42% of the Moderna study participants were either over 65 or suffered from one of several co-morbidities that put them at risk of sever disease. The results suggest that vaccination of those at risk will eliminate most all deaths from covid-19, since people below 65 and without co-morbidities are a quite low risk of severe illness. Since it was a randomized 50:50 study and none of the 11 severe cases were in the vaccine group, the odds of that happening by chance are (I think): 1/(2^11), or P=0.00048….. not bad.
And the raging outbreak in the US means the trials will end sooner!
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I think about 42% of the general population has these co-morbidities depending on which ones they are talking about, so I don’t think they selected for them, but it does mean they likely didn’t select to have them not part of the trial.
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It looks like the results are pretty much the same as previous +- a few subjects. All good news to have two different vaccines under production. Hopefully there won’t be a bottleneck that inhibits the total number of doses. I read in the WSJ that Corning vials might become a limiting factor.
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We are still months away from getting that two shot vaccine in our bodies and effective (takes a month once you start). The current US outbreak will have peaked and diminished by then, at least let’s hope so.
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The population evidently won’t tolerate a strict lockdown anymore, even though now would have been a much better time to do it versus last spring. One lesson to learn here is you don’t lockdown the local population early when the outbreak is already uncontained because they won’t tolerate it later when it might be more effective. The timing of these things is a guessing game.
Tom Scharf,
Yes. I read Moderna is applying for approval in early December. Moderna expects to have enough for… (gotta google..) something like 10 million doses. Pfizer is more. That’s not enough to protect anywhere near the number of people who will want protection. But between the current rate of infection (sigh) and the vaccine, there could be a sizeable dent in the pandemic by March.
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I’d rather get the vaccine than the disease. 🙂
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I think part of resisting lockdown is not entirely believing it works. Another part is thinking it’s ok as long as other people are locked down. (That prominent politicians are seen violating doesn’t help this.) Another, is, of course, just being tired of all the partial lockdown.
Obviously, you can’t catch long term side effects in a short time. BUT these are very large trials.
Lucia,
Considering that New York and California have floated the idea of penalties for family gatherings over the coming holidays, I suspect the resistance to lockdowns will only grow. But I think the biggest reason people resist continuation of draconian restrictions is that they do real economic and social damage. It is not political, it’s practical.
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I am betting that the FDA is going to delay approvals of both vaccines for as long as possible. It is what bureaucracies do. That fact they will be sentencing lots of people to death for no good reason won’t matter a bit to the FDA. I will be shocked if anyone outside the trials gets the vaccine before January. Count also on politicians being at the head of the line when it finally happens.
Yes, politicians doing what they do.
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States Vow Extra Scrutiny of Coronavirus Vaccine
Special committees, mostly in Democratic-led states, will seek to reassure the public that an F.D.A.-approved vaccine is safe and effective amid doubts about the Trump administration’s virus response. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/16/us/coronavirus-vaccine-states-trump.html
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“The committees — most of them in states led by Democratic governors — are in part a response to the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic and concerns that political considerations would influence vaccine approvals.
“The people of this country don’t trust this federal government with this vaccine process,†Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York said in September when announcing his state’s vaccine committee, led by a Nobel-winning virologist.”
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“Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said the F.D.A.’s transparency and guidelines helped assuage the fears of many public health experts who felt “the White House was putting their thumb on the scale in a very big way.â€
Now, he said, he was “absolutely confident in the F.D.A. process—
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Obviously the Trump vaccine is so much different than the Biden vaccine. Everything has changed. Thank goodness our unbiased public health experts are here for trust and guidance now. Hopefully the Minneapolis city council will also weigh in with their recommendation.
I would be fine with Illinois getting vaccine before NY. 🙂
Lucia,
“I would be fine with Illinois getting vaccine before NY.”
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Sure, and I would be fine with Florida getting the vaccine before NY. But I don’t think it is going to work out that way; there are too many cooks in the kitchen for the process to be anything but a political nightmare. States like NY and California will get in the way of distribution, and nobody will get the vaccine until the craziest of the crazies have delayed the end of the pandemic for as long as possible. Kill 25,000 extra? Who cares, exercising political power over everything is far more more important.
lucia: “I would be fine with Illinois getting vaccine before NY.”
I’ve heard lots of talk about who gets the vaccine first, usually mentioning medical personnel & first responders at the head of the list. Not so much about geography…but it would make sense to direct the vaccine to areas with high current rates. IL before NY based on that criterion.
But IL would be behind SD, MN, IA, ND, & a half-dozen other states. (Going by yesterday’s new case count at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ . Weekly counts would be more appropriate but that takes work.)
Lucia,
Looks like the reactions to the vaccine after the second dose are significant (fever, body aches, headache, tiredness, etc.), but they probably don’t last much past 24 – 48 hours. No fun, but better than severe illness.
Tom Scharf,
““Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said the F.D.A.’s transparency and guidelines helped assuage the fears of many public health experts who felt “the White House was putting their thumb on the scale in a very big way.â€
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IOW, the FDA insisting on a delay in releasing the results from Pfizer trial until after the election, ensuring Trump’s defeat, means that the FDA was not really working for Trump after all, and so they can now be trusted.
I don’t have much of an opinion on the timing of the announcements. They can easily cover up any intentional delay and I would not be surprised that it was “managed”. The important clock starts ticking when the formal submission for emergency use is sent to the FDA. Standard FDA process means slow and painful but the eyes of the world are watching this time. After their initial testing failures they cannot screw this up.
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The irony is pretty high that the proposed solution to a perceived politicization of the vaccine is to inject more partisan politics into it. Naturally all these political critters want to get credit for it, and to pre-distance themselves / setup a fall guy in case it goes sideways later. These committees will rubber stamp anything that comes out of the FDA. Delaying things a week will be met with high derision.
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Distribution of the vaccine will be highly political. Nobody will be happy. I’d like to see identity politics kept out of it, but that is wishful thinking.
My estimate of the chances that Trump would still pull out a victory was south of 1%. But it has now ticked up: Sidney Powell is on the job. And she is making a stunning claim:
“We have sworn witness testimony of why the software was designed, it was designed to rig elections,†Powell said. “He was fully briefed on it, he saw it happen in other countries, it was exported internationally for profit by the people that are behind Smartmatic and Dominion.â€
“He” is Smartmatic chairman of the board and Biden transition team member Peter Neffenger. Let that sink in.
Tom Scharf,
“Distribution of the vaccine will be highly political.”
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For sure. Which is one of the reasons I think the FDA will drag its feet to delay most distribution until after Trump leaves office… they want to make sure that the Biden administration gets to make identity politics the focus of the distribution plan.
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If I sound cynical, it is because I am.
I found a good summary article on lipid vesicles used to carry messenger RNA: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c01386
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The particles are in the range of 100 nm size, which is definitely small enough for phagocytosis to capture and internalize the particles.
Maybe NY and NJ are trying to get ahead of an anticipated seasonal surge. Don’t know about Calif.
Mike M. (Comment #193911)
November 16th, 2020 at 2:49 pm
My estimate of the chances that Trump would still pull out a victory was south of 1%. But it has now ticked up: Sidney Powell is on the job. And she is making a stunning claim:
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I can’t find any current odds on Trump winning. But it seems like a very very long shot. I’m not sure you can place a bet on it, but you can wager on whether Trump will attend Biden’s swearing-in. The betting is saying he won’t. I might bet the other way.
SteveF (Comment #193952): “Interesting that States like New York, New Jersey, and California are imposing new restrictions, but don’t really have that much of a surge in cases.”
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Positive tests in those states (and Washington, Oregon) have been rising as fast as in places like Michigan and New Mexico. But the rises started later, so current rates of new positive tests are not as high. So it is not unreasonable for those states to look at the Midwest and mountain states and conclude that is where they are headed and that they don’t want to go.
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The real question is whether the lockdowns do any good.
OK_Max,
Those states are hunting for rabbits where there are very few to be found. The deaths per confirmed case in those states is running about 1 in 120 (0.008), and trending downward; most people catching the virus in those states are not in the population at high risk of death. At present, covid-19 deaths in NY state are running at about 5% to 6% of the “normal” rate of deaths. Whatever steps Cuomo takes, they are not going to have much effect on the overall death rate in New York.
Mike M,
“The real question is whether the lockdowns do any good.”
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Widespread lockdowns, if complied with, pretty much have to reduce the number of cases, at least in the short term. I don’t think the right question is if lockdowns do any “good”, but if they do more good than harm. I would argue that in most places, they cost far more then they are worth. OTOH, a “lockdown” of long term care facilities can save lots of lives at relatively low cost.
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“So it is not unreasonable for those states to look at the Midwest and mountain states and conclude that is where they are headed and that they don’t want to go.”
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Except much of the population in NY has already been exposed, and either were resistant or recovered. Places that are now “surging” never had the high rates of exposure like New York and New Jersey.
I agree the question is really how well these lockdowns work. I’m not arguing they don’t lower risk, but the media coverage of lockdowns has becomes so moralized and politicized that it’s difficult to get to the bottom of how well they really work. I think they simply don’t really know and it’s one of the only levers a government can pull so they pull it.
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For example national coverage about FL’s initial surge was all about DeSantis not issuing a * statewide * lockdown. However every metro area in FL had local lockdowns and mask orders. We are still under mandatory indoor mask orders where I live.
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Then you get still ongoing smug verbiage about motorcycle festivals with happy uncritical coverage about street parties after the election. Politicians get caught disobeying their own orders routinely now.
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What you don’t get is an actual real understanding of the efficacy of which lockdowns work and what doesn’t because it’s really hard to measure. Stay at home orders likely do the most, but at an expense most aren’t willing to pay now. This is not to say we know nothing or have learned nothing. Outdoor restrictions are ridiculous for the most part, but restrictions on crowded indoor places make the most sense.
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NY and NJ can do what they want, but the reason they have done well lately has more to do with explosive initial surges than public policy. The virus is contagious enough that we cannot have anywhere near a normal life and keep it suppressed (once the outbreak became uncontained). NZ and a few other places can still fight the battle to keep it under containment, we can’t.
It looks like ND is at or near peak, that’s a good indicator for the rest of the Midwest. It’s a gigantic peak though.
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And in something counterintuitive, it looks like births are down by the hundred of thousands in the US, one might argue lockdowns would have increased such activity.
Tom Scharf,
In my county there is also a mask order for indoor commercial establishments (except when eating at restaurants). But DeSantis made it almost unenforceable (the county sheriff is not going to get involved), so smaller establishments are a lot more relaxed in their requirements than larger ones. Supermarkets, chain drug stores, and places like Home Depot require masks and actually insist on them. You will now have to share a golf cart in my county, rather than have one for each player, because as we all know, covid-19 virus is not contagious on golf courses. Icewater containers have returned to the golf courses, but still no rakes in the traps…. I don’t even try to understand all the odd rules the covid mania has inspired.
New study: Durable immunity for Covid 19 is possible in most individuals.
As Covid-19 Surges, the Big Unknown Is Where People Are Getting Infected
The U.S. and Europe struggle to identify where coronavirus infections are occurring, making it hard to impose targeted restrictions https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-covid-19-surges-the-big-unknown-is-where-people-are-getting-infected-11605474874
“In Germany, authorities say they don’t know where 75% of people who currently test positive for the coronavirus got it. In Austria, the figure stands at 77%. In Spain, the health ministry said that it was able to identify the origin of only 7% of infections registered in the last week of October. In France and Italy, only some 20% of new cases have been linked to people who previously tested positive.
Jay Varma, senior adviser for public health in the New York City mayor’s office, said 10% of the city’s infections are due to travel, 5% from gatherings, and another 5% from institutional settings such as nursing homes.
“The vast majority of the remainder—somewhere probably around 50% or more—we don’t have a way to directly attribute their source of infection,†Mr. Varma said. “And that’s a concern.—
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I’d like to know how many people got the virus while strictly adhering to government guidelines.
Two people in a golf cart for 4 hours seems like high risk to me. Much better than riding in a car for 4 hours. Get a lot more dispersal certainly. These are the type of situations that could be analyzed and measured for risk but we have almost nothing.
Lucia,
Good paper. The interesting thing in that paper for me was the rise in b-memory cells during the 6 months post-infection; which indicates a robust long term resistance (many years) to symptomatic illness, even if a falling titre of circulating spike specific antibody does not render the person absolutely “sterile-immune” to the virus upon re-exposure.
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I read a recent published review of the Moderna vaccine dose response at 25, 100, and 250 micrograms (active) injected. They showed that the antibody titre at 28 days is roughly proportional to dose for the first innoculation, but that the response to the second innoculation is many times stronger, and tended to max out a bit at the highest dose. The profile of side effects showed the highest dose (250 micrograms of active lipid/RNA particles injected) caused the most severe side effects, but especially for the second dose. Looks to me like the most effective dosing would be a relatively high first dose (100-125 micrograms?) and a lower second dose (25 to 50 micrograms?) to minimize undesirable side effects. The side effects were: headache, fever, injection site soreness, muscle pain, joint pain, nausea, and general malaise.
It doesn’t surprise me they can’t figure out where most individuals got the virus. Testing turn around here is too slow to permit good tracing and communication. Testing is taking about 4 days to report results back around here. (One of Jim’s brothers got tested Friday. We haven’t heard back.)
I’d like to know how many people got the virus while strictly adhering to government guidelines.
Probably almost no one because almost no one is strictly adhering to real guidelines!!! (Meanwhile, extra “rules” get made up. Likely there is no rule against rakes.)
“And in something counterintuitive, it looks like births are down by the hundred of thousands in the US, one might argue lockdowns would have increased such activity.”
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Absence makes the heart grow fonder…. and the opposite is also true.
Well… Lockdowns only really started in March. So we shouldn’t expect any effect on births yet.
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Beyond that, birth control is widely available. I imagine lots of people might avoid a planned pregnancy when they aren’t sure about jobs. It’s possible limited dating possibilities reduced unplanned events.
This is what can actually happen in a recount. GA county finds 2600 ballots that were never counted, A net +800 for Trump. Not nearly enough to matter here, but greater than the Gore/Bush difference. Looks like incompetence. https://www.ajc.com/politics/georgia-recount-uncovers-2600-new-votes-in-presidential-race/I75NSPYYGNF43HQZBPYKJWJ5MA/
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“Martin said these ballots rectify a discrepancy between the number of people who checked in to vote early and ballots that were counted in Floyd County, located in northwest Georgia.
The issue appeared to occur on an optical scanner that stopped working after a couple of weeks of early voting, Martin said. County election officials were supposed to rescan all paper ballots cast on that machine, but roughly half of them weren’t recorded.”
“The most effective NPIs include curfews, lockdowns and closing and restricting places where people gather in smaller or large numbers for an extended period of time. This includes small gathering cancellations (closures of shops, restaurants, gatherings of 50 persons or fewer, mandatory home working and so on) and closure of educational institutions. While in previous studies, based on smaller numbers of countries, school closures had been attributed as having little effect on the spread of COVID-19 (refs. 19,20), more recent evidence has been in favour of the importance of this NPI28,29; school closures in the United States have been found to reduce COVID-19 incidence and mortality by about 60% (ref. 28). This result is also in line with a contact-tracing study from South Korea, which identified adolescents aged 10–19 years as more likely to spread the virus than adults and children in household settings30. Individual movement restrictions (including curfew, the prohibition of gatherings and movements for non-essential activities or measures segmenting the population) were also amongst the top-ranked measures.”
It notes that these can very expensive however, and there are effective interventions that are cheaper. “We also find a number of highly effective NPIs that can be considered less costly. For instance, we find that risk-communication strategies feature prominently amongst consensus NPIs. This includes government actions intended to educate and actively communicate with the public. The effective messages include encouraging people to stay at home, promoting social distancing and workplace safety measures, encouraging the self-initiated isolation of people with symptoms, travel warnings and information campaigns (mostly via social media). All these measures are non-binding government advice, contrasting with the mandatory border restriction and social distancing measures that are often enforced by police or army interventions and sanctions. Surprisingly, communicating on the importance of social distancing has been only marginally less effective than imposing distancing measures by law.
PhilScadden,
“Surprisingly, communicating on the importance of social distancing has been only marginally less effective than imposing distancing measures by law.”
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Paredo’s law in action. If you accurately inform people of the relative risks of different behaviors, a large majority will do their best to avoid the risky behaviors. Try to force everyone to comply, and you will still have nearly 20% who flip the bird at the rules, and 80% who follow them…. but many of that 80% will be pissed off by the process. When rules are disconnected from risks, the compliance level will be lower, of course. Except in China, where they will throw you in prison if you don’t follow crazy rules.
For anyone interested: I have evaluated the Brave browser, desktop and laptop. Very good, very fast, very small footprint. It imports your bookmarks and settings from other browsers. It really does eliminate all the irritating ads that chase after you when you search any subject. Select DuckDuckGo as your default search engine, and you will stop supporting the evil Google cabal as well.
Phil,
Thanks for that. This is the problem here:
“Using a comprehensive, hierarchically coded dataset of 6,068 NPIs implemented in March–April 2020 (when most European countries and US states experienced their first infection waves) in 79 territories23, here we analyse the impact of government interventions on Rt using harmonized results from a multi-method approach consisting of (1) a case-control analysis (CC), (2) a step function approach to LASSO time-series regression (LASSO), (3) random forests (RF) and (4) transformers (TF). We contend that the combination of four different methods, combining statistical, inference and artificial intelligence classes of tools, also allows assessment of the structural uncertainty of individual methods24.”
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Hmmmm … inference and AI tools. Perhaps this all worked and the results sound plausible but I’ve done enough algorithm work that this sounds remarkably like a fancy random number generator. They are unscrambling eggs here and I don’t trust black boxes to do that even if it uses “AI”. This is better than guessing, but how much better I really can’t tell.
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I read an article today that said simple numerical analysis clearly shows the number one cause of increasing outbreaks was increased testing availability. They were kidding, wet streets make it rain and all, but that is a simple example of why this problem is so hard to analyze. They “inference” these things away. Once you get into that business then you start saying things like “We also find no evidence for the effectiveness of social distancing measures in regard to public transport.” That sounds debatable on inference.
Tom Scharf,
I long ago stopped looking at “cases” more than 2 month in the past; they are 100% meaningless. The only real measure of success against covid-19 is the rate of deaths per million population. Everything else is too subject to distortion and confusion.
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That said, most everywhere (even most places where there is a surge in cases) the number of deaths per confirmed case has been dropping. Which indicates that measures taken to isolate/protect the most vulnerable have in fact been at least partially effective. Except for places like NY and NJ, where Cuomo and Murphey outright killed many thousands to remain politically correct in their policies. They were and are idiots, and history will not be kind.
Well I live my working life in algorithms and, yes, I am suspicious of use by people that not extremely familiar with code, but I think blanket “I saw AI and inference so I can dismiss it” is not useful either. Particularly when published in Nature. I would certainly be watching for criticism of methods by other researchers in the field but for moment, this is best actual analysis I have found and beats uninformed guesswork hands down.
That said, I havent delved into the tables too far yet.
Furthermore it pretty much backs up conclusions from an earlier paper I posted on evaluation of NPI but based on US states alone and using google mobility data.
Pfizer says vaccine 94% effective in over 65 age group.
