Covid 2/25: Holding Pattern

Scott Alexander reviewed his Covid-19 predictions, and I did my analysis as well. 

It was a quiet week, with no big news on the Covid front. There was new vaccine data, same as the old vaccine data – once again, vaccines still work. Once again, there is no rush to approve them or even plan for their distribution once approved. Once again, case numbers and positive test percentages declined, but with the worry that the English Strain will soon reverse this, especially as the extent of the drop was disappointing. The death numbers ended up barely budging after creeping back up later in the week, presumably due to reporting time shifts, but that doesn’t make it good or non-worrisome news.

This will be a relatively short update, and if you want to, you can safely skip it.

Judging Our April 2020 Covid-19 Predictions

Scott Alexander has given his verdict on our predictions for Covid from April 2020. 

This seems like an excellent opportunity to reflect on those predictions. I’ll also attempt to render my verdict on the predictions, based on the principles I discuss in Evaluating Predictions in Hindsight under Hard Mode, as Scott’s already done the Easy Mode work. 

Afterwards, I’ll give my take on the Assorted Links from that post as well.

Covid 2/18: Vaccines Still Work

This week the CDC released new guidelines for schools. I’ve spun my analysis of that off into its own post. Scott Alexander also shared some good thoughts on Covid-19 in two new posts, and I discuss both of those, and how our models and predictions differ.

Also, as some combination of retaliation and its continued crusade against the evils of the tech industry and the notion of freedom of speech, the New York Times finally published its hit piece on Scott Alexander. I devote a brief section to it, the upside of which is that the paper is now permanently banned from this space. 

Covid: CDC Issues New Guidance on Opening Schools

Author’s Note: This was originally the title topic of this week’s Covid post (as ‘School Daze’), but the post was getting long and this is its own issue, so I’m moving the guidelines discussion to its own post. 

As usual, all discussions of school are confusing for me, because I consider 21st-century American schools as they currently exist to mostly be a dystopian nightmare, obedience factory and prison system. That makes it hard to root for the resumption of in-person education. 

Covid 2/11: As Expected

Nothing both unexpected and important happened this week, other than that we might be on the verge of at least partially solving obesity.

There’s plenty else to talk about, but everything was on trend. That doesn’t mean my predictions were perfect or the speed of trends didn’t give us a few surprises, nor does it mean I could have written this post a week ago. It does mean that long term expectations haven’t much changed. 

Still Not in Charge

Epistemic Status: Speed premium, will hopefully flesh out more carefully in future

Previously: Why I Am Not in Charge

A brief update about my exchange with Scott from this past week.

Why I Am Not in Charge

Epistemic Status: Long piece written because the speed premium was too high to write a short one. Figured I should get my take on this out quickly.

(Note: This has been edited to reflect that I originally mixed up UpToDate with WebMD (since it’s been years since I’ve used either and was writing quickly) and gave the impression that WebMD was a useful product and that my wife liked it or used it. I apologize for the mix-up, and affirm that WebMD is mostly useless, but UpToDate is awesome.)

Scott Alexander has a very high opinion of my ability to figure things out.. It’s quite the endorsement to be called the person that first comes to mind as likely things right. Scott even thinks it would hypothetically be great if I was the benevolent dictator or secretary of health, as my decisions would do a lot of good.

In turn, I have a very high opinion of Scott Alexander. If you get to read one person on the internet going either forwards or backwards, I’d go with Scott. Even as others are often in awe of my level (and sometimes quality) of output, I have always been in awe of his level and quality of output.

His core explanation in one paragraph:  I have a much easier task than those in charge. All I have to do is get the right answer, without worrying (anything like as much) about liability or politics or leadership, or being legible, or any number of other things those with power and responsibility have to worry about lest they lose that power and responsibility and/or get sued into oblivion. Those with power have to optimize for seeking power and play the game of Moloch, and we need to pick a selection process that makes this the least destructive we can and thus can only rely on legible expertise, and we actually kind of do a decent job of it. 

In that spirit, I’d like to welcome everyone coming here from Astral Codex Ten, flesh out and make more explicit my model of the dynamics involved, and point out some of the ways in which I think Scott’s model of the situation is wrong or incomplete. Which in turn will be partly wrong, and only be some of the ways in which it is wrong or incomplete, as my model is also doubtless wrong and incomplete. m

Covid 2/4: Safe and Effective Vaccines Aplenty

The vaccine data is in. It’s pretty great.

We now have six known safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines: Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Novavax, Johnson & Johnson and Sputnik.

Pfizer and Moderna are amazingly safe and effective. They have been approved and are being distributed. The problem is that due to our unwillingness to properly fund the process of scaling up, we are stalling out at about 1.3 million doses per day for a population of 330+ million people each of whom needs two doses. That won’t do, the vaccine rollout is going about the way you would expect if you’ve been paying attention so far, and the English and other variant strains are rising fast.

The other vaccine approvals are not in. It’s pretty terrible.

Covid 1/28: Muddling Through

Three different time frames, three different fronts. We continue to muddle through, with some hope that this could be successful relative to our modest expectations.

There’s the situation short term, there’s the new strains, there’s the vaccines. 

Covid: Bill Gates and Vaccine Production

Vaccine production, and in particular vaccine production by Pfizer and Moderna, has languished for want of a few billion dollars, well within the budget of many individual philanthropists. It is an important fact about the world that none of them stepped up and fixed the problem. At most one of them is known to have perhaps made a serious attempt, with that one being Bill Gates.

So what exactly has he been up to, as a longtime proponent (to his credit) of vaccines and vaccination efforts? 

I want to be clear: This is not me going after Bill Gates and saying he is bad. This is investigating the question of why it seems that no one with power can do anything useful, and investigating the person who appears to have power who people thought might be doing useful things, and who looks like he is in a strong position to do useful things, with a stated priority and even explicit commitment of spending his money to do exactly the most useful things. 

I also want it to be clear that Gates has far from full control over the actions of his foundation, and for reasons he is unwilling or unable to act outside of the foundation, a pattern that seems to be common among the wealthy.

This is not about Gates being unusually terrible. Quite the opposite, he seems unusually well-meaning. Especially for his reference class. 

It’s important to note that this was not enough.