s good, though a bit sweeter than I was wanting today. Fun!
kitchenoverlord.com/dune-week…
⌛️🐛🥖
Bookmarking A methodology for agile data science by Edwin Thoen (ch.5 of Agile Data Science with R). Also favors Kanban. Highlights below.
As a rule of thumb, never work on more tasks simultaneously than the number of data scientists on the team.
One of the major pitfalls of trying to improve a data science product is endless exploration of a hypothesis.
How to manage exploration then?
The data scientist should not take longer for the task than the team agreed upfront, wrapping up even when he does not feel completely finished. If he found an alleyway that is still worthwhile exploring a new task should be put in the backlog, instead of persevering in the current task
Bookmarking Why Kanban for data science. Two core issues:
…tasks have uncertain outcomes
…don’t have a good definition of done
Wait… @agilelisa, this is near your domain, no?
[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.
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
|
But do the December excess deaths (above) match the **3,000/day average** COVID-19 daily death reports (right)? No. The December daily count is 50% higher than April (3,000 vs 2,000). That's an extra 7,000 deaths per week vs. April - but the CDC *total deaths* peaks are both about the same height. Where are those cases?
[Revisiting 23-May-2021.
* Total for the four April weeks (ending 25 Apr): 302K.
* Total for the four December weeks (ending 26 Dec): 328K.
* That's a difference of 6.5K per week.]
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.
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?
[The numbers above suggest extraordinary lag is the explanation.]Maybe COVID is displacing other deaths via a combination of: (1) Miscounting, (2) Harvesting, and (3) “On Balance”.
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.
Harvesting: Maybe all 3,000 are COVID-19, but 1,000 would have died anyway within say 4 months.
On Balance: Yes, 3,000 die from COVID-19. Also, far fewer are dying of other causes, esp. (non-COVID) P and I.
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.
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.
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:
[ 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.
In the meantime, I pray we stay well, avoid making others ill, and update our beliefs with new evidence.
Immortal time bias
A subtle trap in treatment studies. I hadn’t heard of it, and had to follow the link before I really got it. To their credit, the authors acknowledge the flaw.
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?
What would happen if the Dems made a strategic compromise on Roe v Wade? If you were Biden, what would you offer, and what require in exchange? If the deal happened as you describe, would that be a gain or loss in next election(s)?
Question inspired by this piece in America, and thinking over a Biden priority tradeoffs essay by Paul Monk.
Wrong About
The winner of the Metaculus Li-Wenliang COVID-19 forecasting tournament was wrong about these. What about you?
Aristotle argued that an enduring republic required a balance between democracy (popular participation and representation), oligarchy (expertise, serious stakes in the polity and elite gravitas) and monarchy (strong executive authority) if it was to avoid degeneration. It also required a reasonable degree of civic quality and economic equity among its citizens. If the balance was too much disturbed, crises would trigger regression to mob rule, tyranny or oppressive aristocracy. All this is at stake in America right now.
~Paul Monk, “It’s time to address the truth of President Trump”. Probably in The Australian.
From Pale Rider, Afterword:
…and novelists try to put themselves [in] the heads of those who lived through it…. Like worker bees they are busy weaving threads between the millions of discrete tragedies to create a collective memory - a living photograph of the Spanish flu.