What is a naive algorithm going to tell you about the latest outbreaks in the US and Europe? Wearing masks makes things much worse. People are wearing masks much more now and the outbreak is considerably worse than the spring.
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We “know” this isn’t true, so the algorithm must be corrected. We know more testing doesn’t create cases, so this must be corrected. We know the full extent of the spring outbreak wasn’t recorded so this must be estimated. We don’t have good information on regional mask use over time, so this must be estimated. On and on and on.
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We keep tweaking until we get a reasonable output from the magic number cruncher. What does reasonable mean? It matches our prior expectations.
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This can be a grand exercise in numerically modelling our existing biases against very bad noisy data. If you don’t think that can be true then go read 10+ year of Climate Audit and tree ring data. This is a rare example of a numerically complex algorithm being put under strict scrutiny and a lot of dirty algorithm underwear being exposed.
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Why did they choose to use these numerically complex tools with inference, AI, etc? Very likely because the basic numeric tools were tried and didn’t work. They didn’t work possibly because the input data is inadequate or the answer is unknowable because of the complex dynamics at play.
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How can we tell the difference between sophisticated bad guessing and sophisticated good guessing? I can’t really tell but there are red flags here that make me skeptical. It’s perfectly OK to treat it as the best data we have, but not as definitive.
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If they are capable of sorting out all this mess looking backwards, then the same numeric methods should be able to predict the future looking forwards with newly acquired data. This is typically where these things fail miserably.
I wish Pfizer and Moderna would just release the trial data. Pfizer had one severe case in the vaccine group, and 10 in the placebo group, but no information about the age or heath profile of the severe cases. The description of side effects for the Pfizer vaccine make it sound like milder symptoms than the Moderna vaccine.
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The description of the distribution plan (all dry ice) sounds really complicated. The Moderna vaccine should turn out cheaper.
I think the Moderna vaccine is going to be nicknamed “The Dolly”. 🙂
Lucia,
The Dolly? Why?
Dolly Parton donated $1Million to fund the Moderna Vaccine.
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I think the PR campaign for the vaccine should point it it’s not Trump’s vaccine. It’s not Biden’s vaccine. It’s Dolly’s. 🙂
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This may not be entirely fair to Trump who actually DID organize things to get regulators out of the way, nor Biden who may in the future do something useful vis-a-vis the vaccine. BUT Dolly is possibly the least polarizing person in America. She funded her friend a researcher at Vanderbilt when he explained the need.
Yes, it would be nice to attach this to something largely nonpolitical.
Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vacciiiiiiiiine…
Yes. And I think Dolly tends to avoid politics. Her main view is to love everyone.
Tom Scharf (Comment #194021): “We keep tweaking until we get a reasonable output from the magic number cruncher. What does reasonable mean? It matches our prior expectations.”
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An excellent diagnosis. The studies claiming that lockdowns or masks work are never straigth forward. They always use a non-obvious figure of merit and generally have cherry picked start and end dates. And whatever lag time is needed for agreement is the correct lag time.
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Maybe there are in fact small benefits that are difficult to extract from the data. But the claim made for lockdowns and masks is that the benefits are dramatic. If that were so, a simple analysis would suffice to show the effect.
Tom, I am really struggling to connect your objections to what was actually done in paper. The results from each of “simpler” techniques are included in the supplementary materials.
Perhaps the easiest way to understand your objections would be if you could explain what methods you think should have been used to rank NPIs given the data sets available, and why they are superior to the methodologies actually used?
I believe we already know from the first surge that elements of the lock down reduced the Rt below 1. The study in Nature was attempting to find which elements were the most effective and rank them. That is a very tall task. They use methods suited for such a task when attempting to model with in-sample data, but as Tom eludes to that does not quarantee the model will work out-of-sample.
Any practical benefits from this study would be for those calling the shots to eliminate restrictions that have little or no effect on Rt and might well have very detrimental side effects. Will politicians calling the shots use this information? I doubt it very much.
I also think this study does not deal with two very important issues in these matters. One is the trade-off in health/death considerations and damage to the economy and detrimental effects of lock downs on mental and physical health and the other is whether this model is useful with the second and third surges and applying to NH winter conditions.
Like the tree ring case with climate science it would be better to have a prior theoretical criterion to test with in-sample data, but in the case of Covid-19 infection spreading I do not think we have a good handle on it.
The Nature study admits to much population heterogeneity at nation level in their results and on a first reading I am unsure of how much that could effect their results when that heterogeneity is taken down to the local level.
I should make it clear here that the tree ring modeling and studies in climate science did not make use of a prior criteria from theory in selecting tree ring proxies but rather selected posterior from in- sample results – which is a statistical no no that none in the field appreciated.
” They use methods suited for such a task when attempting to model with in-sample data, but as Tom eludes to that does not quarantee the model will work out-of-sample.”
How do you interpret their runs againt validation sets then?
The study was making no attempt at cost benefit analysis, but it did note that many of the policies that were effective were also very expensive. It was trying to identify effective baskets of policy that we not necessarily so expensive and also noted that heavy-handed laws werent much more effective than good communication.
I dont think “leadership” that claims it a just a little flu, a hoax, or that masks are “un-American” are examples of effective communication.
I was surprised that the method ranked school closures so high for both cases and mortality, given that we know cases are much less common among children and fatalities are massively less common among children. (It was second most effective overall, after small gathering cancellation). This was apparently surprising to the authors as well, as they call it out specifically:
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While in previous studies, based on smaller numbers of countries, school closures had been attributed as having little effect on the spread of COVID-19 (refs. 19,20), more recent evidence has been in favour of the importance of this NPI28,29; school closures in the United States have been found to reduce COVID-19 incidence and mortality by about 60% (ref. 28). This result is also in line with a contact-tracing study from South Korea, which identified adolescents aged 10–19 years as more likely to spread the virus than adults and children in household settings.
—
Reference 28, used twice in these sentences, is Auger from June 2020, and it too is trying to extract a specific NPI from a host of other NPIs adopted at the same time. It uses state-level school closures in March 2020 and attempts to tease it out from other measures taken. Besides the eye-catching large increases in cases in mortality (between what actually happened and what they modelled would happen given exponential growth), their main takeaway was that the earlier the better — the states that were “early” had a larger percentage impact than those that closed “late”. This deserves more elaboration.
Early and Late refer to the point in time compared to the diseases progression, not the calendar time (all states closed schools between March 13 and March 23rd). In essence, the states with lower Covid rates at the time schools were closed in March did better at avoiding modelled cases/deaths through May 7th. Given that it was a few high-quartile states that failed to “flatten the curve” back then, this does not surprise me, but I imagine it would be true of any intervention.
This is based on publicly available data about cases/deaths between March 9th and May 7th. It is described as “more recent” than references 19 and 20. 19 (Banzholzer, preprint Apr 28) is based on cases through April 15th at the country level (using US, Canada, EU-15, Switzerland, Norway, Australia). Auger has three more weeks at the end of the data, though it needs it for the mortality analysis (10-12 days lag between case diagnosis and death used), and some of the countries involved were ahead of US on disease progression. It seems implausible to me that three weeks of additional data would turn an 8% case reduction into a 62% case reduction using #19’s methodology, especially since their largest case impact (venue closures) is only 35%. 20 (Flaxman, June 2020) uses 11 European countries from February 20th until May 4th; describing Auger as “more recent” is a stretch given they are from the same month and the end-date is only 3 days different (while #20 starts earlier). Their model only can identify lockdown as a large positive effect, while all other interventions can’t be teased out at all.
I suspect the different results have to do with models and methods, and not at all how “recent” the paper is. With so little agreement, falling back on an explanation on *how* they work would be agreeable. Auger is almost apoplogetic in this regards, hypothesizing that it may not be the school closure itself, but the disruption to adult schedule — i.e., by forcing adults to stay home to watch the de-schooled kids, transmission is disrupted. Interestingly, Auger references four contradicting studies about modest fatality effects from school closures, those four do not overlap with the two referenced by Haug.
Reference 29 is Lui (pre-print August) which uses 130 countries and data from January through June, so can claim recency, at least. They don’t try to estimate scale, only if the effect is deemed significant in all the regression models they used. Only two interventions made the cut in all of them — school closures and internal movement restrictions. As they noted, “we found temporal clustering between many of the NPIs”.
It seems to me the effect of school closures and other interventions might be more detectable on the other end — all the interventions tend to come in clustered together, but the ending of interventions is more spread out.
Phil Scadden (Comment #194045)
November 18th, 2020 at 5:58 pm
How do you interpret their runs againt validation sets then?
Cross validation is no guarantee of out-of-sample model performance because it is based on in-sample data just as are the data it is attempting validate. It is better than the post facto selection of proxies in climate science studies of ancient temperature trends but can still suffer from some weaknesses. For example, an investigator could peak at the entirety of available data and select that piece of data that fits some prior subjective assumptions. Cross validation of data within that piece is likely to find some degree of validation. Further as I noted previously the conditions prevailing in the modeled period may not persist into the future. There also should be some a prior theories to guide such analysis and put bounds on it.
Using reported cases in this study to measure Rt gets complicated by the varying amounts of testing, asymptomatic cases not tested and the heterogeneity of the population to susceptibility to Covid-19 and the spreading of it.
The crazies on all sides of these issues will not stop being crazy based on analyses that they either will ignore or refute out of hand. That situation, however, should not be used to discourage legitimate criticism of these analyses or pointing to the limitations of the results.
This reference also popped out at me, since it seems to contradict the what-we-know about children spreading the disease:
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“This result is also in line with a contact-tracing study from South Korea, which identified adolescents aged 10–19 years as more likely to spread the virus than adults and children in household settings.”
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The study by Park is from Jan 20-Mar 27 data in Korea, and does show that *if* the index patient in a household is 10-19, they have the highest chance of a household contact getting it (18.6%, CI 14.0-24.0%), while if the index patient is 0-9 they have the lowest chance (5.3% CI 1.3-13.7%). As you can tell from the 95% confidence intervals of lowest and highest nearly overlapping, there aren’t a lot of index patients in either bucket, 0-9 represented just 0.5% of index patients and 10-19 just 2.2%. And these are household contacts during school closures, meaning the index patient 10-19 is likely home all day, every day — for nonhousehold contacts in the same study 10-19 was tied for the lowest, with 0.9% (0.1-2.9%).
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Honestly I’m surprised that this highly infectious virus is infecting just 11.8% in the first place in the same household, I would’ve expected a lot higher. Given that 10-19 was *vastly* less likely to be the index patient, I don’t know that it’s worth worrying that *if* they have it there’s a 3-13% additional chance of it spreading. I also wonder if the buckets are well chosen — 20-29 has a large number of index patients, and I suspect 19 year olds may be more like 24 year olds than 14, and 10 years old may be more like 2 year olds than 18 year olds with respect to this disease. Why not make buckets based on the age ranges of particular school levels instead?
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There are, of course, LOTS of studies that reinforce the same thing that this study also shows — school age children are much less likely to get the disease in the first place. Surely that’s relevant to whether school closures are a good idea?
One more thing that caught my eye:
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‘Wearing a mask’ exhibits a significant impact on Rt in three methods (ΔRt between −0.018 and –0.12).
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-0.018 is significant? Oddly enough, “Wearing a mask” is not shown on their table one, though from the range given I suspect it is “Personal Protective Measures”, listed about midway on the list of impacts. Of the four methods used, the Z-score heat map shows two with no significant effect (CC and LASSO), below 5 for RF and somewhere around 25 for TF. TF seems to be very all-or-nothing, almost everything is dark red or grey.
Dale S,
“Surely that’s relevant to whether school closures are a good idea?”
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I don’t think so. School closures are mainly about protecting teachers, not protecting children. And teachers have plenty enough political influence to keep the schools closed until all teachers have received vaccinations. So maybe schools will return to normal operation in the fall of 2021… maybe.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #194042): “I believe we already know from the first surge that elements of the lock down reduced the Rt below 1.”
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I do not think we know anything of the sort. (R-1) is proportional to ln(P(i)/P(i-n)), where P(i) is positive tests on day i and n is a suitable interval of days. Plots of that quantity indicate that R often started to decrease well before any lockdowns and even before changes in mobility. In other cases, R started to increase after lockdown. So far as I am aware, one can not look at such plots and reliably identify any events that altered the progression of infections.
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The lack of sharp changes in R does not prove that there was no effect of interventions. With the 7 day cycle in reporting and the spread in interval from one infection to the next, the data are naturally smeared out, so even a relatively sharp change could end up not being obvious. But it is now clear that R goes up and down with no real connection to behavior. So it seems clear to me that behavior is not a dominant factor in the progression of the epidemic.
Mike M. (Comment #194071)
November 19th, 2020 at 9:49 am
When I use the term elements of lockdown I include those that were undertaken voluntarily before governments made the elements mandatory. I suspect that voluntary actions are a big part of the control of the spread of the virus and there are studies I have read that imply what I suspect.
I also agree that smearing of the infection data over time can and does occur. In my analysis I found that Rt is changing over time to a significant degree and a static Rt paints a very incorrect picture.
We do know that human actions can reduce the rate of spread of the Covid-19 infections and that it can be tracked by way of reported cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Looking at 43 actions, that can be tightly clustered in time of application but can vary individually over time in degree of compete application, and attempting to rank the effectiveness of those actions would appear to be a nigh onto impossible task of unconfounding the results.
The media screaming pandemics and deaths make people change their behavior. One can reel off lots of problems with the forcing data they are using. It’s very hard to get reliable results in multifactor analysis from data that isn’t reliably measured in the first place. Combining lots of disparate unreliable data isn’t like averaging white noise, it’s not making things easier to analyze in most cases. Putting it into the math blender and through the algorithm strainer results in brown mush of varying tones.
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Saying this is difficult is not saying it isn’t potentially useful or should be dismissed. Does this provide “actionable intelligence” that should be used to change policy? I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone is saying that right now.
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What I do see is increasing evidence that surface contamination and outside activities are less risky. I also suspect we are missing something very important about this virus and its spread. Perhaps there are certain environmental conditions that affect R much more than mask compliance and our other tribal obsessing over human behavior. Maybe it stays aerosolized much longer at certain narrow ranges of temperatures and humidities etc. Who knows. One of the least dense states has one of the largest outbreaks per capita.
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Stay away from other humans is good advice, and the goal of this study is great, rank where the risks are. My only skepticism is that they can really wring this out from the data they have.
“Honestly I’m surprised that this highly infectious virus is infecting just 11.8% in the first place in the same household”
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I’ve seen other estimates close to this that itemized spouse transmission at around 23% and other members around 15% or so, can’t remember the specific numbers. I was also surprised by how low this number was. On the other hand anytime one member of a family got flu it didn’t necessarily spread inside the house like fire, and we didn’t treat family members with the flu like they had Ebola. We might have a a high degree of varying contagiousness of spreaders combined with a high degree of susceptibility of victims. Perhaps it is this way for most diseases of this type.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #194075): “When I use the term elements of lockdown I include those that were undertaken voluntarily before governments made the elements mandatory. I suspect that voluntary actions are a big part of the control of the spread of the virus and there are studies I have read that imply what I suspect.”
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I think the only studies that show a big effect are based on models (i.e., fantasy). The model shows some enormous number of deaths if no action was taken, reality is very different, and they attribute the difference to actions taken rather than the model having been wildly wrong.
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There is probably some effect, but there is no evidence that it is large or that voluntary actions actions could not achieve almost the entire effect.
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Imagine educating the public as to potential super spread situations and advising the public to avoid such. For the sake of argument, let’s say that results in a uniform 50% reduction in attendance at such events. With the simplistic logic of a SIR model, that would reduce transmission by 75%; half the chance of an infected person at a given event and half as many people potentially infected. With an initial R0 of 3, that would be enough to stop the epidemic. With an 80% reduction in attendance, there would be a 96% reduction in spread; sufficient to crush any epidemic.
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I suspect that argument is essentially why the models show spectacular effects from lockdowns. And it is obvious that such dramatic results have not been achieved. The reason remains unclear.
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That argument, implies an important conclusion. Voluntary action should be sufficient to achieve most of the limited benefit of a lockdown. And voluntary action would lead to far less harm and be far more sustainable.
Tom Scharf (Comment #194078): “I also suspect we are missing something very important about this virus and its spread.”
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I think that is obvious. We have no idea how to control the virus.
“ We have no idea how to control the virus.â€
We have no idea how to control the virus and have anything like a normal economy and normal lives.
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I expect the complexity of spread will ultimately be shown due mostly to a wide range of individual susceptibility to the virus, even among people of the same age and general health. My guess is it is due to different exposures to other coronaviruses in the past.
The study I posted last month https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Arnon-et-al-conference-draft.pdf
(USA only) indicated voluntary action from fear was a very important factor. ie google mobility data was showing sharp changes before any NPIs. “NPIs introduced by state and local governments explain a
small fraction of the nationwide decline in contact rates but nevertheless reduced COVID-19 deaths by almost 30% percent—saving about 33,000 lives—over the first 3 months of the pandemic”
However, it also shows that voluntary precautionary behaviour has a very large economic impact too. (See Fig 10 in the paper).
Phil Scadden (Comment #194091): “The study I posted last month …”
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Results from a never validated model. Proves nothing.
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Phil Scadden: “However, it also shows that voluntary precautionary behaviour has a very large economic impact too.”
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Sure, but that misses the point. Voluntary behavior allows individuals to minimize damage to themselves in accord with what they value. A person who can afford to take a large financial hit in exchange for greater safety might choose to do so while a different person might make a different choice. A person who can choose which activities to forego will choose to skip the things that are less important to him. So for the same level of economic impact, voluntary behavior produces much less damage to individuals.
It’s a bit striking if you compare previous answers to “why is the flu seasonal?” to current conversations on covid. What is striking is conversations on the flu are focused on the behavior and characteristics of the virus itself, while conversations about covid are almost entirely about people’s bad behavior. http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2014/the-reason-for-the-season-why-flu-strikes-in-winter/
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“The results from the study suggest that influenza actually survives longer at low humidity and low temperatures. At 43°F with very low humidity, most of the virus was able to survive more than 23 hours, whereas at high humidity and a temperature of 90°F, survival was diminished at even one hour into incubation (3).”
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I’m not comparing these two diseases directly, just how one is de-personalized and that makes a difference in the way they are framed in discourse.
Mike, I am not sure any study would satisfy your criteria if you didnt like the result. Have you thought what data might convince you?
I believe the hypothesis on financial hits have almost nothing to do with personal wealth on choice. Scared people do not go to bars, restaurants, shows, events, cinemas, gyms, planes and cruise ships identified with spreading the virus. Switching to online kills other shopping. (Online businesses prospered). The lack of custom is the killing economic cost.
Tom, if summer heat is killer (and I suspect it is a factor), then I would expect big differences between climatic zones. It hasnt raged through Finland, but has through Brazil which would suggest behaviour is more important than climate.
Regarding seasonality, consider not the virus, but the hosts:
. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8000
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Epigenetics appear to make us more vulnerable during winter, perhaps in phase with vitamin D.
Phil Scadden (Comment #194097): “I am not sure any study would satisfy your criteria if you didnt like the result. Have you thought what data might convince you?”
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It has nothing to do with whether I like the result. What would convince me would be something that actually shows evidence of a significant effect.
Mike, models are inherent in science, implicit or explicit. How would propose to investigate effects of NPIs without a model (probably many)? Both papers are built on big datasets available to analyze these now.
