Liberty

2020 AGM video (posted April 7, recorded feb 25):

Yeah, it's the federal government that is in charge of the CDC, HHS, DHS, FDA, the national stockpile, army corps of engineers, etc.. They're the ones who are supposed to protect the country from what's happening right now as a first line of defense, and then coordinate resources and do clear national messaging/planning during the crisis, as well as coordinate with international allies and suppliers. Why are taxpayers paying for all that if not for times like these? The failure of the federal government is what is leading to individual governors having to pick up the slack as best as they can, but they don't have the federal bodies dedicated to this, and 50 of them can't help but work at cross-purposes and cause even more problems when they all try to bid on the same supplies at the same time. It's the whole point of being a federation. Meanwhile, the president's failed-developer son-in-law is running point on a pandemic, because when you're highly corrupt, you always put loyalty above competence, because someone who's competent but not entirely loyal will turn on you and expose you, so you can't have that...

Did you just have an aneurysm?

Nah, he's not doing this one for money, he's just gambling that if it turns out to work, he can say he knew and pretend to be the savior, and if it doesn't, he'll quickly move on and gaslight us about that too. Nothing to lose for him, only for people dealing with the pandemic.

Background on Hydroxychloroquine: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/hydroxychloroquine-trump-coronavirus-drug

I certainly hope that we're starting to peak in more places. A lot of places have been taking stronger measures for about 3 weeks, so this is about the right time to be seeing the impact. From the start, every epidemiologist has been saying: If it ends up looking like we over-reacted, it means measures worked, not that we over-reacted. It's not too hard to run a scenario in your head where there's no shutdown and you get a couple more weeks of very high daily exponential growth and instead of what we're seeing now, you have a few more million cases and things are quite a bit worse. But we're far from out of the woods. I know everyone is starved for good news so when we get some it feels really different, but things are far from over. Let's not botch this phase of things and really get this thing under control.

Thread, that’s a press conference in the middle of a historic crisis:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-s-use-medical-stockpile-veers-past-administrations-leaving-state-n1177786

"UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson in intensive care after coronavirus condition ‘worsened’" https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52192604?at_custom1=%5Bpost+type%5D&at_custom4=2444197A-783B-11EA-8FE0-C319FDA12A29

I've enjoyed this piece by Mauboussin, some good insights about how underrated the impact of noise on decision making generally is: https://www.morganstanley.com/im/publication/insights/articles/bin-there-done-that_us.pdf

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/covid-19-live-updates-ontario-reporting-309-new-cases-including-13-additional-deaths

Two people's experience of the "mild" case of the virus, still pretty brutal:

Houston:https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/houston-hasn-t-reported-surge-coronavirus-cases-its-hospitals-tell-n1175291 That's one thing we're likely to see with the uneven testing around the country... Some places may stay under the radar for a bit and then seem to come out of nowhere because suddenly they start testing more.

Yeah, I also think that's probably why they did it (or partly why, they probably also interpreted too rigidly some studies without considering the asymmetry in risks -- too many people think you can't do anything without RCT studies, but sometimes you just don't have good data and need to make a decision with what you have). Big mistake, but the biggest mistake was to not have been ready for an epidemic with a huge stockpile and good plans for what to do, testing capability and all that, and to lose weeks to this disorganized response.

Personally I agree with you, but I suspect that a bunch of laws have been shaped by religious considerations. And I also think that respecting the wishes of the deceased/family needs to have weight in the equation, though it shouldn't be an absolute veto if there's a significant public health risk to trying to accomodate these wishes.

The worst case isn't that it's no different. The worst case is that it's worse, potentially because it'll make people rush to get masks that hospitals need, and because people not used to wearing masks can do all kinds of wrong things that increase their risks (they constantly touch their faces to re-adjust the mask, they feel protected, so they get themselves in situations that they wouldn't have without the mask (going out more, getting closer to people, etc), and they may not understand that the mask can be contaminated, so it must be taken off carefully without touching the outside, washing hands before and after, not re-using the same masks, etc). These are all real considerations. I still am in favor of masks, but I think you need to educate people about them, just like how most people recently realized they didn't wash their hands properly and didn't understand surface contamination and such. It can be done, but it has to be done well. Done badly, I think it could make things worse. You certainly don't want to do what has just been done, with the CDC and many cities recommending cloth masks, and then having the president say right after "well, it's totally voluntary, you don't have to, I don't think I will, etc". You need a clear message, because masks work if enough people wear them (you need lots of asymptomatic people who don't even know that they're sick to wear them to bend R0), so if you do it half-assed, you won't get much out of them. It's like if you only vaccinate 10% of a population... Still too many potential vectors.

I posted about this a while back. I have some friends who are nurses/MDs at NYC facilities, they have replaced their morgue vans with trailers as the twitter thread mentions. I think I even posted the picture. This happened about...1.5 weeks ago? Not sure where he is getting the rest of the information (burial trenches in city parks?) but it seems the most effective way to manage the bodies would be cremation,but I am no professional in this area. Can they cremate bodies against the wills of the deceased/families, if they had wanted to be buried? Probably wasn't an issue in China, but here the law may prevent it. I don't know.

On the balance of the evidence that I've seen, I'm still masks4all too, as long as there's heavy education about their limitations and making sure they don't replace other measures or lead to more dangerous behaviour. And as long as home-made cloth masks are encouraged until supply of other masks catches up to demand from medical workers. Seems like we won't have solid evidence quickly enough to decide, but the asymmetry of risks pushes in favor of going with masks. I do think they're probably a good constant reminder of the situation (including visually for those not wearing them) and probably help maintain social distancing more than they hurt, on top of any effectiveness in catching some droplets that may otherwise infect others, but who knows. It's probably not one answer, but has a lot to do with education surrounding them and other measures, so it can be done well or badly.

I'm a hater of corruption, stupidity, incompetence, bullshit, meanness, authoritarianism, nepotism, tribalism, irrationality, anti-science, and a few other related things. If that makes me a Trump hater, oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Shooting the messenger. Is this your superior debating skill on display? He's a garden-variety troll. You could have a 12-hour Ken Burns documentary about a single thing that Trump did wrong shown from every possible angle all caught on tape and he still would never update his thinking. He'd probably change the subject to something totally unrelated that someone else did wrong (as if it cancels out) because to these people, it's about scoring points and tribalism, not about trying to understand what is going on. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-is-the-mind-killer

Thread on NYC morgue problem:

based on my conversations with three friends who have admitting privileges at (NYP) one of the best NYC hospitals, plaq+z pack has been administered since very early on with very good results (very few patients dont have favorable immediate improvement). same with my pulmonologist buddy in Jax. if Fauci is not 100% completely behind this treatment (with additional treatments hopefully soon to follow), he really does not now what is going in in the best hospitals in US You think Fauci doesn't have better info than your "three friends"?

Is this real? Are you really linking to a whole article blasting someone for "interrupting" an expert while he speaks, while Trump constantly does this to everyone and contradicts experts to their faces based on no facts and keeps them from even answering questions (like yesterday's question to Fauci about Chloroquine)?

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2020/04/best-case-global-coronavirus-ends-august-but-less-than-10-chance.html