Recurring Freedom session across all my devices (laptop, phone, tablet) set to disable all apps and most websites (including messaging, news, and discussion sites) 30 minutes before bedtime every night.
Pablo_Stafforini
Karma: 2,282
There’s also Jeff Kaufman’s Parenting and happiness.
Thank you!
I elaborated further on the distinction and on the concept of a tool-AI in Karnofsky/Tallinn 2011.
Holden’s notes from that conversation, posted to the old GiveWell Yahoo Group as a file attachment, do not appear to be publicly available anymore. Jeff Kaufman has archived all the messages from that mailing list, but unfortunately his archive does not include file attachments. Has anyone kept a copy of that file by any chance?
An update by the OP on what bets they are willing to make would be much appreciated.
Update: it now appears that Bolsonaro may have tested positive, though the situation is still unclear, at least to me. The main evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the Brazilian president has tested positive, according to this London Review of Books article, is that (1) Fox News claims that this is what his son Eduardo initially told them, that (2) Bolsonaro has refused to make the results of his tests public, and that (3) 25 members of his entourage are confirmed to have the virus.
Note that the article shows some signs of bias, such as calling the impeachment of former president Dilma Rousseff a “coup” and describing Bolsonaro’s economic minister as having studied “at the University of Chile under Pinochet” (Pinochet was the president of Chile, not the president of the University of Chile). So I’m updating only slightly and would like to see this confirmed by more neutral sources.
I really appreciate your attempt to summarize this literature. But it seems you still believe that the Oxford paper provides evidence in favor of very low IFR, when in fact others are claiming that this is merely an assumption of their model, and that this assumption was made not because the authors believe it is plausible but simply for exploratory purposes. If this is correct (I haven’t myself read the paper, so I can only defer to others), then the reputation or expertise of the authors is evidentially irrelevant, and shouldn’t cause you to update in the direction of the very low IFR. (Of course, there may be independent reasons for such an update.)
Many passengers refused to be tested.
That’s the Grand Princess, not the Diamond Princess.
What is the lag between infection and feasible detection? Without knowing the answer to this question, I’m skeptical this consideration should suffice to justify indiscriminate travel bans. South Korea has largely contained the outbreak mostly by extensive testing and isolation, and without imposing significant travel bans. And we are assuming a scenario where tests are even more widespread, and deliver results more quickly, than currently in South Korea.
As we approach the “endgame” where testing is ubiquitous and virus numbers get closer to 0, borders become more important, because adding 500 cases to an area with 1 case is much worse than adding 2000 cases to an area with 1000 cases (you have to think in logarithms).
Why would you want to ban travel indiscriminately once testing has become ubiquitous? You can instead bar entry only to the tiny minority of travelers who test positive.
And 18 or so hours later… Europe surpasses China.
The South Korean approach seems to be roughly as effective as the Chinese approach but significantly less costly and disruptive. SK managed to halt exponential growth and currently cases are increasing linearly at a rate of 75 or so per day. This has been achieved without lockdowns or extensive border closings. Instead, the key ingredient appears to be rapid, extensive and largely free testing, and an educational campaign that stresses the importance of hand washing and staying at home.
Over the past few days, cases in Europe have been doubling every four days, while cases in China have been increasing linearly, at a rate of 25 cases or so per day. There are currently around 71k cumulative cases in Europe, and 81k cumulative cases in China. So we should expect Europe to surpass China in 18 hours or so.
Thanks for putting this list together.
I stopped looking after Bucky supplied the link to the MIDAS network list, since it seemed so comprehensive.
For models that incorporate actual healthcare capacity, see this thread. One limitation of the models I’ve seen is that they fail to account for growth in such capacity. China responded to the realization that they didn’t have enough hospitals by quickly building more hospitals. Maybe Western countries are less competent than China and it will take them longer to build the needed capacity. But it seems implausible that they will be so incompetent that capacity-building efforts will not make a significant difference.
My understanding is that he never tested positive; rather, it was reported that he tested positive, and then that he tested negative. (The link you provide says otherwise, but Telesur is not a reliable source.)
Note that Bolsonaro does not have the virus.
Update: the positions are now filled. See here for the official announcement.
Help wanted: pandemic.metaculus.com project lead
The high interest and proliferation of questions on the novel coronavirus calls for dedicated attention, which led to the formation of pandemic.metaculus.com. Managing it, though, is straining Metaculus’s very limited staff and community moderator team. Contingent on acquisition of funding (which Metaculus is working to secure), Metaculus is looking to bring onboard someone to help manage this project. Components would include:
Managing the pandemic site and question series as a sort of “editor in chief” working with the community moderators (as Tamay does now for Metaculus in general.)
Helping build data products and analyses out of the questions and results.
The above indicates a range of skills including pretty strong understanding of Metaculus, and data analysis capability. Science background would be great, and huge bonus for actual medical knowledge. This is probably a part-time role but full-ish time is also imaginable depending upon the person, the duration, and funding.
If you’re interested, please send a note and CV to jobs@metaculus.com.
Another basic SIR model, which considers impacts on hospital capacity (and resulting deaths) from infection controls of various degrees.
Wonderful, thank you so much.
This argument has long been known, and much discussed. See e.g. Jacob Ross, Rejecting ethical deflationism and William MacAskill, The infectiousness of nihilism.