Phil Scadden (Comment #194108): “models are inherent in science, implicit or explicit.”
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That is rather like saying that any analysis makes assumptions, therefore one can make any assumptions one likes.
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I did not say “models”. I said “a never validated model”. The scientific literature is full of papers based on models that are really nothing more than science fiction.
“Never validated”? Is this an objection to their contact rate metric from Unacast, Google mobility et al?
I wasnt proposing NPIs have a big effect – the papers suggest quite the opposite, compared to precautionary efforts. I was asking how you propose measure the effects of NPI when there are confounding factors.
The idea that NPIs are completely useless I think is unsupportable from experience in Korea, NZ, China, Taiwan and Australia. Whether they are cost-effective is another story entirely.
Kenneth complained that validation in the second paper was in sample which I find hard to support. The validation dataset was not used in creating the model, only for testing.
Phil
It hasnt raged through Finland, but has through Brazil which would suggest behaviour is more important than climate.
Yes. But the relevant behavior may be taking vitamin D supplements in Finland.
It’s quite possible that because the NPIs occurred in such close proximity that disentangling their effects is not possible, and even if a model is lucky enough to get the disentangling right, would not be verifiable. For that reason, it makes more sense to focus on the mechanics of disease transmission to see how the NPIs should work *mechnically*. For example, if the risk of transmission is negligible between two strangers (one infected) passing within six feet of each other for a few seconds, policies designed to suppress that brief contact are not going to do much good. There’s depressingly little information that hones down on exactly what the risks of transmission are in various scenarios, and that would be useful not just for public policy but also for informing private behavior.
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Informing private behavior is vital even for public policy. One of the reasons cloth masks were dismissed as useless in March was that it was feared that individuals would assume more risk when “protected”. One of the reasons that cloth masks were hailed later that it would remind people to be cautious in other ways. The human response is unpredictable, and can change over time as fatigue sets in. If you give people the tools to more effectively manage their own risk — and give business the tools they need to reshape how risky their activities are — I think you’ll end up in a better place than using a blunt on/off instrument.
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It’s true that the fear response had more dramatic effects back in March than governmental actions, at least in many sectors. The fear response had the effect of making close extended contacts much less likely. My kids went to see a movie before the theatres were closed — they were the only ones in the entire theatre. The last time I went to our favorite sushi restaurant before it was closed, all the tables were empty at dinnertime — I could have dined-in with no more human contact than I incurred while getting my takeout. When my daughter flew home from Hawaii, she was the only one seated in her row. The loss of traffic can and did leave to revenue loss, and it’s possible that some businesses would not be capable of making their business safe enough to overcome fear without reducing capacity to an unsustainable point. But if we are going to pump vast amount of borrowed dollars into keeping businesses alive, perhaps it would preferable to use that money to fund equipment/building to make businesses permanently safer rather than just to keep alive a business that posed no significant elevated risk but was closed by government fiat anyways.
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I also question the estimated reduction of death following from driving mobility lower. It’s been known for a long time that the risk of fatality is *very* uneven according to age and underlying conditions; what matters to fatalities isn’t the contact rate of the less vulnerable population, but exposure of the more vulnerable population. When the vulnerable population is much less likely to have a job and extremely unlikely to be in school, reducing non-household contacts by business closure and school closures won’t have anywhere near a linear effect on fatalities.
I haven’t seen the Danish control trial on masks mentioned here ( in my cursory scan ).
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What do we think?
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Masks don’t prevent incoming disease, but help limit our infections of others?
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The study provided high quality masks, regularly replaced, with instructions to the using group. These conditions are practiced by at most a scant minority, at least in my locale.
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Makes me think a cloth mask to limit my coughs or sneezes but otherwise be comfortable may be preferable.
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A benefit of this is rededicating to limiting the other factors: crowds, closeness and duration.
. https://unherd.com/thepost/danish-mask-study-professor-protective-effect-may-be-small-but-masks-are-worthwhile/
Dale S (Comment #194129)
“When the vulnerable population is much less likely to have a job and extremely unlikely to be in school, reducing non-household contacts by business closure and school closures won’t have anywhere near a linear effect on fatalities.”
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Dale, I’m not sure I understand what you are saying. Covid-19 fatalities are rising again, and we don’t yet know whether fatalities from this virus will be greater than before nor do we know the age distribution of these future fatalities.
Kenneth complained that validation in the second paper was in sample which I find hard to support. The validation dataset was not used in creating the model, only for testing.
Phil, I think the confusion here is due to the term and meaning of out-of-sample data. There is true out-of-sample data which means data not available to the model maker and most often would mean future data. In cross-validation there is pseudo out-of-sample data which is data withheld from the available in-sample data on which the model can be tested after using the in-sample data to construct the model. That pseudo out-of-sample data are available to the model maker before making the model. It is important to understand the difference between true out-of-sample and pseudo out-of-sample data and for some of the reasons I gave in my post on this topic.
The modeling under discussion here could have benefited from some theoretical considerations to limit and bound their analysis to unconfounding many fewer behavior changes and restrictions. The fact that it did not would lead me to believe that the theory was and probably remains lacking.
From practical considerations an analysis/model that attempts to disentangle actions that were initiated on nearly the same starting date, were actually probably put into effect over varying time spans and under national differences gets to be a very complicated matter to model. The combination of 43 inputs to fit some final results over many nations would require very high powered computing and tend to put analysis and understanding of it in a blackbox.
Phil,
It’s unclear what you are arguing here. Nobody can prove these results to be either useful or non-useful without a major effort to validate methods and data. Assuming they could be proven useful then what are you arguing here? Less human contact results in less disease transfer, this is accepted.
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This entire class of curve fitting exercises has a lot of issues that everybody is aware of, taking results like this with a grain of salt isn’t a controversial position. If you input flu data and winter coat sales into this class of algorithms they will tell you selling coats causes the flu to spread. It’s not just selecting the right data inputs with high quality data, it is is also not * leaving out * important data inputs.
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You cannot use A, B, C as inputs to these curve fitters to prove that the output is dependent on A, B, C. It’s a circular argument. They do their best with the limited data they have, they present their efforts, and their rankings are probably a good first pass estimation on reality, but it is really just that, an estimation that is difficult to judge the quality of.
OK_Max,
“ nor do we know the age distribution of these future fatalities.â€
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That is simply crazy. Everywhere, at every phase of the pandemic, nearly all fatalities have taken place among those either over 60 (and especially over 70) and/or with other significant co-morbidities. That is not going to change; we are not suddenly going to have mostly young people die from the virus. Every published study has shown the same; any suggestion otherwise is wild speculation without data to support it. I note that the two recent phase 3 vaccine trials focused on recruiting more elderly volunteers than the population as a whole. That is not a coincidence…. those are the people most at risk.
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BTW, all life on Earth *could* be exterminated next week by a large meteor…. and that seems to me to have about the same probability as lots of young people suddenly start dying from covid-19.
OK_Max,
When evaluating the “lives saved” from past NPIs, it does not matter if the disease will skew differently for age/condition in the future than it did in the past. When evaluating whether to apply an NPI to a future NPI a change in disease behavior would be relevant, but the default assumption would be that a disease will continue to behave as it has in the past until you have evidence otherwise.
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Cases are rising here in Georgia and fatalities are likely to rise at well (due to lag in reporting, that won’t be clear for some weeks; using actual date of death fatalities are falling consistently since a peak in early August, but it seems likely that last week will be higher than the week before). 18-29 year olds can certainly get Covid (they’re our highest count age range for confirmed cases, but they had just 51 deaths as of 16 September and now 58 as of Nov 6th — 0.07% of confirmed cases, and in that age range there’s going to be a lot of unconfirmed cases.
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For pediatric fatalities, in Georgia there have been 7, two without co-morbidities. Those two were a seven year old who drowned in a bathtub after a seizure, and a 17 year old who died in the hospital after a serious auto accident. A policy that results in a reduction of pediatric cases (the rationale behind school closings) simply will not have a corresponding effect of the same size on mortalities. When a model suggest similarly-sized and massive reductions for school closings, that doesn’t pass the sniff test for *this* disease.
Phil Scadden, Mike M, et al.
I think the use of “in sample, but not used data” as a “validation” of a model suffers from problems of “data snooping”, and confirmation bias (see the many tree-ring vs temperature studies, which are essentially garbage).
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If you can convince people to avoid most all contact with others, then that will for certain reduce the spread of the virus; convince them to be locked in isolation cells, and you will stop the spread of the virus. I really don’t see that the study in question tells us much of anything more illuminating than this.
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WRT mandated mask wearing: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817
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While there was a modest effect in illness rates among 3000 volunteers who did not wear a mask versus 3000 who did, the difference was not statistically significant.
SteveF (Comment #194140)
Everywhere, at every phase of the pandemic, nearly all fatalities have taken place among those either over 60 (and especially over 70) and/or with other significant co-morbidities. That is not going to change.
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According to CDC, almost one-quarter of the covid-19 deaths were below age 67, the age for drawing full Social Security benefits. In the future, persons below retirement age may account for an increasing proportion of covid-19 deaths if retirement homes do better at protecting their residents from this virus than they did in 2020. Persons in retirement, however, should continue to represent a large majority of covid-19 deaths.
Dale S (Comment #194141)
OK_Max,
When evaluating the “lives saved†from past NPIs, it does not matter if the disease will skew differently for age/condition in the future than it did in the past. When evaluating whether to apply an NPI to a future NPI a change in disease behavior would be relevant, but the default assumption would be that a disease will continue to behave as it has in the past until you have evidence otherwise.
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Dale S, I think I understand what you are saying.
There might have been an initial die off of people who were particularly susceptible to the disease and much more likely to die from it. This might also account for part of the the reduction in death rates.
Tom Scharf,
Maybe, but I suspect it was mostly the relative lack of protecting the population in long term care facilities in the first few months of the pandemic that gave the high death rates (New York, NJ, and other states). Most states, even with much older populations like Florida, have never come close to the deaths per million in the Northeast states. It probably is true that in those states with very high deaths per million many of the most vulnerable of the elderly population have already died. But regardless of the death rate, Gov Cuomo is a hero.
My guess is that there is one non-pharmaceutical intervention that could be more effective than all the others put together: staying home if sick. No, that is not right. It should be staying home if you have any symptoms whatsoever. I do not think that I have seen, heard, or read a single public service announcement advising people on when they should implement that. I am in New Mexico. Is it different where you guys live?
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The Wuhan virus causes a disease that is much worse than the flu, which is pretty bad. Obviously WAY worse than a cold. It has scary and unusual symptoms, like difficulty breathing and loss of taste and smell. And of course, fever. We all know that if you don’t have a fever, you don’t have the Wuhan virus. Even if you do have it, you wear a mask , every one else is wearing a mask, and masks are wonderful at stopping the spread. So if you have a sore throat, a bit of a cough and/or headache, but no fever, you are good to go. No need to get tested or stay home.
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That paragraph is bunkum. But I am guessing that a lot of people, perhaps even a substantial majority, would be hard pressed to find much wrong with it. Thus, the single most important NPI is rendered inoperative.
MikeM,
I’m confused about your claim and your point. You wrote a bunch of whooey in the first two paragraphs. Then you seem to admit it’s whoeys. Then you claim that people not knowing it’s whooey renders NPI in operative?
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I think many, many people know it’s whooey.
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I’m not goign to argue though because I’m not sure what your claim is .
Written bunkum needs to be sufficiently clear. Sort of like Johnathan Swift’s “A modest proposalâ€. When you present bunkum that many people would accept as truth, then you only obscure your views.
You must be referring to the newly announced Emmy Award winner for covid “leadership”, Gov. Cuomo? I literally did LOL when I heard this. I suppose it depends on what you think he was leading, perhaps death count leadership. There is a certain segment of people who care much more about performative displays to the absolute exclusion of results.
I see absolutely nothing with regards to public service announcements on television, billboards, etc. with regards to basic behavior on lowering risk (avoid people, staying home, how to wear a mask, stay away from crowded indoor places, etc.). Comparing the amount of money spent on campaign ads in FL relative to basic covid risk reduction is instructive. Maybe they think everybody knows these things.
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The CDC website is pretty good, but I very much doubt most people even know it exists. Example: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/about-face-coverings.html
Republicans are now +10 in the House.
Two more races look like ~100% certain, and one more a coin flip. So +12 or +13. A far cry from the projected -5 to -15 projected from the pre-election polls.
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It is clearly not just “shy Trump†voters; the polling companies simply can’t reach a representative sample of voters. Here is my modest proposal: public release of polls more than 2% away from the actual vote within 4 weeks of an election should be a felony. It’s a joke, but virtually all polls should be ridiculed and then ignored; pollsters really have not a clue what they are doing.
Masks are just one component of a multi-layer risk reduction strategy. People tend to get too reductionist in whether one thing or another solves the problem when all these components do is change probabilities. I think simultaneously that masks are oversold for their efficacy and people should wear them anyway because they aren’t harmful and potentially beneficial.
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Put a 100 volunteers in one room with masks, 100 in a room without masks. Stream contagious people through the rooms. Count up how many get infected. Repeat the experiment except contagious people with and without masks. This type of experiment has to be done carefully like anything else, but is much better than these correlation study nightmares.
I read a story about polling that said the type of people who answer and talk to pollsters tend to be those who trust government institutions more, these people also happen to be more liberal in general. The solution to this problem was unknown. A lot of people used to answer pollster’s calls relative to now, and because these people are now rare (and thus kind of weird) they also tend to be much less representative of the population. Apparently the old screening parameters they used to weight answers no longer work.
Tom Scharf,
“The solution to this problem was unknown.”
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The only solution is to ignore pollsters. They really have no clue how to reach a representative voting population.
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Of course, it is not all the pollsters fault; the name and shame ‘woke left’ constantly threatening to have you thrown out of your job adds to it. Why even talk about your views when they will provoke only ridicule and condemnation? The pollsters are way off because sane people on the right want to avoid ugly confrontations with friends and family who are on the left….. people willing to ‘write off’ anyone, friend or family, who disagrees with their political views.
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It is a very ugly business, but is 100% the fault of those on the left who can never accept anyone could possibly rationally hold different political views or reach different conclusions. That is always the problem on the left. It is why I loath the left.
Tom
I think simultaneously that masks are oversold for their efficacy and people should wear them anyway because they aren’t harmful and potentially beneficial.
That’s my view. I think people get overly emotional about them in both directions. I think they likely help especially for spread. But if you don’t want to get Covid…. do you imitation of a cloistered monk or nun.
Of course no one is going to do the experiment spraying people with the masks. That’s one of the difficulties with getting convincing data. In fact no one thinks they are sufficiently protective to do that experiment so everyone would say it’s unethical.
Tom Scharf,
“Put a 100 volunteers in one room with masks, 100 in a room without masks. Stream contagious people through the rooms. Count up how many get infected.”
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I assume this was meant as a joke. Real experiments to test politically correct policies like cloth masks on everyone everywhere are not ever going to be done. Shame on you to even imagine it.
Lucia,
“I think people get overly emotional about them in both directions.’
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It is not for me even slightly emotional, it is rational. I have yet to see convincing evidence in a real trial that cloth masks on everyone make a bit of difference. It does clearly make people feel better. I rode from Seattle to Charlotte yesterday night with a couple immediately to my right (both in their late 20’s) who were obviously spooked by covid. I probably seemed scary to them…. even with a mask…. but if there were any risk to speak of, it was that they could infect me. The madness is out of control.
SteveF,
The increasingly poor poll results in not merely a result of “the left”. It’s also caused by increasing use of texting and email and, to the extent relevant, phone screening. I don’t answer my landline. It’s nothing but robo-callers. Fewer and fewer people are answering phones at all, so those who answer at all are starting to likely be “different” in some way.
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Of course… I used to lie to polsters. But that’s a different issue. 🙂
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This isn’t polsters “fault”, but they should be aware that the decline in phone answering was a bad sign for accuracy.
Lucia,
“It’s also caused by increasing use of texting and email and, to the extent relevant, phone screening. I don’t answer my landline.”
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I don’t now own a land line. But if I did, I still wouldn’t participate in a telephone poll (I have been asked many times… this is Florida, after all). I don’t lie to pollsters, I just think they are evil in intent and outcome, and so refuse to respond.
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If I were a pollster (and if I didn’t commit suicide), I would start by trying to figure out why I am not talking to conservative voters…… of course, that is not going to happen.
I was standing on a main street in Seattle 48 hours ago at about 5:30 PM local time, while waiting for my taxi (or Uber…turned out they were the same) to arrive…. 6 Seattle city buses passed. On those 6 buses, I saw exactly 2 passengers. This is not surprising…. after months of raising fear of covid, no sane person would ever ride a bus. At the airport in Seattle, I rode a passenger train between terminals. I was the only person on the train… twice: once to visit the executive lounge of Alaska Airlines, and one to return to my boarding gate in another terminal.
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On my return flight, we were informed by the pilot that the Utah flight control center had “unexpectingly closed” due to COVID cases among the air traffic controllers. So the flight could either go into Canadian airspace (apparently an expensive proposition without any pre-existing agreement), or fly south to the LA area to avoid the Utah control center… adding an hour-plus to travel time on our flight.
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We ended up flying over Canada… for which I am forever grateful.
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Covid fear is totally, competently, insanely, out of control.
Lucia,
“Of course no one is going to do the experiment spraying people with the masks. That’s one of the difficulties with getting convincing data. In fact no one thinks they are sufficiently protective to do that experiment so everyone would say it’s unethical.”
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There’s no shortage of governments in the world that don’t let ethics stop them. Why don’t our CCP friends run experiments like this and share them with the world?
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More seriously, I personally don’t see an ethical problem with medical research performed with volunteers who are both fully aware of their risks and financially compensated for their risk. This particular disease is deadly to some and vanishingly unlikely to kill others — researched performed with healthy 18-27 year old volunteers to characterize exactly how the disease spreads has the potential to save thousands of lives in the 65+ set.
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Behaving as if Covid19 was the only disease in the world continues. Way back in March, one of the reasons that masks weren’t recommended is that people might touch and handle their masks often, increasing their risk of picking up any contact-spread disease. Now the state of California recommends you put your mask back on *between bites* while dining.
“More seriously, I personally don’t see an ethical problem with medical research performed with volunteers who are both fully aware of their risks and financially compensated for their risk.”
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Count me in Dr. Mengele! Ha ha. Seriously though we are already performing this experiment by the millions, we just aren’t tabulating the data correctly. Imagine we took a large school and fully instrumented it so it was monitored 24/7 and every person in the school was tested every day … but not informed of the results. We could monitor the contagious, who got infected, get a really good idea of the common routes and try to figure out why certain people didn’t get infected.
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The ethical part here is knowingly allowing infected people to spread the disease, but the outcome of people’s lives in this experiment is identical with and without monitoring. Perhaps if this disease was killing kids by the truckload then these type of tests might cross more people’s ethical barrier.
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There needs to be enough justification to put people at risk, would we gain enough knowledge from challenge tests to justify it? In the example of vaccine challenge tests if we got a vaccine a month earlier then the answer is pretty obvious in my mind.
DaleS,
You got me. I suspect there are some governments who would do the experiment.
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I do agree mask rules have been… uhm…. evolving.
