Liberty

"Nobody knows anything." -William Goldman

This is B.S. If this were true, there would not be the second wave phenomenon seen in past pandemics. Can confirm, it is total B.S. made up by people who have no idea what they're talking about or what it would take for "herd immunity".

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/covid-spit-test-is-faster-cheaper-avoids-shortages-and-now-greenlit-by-fda/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/science/coronavirus-bayes-statistics-math.html

Potentially good news on testing: (thread)

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/15/forty-percent-of-us-covid-19-tests-come-back-too-late-to-be-clinically-meaningful-data-show.html

More good pandemic voting logistics.. “ Brian Williams: "NBC news has obtained an internal USPS document, that reveals plans to remove, 671 high volume mail processing machines, from postal facilities across this country."

Looks like Sweden's GDP numbers aren't better than neighbours: Of course there are many variables, but still, it's a data point that doesn't help support the approach.

Glad you guys seem to have enjoyed it. It's definitely a wild ride and a page turner (at least it was for me). Gary Kasparov is also a good read and follow on Twitter, when it comes to explaining the mafia state that is modern Russia.

Jesus Christ, making election day a national holiday would be a disaster. There is a reason why Canada used to close the beer parlours on election days, and that was to encourage the working class to actually get out and vote. Just ensure that people have 4 consecutive hours available to vote during the polling hours, just like what we do in Canada. Those who are interested will come out to vote, and you can't do much about those who are not interested. SJ This wins the most paternalistic comment on the forum. Lots of countries do it and it's fine. Or you could just have it on the weekend, like many countries do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_day Every vote is supposed to count equally, but if you make it much harder to vote for some people than others on purpose, you're violating the spirit of the whole thing.

Curious -- are you American? No. Why? I’m also not a filmmaker, but know s bad fun when I see one. Not a CEO, but I have opinions on companies. Haven’t fought in WW2, but am interested in it. I also have lots of opinions about lots of other countries, like Russia and Brazil and Finland and France and the UK. Meanwhile: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/08/13/trump-requests-mail-ballot-florida-primary-despite-rhetoric/3371605001/

Basic stuff doesn't exist in the US, if they really wanted to improve democracy. Like, election day should be a national holiday. Otherwise, it's a lot harder for poor people who have to work than for wealthy people with more job security and flexible vacation time/etc. Don't get me started on gerrymandering.. But anyway, the mail-in stuff was directly related to COVID. The rest is less on-topic, though just as important.

You'd think that one obvious thing in a pandemic is to allow voting by mail, as has been done in all past elections, and has been the norm for military voters forever.. But this: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7wk9z/the-post-office-is-deactivating-mail-sorting-machines-ahead-of-the-election https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-admits-he-wants-block-usps-funding-sabotage-mail-voting-2020-8

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.09.20171132v1 Also:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/12/accuracy-of-us-coronavirus-data-thrown-into-question-as-decline-in-testing-skews-drop-in-new-cases.html This many months into it and still can't get testing together... Maybe a certain someone had his wish of "slow the testing down, please".

It's the almost-G7 countries. I didn't make the list. I think it shows a pretty stark difference in success in containing the epidemic, don't you? I think I saw that the US had more daily deaths right now than Germany had daily cases (Germany is smaller, but still has 80 million people). You may not be able to vacation in France, but if I had a choice between vacationing in France or in Florida right now, I know where I'd go.

Maybe you should strike France off your list of "good" countries (Spain too, for that matter). Daily new cases in France have tripled over the past month, and over 2k per day were reported on each of the Aug 7, 8 and 9th. France has about 20% as many people as the US, so that would be roughly equivalent to the US reporting 10-12k new cases per day (better than the US, but still not good). I just cancelled a flight for tomorrow that I scheduled for a vacation in France that I had planned. If France has one more doubling of new cases over the coming weeks, they'll be right back where they were in late-March and early-April. I cannot accept the risk that border control measures and population movement controls would be re-imposed during my vacation. It's fascinating how quickly they shifted from having everything reasonably under control in early-July to having the beginnings of a mess on their hands in mid-August. SJ I don't have a "good countries" list, and didn't say anything specific about France, I'm just reporting death figures. The rest, you read into it.

We can come up with scenarios where it may make sense, but in the current real-world situation, the choice isn't between a phase 1 untested vaccine and no vaccine. It's to wait a little longer, and in the meantime, do the things that we know work to crush the number of infections and maintain it low, like most countries have done. That's the better path.

Cutting corners on the science is dangerous both because it can lead to people getting exposed and dying when they think they're protected and aren't, and because if there are safety or efficacy issues, it can cause long-lasting backlash against vaccines in general, leading to more deaths and suffering over decades. You already have crackpots making stuff up about vaccines, if you give them something real because you don't do things right, it'll be bad. From what I've seen, Russia is talking about a phase 1 vaccine that has been tested on hundreds of people... That's pretty bad science. Is the concern with the Russian vaccine: 1. Safety? 2. effectiveness? Safety: If the virus kills 0.6% people and the vaccine has dangerous side effects 0.6% of the time, you haven't really gained much at the population level. Effectiveness: OTOH, if its not truly effective, you will start being spikes in cases as people get infected. Its a loss of resources and credibility, but for a poor country it might be worth the shot that it does actually work well. Agreed it's not unto the usual standards, but in the current scenario everything is now a risk-reward decision in real time with limited information. Safety would probably worry me the most here. So Putin's injected his daughter to allay those fears. Not the right way to look at it. You don't gamble with whole populations by injecting them with unproven medicines. This kind of callous thinking is what got the US and Russia in their messes in the first place.

Short 6-minute interview with Tomas Pueyo:

Cutting corners on the science is dangerous both because it can lead to people getting exposed and dying when they think they're protected and aren't, and because if there are safety or efficacy issues, it can cause long-lasting backlash against vaccines in general, leading to more deaths and suffering over decades. You already have crackpots making stuff up about vaccines, if you give them something real because you don't do things right, it'll be bad. From what I've seen, Russia is talking about a phase 1 vaccine that has been tested on hundreds of people... That's pretty bad science.

Do the demographics, land mass size, population, population density etc too. NYC has a population density of 38,424 per square kilometer NZ has a population density of 15 people per square kilometer. Complete waste of time even looking at this comparison. Why dont you post a twitter link on the data from Antarctica to really hammer the point home. Hold on there just a minute. You make accusations of cherry picking the data then you do exactly that. Instead of comparing population density of the U.S., you use NYC. And you do that because the comparison between the two countries doesn’t support your argument. NZ population density: 15 people /sqK US population density: 36 people /sqK NOT 38,424 / sqK Pretty dishonest trying to compare the country to NYC. How about sticking to the facts for a change. Yeah, and while some countries like NZ have factors that help them, they can't explain the difference, by far. they are doing well because they did the right things, had leadership and followed the science. If they had not done these things, they'd be doing badly, their population density or whatever wouldn't save them. And as I posted above, highly dense places like Taiwan and Singapore did pretty well too. I mean, Europe had really bad outbreaks (Italy, Spain) and worse demographics and density than the US, but did the common sense scientific things and now Florida has more cases and deaths than the 450m people in the EU.