Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• Life's Work: An Interview with Jerry Seinfeld

  Harvard Business Review

  It's very important to know what you don't like. A big part of innovation is saying, "You know what I'm really sick of?" For me, that was talk shows where music plays, somebody walks out to a desk, shakes hands with the host, and sits down. "How are you?" "You look great." I'm also sick of people who are really there to sell their show or product. "What am I really sick of?" is where innovation begins.

• The Economics of Culture, Values, and Meaning

  Interview with Tyler Cowen

  With that said, when I meet actual effective altruist groups or rationalist groups, (e.g. LessWrong) I become hesitant. The rationalist community can itself be a kind of religion. I don't think that has to be bad, but I don't view them as the most rational people.
  ...
  They think they are the most rational people, and somehow I doubt that. I'd love to see a study measuring the decisions people who identify as rationalist make in their romantic personal lives, for example - how rational those decisions are, compared to other individuals. I suspect they'd come out slightly below average.
  It seems to me there's something about common sense morality, and an understanding of the imperfections in real world institutions, that should be refined in those communities. In that sense, I'm more influenced by Adam Smith and David Hume. Tradition has embedded wisdom, even though you can't always defend or justify it.
  

• With Trump, the Pathology Is the Point

  Andrew Sullivan

  It's perfectly clear by now that the United States does not have a functioning president or administration. It also seems clear that this does not matter to a sizable chunk of the population. They just don't care - even when it could lead them to lose their lives and their livelihoods.
  ...
  For them, the pathology seems to be the point. It is precisely Trump's refusal to acknowledge reality that they thrill to - because it offends and upsets the people they hate (i.e., city dwellers, the educated, and the media). The more Trump brazenly lies, the more Republicans support him. The more incoherent he is, the more insistent they are. Bit by bit, they have been co-opted by Trump into a series of cascading and contradicting lies, and they are not going to give up now - even when they are being treated for COVID-19 in hospital.

• The Utter Futility of Biden's China Rhetoric

  The Democratic candidate tries to out-hawk Trump, but trying to beat Republicans at their own game is pointless-even dangerous. Peter Beinart

  By attacking Trump for being insufficiently nationalist rather than being insufficiently internationalist, Biden is hastening a geopolitical confrontation that threatens progressive goals. And he's sowing doubts about what the Democratic Party actually believes. He's choosing short-term advantage over long-term principle.
  This is what supporters of Bernie Sanders were worried about, and Biden is proving them right.

• Cuomo's approval ratings shows politics is getting more and more shallow

  David Sirota

  "When you couple it with what Cuomo has done, not moving as quickly to take the steps that needed to be taken, cutting Medicaid in the middle of a pandemic, putting forward an austerity budget that cuts basic public services, public education and the like while he repeatedly refuses Democratic legislation to raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires in New York," he added.

• Sweden's Coronavirus Strategy Will Soon Be the World's

  Herd Immunity Is the Only Realistic Option-the Question Is How to Get There Safely

  People receiving nursing and elder-care services account for upward of 50 percent of COVID-19 deaths in Sweden, according to Tegnell, in part because many facilities were grievously slow to implement basic protective measures such as mask wearing. Immigrants have also suffered disproportionately, mainly because they are poorer on average and tend to work in the service sector, where working remotely is usually impossible. But Swedish authorities have argued that the country's higher death rate will appear comparatively lower in hindsight. Efforts to contain the virus are doomed to fail in many countries, and a large percentage of people will be infected in the end. When much of the world experiences a deadly second wave, Sweden will have the worst of the pandemic behind it.

• Fatalism, Beliefs, and Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic

  Third, the more infectious people believe that COVID-19 is, the less willing they are to take social distancing measures, a finding we dub the "fatalism effect". We estimate that small changes in people's beliefs can generate billions of dollars in mortality benefits. Finally, we develop a theoretical model that can explain the fatalism effect.

• We know everything - and nothing - about Covid

  It is data, not modelling, that we need now. Matt Ridley

• Open Knowledge Foundation

  Our mission - an open world, where all non-personal information is open, free for everyone to use, build on and share; and creators and innovators are fairly recognised and rewarded.

• The agonizing story of Tara Reade

  All of this leaves me where no reporter wants to be: mired in the miasma of uncertainty. I wanted to believe Reade when she first came to me, and I worked hard to find the evidence to make certain others would believe her, too. I couldn't find it. None of that means Reade is lying, but it leaves us in the limbo of Me Too: a story that may be true but that we can't prove.

Various links related to the Coronavirus pandemic with some contrarian views. But note that what is known about Covid-19 is often uncertain so information can become outdated.

• COVID-19 Superspreader Events in 28 Countries: Critical Patterns and Lessons

  When do COVID-19 SSEs happen? Based on the list I've assembled, the short answer is: Wherever and whenever people are up in each other's faces, laughing, shouting, cheering, sobbing, singing, greeting, and praying. You don't have to be a 19th-century German bacteriologist or MIT expert in mucosalivary ballistics to understand what this tells us about the most likely mode of transmission.