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FWIW: I’ve never thought positively about the concern that people would touch their masks. Those concerned just elicited my eyerolls. My view was some people were mistaking the function, requirements and benefits of masks in the operating theater with those out in public.
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My view has always been that masks could plausibly help in public by (1) trapping some droplets emitted during speaking, sneezing coughing and just taking , ( 2) reduce the forward momentum of air and droplets during the same activities and thus reduce viral load on other people. Someone touching their own mask is utterly irrelevant to this issue.
SteveF, you write: “Covid fear is totally, competently, insanely, out of control.”
Trite thought experiment for you, but I’d really like to understand the mechanism(s) by which you have reached that opinion:
Imagine any other cause of death leading to between 1-2,000 deaths a day. The ones I see mentioned are terrorist attacks and airplane crashes, but let’s be less melodramatic.
If we were seeing this level of death from any new cause–poisoning, bridge collapse, whatever–in your opinion would there be a) widespread fear and b) would that fear be insanely out of control?
Thomas Fuller (Comment #194199): “Imagine any other cause of death leading to between 1-2,000 deaths a day.”
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That happens every year. It is called “flu season”, although most of the excess deaths are not influenza. But they correlate extremely well with pneumonia deaths, so they are likely due to respiratory infections.
Peak weekly excess deaths above baseline for the last few flu seasons (peak in January of specified year):
2016 6.8K
2017 11.2K
2018 17.0K
2019 7.3K
2020 8.4K
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Thomas Fuller: “If we were seeing this level of death from any new cause–poisoning, bridge collapse, whatever–in your opinion would there be a) widespread fear and b) would that fear be insanely out of control?”
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I vote for c): It might be almost completely ignored. I think that we are in fact seeing that. The new cause in coronamonomania. It kills via suicide, drug overdoses, stress, and avoidable deaths from lack of timely medical intervention.
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Unlike the Wuhan virus, those deaths shorten lives by decades, not months.
Kenneth, thanks very much for your comments on in-sample, out-of-sample, but using a data set for validation that wasnt included in making the model does seem a good method for model validation. Of course, the worsening situation in USA with Covid19 is seeing a whole raft of NPIs being applied in different states. I assume evaluating the model against the dataset that should be produced over the next few months would be seen as sufficient validation? (though hopefully the vaccines will make the matter moot, but could guide future response to new contagions).
So despite the skepticism here, I would predict that over the next few months:
– The NPIs being applied in the UK will reduce the infection rate below 10k per day in 2-3 weeks and deaths will drop of accordingly.
– In US , states will apply ever-more drastic NPIs till infection rate drops and I would expect the effectiveness of those NPIs to pretty much in line with assessments of those papers.
Thomas Fuller,
We have 600,000 per year die from heart disease, and another 600,000 form cancer. That is year in year out, every year. The country is not turning itself inside out over those deaths. We have about 2.8 million deaths each year from all causes. Like cancer and heart disease, covid kills mostly people over age 60.
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Covid’s death profile looks remarkably similar to the overall risk of death with age. Shockingly enough, elderly people (like me!) are always at much greater risk of death. The risk profile for Covid 19 is no different… nor is the relatively low risk of death among younger people much different with Covid 19. It is a serious disease of old age.
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As a society, we spend massively on research on cancer and heart disease, and we have made some progress, but what we have not done is drastically damaged businesses and peoples’ ability to earn a living. The burden of the covid illness has been in large measure bourne by people who receive little or no reduction in risk of serious illness or death. The costs of public policies (financial, personal, and educational) are astronomical, and strike me as wildly disproportionate to the benefits in quality life years potentially gained. Worse yet, the policies are not even really focused on protecting those truly at risk, but rather trying to ‘protect’ a much larger population from infection that is not at significant risk.
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The example of the air traffic control center in Utah suddenly closing is typical of the over-the-top reactions to the illness. Surly those controllers at real risk (age or co-morbidities) could be sent hone while others not at significant risk continue operation. If meat packing companies can continue operation, in spite of some covid cases, surely air traffic control centers can do the same. It is all just wildly inappropriate rules. It is driven by fear, not reason. It is adopting policies which save few lives but do great damage. It is IMO crazy.
Phil
In US , states will apply ever-more drastic NPIs till infection rate drops
Sure… but I think that’s mostly because the infection rate dropping will be the cause of relaxed NPIs!
Whether the NPIs also cause lower infection rates… I think we won’t really know. I think some must lower infection rates. Others may. But it’s absolutely certain the infection rate influences Governors decisions, so infection rate is causal for imposed NPIs!
Lucia, Phil,
There will be many states where the governor will not impose more draconian policies. For example…… Florida. The rates will fall in those states as well. Then there will be the truly bizarre places like New York, were ever more draconian policies will be promulgated, even without much increase in deaths.
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As an instructive exercise, a comparison of Covid outcomes in Michigan and Sweden is appropriate. Sweden ~10 million, Michigan ~10 million. Climate: strongly seasonal both. First peak in deaths: Sweden ~April 18, 100 deaths per day, Michigan: April 16, 144 deaths per day. Current surge: Sweden peak 25 deaths per day, currently 13 deaths per day, Michigan ~70 deaths per day, now at peak. Total deaths to date: Sweden 6,406, Michigan 8,875.
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Covid rules: Sweden- no gatherings above 50 people, no visits to elder-care facilities, recommendations to minimize contacts; schools, restaurants, gyms, hair salons continuously open; no masks required anywhere. Michigan- almost too many rules to describe, but including travel restrictions, lockdowns, mask mandates, school closures, restaurants closed then limited operation, gyms closed, hair salons closed then limited operation.
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A reasonable person might ask what all of Michigan’s covid regulations have accomplished save for economic damage and social friction. My answer to that question: Michigan’s covid policies have accomplished worse than nothing. Those policies fail to protect the most vulnerable while tormenting the rest.
Are you trying to say that if Michigan had same rules as Sweden, then it would have same outcomes for deaths? That if whole of US had only the same restrictions as Sweden, then it would have had fewer deaths? Frankly, I dont buy it. My guess is that contact rate in Michigan is still higher than Sweden despite restrictions from cultural factors but I cant think what data you could use to measure it. Unacast is only USA.
Swedish joke: We will be glad with 2m restriction on closeness is over – then we can go back to the usual 5m.
If an NPI is successfully reducing infection rate, then removing the NPI should see infection rate go up again. Broadly this seems to happen but a hell of a lot of other compounding factors at play hence the “models” to tease them out. In particular, fear alone without any intervention will drive caution, and indeed this alone seems to be a major factor. I would bet on fear beating growing herd immunity as a reason for decline but you can only be sure of that by watching what happens to infection rate when fear recedes. Again, I hope vaccine induced herd-immunity is going to be the real winner.
Lucia,
“FWIW: I’ve never thought positively about the concern that people would touch their masks. Those concerned just elicited my eyerolls. My view was some people were mistaking the function, requirements and benefits of masks in the operating theater with those out in public.”
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My view is that the focus on Covid-19 is causing people to ignore all other source of risks. I think the risk of catching *covid* from handling your mask frequently may be insignificant, but there are plenty of other sicknesses that can be caught from repeatedly handling warm, most, and sometimes dirty cloth, and depending on age and health some of those could be more dangerous to a mask-wearer than Covid-19.
Dale S,
What disease? Real Q.
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I tend to think if you wash your facemask daily you are fine. If you are really worried, own multiple masks and change every two hours.
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My mask doesn’t seem to get moist, but perhaps other people drool.
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But I really don’t see much of a concern provided you wash your mask which is easy enough to do. If you’re worried that you can get sick from moist dirty cloth well, you could get sick from your underwear. Few people worry about that.
Phil, it isn’t 5 meters, nor even 2: https://citymonitor.ai/community/what-its-been-like-living-in-one-of-the-few-places-that-never-locked-down
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The Swedes mostly recognized that young people are not at significant risk, and old people are, and adopted policies based on that. The article linked above points out that they made a series of recommendations very early, when it became clear what the risk profile is. They did not close schools for kids under 16. They did tell people over 70 that they should stay home to reduce their risk. They did prohibit visits to elderly care facilities. They also urged people to work from home if possible and be cautious about interacting with large numbers of people.
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Most of all, they gave individuals the best information available, and let those individuals make their own choices about acceptable risks. They did not force on everyone rules and regulations that took all personal decisions away, and provide mostly breathless pronouncements which were devoid of useful information but inspired only panic. The single most important piece of information to reduce deaths is a clear statement that people over 70 are at substantial risk and should avoid most social contacts, while those under 50 at very low risk, and children at essentially zero risk. Nowhere in the States (that I am aware of) are these irrefutable facts regularly promoted by health authorities. Every destructive policy instituted in places like Michigan flys in the face of those simple facts. Since uninformed fear sets the rules in Michigan (and in many other places) adopting Swedish style rules is in Michigan not going to happen. That does not mean they would not yield very similar results if adopted. But the experiment will never be done.
Phil,
“I hope vaccine induced herd-immunity is going to be the real winner.”
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Sure. In most places, costly and foolish public policies have precluded any real progress toward herd immunity absent an effective vaccine.
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Of course in practice giving people the vaccine is more politically complicated. The FDA recently announced they have formed a committee to evaluate applications for emergency vaccine approval… but have not scheduled the first meeting until December 10. They explicitly state in the announcement they have no timetable for approval, nor what they will require for approval. Very standard bureaucratic fare, of course, but oddly inappropriate for ending a “national emergency”. When I saw that announcement, it told me those at the FDA really don’t give a sh!t if an extra 50,000 die before the vaccine is distributed to those most at risk of death; preserving (and demonstrating!) their control over the process by delaying approval is far more important than saving lives.
SteveF,
Yeah.. I’d ask “Why wait 3 weeks…?” But the answer is obviously. “It’s the FDA”.
I hope they’ve at least already appointed committee members.
In contrast UK’s NHS is getting prepared to start administrating the Pifzer vaccine on December 1st. The plan is to target nursing home staff and residents in the first push and are expecting to have 10 million doses on hand by the end of the year.
Andrew P,
I guess that means the FDA is getting the UK to do extra testing for the US. 🙂
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That’s the way it always is. The FDA usually waits for evah! Waiting to see what happens in other countries is not FDA official policy. But it always happens!
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Oh. well….
Well… at least it appears we might have vaccine in US arms by Dec 11 or 12!
“Dr Moncef Slaoui, head of Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, said yesterday that inoculations could begin ‘a day or two after approval, on the 11th or the 12th.'”
Lucia,
The committee members exist already, they don’t have to be appointed: https://www.fda.gov/advisory-committees/vaccines-and-related-biological-products-advisory-committee/roster-vaccines-and-related-biological-products-advisory-committee
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Pfizer formally applied for the emergency use licence on November 20. Perhaps the Pfizer application came as complete shock to the FDA staffers, after all they would have to believe Pfizer’s press releases to expect an application, so they could not months ago have prepared to immediately start the review process. Then there is the immense complexity of making travel arrangements for the committee members to visit Washington DC.
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The FDA is a huge bureaucracy. It is bad, really, really bad.
Phil Scadden (Comment #194201)
November 22nd, 2020 at 2:42 pm
Since the Nature article and SI, linked above and by Phil initially, discussed here had some interesting results, I went back to reread the Nature article and SI to better analyze the details of what the authors did in modeling and validating.
The reported results detailed in the main paper (and not the SI) are from in-sample data from the smallest data set, CCCSL. The validation used comes from using in-sample data from the other two data sets, CoronaNet and WHO-PHSM and the use of four different models. I do not see any actual cross-validation in the normal sense that would ordinarily be carried out with pseudo out-of-sample data. The lack of performing cross-validation (or at least not reporting results) is probably due to the results being very regionally dependent. Without cross-validation there is no way of determining model over fitting. The methods use many features, covariates and hyperparameters and are thus susceptible to over fitting.
The models using the four methods of Case Control Analysis, LASSO, Random Forests and Transformers, were applied to the three data sets, CCCSL (6,068 NPIs), CoronaNet (31,5322 NPIs) and WHO-PHSM (24,077 NPIs). Since the methods were applied to in-sample data and not tested with pseudo out-of-sample data (or at least not reported) for all three data sets, I do not understand why the smallest data set is the one detailed in the paper proper. The two largest data sets evidently include all or most of the data from CCCSL.
Although the 4 methods differ in attaching statistical significance to the decrease in Rt for a given NPI they do essentially all agree on which NPI categories are ranked highest and lowest. That agreement in ranking follows for the three data sets. I credit the authors of the paper for including some of the issues discussed here that could affect the paper’s results, e.g. the lack of formal harmonization of all NPI categories, assuming compliance being the same across all NPIs and NPIs occurring together over a short time span. They also point to the second and third surges of the Covid-19 infections being an opportunity to test the paper’s findings. That would be with true out-of-sample data.
I had noticed that most of the NPIs show a median decrease in Rt whether its uncertainty range makes it statistically significant or not. That decreasing relationship appears to follow all the way down to level 4. (The hierarchy is from Level 1 with less than 10 groups, to Level 2 with approximately 40 to 100 groups and down to Level 3 and Level 4 with thousands of groups). At this point in my understanding of the processes and methods used in the paper I am not certain how the Rt decreases for the Level 2 (level discussed in detail in the paper) are combined from the lower levels. If there were any biasing of the top ranked NPIs I judge it would come from that grouping and perhaps the number of groups at Level 4. Another aspect of the paper results that could bring the validity into question would be the those NPIs that show a statistically significant increase in Rt and that from a common sense view would not be expected to increase Rt. It could mean that the models are actually over fit and looking at noise. I am probably not motivated to look further into this matter, but do think that the results of this paper could get tested with the current surges and resulting data.
Lucia,
“Dr Moncef Slaoui, head of Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, said yesterday that inoculations could begin ‘a day or two after approval, on the 11th or the 12th.'”
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I fear the good doctor is quite delusional; it would not surprise me if the review process takes 3 weeks or longer.
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So the UK will start inoculating people with the exact same vaccine, 10 days before the FDA starts to consider the application for approval. The FDA seems to me run by a bunch of criminally negligent bureaucrats…. who likely conspired to delay announcement of the Pfizer vaccine’s efficacy for three weeks to ensure Trump would not gain re-election.
lucia (Comment #194198):”I’ve never thought positively about the concern that people would touch their masks. Those concerned just elicited my eyerolls. My view was some people were mistaking the function, requirements and benefits of masks in the operating theater with those out in public.”
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Is there any real difference, other than the strictness of precautions? Real question.
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lucia: “My view has always been that masks could plausibly help in public by (1) trapping some droplets emitted during speaking, sneezing coughing and just taking , ( 2) reduce the forward momentum of air and droplets during the same activities and thus reduce viral load on other people. Someone touching their own mask is utterly irrelevant to this issue.”
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But we don’t really know that. The issue with touching masks is fomites. You touch the mask and pick up virus from it, transfer the virus to the apple you examine, then someone else comes along and picks up the same apple. It does seem like fomites are not as big a deal as originally feared, but CDC guidelines on that have not changed and people are still madly disinfecting things.
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If the mask is doing anything, then it collecting large amounts of virus. The question of what happens to that virus is not irrelevant.
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lucia (Comment #194207): “I tend to think if you wash your facemask daily you are fine. If you are really worried, own multiple masks and change every two hours.”
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Again, we don’t really know, do we? We are left to use our own judgement and are not provided with the information needed to make that judgement. Thus reducing the wearing of masks to theater.
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lucia: “My mask doesn’t seem to get moist, but perhaps other people drool.”
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I think the issue is absorbed moisture rather than actually being wet. Once again, we don’t know. And of course, if you cough or sneeze into the mask, it will get moist.
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lucia: “If you’re worried that you can get sick from moist dirty cloth well, you could get sick from your underwear. Few people worry about that.”
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I strongly disagree that few people worry about that. I think that very few people would be willing to wear dirty underwear over their mouths.
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The mask collects stuff. There is no guarantee that stuff stays on the mask. It can be re-aerosolized while breathing out and breathing in. The more stuff on the mask, the more gets re-aerosolized, thus reducing the usefulness of the mask. Unless the virus particles collected on the mask quickly become non-viable.
I should have been clearer in my view of the paper’s handling of the the three data sets. The 4 methods were used in all three but the fitting was to the data in the individual data set. It was not accomplished by finding a well fitting model in one data set and applying it directly to another data set’s data.
I have some real political questions that I do not know where to post – so I will impose them here.
When will the Republican party as a whole cut loose Trump and his apparently out of touch view of the election results? Are the Georgia Senate races being leveraged by Trump to maintain Republican support? What is with Rudy’s profuse sweating in his interviews and TV appearances? Will Trump finally concede defeat or go out kicking and screaming?
There have been no government edicts / NPI’s for the flu over the years, yet it waxes and wanes every year over the seasons, with significant variability from year to year. People are overly focused on the start of the virus spread but why the flu stops is even more perplexing. Why have ND and SD covid cases peaked? The entire region is peaking. Heroic government interdiction? People’s fear? Herd immunity? We.don’t.know, and there are far too many people in science who are afraid of those words.
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NPI’s help with flu as well, so my point continues to be that it is reductionist to model covid spread as only a factor of government edicts on human behavior. It is quite possible this “natural” variability is playing the leading role in the transmission, and remains missing from models. Natural variability may be dominated by climate driving people indoors, environmental conditions allowing the virus to stay alive much longer, etc. They still don’t understand the flu spread, and it has been with us a very long time.
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The proper response to this argument is not “models are assumed perfect until proven otherwise” but instead we can’t stop winter from coming but we might be able to slow down virus spread through its other factors. NPI’s will work better if people trusted they were effective, we aren’t there yet and overselling it hurts credibility.
Is there any real difference, other than the strictness of precautions? Real question.
I think so. At least two:
1) In ORs, the medical staff are cutting people and laying hands on people. Getting material on their hands or instruments has a potential for direct transfer to a patient– including inside a patient.
2) In ORs the concern is for a bunch of different diseases each of which might transfer in different ways. Our masks are only intended to prevent Covid.
But we don’t really know that. The issue with touching masks is fomites.
And it’s thought fomite transport is insignificant with this disease. That might be wrong, but it is still the thinking and has been from nearly the start.
I think that very few people would be willing to wear dirty underwear over their mouths.
I didn’t suggest they would. But I also think very few guys are constantly worrying about getting jock itch from wearing underwear for a day. Nor are they worried about getting athletes foot from wearing socks one day.
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Obviously, you should wash these things. But that’s the same with masks.
AstraZeneca-Oxford Vaccine:
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Full dose, followed by full dose: 62% effective
Half dose, followed by full dose: 90% effective
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Mysterious. Also the EU has been doing a “rolling review” of this vaccine all along. The FDA better not drop the ball on this, it doesn’t get any more high profile than this. BAU will put a stain on the FDA that will last decades, I hope they realize this.
Kenneth,
“When will the Republican party as a whole cut loose Trump and his apparently out of touch view of the election results? Are the Georgia Senate races being leveraged by Trump to maintain Republican support? What is with Rudy’s profuse sweating in his interviews and TV appearances? Will Trump finally concede defeat or go out kicking and screaming?”
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If the legal challenges all fail (which it appears they will), most elected Republicans will tell him to give it up and call for him to concede. He won’t.
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I suspect Trump’s continuing bad behavior will, if anything, jeopardize the Georgia Senate seats. That would be terrible, and something Trump should carefully consider… he won’t.
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No idea about Rudy’s sweating. But he needs to be more careful about applying cheap hair dye just before a press conference.
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I do not think Trump has it in him to ever concede defeat (no doubt learning from the thoughtful and enlightened ‘governor’ Stacy Abrams). Trump will for sure leave the White house, but will not go to Biden’s inauguration, and will always claim the election was stolen.
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Of course, there was plenty of voter fraud (the evidence is irrefutable and overwhelming), but because of the way widespread mail-in voting was handled, it is going to be just about impossible to prove enough fraud to overcome the deficits in close states.
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I want to make a couple of other political observations here: Unlike Democrats in November 2016, Republicans are not calling for electors from very close states to renege on their promises… nor any of the other unhinged suggestions made by Democrats to overturn the 2016 election result.
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Many Republicans view Biden’s election for what it is: a career politician, obviously descending into dementia, who has never had scintilla of personal principles, is about to assume office. It is very bad for the country, since his already limited competence will only grow worse, and will almost certainly lead to “President Kamala” within a year or two…. and that will be a true catastrophe. Considering all that, the Republicans are actually handling the situation pretty well. I have to conclude Republicans are far more responsible that are Democrats.
SteveF (Comment #194204)
“As an instructive exercise, a comparison of Covid outcomes in Michigan and Sweden is appropriate. Sweden ~10 million, Michigan ~10 million. …Total deaths to date: Sweden 6,406, Michigan 8,875.”
___________________________
Sweden with comparatively non-restrictive anti-covid-19 policies has had 63 deaths (per 100,000 population) from this disease, compared to 89 in Michigan, which has restrictive measures. On the other hand, countries that border Sweden have very low death rates from the disease (Norway 6, Finland 7, and Denmark 14). These three countries do have far more restrictive measures than Sweden.
I’m not sure what all of this means, but maybe comparing the experiences of Sweden and Michigan is an “apples and oranges†comparison.
“When will the Republican party as a whole cut loose Trump and his apparently out of touch view of the election results?”
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I grow weary of this ridiculous fight. I think he has about another week to find something (chances = 0) before the establishment declares Biden the winner without his input. The resistance put up a similar fight for HRC for a while, I can’t remember when it ended, mostly after all the states formalized results as I recall.
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I predict Trump will leave the WH in Jan saying all his usual crazy things but will fade into the sunset because he will be ignored and have no power. Be ready for Senator Trump from FL though!
Tom Scharf,
“BAU will put a stain on the FDA that will last decades, I hope they realize this.”
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BAU and bureaucrat are permanently joined at the hip. They are career Federal employees, impossible to fire and untouchable. It is already clear from the delay to December 10 that they don’t give a sh!t.
OK_Max,
“I’m not sure what all of this means, but maybe comparing the experiences of Sweden and Michigan is an “apples and oranges†comparison.”
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Most all comparisons will be “apples and oranges” comparisons. My only point is that the economic and social damage caused by Michigan’s policies do not lead to low rates of death. I have no doubt that policies which actually focus on protecting those at risk could reduce deaths, but few countries (or states) are even trying that approach. After a poor start, Sweden does appear to be trying.
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For example: If you want to keep elderly people from catching covid 19, why not provide N95 masks (and appropriate training) to those truly at risk (mostly people over ~65, and especially over 70) when they need to leave home? N95 masks actually do filter out most all airborne particles, and greatly reduce the risk of infection for all respiratory diseases…. which is why they are used in hospitals. But nobody has suggested so simple and cheap an approach. Instead, even the sale of that grade of mask is prohibited in most places. It is crazy.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #194219)
Will Trump finally concede defeat or go out kicking and screaming?
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Trump may be receiving enough in contributions to make not conceding worthwhile. And the money doesn’t have to be used for challenging the election.
@ OK_Max
Heck, he could be spending it on crack and strippers.
OK_Max (Comment #194224): “countries that border Sweden have very low death rates from the disease”
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True. Part of that is that Sweden got hit early and initially did a poor job of protective people in nursing homes. Also, Sweden has a lot more old people; the per capita death rate in Sweden is 16% higher than Norway, solely because of different age distributions.
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Comparing Wuhan virus deaths per capita, Sweden has had about 5700 more deaths than if the rate was the same as in Norway. But if you look at all cause deaths in the two countries, the difference is half that. But Sweden had an unusually low number of deaths in the year before the epidemic. Over the last two years, all cause mortality in Sweden has not been higher than in Norway, after allowing for the older population in Sweden.
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That suggests that the main effect of the epidemic was the harvesting of people close to the end of their lives, with little effect on overall life expectancy.
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My source for the above (the link I thought I had seems to be broken): Frederik E. Juul et al., “Mortality in Norway and Sweden before and after the Covid-19 outbreak”. Their interpretation:
All-cause mortality remained unaltered in Norway. In Sweden, the observed increase in all- cause mortality during Covid-19 was partly due to a lower than expected mortality preceding the epidemic and the observed excess mortality, was followed by a lower than expected mortality after the first Covid-19 wave. This may suggest mortality displacement.
One of the reasons I groan and moan so much about black box model fitters is my own experience. I wrote a neural net based horse racing selector many years ago. It took data from daily racing forms and ranked the horses. A couple observations is when you have access to the models you can examine their internal weightings. When I added more data these weightings tended to shift dramatically and unexpectedly. You need a lot of good data.
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Secondly ranking horses is not the game, you are betting against other bettors. You need to find undervalued horses. The house takes about 25% of the take for horse betting depending on the state so you need to win by a lot to make this effort worthwhile.
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It worked, kind of. It did relatively well but not as good as an experienced horse bettor. The effort was eventually abandoned. It should be noted that some people were more successful at this: https://www.wired.com/2002/03/betting/
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Another point is you need to make sure you are asking a model the right question and give it the appropriate data. Let’s say you were giving a naïve model the electrical signals for a pulse oximeter and gave it an enormous amount of normal clinical data and asked it to give you the answer that was most likely correct. Almost all normal clinical data will read ~98% for healthy people. The “correct” answer to that question is to always output 98%. Not a useful model.
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When the readings are low these devices tend to have a much higher incidence of false low readings than real low readings. You can fix this problem in different ways, you can give the model a signal quality input, you can restrict the input data so that it covers a more evenly weighted set of output readings, etc. What you can’t do is drop a crapload of data blindly into these things and get magic.
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These things are a problem with naïve models, and naïve modelers will eventually find them with experience. I imagine the modern tools can flag for these but there are fundamental things the modeler must do.
SteveF,
“Heck, he could be spending it on crack and strippers.”
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LOL. 😉
SteveF
My only point is that the economic destruction caused by Michigan’s policies do not lead to low rates of death.
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But you don’t know what the death rate would be without those policies. Nor do you know what the infection rate would be.
OK_Max,
What we do know is that if you expose very elderly people to the virus, there will be a lot more deaths (see New York and New Jersey, where state rules required infected elderly be returned from hospitals to elderly care facilities, nearly doubling overall death rates). We know that the probably of death after infection raises exponentially with age, with near zero chance below age 40, ~2% chance of death near age 60, but reaching about 30% change of death after age 85. So we know that if only younger people were exposed to the virus, there would be relatively few deaths.
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Public policies should reflect those obvious facts. In Michigan (and most places) they don’t. We instead torment and financially damage many who are not at risk and fail to adequately protect those who are.
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BTW, the “infection rate” is so poorly measured as to be almost meaningless; I long ago stopped looking at the infection rate. People who recover are almost always going to be perfectly OK in a few weeks (and most often within a few days). Dead people are not.
Mike M. (Comment #194230).
That suggests that the main effect of the epidemic was the harvesting of people close to the end of their lives, with little effect on overall life expectancy.
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I wouldn’t put it exactly like that. Something about “harvesting of people” makes me shudder.
Why would Sweden have relatively more old folks in nursing homes than neighboring Denmark, Norway, and Finland?
The number of Covid-19 cases in Sweden has risen sharply recently but deaths from the disease haven’t risen much. I don’t know whether restrictions have been tightened.
SteveF (Comment #194234)
So we know that if only younger people were exposed to the virus, there would be relatively few deaths.
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But young people with Covid-19 can infect older people. This can happen even before the young know they have the disease. In multi-generational households this can be a serious problem.
OK_Max,
“But young people with Covid-19 can infect older people.”.
Sure, and old people can infect young as well. But the older people, who are at risk, are the ones who should be protected not the young. Multi-generational households have to evaluate risks and act accordingly. But they are are not even being given the right information, never mind simple things like N95 masks for those at risk. There are lots of prfectly sensible ways to reduce the risk to the elderly. What we have been doing in most places (like Michigan) isn’t among them. Just keep in mind: in Michigan, a family could drive in the same car from their home to a lake, but were prohibited by Michigan’s thoughtful Governor from sitting in the same boat on that lake. All arbitrary, all nutty, all useless.
Kenneth, thanks again for your studied and careful examination of the paper. I really appreciate your perspective here.
Tom Scharf, in college we built a model for baseball teams making the playoffs, based on stats like HR, strikeouts, hits, ERA, etc.
One guy on our team had a very high performing model, which also uses as inputs team wins and team losses.
MikeN (Comment #194240)
November 23rd, 2020 at 10:15 pm
MikeN, if enough models are built and evaluated covering the same variables, one or a few can outperform – by chance.
Kenneth,
I think MikeN’s comment was tounge-in-cheek (he can correct if I am wrong). Wins and losses always tell you which teams make the playoffs.
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But yes generate enough models, and a random one will outperform by chance. Of course, in the case of baseball, you could run the same model against historical data from many years, where random chance should be much less important.
The baseball type of models are somewhat fair tests, at least they get validated. As Kenneth says though you have to separate lucky from good. People have been trying to mathematically model the stock market for a very long time with varying degrees of success, some of these models read the WSJ.
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One can simply look at last year’s sports records and be pretty successful for predicting this years best teams, so the important question is what your reference is, the null model. If people bet money on it then typically that is a good place to start, are you consistently outperforming the Vegas line? If so then I would suggest your model has some value to some casinos, ha ha. Read Moneyball for baseball analytics, and the Ray’s recent success is apparently an analytics story as well.
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I’d love to see what a betting market would reveal for sea level rise. I think I would take the “under” from the academic estimate as reported by the media. It would be revealing to see what they would wager with their own money.
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As far as lucky goes there is a story of selecting a 1024 wealthy people to send your random stock picks to, wait a week, then choose the 512 best outcomes and send those people a new list of random stock picks, wait a week, 256, 128, 64, etc. By the end there will be few wealthy people who think you are the world’s greatest stock picker who are likely to buy your very pricey services, at least for a while.
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Things can be modeled successfully, but even games with rigid rules such as chess and Go took some ingenuity and a long time to master.
I have seen the claim that 80% of Wuhan virus cases are transmitted by 10-20% of those infected.
I have seen the claim that only about half of cases can be traced.
Those two claims are contradictory.
Maybe the superspread events are 80% of the cases that can be traced? Does anyone here have information that might explain the contradiction?
MikeM,
Perhaps the claims are made by different people looking at different data. Sort of like we have claims masks DO work and claims masks DON’T work. These obviously contradict each other but are made by different people. Those people may have different views on whether evidence is strong or weak.
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My view is they probably help some. At the same time, I know I sort of have to laugh at some people’s inconsistencies.
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There is a dancer at my studio who is VERY, VERY careful about masks including those worn by others. YET, she has gotten on airplanes and flown to vacation destinations, was going to compete in a huge competition in Ohio and so on. The balance of caution vs. lack of caution strikes me as… well… She wants to dance. She wants to feel responsible. She wants to feel she is doing something.
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I on the other hand do wear my mask. But I basically know I’m taking a risk. I ended up not competing in the local competition because it was cancelled. I have NOT signed up for any “away” competition that would involve travel, hotel, restaurant and do on.
Covid transmission data is pretty much chaos. Some conclusions like primarily indoor transmission seems well founded, others not so much. Difficult to judge competing claims. There are certainly super spreader events but what percentage they are of total cases is unknown.
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A recent claim is contact transmission (versus respiratory) is not a big threat, but they still say wash your hands. I haven’t really seen any data that supports this new claim other than assertions.
SteveF (Comment #194253)
November 24th, 2020 at 10:27 am
I see it now. I was assuming the data used were from the previous season. Using the current season would be making great use of in-sample data, but probably not of any use in betting.
lucia (Comment #194257)
November 24th, 2020 at 10:56 am
The air in an airplane is normally filtered with a hepa filter with probably a fair rate of turnover. If your mask was as effective as a hepa filter you might suffocate unless you breathed really hard.
Of course, if someone on the plane were breathing directly on you that might be a different story even if both individuals were masked, but that would be no different than masked dancing partners.
Things can be modeled successfully, but even games with rigid rules such as chess and Go took some ingenuity and a long time to master.
I play chess against a computer program on my android pad and have gotten to the point that I can win or draw most of the time against the highest level. That is not saying much for my chess playing ability and more about this particular chess program. It is good in the opening and middle game where it probably goes deeper into possible future moves than I do, but appears to be comparatively not that good in the end game were going deeper into moves is not as important.
The games are a great indicator of how well my brain is working and/or attentive I am. Consuming a good sized martini will usually show unless I play at a very slow pace.
Tom Scharf, Kenneth, it was a class in data mining. So we were using various tools like PCA and neural networks to search for good models, and then testing against separate data.
And yes, it was a joke. The entire room was staring at us as we were laughing at our teammate, and he had no idea why.
Kenneth,
“ Of course, if someone on the plane were breathing directly on you that might be a different story even if both individuals were masked, but that would be no different than masked dancing partners.â€
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Planes do have high turnover of air, it takes only about 3 minutes to replace the internal volume. The replacement air is also well filtered (HEPA). Unfortunately, that doesn’t save you. With a plane full of 200 breathing souls, the air you.breath is always going to be ~1% freshly exhaled by others. I have taken thousands of flights over the past 25 years, and I have many times gotten sick when I happened to be seated near someone who was onviously not well…. especially on long international flights. I traveled by air to Seattle and back last week and I am now sick; I don’t yet know if it is covid or something else, but my test results should be available by Saturday. Of course I and everyone wore a mask at the airports and on the planes. Masks will not save you. The only way to not catch anything is to have no contact with anyone.
Lucia,
I have three certified N95 masks from 3M that I purchased long ago… before covid. If you want to go dancing in relative safety, I could send them to you….. they include instructions for proper use. 😉
“Unfortunately, that doesn’t save you. ”
That indeed seems to be true based on cases here in managed isolation. We see multiple cases with the same genome from the same plane showing up in day 3 testing. Got 25 from plane load of foreign fishermen, all of who tested negative before getting on a plane. Either airports or planes seem very bad for spreading.
I guess it depends on the route the air takes before getting to the HEPA filter. You probably don’t want to be the person closest to the air intake. Time x Dose = Bigger Risk.
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The NYT is claiming that they now believe an early mutation made the virus more contagious.
Evidence Builds That an Early Mutation Made the Pandemic Harder to Stop https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/world/covid-mutation.html
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“But a host of new research — including close genetic analysis of outbreaks and lab work with hamsters and human lung tissue — has supported the view that the mutated virus did in fact have a distinct advantage, infecting people more easily than the original variant detected in Wuhan, China.”
“One study found that outbreaks in communities in the United Kingdom grew faster when seeded by the 614G variant than when seeded by its Wuhan ancestor. Another reported that hamsters infected each other more quickly when exposed to the variant. And in a third, the variant infected human bronchial and nasal tissue in a cell-culture dish far more efficiently than its ancestor.”
“Even so, Dr. Andersen said that the variant’s higher transmissibility could help explain why some countries that were initially successful in containing the virus became susceptible to it later. The virus may have been “harder to contain than the first time around,†he said.”
“The 614G variant clearly won the race, the analysis found. The precise rate remains uncertain, but the most likely value gives 614G roughly a 20 percent advantage in its exponential rate of growth.”
“ Either airports or planes seem very bad for spreading.â€
I’d guess planes.
Lucia,
“What disease? Real Q.”
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A real question deserves a real answer. The glib answer is that any infectious disease whose germs can live on or in a cloth facemask could transmit it to someone who frequently touches it — and I think that covers the vast majority of infectious diseases, including Covid-19. But that’s true of every cloth thing a person could conceivably touch. While actually on your face it’s not likely to get contaminated by anything external that doesn’t also contaminate you, and stuffed in a pocket while not being worn might make it dirty, but that’s probably not a high-likelihood vector for infectious disease. Unless you’re setting your mask on the restaurant table when you take it off to dine (this seems very common where I live), the most likely source of contamination for a mask-handler is the handler’s own hands. So the specific diseases where masks could pose a risk to an improper handler are those where the germs will live longer on or in a mask then they will on hands.
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This is common with viruses. For example, the influenza virus lasts only five minutes on hands, but lasts 8 to 12 hours on fabric — that’s better than hard surfaces, but it’s two orders of magnitude longer than hands. So a person who gets flu germs on his hands and touches his mask within five minutes can stash those germs for *hours*, even though if he’d touched nothing at all it would go away within a few minutes.
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Bacteria in general prefer soft surfaces to hard, and like warm moist conditions. Unlike a virus, bacteria can multiply outside the body. But it can also last a long time on hands, so the use case for contamination would be handling your mask before washing your hands, or a mask getting contaminated at the same time (such as getting coliform bacteria from airborne toilet water, and only washing your hands).
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“I tend to think if you wash your facemask daily you are fine. If you are really worried, own multiple masks and change every two hours.”
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I don’t wash my facemask daily and I’m fine — I’m reasonably healthy, and have no underlying health conditions that make me especially vulnerable. But while I’m not “really worried” about getting sick from my uncleaned facemask, I’m also not “really worried” about getting sick from Covid-19 either, which has a lower death rate if caught *for me* than any number of nasty things my wife could bring home from the hospital. Facemasks present minimal risks IMO — but they also present minimal benefits as well, and daft advice like removing your mask between bites has negligible effect on source control while multiplying the chances of catching something else. But that doesn’t make the chance of catching something else high. Gerba 2014 found fecal coliform in 89% of the kitchen towels they looked at from 5 N.A. cities — but nowhere near 89% of us are catching anything from them or even our sponges. Of course we aren’t trying to breathe through them.
From a CBC article in May that actually acknowledged risks:
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If people are wearing masks for extended periods of time without properly cleaning them, Furness [University of Toronto epidemiologist] said, a bacterial biofilm can build up on the outside layer of your mask.
“If 30 million Canadians are wearing a cloth mask all day long, you’ll see a noticeable spike in bacterial lung infections in a month or so,” he said. “Especially because many people wearing them are often immunocompromised.
“Think about it: Our bodies are not designed to have a dirty cloth in front of our mouth all day.”
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Now to be fair, I don’t know of any evidence that there *was* a spike in bacterial lung infections, or how easily such a spike could be detected in the first place.
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“My mask doesn’t seem to get moist, but perhaps other people drool.”
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Your mask, like everyone else’s mask, has a steady stream of warm, moist air going into it. It doesn’t have to be damp to the touch for bacteria to like that.