  It's worth scanning all the myriad forms of common human activity that aren't represented among these listed SSEs: watching movies in a theater, being on a train or bus, attending theater, opera, or symphony (these latter activities may seem like rarified examples, but they are important once you take stock of all those wealthy infectees who got sick in March, and consider that New York City is a major COVID-19 hot spot). These are activities where people often find themselves surrounded by strangers in densely packed rooms-as with all those above-described SSEs-but, crucially, where attendees also are expected to sit still and talk in hushed tones.

  In a similar vein, The Subway is Probably not Why New York is a Disaster Zone.

• Swedish expert: why lockdowns are the wrong policy

  Video of interview with Professor Johan Giesecke epidemiologists, advisor to the Swedish Government.

  Summary:

  • UK policy on lockdown and other European countries are not evidence-based
  • The correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only
  • This will eventually lead to herd immunity as a "by-product"
  • The initial UK response, before the "180 degree U-turn", was better
  • The Imperial College paper was "not very good" and he has never seen an unpublished paper have so much policy impact
  • The paper was very much too pessimistic
  • Any such models are a dubious basis for public policy anyway
  • The flattening of the curve is due to the most vulnerable dying first as much as the lockdown
  • The results will eventually be similar for all countries
  • Covid-19 is a "mild disease" and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people.
  • The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%
  • At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available
• "Living Days Stolen" ... A Smarter Way To Measure COVID-19 Deaths

  COVID-19's damage has been awful. But from a public policy perspective, it should be judged by the number of living days it has robbed from human beings, not by raw deaths tallied up without the context of demographics. Using the living days stolen scale is the only fair way to assess COVID-19's damage as policy makers and citizens begin the hard task of weighing the health and economic tradeoffs of COVID-19.

• Some doctors moving away from ventilators for virus patients

  But 80% or more of coronavirus patients placed on the machines in New York City have died, state and city officials say.
  ...
  But increasingly, physicians are trying other measures first. One is having patients lie in different positions - including on their stomachs - to allow different parts of the lung to aerate better. Another is giving patients more oxygen through nose tubes or other devices. Some doctors are experimenting with adding nitric oxide to the mix, to help improve blood flow and oxygen to the least damaged parts of the lungs.

  Also see New analysis recommends less reliance on ventilators to treat coronavirus patients.

• Influential Covid-19 model uses flawed methods and shouldn't guide U.S. policies, critics say

  The chief reason the IHME projections worry some experts, Etzioni said, is that "the fact that they overshot will be used to suggest that the government response prevented an even greater catastrophe, when in fact the predictions were shaky in the first place." IHME initially projected 38,000 to 162,000 U.S. deaths. The White House combined those estimates with others to warn of 100,000 to 240,000 potential deaths.

  That could produce misplaced confidence in the effectiveness of the social distancing policies, which in turn could produce complacency about what might be needed to keep the epidemic from blowing up again.
  Believing, for instance, that measures well short of what China imposed in and around Wuhan prevented a four-fold higher death toll could be disastrous.
  

  ... The death curves in cities outside the U.S. are assumed to describe the U.S., too, with no attempt to judge whether countermeasures -lockdowns and other social-distancing strategies - in the U.S. are and will be as effective as elsewhere, especially Wuhan.

  Also see related, After Repeated Failures, It's Time To Permanently Dump Epidemic Models.

• Conservative Pundits Weren't the Only Ones to Get the Pandemic Wrong

  Media figures on both sides of the aisle failed to appreciate the extent of the threat until it was too late. Liberals shouldn't pretend otherwise.

• Age is not the only risk for severe coronavirus disease

  Older people remain most at risk of dying as the new coronavirus continues its rampage around the globe, but they're far from the only ones vulnerable. One of many mysteries: Men seem to be faring worse than women.

  And as cases skyrocket in the U.S. and Europe, it's becoming more clear that how healthy you were before the pandemic began plays a key role in how you fare regardless of how old you are.

  The majority of people who get COVID-19 have mild or moderate symptoms. But "majority" doesn't mean "all," and that raises an important question: Who should worry most that they'll be among the seriously ill? While it will be months before scientists have enough data to say for sure who is most at risk and why, preliminary numbers from early cases around the world are starting to offer hints.

• The Science Behind Coronavirus Testing, and Where the U.S. Went Wrong

  The U.S. was completely unprepared for a public health emergency of this scale. South Korea revamped its emergency preparedness plans after the MERS outbreak of 2015, recognizing that early detection and isolation were effective to mitigate an outbreak, and putting resources and procedures into place which could be mobilized quickly.
  ...
  The CDC updates the number of tests performed at CDC and public health labs daily. Though the U.S. has now performed several hundred thousand tests, it still lags behind South Korea having tested six time less individuals per capita as of March 24th, despite having detected the virus on the same day.

• Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance

  As the title indicates, Pueyo and his collaborators are suggesting an approach that combines initial aggressive action followed by a longer period of efficient vigilance. First comes the Hammer - we use aggressive measures for weeks, giving our healthcare system time to ramp up & scientists time to research the hell out of this thing and for the world's testing capability to get up to speed.
  ...
  And then we Dance. If you hammer the coronavirus, within a few weeks you've controlled it and you're in much better shape to address it. Now comes the longer-term effort to keep this virus contained until there's a vaccine.