But you’re bang-on about the two hours. There’s an interesting study from India in 2013 I found (Kelkar, International Journal of Infection Control) about masks in the Operating Theatre (in this case, for opthamology), but unusually it uses both surgical masks and cloth masks, and it’s specifically looking at bacterial source control — the subjects breathe on a cough plate without mask at time zero, then wearing the mask they performed the same exericse every 30 minutes up to the two and a half hour point. As the masks were worn longer, they became less effective, but both showed large dropoffs at 30 minutes (doing their job) and steadily got worse as time elapsed. Surgical masks were back to normal rates at the 2:30 mark, it’s a pity it didn’t extend further because the cloth masks were back to normal at the 2:00 mark and significantly *higher* at 2:30. Their recommendation was to replace masks every two hours at most, 90 minutes would be better. But that the rise in bacteria kept rising past the control by the 2:30 mark *really* makes me wonder how it would look after eight hours.
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“But I really don’t see much of a concern provided you wash your mask which is easy enough to do. If you’re worried that you can get sick from moist dirty cloth well, you could get sick from your underwear. Few people worry about that.”
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If people were asked to breathe through their underwear, I think you’d find more people worried about it. Certainly washing your mask daily, as the CDC recommends, will greatly reduce your mask-wearing risk. And just as certainly, everyone does *not* wash their mask daily, however easy that may be to do. When ordinary people are required to wear masks on a daily basis, it can be taken for granted that they are not all going to wear them correctly, wash them correctly, wash them *at all*, and certainly not swap them out every two hours or throw their surgical masks away after a single use. You could improve on *all* of these things with publicity and education, but the media messages I see are all focused on whether you mask rather than how you do it. Heck, there’s plenty of people willing to imply there’s no possible downside to mask wearing, which is no way to encourage proper mask hygiene.
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And even in the case of washing, the CDC recommendation to use tap water and laundry detergent or dish soap isn’t exactly designed to return a mask to a pristine state. Tap water isn’t supposed to be higher than 120F for risk of burning, WHO recommends 140 to kill viruses, and 160 for 25 minutes is used for hospital linens to kill assorted pathogens.
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Sorry for the length of this post, but after spending so much time looking into it I wanted to share what I found.
I don’t know why people thought I was suggesting wearing underwear over your face. I was thinking of jock itch from underwear.
I didn’t think you were suggesting that.
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BTW, changing underwear more than once per day is one of the suggestions to help control jock itch. But the fungal spores that spread the infection are hard to kill… either over 140F or washing with bleach. Cool washing without bleach and line drying just spreads the spores to everything .
SteveF,
One you have something, it can be difficult to get rid of. No doubt!
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A long time ago we bought a Neptune front loader that doesn’t allow the user to select a specific temperature. Maytag was having all sorts of verbiage on how their engineers had perfect temperatures….. Wrong.
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Washing machines should allow the user to use REALLY HOT water sometimes. I don’t think I would have achieved 140F…. but I don’t like that the machine has thermostats and mixes to “perfect” temperature for me. Their hot isn’t hot.
Lucia, I initially read that you had bought a Neptune front end loader. Probably just a reflection of my biases…
It would certainly help in moving laundry though.
Edit to add: And washing machines and laundry soap assume the cold water is closer to room temperature than what we have in Alaska. I’d hate to see how the Maytag engineers would solve that.
Earle,
It does *mix* the cold with the hot. The problem is IT decides and IT’s choice is less hot that people who want to disinfect really want.
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It was one of the first ones and I suspect newer ones have a hotter cycle because consumers caught on and realized that not even being able to have a real hot cycle is…. to put it mildly… craptastic. Newer machines will describe some cycle as “steam clean”. I suspect it’s not really steam– but they at least want to suggest that the water is really hot.
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Honestly, it’s one of those things where the “energy efficiency” overrides choices but actual people need to exercise some of those choices. (Admittedly, most would exercise it more often than required. But I can probably disinfect my masks better by running the water in my basin really not and hand washing than using my washing machine!)
Lucia,
Unless you have adjusted the thermostat, it is unlikely your water heater can produce 140F at the washing machine or a basement faucet. Most manufacturers are afraid of scald lawsuits, and set the temperature near 120F.
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If you turn off the cold water supply valve you will get the maximum temp available. Of course, some machines only allow cold water for rinse cycles, so you would have to turn the cold water on again to allow any rinsing.
SteveF,
I don’t have my water heater turned to “max” whatever that actual temperature is for my heater. (Probably not 140F. But it is pretty hot.)
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But also, unlike my old machine where I could adjust the temperature by changing cranking hot and cold more or less open, this one has no hand cranks. The flow rate is adjusted by a thermostat. I could probably over ride this, but haven’t looked into it.
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Next washing machine I’m making sure I can get a real HOT cycle even if I use warm and cold most of the time.
My washer has a “sanitize option”.
“Use the deep clean sanitize cycle to clean and sanitize heavily soiled, colorfast fabrics including towels, bedding, cloth diapers, and children’s clothing. It is recommended that you set your water heater to 120° F (49° C) or higher to ensure proper performance during this cycle.”
“The wash water is heated by an internal boost heater to a maximum of 152° F (67° C) as the load tumbles. Cold water is added to cool down the load prior to drain and spin.”
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Some dishwashers also do this, not sure if that is useful for masks.
Lucia,
I am very surprised your washing machine has no local shut-off valves. The last I checked a local (accessible) shutoff valve on both supplies was code required for washing machine connections in most places, and I believe it is in Illinois.
US cases looked to have peaked. The Midwest is in decline:
7 day rolling averages:
ND: -14%
WY: -7%
SD: -24%
MN: -3%
IA: -12%
WI: -10%
IL: -8%
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Some states are increasing but are starting at much lower numbers (AZ, NM). The EU peaked about 3 weeks ago.
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What is really odd here is that on there isn’t a single media outlet that has even noted this, at least via headlines. They have shifted to hospital and death counts. All bad news, all the time. You really have to look at the numbers to know what is happening.
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Vaccines are going to be allocated to states based on population. The states will then make final determinations on how to use them, although recommendations will be given.
Tom Scharf,
When cases were rising in Florida last summer, there was only coverage of impending catastrophe and how monstrous DeSantis is. Not a peep when they fell for a couple of months immediatly afterwards. No comparison of DeSantis with truly monstrous governors like Cuomo and Murphy (NJ) who’s policies killed thousands. News coverage is both dishonest and politically motivated at every level: local, state, national. There is no way they would ever report on things improving until Biden is sworn in. The news media are shameless.
International study of covid transmission etc from contact tracing data for the entire Hunan province has been published.
No great surprises but working from a large data set. It confirms age-related suseptibility to infection, important to modelling and to what herd immunity level is, but doesnt find infectivity is age related.
“We estimate that overall in Hunan, 63% of all transmission events were from pre-symptomatic individuals, in concordance with other modeling studies ”
“Further, transmission risk is higher around the time of symptom presentation of the primary case (Table 1). In addition, susceptibility to infection (defined as the risk of infection given a contact with primary case) by age: children aged 0-12 years are significantly less susceptible than individuals 26-64 years (odds ratio 0.41, 95% CI 0.26 to 0.63); while patients older than 65 years are significantly more susceptible (odds ratio 1.39, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.91). In contrast, we find no statistical support for age difference in infectivity (fig. S3A). These results are in agreement with previous findings”
“The early testing scheme may lead to underestimation of susceptibility in children, as younger individuals are less likely to develop SARS-CoV-2 symptoms (50). However, reassuringly, sensitivity analyses indicate that the age gradient of susceptibility is preserved even after stratification for changes in testing protocol. Further, our finding of lower susceptibility to infection among children under 12 years, relative to adults, remains stable in the period with comprehensive testing”
Tom…. let’s hope we’ve peaked. I like to wait for multi-week declines in 7 day averages. But… fingers crossed.
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It’s still not a great time to go out and mingle. My dance teacher wants to go to a competition in Florida in early December. Of course he’d like me to go. (This is both a business thing and also… I’m a GREAT person to have in the audience. I’m the loudest possible person when I’m cheering. I have a really loud voice combined with willingness to whoop and holler.)
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But with respect to flying anywhere right now: I’m like… noooooooo. Not me. Chicago is still rip-roaring. So anywhere I go, I’ll be in a plane full of people from Chicago which ain’t good right now.
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But fingers crossed on hitting a peak. And the vaccine getting approved.
Gosh, is the US media in the habit of publishing good news? This would make them almost unique in Western world if true. I usually only see such strange behaviour in likes of Pravda or China Daily where there is a party line to follow.
Steve…. there is a single flip switch. So I can turn both on and off. But I can’t turn only one off. I’m sure it would be possible to sort of work around this, but this is the default design.
Lucia,
That explains it. I you want to restore independent operation, you can connect a suitable shut-off valve between the flip valve and the cold water hose.
Phil,
All media tend to report bad things rather than good (‘if it bleeds, it leads’). But Here in the USA, the reporting of bad things, and even more who is blamed, is very selective. Skyrocketing cases in Michigan (100% Democrat control) are Trump’s fault. Skyrocketing cases in Texas (100% Republican control) are the Republican governor’s fault. The selective, politically motivated reporting is the problem.
Lucia, have you thought of driving to Florida.
My Minnesota family is driving to Florida starting tomorrow in a 2 car caravan and stopping at my house for TG dinner. Another MN group is joining them in early December and stopping at my house for an overnight. My other son and his wife and some relatives from IL are driving down to Florida (to another location) in early December. Both groups thought of flying but opted for driving as a safer alternative. Both groups have been isolating in preparation for the trip. The MN group were tested for Covid going into isolation and are getting tested again before leaving.
If you want loud be around the Fritsch family for awhile.
I usually only see such strange behaviour in likes of Pravda or China Daily where there is a party line to follow.
That strange behavior did exist here in the US with the Obama administration and will probably prevail under Biden. When it comes to politicians of both parties I would prefer that the press give them what they deserve and that most often would be negative coverage and criticism. Unfortunately it is pretty one sided in the US and actually one sided from the international press. The economy is the best example of one sidedness where in the main it gets good reviews under Democrats and not so good under Republicans.
All of this could come to good if more people decided that they better figure out and learn what is going on and decide for them selves what is good or bad.
Phil,
As Kenneth rightly points out, Obama was treated with kid gloves. Even when he (unlawfully) granted residency to hundreds of thousands of “dreamers†(who arrived illegally in the States as minors)…. the same people he had publicly and multiple times declared could not be granted residency without an act of Congress, the press fell all over themselves to say what a good president he was for his blatantly illegal executive order. Unless the goal is to push Biden out and install Kamala Harris as president, the MSM will never report harshly on Biden. That he has been pedaling influence for 40 years to enrich himself and his family will absolutly never be raised by the MSM.
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It is sort of like news reporting on Brexit a few years ago…. those supporting Brexit were consistently described as little better than knuckle-dragging primitives, and just as with Trump’s elections in the USA, polls in the UK showed Brexit had no chance. The MSM is truly dishonest, and indeed, deplorable. They are the propaganda arm of “progressive†politicians, nothing more.
Tom Scharf (Comment #194315)
November 25th, 2020 at 12:04 pm
US cases looked to have peaked.
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That’s good news. With the holidays coming up the peak eventually may be higher, but maybe not.
Self, wife, and son all tested positive last week. This is with the PCR test. So far symptoms are de minimus. I have had a cold for several weeks and tested negative earlier in the month. I’m struggling to identify any symptoms that I can attribute to COVID-19.
We’re keeping quarantine until released by our doctors, which I expect will be in a couple days for my son. He works at the nearby army base doing night janitorial work. My wife coaches for a local swim club and is also looking to get back to work next week.
I’m looking forward to having this behind us. Unfortunately it seems much of the rest of the world will still be in a panic. The biggest inconvenience for me is that our daughter will not be joining us for Thanksgiving.
SteveF (Comment #194328)
It is sort of like news reporting on Brexit a few years ago…. those supporting Brexit were consistently described as little better than knuckle-dragging primitives….
________
Well, they did pine for the old days. Residents of Scotland and N. Ireland didn’t agree.
Why Is All COVID-19 News Bad News? https://www.nber.org/papers/w28110
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“The negativity of the U.S. major media is notable even in areas with positive scientific developments including school re-openings and vaccine trials… Stories of increasing COVID-19 cases outnumber stories of decreasing cases by a factor of 5.5 even during periods when new cases are declining. Among U.S. major media outlets, stories discussing President Donald Trump and hydroxychloroquine are more numerous than all stories combined that cover companies and individual researchers working on COVID-19 vaccines.”
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“She finds that infection rates among students remain low (at 0.14 percent) and schools have not become the super-spreaders many feared. Guthrie et al (2020) and Viner et al (2020) review the available evidence and reach similar conclusions. However, ninety percent of school reopening articles from U.S. mainstream media are negative versus only 56 percent for the English-language major media in other countries.”
FL has increasing cases and will likely continue to do so for the next several weeks. We shall see what all the travel does for covid cases a few weeks from now, not likely going to be helpful. It might be premature to call the peak now.
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Media framing bias example, The Atlantic today:
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“Vociferously Trump-allied governors in hard-hit states such as Georgia, Florida, and South Dakota have declined to so much as implement a public mask mandate while local caseloads have soared … When places including New York, California, and Massachusetts first faced surging outbreaks, they implemented stringent safety restrictions—shelter-in-place orders, mask mandates, indoor-dining and bar closures. The strategy workedâ€
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Deaths:
GA: 9,221 (87 per 100,000)
FL: 18,383 (85)
SD: 821 (93)
.
NY: 35,157 (177)
MA: 10,783 (153)
CA: 18,883 (48)
OK_Max,
“Well, they did pine for the old days.â€
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Not that old.
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Northern Ireland was very concerned they would end up being cut loose from the UK and effectively taken over by Ireland vie the EU common market rules. The Scotts, well, I think they are mostly crazy leftists, so no other rational for their Brexit position is needed. I note the Scotts didn’t walk away from the UK yet, and I doubt they will.
Tom Scharf,
The framing is even more biased than that: California has a median age more than 5 years younger than Florida, and NY 3+ years younger, so Florida is is doing even better than the raw numbers indicate.
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MSM Propaganda: Cuomo is a hero. Reality: Cuomo killed thousands who did not need to die due to woke sensibilities, and blames everyone except himself, and continues to insist on draconian rules where a lighter touch would be adequate, and much less damaging.
Kenneth,
I’d really rather just wait until covid numbers are down rather than drive all the way to Florida to compete. There will be other competitions!
The people who are going are the ones who prepared to dance in Ohio which got cancelled. I was planning to go to that… I’m just going to wait.
I want to see innoculations happening so bad. Even if I don’t get it early, covid numbers will start to drop as people become immune! (Of course they might anyway. It’s now ripping through so fast we might actually hit natural herd immunity.)
Lucia,
Deaths will start dropping long before cases. The total number of people in the USA who will complete the two dose protocol will be not more than 5 -10 million by the time Saint Joe the Corrupt takes office in January. Widespread inoculation (that would be you) seems unlikely until mid to late next year, depending of course on how much the FDA slows things down.
It’s not just the travel to destination part, it’s also the staying part. You are bound to have a much larger number of contacts while on the road. Staying in a hotel or with relatives, eating out, etc. These can be minimized but it kind of takes all the fun out of travel if you do so. I very much look forward to being able to travel again.
Can you imagine the FDA declining to give the vaccine an EUA? The media should be camping out at their headquarters and harassing employees as they walk to their cars. “Are you comfortable going home when 1000’s are dying every day?!?!”. They really barely cover it all. It’s all just bizarre.
Tom Scharf,
No imagination needed. They have already deladed distribution by at least 18 days, and probably much more. As I said up thread: They are untouchable Federal bureaucrats, accountable to nobody, and only interested in preserving their power and exercising it. Usually when someone directly causes many thousands of deaths, there are consequences. Not for FDA bureaucrats. They are bad people, really, really bad people.
Tom Scharf (Comment #194339)
November 25th, 2020 at 7:14 pm
I think if you have a destination in mind where you are staying at a more or less self contained cottage in an open area with friends and/or family the trip itself need be no more exposure than running into a grocery or hardware store if you were staying at home.
I keep track of the people who work at the one grocery store that I go to most frequently and I see the same ones. They have to be more exposed than a vacationer would be and I do not observe any absent where I might expect a Covid infection. I will have to make a note to ask the manager next time I am in the store about any or the number of workers who have been Covid infected.
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The President could order FDA to move, just as he did to get testing approved in early in the year. CDC and FDA told a lab in Seattle to stop testing until they could get approval, then refused to send them the samples they needed to show that their test worked.
Tom Scharf: “I very much look forward to being able to travel again.”
Amen! Traveling to/from FL is now a race keeping exposure to a minimum, rather than a pleasure trip with visits to friends, family, museums, gardens, etc.
In other news, Happy Thanksgiving to all! Although lacking the normal celebrations, we have much to be thankful for, not least that our friends and family are not among the 200+ thousand victims of Covid.
Tom Scharf (Comment #194340): “Can you imagine the FDA declining to give the vaccine an EUA?”
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I can imagine them giving an EUA limited to those at high risk. There is strong justification for that.
———–
MikeN (Comment #194353): “The President could order FDA to move”.
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There might be no better way to undermine trust in the vaccine, at least among Democrats.
Mike M,
What strong justification? Who do you mean by “high risk�
High risk would be people at high risk of exposure (such as health car workers), high risk of transmitting to vulnerable people (nursing home staff), or high risk of serious consequences, such as the elderly.
As a practical matter, it will be a while before the vaccine can be administered to others.
Not limiting use risks undermining ongoing trials before they are complete.
Ideally the FDA would from historical and recent data on vaccinations for viruses let the public know the risk associated with the testing to this point in time and where it might be x months from now. From there individual decisions could be made.. Unfortunately that is not how paternalistic and bureaucratic government agencies operate.
Mike M,
As a practical matter, there will be de facto postponement of vaccine use for most ‘not at risk’ individuals…. with a broad exception for politically favored groups (look for politicians and teachers to be inoculated, at risk or not, as soon as Biden is sworn in). So there will remain a large population of not- vaccinated individuals available for trials, at least until late next year. But it won’t matter much if there are 5 effective vaccines or 9 of them. Nor will herd immunity matter much once the portion of the population truly at risk of death have been vaccinated. 10,000 new colds per day…. with no deaths to speak of…. just doesn’t have the visceral impact of 1,500 deaths per day.
The SC blocks NYC’s bans on religious gatherings. I’m not really for or against these things as a practical matter (people need to avoid indoor gatherings) but there have been several instances of specific restrictions on religion that are not squared with similar restrictions on restaurants and so forth.
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The people who make these restrictions seem to be unacquainted with the 1st amendment and it is necessary to smack them down occasionally. Every time a wacko preacher says something stupid the media amplifies it and paints all of religion with that brush. I only have a passing understanding of what regular churches are doing, but it seems responsible.
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There are really two questions with these things:
1. Can it be done safely?
2. Will it be done safely?
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Happy Thanksgiving to all, and let’s hope next thanksgiving is virus free (or near enough to that to be safe).
SteveF (Comment #194335)
“The Scotts, well, I think they are mostly crazy leftists, so no other rational for their Brexit position is needed. I note the Scotts didn’t walk away from the UK yet, and I doubt they will.”
______
I’m one-half Scottish, which may explain why I’m one-half “crazy leftist.”
Scotland already has some financial independence, allowing it to spend differently than the rest of the UK. A recent example is free period products (tampons and sanitary pads) in women’s public restrooms, a world first.
Nevertheless, Scotland’s economy could be better off if it left the UK and joined the European Union. There may be other reasons for leaving. Recent polls show most Scotts favor leaving the UK.
Kenneth
I think if you have a destination in mind where you are staying at a more or less self contained cottage in an open area with friends and/or family the trip itself need be no more exposure than running into a grocery or hardware store if you were staying at home.
Perhaps. But a Ballroom Dance competition in Orland would not qualify as staying in a more-or-less self contained cottage.
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I usually have lessons in the morning… so less crowded (which is good on many levels.) Yesterday, I had one at 3:45 pm and two of the women going to the Orlando competition were finishing up and chatting. They are planning a side tour to Disneyworld. Disneyworld!!!
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Let’s just say it’s pretty clear they aren’t into “social distancing”. This fits my pre-conceived notion that the typical dancer going to the competition is less risk averse than the typical dancer not going and by a long shot.
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From my view: What fun would it be to drive down, then isolate myself in a room for every minute other than my competition and then come back.
Tom Scharf (Comment #194378)
I spent much of the early morning reading parts i-iii of Josh Blackman’s series on the ruling to stay Cuomo’s orders at Volokh. Time to read iv.
Lucia, I will not question your devotion to dance, but when I was asked in the past by avid golfers and fishing people what I liked about those sports and I would start with being in the fresh air outdoors, nice scenery and a relaxing atmosphere they would stop me and interject with: well then you are not a real golfer/fisherman.
Just saying.
Kenneth,
My response to “You are not a real X” would be “So what?” I don’t need to be a real dancer. I bet you didn’t really care if you were a “real” or “not-real” golfer or fisher.
Hummmm…
Seems to me real dancers dance, real golfers golf, real fishermen (and women) catch fish. The rest is snobbery.
OK_Max,
The Scotts are in a snit ((ok, they most always in a snit), but I doubt they will leave the UK and join the EU. It would mean closing the land border to commerce (and maybe people) and a bunch of other complications.
SteveF
Seems to me real dancers dance
That seems to be the point of view of my teacher, the various coaches and the studio owner and so on. Obviously I am not Karina Smirnov. But the female pros know they aren’t that level either!
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They also know part of the decision to go to competitions is financial. It’s freakin’ expensive especially if you are flying from Chicago to Florida, staying in a hotel, eating out and so on.
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Of course no one can explain why their hobby expensive makes sense and someone else’s doesn’t. But fishermen buy Bass boats, golfers buy ridiculously pricey clubs and join Country Clubs with ridiculous fees and so on. Other people splurge on cars or ‘haut couture’ or overseas travel and so on.
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Lots of these things are on hold because of Covid.
My answer to being a real X was: you are right and you have found me out. Those people I responded to I think took me off their list of people to talk about the finer points of their sport.
I have 2 sons who probably feel obligated to talk to their dear old father about the finer points of various sports so I still have those discussions.
Sounds like SteveF would have found me out.
Government tampons are the very definition of socialism, ha ha. I can’t wait to see the dreary factory where the dreary unproductive people put out their daily quota of tampons designed by an all male government committee who used to design tractors and made from recycled cardboard. Perhaps this is overstating the situation.
Golf is nice exercise in a park with a few curse words randomly thrown about. My favorite part of golf is after striking a ball particularly well on an approach shot to the green, it flies for about 5 seconds and the * anticipation * of those moments watching and waiting for it to land are magic, nothing else in the world matters, pure escape.
The public toilets have free toilet paper, free water, free soap. Someone pays for them to be cleaned. I”m all for free tampons.
Lucia,
“But fishermen buy Bass boats, golfers buy ridiculously pricey clubs and join Country Clubs with ridiculous fees and so on.â€
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Yes many hobbies are expensive. I owned a 41 foot twin-cabin cruiser for 17 years. (recently sold) It was a huge expense. OTOH, golf can be very expensive, but really doesn’t have to be. I have owned the same set of Irons for 20 years, and I rarely buy any new equipment save for grips that wear out. I do have to buy gloves and some golf balls, but I don’t lose many (I often play 2 or 3 times with the same ball) so that isn’t much money. The real cost is greens fees, but I usually reduce this by getting a membership at a municipal course on (Cape Cod) so $750 per year for about 25 rounds. It is more expensive in Florida, but I play less in Florida
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I do see players buy crazy-expensive equipment on a routine basis, of course, but they are laboring under a delusion: it is the golfer’s skill that matters, not the equipment. And it is usually the former that is lacking. My younger brother (started playing at 11, and was ‘scratch’ from 19 to 60 – placing him in the top ~0.1%) told me when I started playing that he could easily better 95% of golfers using only 3 clubs (normal is 14 clubs), and said “it is skill, not equipmentâ€. I have remembered that and avoided wasting money.
SteveF,
Equipment is always a weird thing. Some equipment is purchased for show.
I have discovered that $100 practice dance shoes really are worth the money. I decided to buy them after I saw a video by the guy who sells Aida dance shoes and could understand what is different about them. I figured I was being a sap…. but actually, they are better.
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OTOH: Practice skirts, dresses and so on are expensive and mostly just prettier. You can learn just as well in cheap leggings, cheap Amazon circle skirts and so on.
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Private lessons with great teachers really do help. Whether it’s “worth” the money? Well, that depends on what you have to give up and whether you enjoy dancing.
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Since last January, my progress in Waltz and other “smooth” dances has been enormous, and it’s hard to explain how much more fun the dance is when you start being good enough to do authentic sway, learn to move forward and backwards correctly and know how to “connect” during dancing. But… well… there an element of being like a kid on a swing or a merry go round.
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Obviously, shoes can’t make you dance right. But bad shoes make it harder. 🙂
It is time for my true story about golfing with a priest.
My neighbor and I were golfing at a local course one day where the fees were modest when after a few holes in a priest hopped over a fence and asked if he could join us. He had one club with him which as I recall was a five iron. He used that club for all his shots including putting and even after we offered him to use ours. He shot an even par for the remainder of the holes. Damn near converted to Catholicism on the spot.
Lucia,
“ it’s hard to explain how much more fun the dance is when you start being good enough to do authentic sway,…â€
.
It is not so different. I have tried to help some (terrible) golfers improve, and would say something like “It is so much better when you learn enough that you can hit it consistently and curve it either direction as you want.â€. But I have learned that very few golfers (who are not young) are interested in (or capable of) changing a really bad swing. A few are, but it is few.. Golf instructors have to have great patience.
Well after reading the Josh Blackman series, it would seem Gorsuch is exactly what I was hoping for in a justice. Strict adherence to the 1st Amendment and Constitution, and he is quite emotional about it (as far as one can read these things in a legal document). He’s not going to split many hairs on these issues.
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I don’t feel particularly strongly that the right of religious exercise is on a higher moral order than the rights of grocery stores, but the fact is that religion is specifically enumerated in the Constitution and this puts it at a much higher legal standard.
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As the pandemic moves along the court is applying more scrutiny and starting to put the burden on the state to prove its emergency restrictions are necessary.
SteveF,
Ballroom dance teachers also need a lot of patience.
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The thing is, I’ve come to understand that there are teachers who really only want to focus on “groovy moves” or “step patterns” and don’t want to do the hard work to get students to deal with posture, basic motion and so on. My dancing has improved because a coach gave me a stern talking to about posture and I then figured out how to fix it.
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To be fair to other teachers, they did all discuss posture. But Rita just flat out told me that people who were worse than me would beat me in competitions because of my posture. I saw videos of dancers in competition and could see how and why this was true. It also turned out fixing my posture allowed me to get better.
.
But also to be fair about some other teachers who are less good….the owner of local studio I used to go to really like to encourage people to learn tons and tons of “groovie” steps to be “interesting”. But their fundamentals… He either doesn’t know how to get them to improve or he just doesn’t want to spend time on that. My opinion is he treats it as sort of a special extra “frill” for the “true dancers” and he doesn’t really think most people will become “true dancers”. Of course…. his students generally don’t become true dancers — unless they somehow have some natural positives and also spend time doing outside study!
Tom Scharf,
And imagine… Gorsuch is the token Protestant on this court. 🙂
Tom Scharf
I don’t feel particularly strongly that the right of religious exercise is on a higher moral order than the rights of grocery stores, but the fact is that religion is specifically enumerated in the Constitution and this puts it at a much higher legal standard.
I think one problem is Cuomo wants the right of religious exercise to be a lower moral order than the rights of grocery stores. My understanding is Cuomo wants to treat some things as essential but not put religion on that category.
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His argument seems to be that if some businesses are treated as strictly as religion then it’s ok. But it appears the SCOTUS judges don’t accept that. Their standard is if anyone gets treated better than religion, that’s a problem.
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I’m an atheist, but I lean toward the 5 judge majorities view. It seems to me nothing prevents Cuomo from making 10 or even 100 tiers and putting religion in the most restricted tier. It may be his view that taking the holy eucharist is “not essential”. I don’t need to take it. But… uhmm…..
Trump evidently says vaccine is coming next week. The article also mentions FDA meeting is Dec. 10. It is silent on how the two reconcile. (My guess is Trump is… erhmmm…. mistaken.)
Lucia,
You can distribute an unauthorized medication, you just can sell it or use it. Probably Pfizer told someone in the administration about pre- approval distribution, not use.
Makes complete sense to me that logistics would start to do their thing before the bureaucrats get around to rubber stamping the affair. My guess is both are correct.
So I get to feeling poorly enough I went to the ER. They do CT scans with contrast of my chest and abdomen. They find abscesses on my liver and a blood clot in my lung. Apparently my white cell count is high so lots of IV antibiotics plus blood thinner for the clot. They put a tube in one of the abscesses and suck out over 100 mL of nasty looking stuff. I get to feeling better and shortly thereafter test positive for COVID. Now I can’t go home because my wife doesn’t have it and she would lose her caregivers. So I’m in the COVID wing of a skilled nursing facility.
My only obvious COVID symptom is fatigue. That seems to have improved recently so maybe I’m out of the woods.
Weren’t we told early on that it was important to implement control measures as soon as possible to minimize the death rate? Why wouldn’t this apply to vaccinations? Oh, that would be applying logic. Can’t have that.
If I prayed, I’d pray for you DeWitt. I don’t…. so I’ll be thinking of you and hoping for the best.
DeWift,
I hope you recover soon and completely. I’d miss your a acerbic comments if you stoped making them. And What Lucia said.
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It does make sense to get the vaccinations going ASAP. But this is the FDA. The same FDA that pressured Pfizer to not release positive vaccine trial results before the election. They are bad people doing bad things.
DeWitt, I was concerned when I did not see you posting. Thanks for the update on your health and hope you recover soon.
Ooof! Sounds like you made a great call, DeWitt! Pulmonary embolism can be nasty and it sounds like the liver absess was a ticking timebomb for septic shock. Wishing you a speedy recovery!
DeWitt, I hope you feel better and better.
DeWitt,
I don’t really believe, but I’ll pray for you anyway.
Be well.
I think I’m well into recovery at this point, but thanks for all the good wishes and prayers.
Did I hear the news correctly that Biden is planning to put the known to be incompetent CDC in charge of all things COVID?
I wish you well.
Tom Scharf, imagine Trump had nominated Kavanaugh and Gorsuch in reverse order. Kavanaugh would have gotten in relatively easily, and Gorsuch would have been accused of rape. He went to the same school, and it was two years later, so Ford could have stuck to her original story to the therapist with the right year.
“The death toll of Americans under the age of 40 from COVID-19 — 3,571 — has now surpassed the total death toll from the 9/11 terrorist attacks.” From an article in today’s USAToday
Still, although may people under the age of 40 get Covid-19, the number who die from this disease is relatively small. I don’t know how many survivors suffer a lot.
OK_Max,
About 150,000 people per year die before 40 in the USA (out of about 175 million), more of them men than women. So 3,571 is not a large increase. Most deaths from covid are after age 65, with a median age at death for all cases of about 79. Covid is a serious illness mainly of the elderly, the infirm, and especially the infirm elderly: even at age 85, 2/3 of covid patients survive the infection.
If the data used in that analysis are correct it would indicate that comorbidities are playing a part in the Covid-19 deaths and individuals with severe health conditions who contacted Covid-19 might have died from that condition within the 2020 year. That would, not be particularly surprising.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #194476): “If the data used in that analysis are correct”.
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A huge if. The data come from the CDC, so who knows if they are correct.
About 150,000 people per year die before 40 in the USA (out of about 175 million), more of them men than women. So 3,571 is not a large increase.
______________
If you have already lived past 40, you may not be able to relate to them.
Ed Forbes (Comment #194473)
November 28th, 2020 at 1:00 pm
John Hopkins finds covid has relatively no effect on overall death rate in US. The mob is out with pitchforks for this heresy.
______
Some possibilities
Hospitals and staff fib about being overwhelmed.
Covid-19 patients in hospitals fib about being sick.
The study’s author is misunderstood or wrong.
Kenneth,
“…and individuals with severe health conditions who contacted Covid-19 might have died from that condition within the 2020 year.”
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I suspect we will see a dearth of deaths (relative to expected rates) over the next year or two, since many vulnerable people have died. It is true that covid–19 “harvests” (sorry OK_Max) the most vulnerable…. but that is just like most every other disease…. old people die, and the older, the more likely to die. Life is fatal.
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I calculated how many years of life were lost in Florida per confirmed case earlier this year, using Florida data for 53,000 cases. My conclusion was that the cost of a confirmed case in terms of life-years lost, reached a peak of a little over two years per confirmed case at age ~72 for people who were confirmed to have contracted covid-19. At greater or lesser ages, the average life-years lost was lower that ~2 years. Suggesting the maximum social benefit per avoided case was at ~72 years old…. the age were the potential life-years lost per case was highest.
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Still, politicians and the politically favored will be first in line for the vaccine. Of course, teachers don’t deserve being at the head of the line, but the kids they are punishing with their cowardice need them to be inoculated first.
OK_Max,
I am many years past 40, but I have not the faintest clue what your last comment is suggesting. That I can’t relate to my kids? Weird, really.
They can give the new vaccine to my cold dead body, but not before.
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I don’t trust the CDC as they have been wrong on just about everything over the years.
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I generally take the annual flue shots even though they are usually only about 25% effective. Those taking the new, and rushed, vaccine are signing up to be a lab rat. This for a virus that is pretty benign for someone like me who is not in a high risk group.
Well Ed, giving it to a dead body would be a waste. I’m trying to be first in line. 🙂
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If you don’t want to take it, I’ve got a better shot at getting it.
The freedom to choose is a great thing, although I suspect that some companies will go to requiring employees to have the vaccine if they are public facing. Grocery stores, restaurants, cruise lines, etc.
Tom
Given that employment is “at will” in Illinois, one the vaccine is widely available I suspect some companies will prefer to only hire people who have been vaccinated. An expensive restaurant would probably love to advertise that all the servers are vaccinated. Since the training requirements for a waiter, waitress or bus-person are not too high, I would imagine that at least some restaurants will require the vaccine. If you want to avoid vaccination, well…. work somewhere else! It’s sort of the libertarian solution.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually some venues might not require people buying tickets to prove vaccination. For example: You can go to the Bears game if you show you are vaccinated. Otherwise, no. This protects the 10% of those vaccinated whose vaccine might not have worked.
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Once again: Libertarian solution.
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The libertarian solution will work provided there is someway of keeping track of who was vaccinated. But that won’t be too difficult because while HIPPA bars medical people from disclosing certain stuff, i doubt it bars disclosure if a person requests disclosure. (And if it does, all we need is a legislative change to HIPPA to permit individuals to authorize disclosure of limited information in specific ways.)
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People who don’t want to be vaccinated won’t be required to be vaccinated. Those who are will have access to more conveniences and more services. Totally libertarian solution.
Evidently, the current plan is to distribute vaccines based on state population. See above.
lucia (Comment #194499): “I’m trying to be first in line.”
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You are welcome to my spot. I won’t get it until fully tested.
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lucia (Comment #194501): “totally libertarian solution.”
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No, slightly short of totalitarian solution.
No, slightly short of totalitarian solution.
I don’t see how. It allows:
1) those who want the vaccine to get it.
2) those who don’t to not get it.
3) those running businesses to make their own choices about how they run their own business.
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Everyone gets to make their own choice. What consequences they face will depend on the virulence of the pathogen and free choices of others. That’s a libertarian, not “totalitarian” solution.
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Some who don’t want to take the vaccine might not like because they may wish to bend others to their will so as to reduce the consequences of their choices. But not letting those who don’t want vaccines dictate the choices of everyone else is not totalitarianism.
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They are free to make their choice: not get vaccinated. Then they face consequences, just as others make their choice and face consequences.
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If you want to support your claim that this is some sort of “totalitarian” situation, your going to have to explain how it is. Because it absolutely doesn’t look like one.
Those choosing to take the vaccine early are welcome to it. Personally I will let the early users be the lab rats testing its safety.
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https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-trials-showed-severe-side-effects-fever-and-
November 14, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Mere days after Pfizer announced its new “90% effective†coronavirus vaccine, reports have emerged about “severe†side effects volunteers for the vaccine trial experienced, including fevers and headaches.
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The New York Times emphasized on Monday, “The data released by Pfizer … was delivered in a news release, not a peer-reviewed medical journal. It is not conclusive evidence that the vaccine is safe and effective, and the initial finding of more than 90 percent efficacy could change as the trial goes on.â€
Ed Forbes,
What makes you think the CDC has anything whatsoever to do with vaccines? The FDA is in sole charge of preventing timely distribution of the vaccines, resulting in thousands to tens of thousands of completely unnecessary deaths.
Apparently you have more trust in the NYT than the FDA.
Also it’s the FDA that reviews the application, not a journal.
Kenneth, I don’t think misclassification of deaths to COVID can be more than about 10% of fatalities.
What is the chance at any time that a person has COVID?
Multiply this chance by typical deaths in a year, and you get an estimate for people who died with covid but not because of covid.
Lucia,
Once the vaccine is available to all, the “libertarian” policy is to let people do what they want. Anyone who refuses the vaccine is then responsible if they catch the virus…. not the unknown person they caught it from. When the vaccine is freely available, the libertarian POV is that nobody (not even a waiter) would be required to get the vaccination…. including not by his employer. If the responsibility of risk is 100% with the person who might catch the illness, then everyone else has no responsibility in the case an unwise person chose to not get the vaccine.
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Mike N,
I already looked at the death rate trends over time. Covid 19 for certain is responsible for excess deaths in 2020. That article is utter nonsense.
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Ed Forbes,
The profile of side effects for the Moderna vaccine over a range of doses (50, 100, 250 micrograms) have been published. Most people have fairly mild side effects, mostly the same side effects you expect from a flu vaccination. More people at the 250 microgram dose (IIRC, 7%) reported more severe (flu-like) side effects, especially after the second dose. There were very few severe side effects at the 100 microgram dose (what actually used in the phase 3 study). All side effects, even at the highest dose, lasted less than 2 days. Death, on the other hand, lasts a bit longer. I have sern nothing to suggest the vaccine presents any more risk of side effects than other vaccines. I will definitely get it when it becomes available…. which I fear will not be until late spring next year.
.
BTW, the Pfizer vaccine is closely related in composition, so very likely has a similar side effects profile. Unfortunately Pfizee has been slow to publish actual data. We will finally have access when the FDA publicly reviews the Pfizer application on Dec.10.
MikeN, my take on the brief look I had of the withdrawn paper was that the cormorbidities were decreasing somewhat at the rate of Covid-19 morbidity. That would not require misclassification of Covid-19 deaths.
I also thought that the rationale for withdrawing the paper was that not using the absolute numbers for Covid-19 deaths is something that the masses out there could not handle.
I see with the Covid-19 crisis that there is goodly portion of the US population (this probably goes for the world generally) that is much too accepting of government power in these matters in my view of things. The basis that I thought was used to withdraw that paper is part of this concern for me.
Another worrying matter for me is that I do not see much public concern for placing boundaries on the use of government edicts, what the definition of an emergency is and the duration of an emergency.
The ruling on a restriction that is different and more severe in one area than others could be handled by government merely imposing that severe restriction on all areas. Covid-19 has set a precedent for handling a contagious disease and without any major concern from the majority of the population on boundaries. You even have talk of ignore the cost if it saves just one life. Without limits or concern for limits there are many candidates for emergencies out there and government authorities out there willing to impose mandates. Maybe John Kerry will be able to make a case for climate change as our next major emergency or maybe the public needs more prior conditioning like making the post Covid-19 flu season an emergency.
lucia (Comment #194504):
3) those running businesses to make their own choices about how they run their own business.
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Everyone gets to make their own choice. What consequences they face will depend on the virulence of the pathogen and free choices of others. That’s a libertarian, not “totalitarian†solution.
Would it be libertarian to allow your local drug store to refuse service to anyone who can not display a membership card in the Democrat Party? Of course not. Would it be libertarian to allow a bank to refuse service to a business that sells guns or ammo? Nope.
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What you are proposing is to allow private individuals and businesses to act as enforcers of government policy. Enforcement that would extend into every aspect of the individual’s lives. One step short of totalitarian.
Some who don’t want to take the vaccine might not like because they may wish to bend others to their will so as to reduce the consequences of their choices.
Huh? Are you accusing people like Ed Forbes and me of wanting others to take the vaccine for our benefit? If so (I may have misunderstood), that is a disgusting accusation.
But not letting those who don’t want vaccines dictate the choices of everyone else is not totalitarianism.
How would my not getting the vaccine be dictating your choice? That is nonsense.
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By the way, people who are vaccinated might still be able to spread the virus, even if they don’t get sick themselves. Antibodies don’t have a lot of effect on upper respiratory infections other than to confine them to the upper respiratory tract.
They are free to make their choice: not get vaccinated.Then they face consequences
As SteveF explains, the proper consequence of not getting vaccinated is the risk I face from the virus.
SteveF
Once the vaccine is available to all, the “libertarian†policy is to let people do what they want.
Yes. What I described is letting people do what they want. That includes letting employers do what they want. If the vaccines is more than 95% effective and widely adopted, I can’t imagine them making any rule at all. But if only 1/3rd of people take it, I can imagine a meat packer or large party venue making a rule. The former won’t want the absenteism associated with an outbreak among the unvaccinated. The later won’t want news stories about outbreaks at a Lady Gaga concert or some such.
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So yeah: letting people do what they want is libertarian and it’s what I described. Forbidding employers or business owners from doing what they want would be the non-libertarian position.
Many details of the plan, which is still in development phase, will rely on three separate components — the Ticketmaster digital ticket app, third party health information companies like CLEAR Health Pass or IBM’s Digital Health Pass and testing and vaccine distribution providers like Labcorp and the CVS Minute Clinic.
Here’s how it would work, if approved: After purchasing a ticket for a concert, fans would need to verify that they have already been vaccinated (which would provide approximately one year of COVID-19 protection) or test negative for coronavirus approximately 24 to 72 hours prior to the concert. The length of coverage a test would provide would be governed by regional health authorities — if attendees of a Friday night concert had to be tested 48 hours in advance, most could start the testing process the day before the event. If it was a 24-hour window, most people would likely be tested the same day of the event at a lab or a health clinic.
Once the test was complete, the fan would instruct the lab to deliver the results to their health pass company, like CLEAR or IBM. If the tests were negative, or the fan was vaccinated, the health pass company would verify the attendee’s COVID-19 status to Ticketmaster, which would then issue the fan the credentials needed to access the event. If a fan tested positive or didn’t take a test to verify their status, they would not be granted access to the event. There are still many details to work out, but the goal of the program is for fans to take care of vaccines and testing prior to the concert and not show up hoping to be tested onsite.
There is an option that allows the unvaccinated entry. But people are working on these. I would not consider Ticketron being allowed to do this if they so chose a “Totalitarian” regime. I would think creating a law forbidding private enterprising from doing this is not libertarian. It takes away a choice from businesses.
MikeN (Comment #194511): “I don’t think misclassification of deaths to COVID can be more than about 10% of fatalities.”
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North Dakota distinguishes between people hospitalized because of the Wuhan virus and “with” the virus. The latter includes those hospitalized for some other reason who then test positive. As of a couple weeks ago, the with but not due to was 36% of all hospitalizations and almost 40% of those in ICU. The percent of deaths with but not due to the virus might well be comparable. But that is in a place with a really high current rate of infection. https://healthy-skeptic.com/2020/11/12/how-to-report-hospitalizations-in-a-more-transparent-manner/
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The above did not give a link to the primary source. If you find the primary source, I’d appreciate your letting me know.
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MikeN : “What is the chance at any time that a person has COVID?
Multiply this chance by typical deaths in a year, and you get an estimate for people who died with covid but not because of covid.”
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The UK has been doing random sampling of the population. That shows the number who test positive at any given time to be about 30 times the daily number of new cases. It is almost a surely an underestimate since they use self-collected swabs, so probably a lot of false negatives.
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That ratio would imply about 2% of U.S. adults currently positive, with the peak in North Dakota having been almost 4 times as high. 2% of all deaths would be almost 200 per day, about 12% of reported covid deaths.
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As I noted above, the factor of 30 could be an underestimate. Also, hospitals might be good places to catch the virus; that would boost the number of deaths “with” the virus. Also, if a single positive test in the somewhat recent past, say the last month, is used to classify a death as covid, that would boost the number even higher.
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So 10% is a plausible guess, but the real number could be a factor of 2 or 3 higher.
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There is an interesting briefing paper in the UK. I lost the link, but the title is:
“PCR-based COVID testing has failed and is not a proper basis to lockdown the nation, let alone decide on tiers for restrictions”.
It claims that the recent surge in cases is largely false positives and that most of the recent surge in covid deaths in the UK are incorrectly attributed to the virus since there has not been a corresponding surge in excess mortality. I don’t know what to make of it.
MIke M
Would it be libertarian to allow your local drug store to refuse service to anyone who can not display a membership card in the Democrat Party?
Yes. And besides that, I’m pretty sure pharmacies can exclude people for that reason if they like. There are limited reasons they can exclude customers. Political view does not fall in a protected class barring discrimination.
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This would probably be a poor business move. But the pharmacy should be free to make it.
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What you are proposing is to allow private individuals and businesses to act as enforcers of government policy.
Nope. Because I would object to the government imposing the policy. There should be no government policy requiring businesses to do this, but equally none to forbid it. (It appears some are going to do it. See ticketron above.)
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Are you accusing people like Ed Forbes and me of wanting others to take the vaccine for our benefit?
Nope. I haven’t suggested that’s what you want. I am aware that it would be the consequence whether it’s what you want or not.
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How would my not getting the vaccine be dictating your choice? That is nonsense
Uhhmmm… A free society involves many different types of choices. Forbidding employers from making a policy about who they hire would be the government dictating their choice about who they hire.Forbidding theater owners from making a policy about who they sell tickets to would be dictating theater owners choice about running their private business.
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What I am saying is allowing the unvaccinated to insist employers cant’ do this would be the unvaccinated dictating the employers choice about employement policies. That is clearly not libertarian.
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By the way, people who are vaccinated might still be able to spread the virus, even if they don’t get sick themselves.
Yes. This would be a very good reason why a meat packer might want to exclude those who can still get sick from his plant. It’s those who get sick that results in absenteeism and down time.
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A law forbidding the meat packer from doing this would (a) dictate the meatpacker choice and (b) force him to accept the economic consequences of decisions by those who don’t want to take vaccines for any reasons.
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I think you should be allowed to not take the vaccines. But I also think the meatpacker should be allowed to decide who to hire and that means he should be allowed to exclude the unvaccinated. I’m pretty sure this is actually the standard rule in most of the US today. Employers are allowed to have conditions for employment. Changing that rule would move toward totalitarianism, not away.
The following link and excerpt would go along with Covid-19 being at least 2/3 responsible for the excess 300,000 deaths in the US in 2020 through Sept 2020. What puzzles me is the percentage increase in deaths by age groups. Any ideas from posters here for a reason? I guess maybe it is because a lot of older people die every year from many different causes.
Overall, an estimated 299,028 excess deaths have occurred in the United States from late January through October 3, 2020, with two thirds of these attributed to COVID-19. The largest percentage increases were seen among adults aged 25–44 years and among Hispanic or Latino (Hispanic) persons. These results provide information about the degree to which COVID-19 deaths might be underascertained and inform efforts to prevent mortality directly or indirectly associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, such as efforts to minimize disruptions to health care..
.. However, the average percentage change in deaths over this period compared with previous years was largest for adults aged 25–44 years (26.5%) (Figure 2). Overall, numbers of deaths among persons aged <25 years were 2.0% below average, and among adults aged 45–64, 65–74 years, 75–84, and ≥85 years were 14.4%, 24.1%, 21.5%, and 14.7% above average, respectively..
lucia (Comment #194527): “Ticketron is working on an app to check vaccination or test status”
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Requiring people to disclose medical records. What could possibly go wrong?
Question: Where you live, can anyone who wants one get a covid test?
Here in New Mexico, you typically can not get tested unless you are sick or have a documented exposure. Even health care workers are not regularly tested.
MikeM
Requiring people to disclose medical records. What could possibly go wrong?
People should be allowed to disclose what they chose to disclose. They are so allowed.
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I hope the program is well designed. I suspect it can be. Something might “go wrong”. Oh. Well.
Mike M.
Question: Where you live, can anyone who wants one get a covid test?
Sort of yes, sort of no. There are places you can just go. It takes some planning. My ballroom dance teacher and all those who planned to go to the Ohio Star Ball championships got tested in the required time frame. (The competition got cancelled.)
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It’s a lot easier to figure out how to get it conveniently if your doctor gives you a prescription. But depending on your doctor they might require you fit some certain priority class.
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But there are drop in locations — those who need them for work and so on figure out where they are. I haven’t. If I didn’t know a bunch of people who got tested just to go to a competition, I wouldn’t be aware that you can get tested “just because”.
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That said: testing availability needs to be expanded. WRT to Ticketron’s proposed policy: it might mean initially, they’ll only be allowing in the vaccinated merely because the unvaccinated have trouble figuring out where to get tested within the necessary time window. That’s what I suggested some businesses might do.
Mike M.,
I reject your assertion that COVID19 vaccinated people could still transmit the disease as being pure speculation unsupported by any evidence. IOW, fake news.
As for becoming infected in the hospital, that’s how I got it.
The county health department where I live in TN has drive through free testing effectively on demand.
DeWitt,
“Might” does the heavy lifting in MikeM’s assertion.
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Of course it’s not actually proven they can’t transmit. Proving it would require careful observations over a period of time along with tracking and so on. Obviously, this hasn’t been done because the vaccine is not available to the public. So this is a case of “we have no evidence” but the reason is “because there is no data”.
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So Mike can just throw out a speculation and include the word “might”.
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But regardless if they “might” be infectious, but can’t get sick that is a very sound reasons for someone like a meat packer exclude the unvaccinated from employment in a meat packing plant. The decision would be economic, and employers are and should be allowed to avoid financial losses associated with absentism that happens during outbreaks.
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The vaccinated being infectious would also be a good reason for someone like Ticketron to exclude the unvaccinated without allowing the “got tested” loophole around that. Ticketron and theater venues would want to avoid both liability and unfavorable publicity related to patrons becoming ill in the venue.
Lucia,
The law may (or may not) allow a private employer to “discriminate” against people who don’t get vaccinated, but I suspect it would be a very close (legal) call, and I am not sure how it would go. If the employee was not past 65 and not suffering other serious disease, then the consequences of them catching the virus (even in a meat packing plant or restaurant) would be no different than the same employee catching the flu, or even a simple cold.
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But allowed under law or not, the employer most certainly would not be a libertarian if they forced employees to get vaccinated. Any more than if they fired anyone who refused to get an annual flu vaccine, or refused register as a Democrat, had the ‘wrong’ kinds of thoughts, etc. Laws and regulations in the USA, both Federal and State, are very far from anything I would consider libertarian. IMO, the covid-19 pandemic has already put the USA on a very slippery slope towards public control of all private actions. I frankly find it frightening.
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I was cheered by the SC decision on NY restricting religious worship, not because I am worried specifically about religious services, but because the court put crazy Dems like Cuomo on notice that they have to tread more lightly on individual freedoms. Alito’s lecture to his three liberal colleagues plus Chief Just Mealy Mouth (who claimed the court should never get involved, no matter how extreme the covid rules) was perfect. He basically told them they were not living up to their oath of office; I would not have liked it more if I had written it myself.
SteveF,
What law would it violate? Real Q.
At will employment is pretty standard. There are specific defined exceptions. This doesn’t prevent someone from suing– but that’s true of any firing or failure to hire. Their suit still has to state a claim to prevail.
States mandate vaccines for health care workers. So the idea of requiring vaccination status for at least some employment is established.
the consequences of them catching the virus (even in a meat packing plant or restaurant) would be no different than the same employee catching the flu, or even a simple cold.
The consequence of many catching something communicable can be disruptive. As for flu: I would imagine employers could require flu vaccines too. Colds are so mild, they probably wouldn’t care. So an employer could view things differently from you. They should be free to do so.
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But allowed under law or not, the employer most certainly would not be a libertarian if they forced employees to get vaccinated.
Perhaps. But a law requiring an employer to be libertarian is, itself, not libertarian. I suspect employers exist who consider it their right to decide for themselves what rules they are going to impose. Certainly, they think it their right to hire and fire who they wish. They can agree to disagree with those who don’t want vaccines and just not hire them. That’s not “forcing” anyone to get a vaccine. Those people can seek other jobs.
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put the USA on a very slippery slope towards public control of all private actions. I frankly find it frightening.
I do too. Which is why I would be frightened by the thought the state would forbid employers or theater owners from making their own rules.
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I also cheered the SCOTUS decision on churches.
The 5-vote majority in the NY covid decision is interesting for two other reasons:
1) The State of NY tried to keep the court from ruling by after-the-fact changing the regulations to render the case “moot”. NY has tried this approach several times in the past, with some success, when they promulgated unconstitutional laws which were challenged by NY citizens, then changed the laws after it was clear they would likely lose at the SC. In this case, Alito and the other four justices pointed out the dishonestly of the NY ploy, and basically laughed at the moot claim. This court is not going to accept such dishonest legal arguments.
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2) The case effectively reverses a series of earlier decisions where the SC had allowed onerous covid regulations to stand, with Chief Justice Mealy Mouth wringing his hands about the loss of constitutionally protected freedoms, but always refusing to prohibit those loses. The conservative 5 has put Mealy Mouth on notice that he will be irrelevant if he sides with the three progressives on constitutional freedoms cases (where I note he has caved every time to avoid reversing many earlier unconstitutional decisions). With any luck the new majority will actually enforce the laws and protect the freedoms the Constitution guarantees.
SteveF
1) The State of NY tried to keep the court from ruling by after-the-fact changing the regulations to render the case “mootâ€.
Yes. One of the writers at Volokh described it as a “whack-a-mole” strategy. I think not letting Cuomo get away with that is very important. Otherwise he has complete control to “moot” the case and reimpose. Gorsuch was the especially severe on about that. He wrote
So if we dismissed this case, nothing would prevent the Governor from reinstating the challenged restrictions tomorrow. And by the time a new challenge might work its way to us, he could just change them again.
Chief Justice Mealy Mouth wringing his hands about the loss of constitutionally protected freedoms, but always refusing to prohibit those loses.
Yep. It might have been one thing early one when there really was a lot of uncertainty and governors across the country hadn’t been playing games. But really… now? With Cuomo?
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Gorsuch also wrote this
At the same time, the Governor has chosen to impose no capacity restrictions on certain businesses he considers “es-sential.†And it turns out the businesses the Governor con-siders essential include hardware stores, acupuncturists, and liquor stores. Bicycle repair shops, certain signage companies, accountants, lawyers, and insurance agents are all essential too. So, at least according to the Governor, itmay be unsafe to go to church, but it is always fine to pickup another bottle of wine, shop for a new bike, or spend the afternoon exploring your distal points and meridians. Who knew public health would so perfectly align with secular convenience?
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You know, the thing is, even if something like “bicycle repair” is essential (on the theory that transportation is essential and that is some people mode of transportation), he still could have had a 10 person limit on occupancy of bicycle repair shops. It would be easy enough to have people drop off their bikes, pick them up and not linger. In fact this is likely normal in most shops which are small and generally not exactly packed to the gills with customers. But he could have made that the rule.
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A similar situation likely applies to acupuncturist and chiropractors. It would likely barely be an inconvenience to limit occupancy to 10 people. Yet… no rule.
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It’s a tougher rule for groceries, but there is no reason people you couldn’t have people switch to curb-side pick up. Yes… it’s an added expense to have people fill orders, but curbside pick up could be done. (In fact, it’s being done in many places without the locality requiring it.)
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You could do it for essential hardware in Home Depot too. Yes.. it would mean fewer people electing to buy Christmas trees which are also sold there along with the small numbers of actual construction materials, but those purchases aren’t essential.
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The fact is: Cuomo didn’t even try to tailor his rule. He just had blanket exceptions for “essential” when he could have easily limited them to 10 only while still allowing people access to the part of the service that is “essential”.
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The to top it all, he’s trying to play games with making things “moot”.
Lucia,
“As for flu: I would imagine employers could require flu vaccines too.”
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I sure hope not. Heck, the flu vaccine is often not even very effective! As I said, the requirement of vaccination would be a close legal call. I am not sure how it would go. I suspect it would come down to whether or not the employer can show a legitimate justification for the requirement. Many people (like me) react poorly to the flu vaccine, and suffer a for-certain 1 day case of flu symptoms. Requiring me to get a flu vaccination every year requires I suffer one day of flu misery each year….. the requirement would not be cost-free. The employee could always resign and find other employment, of course, and I suspect the Mike M’s of the world would do just that. In the case of flu vaccine, I might too.
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Please remember that employers are most certainly not allowed to discriminate in hiring/firing based on race, ethnicity, or religious beliefs. So there are certain restrictions in place already. Forcing someone to get a foreign substance injected into their body is not like telling them to wear a certain uniform while working. There would for sure be a legal case brought if that were required.
SteveF (Comment #194539): “But allowed under law or not, the employer most certainly would not be a libertarian if they forced employees to get vaccinated.”
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Indeed. Libertarians don’t just oppose government coercion; they oppose coercion in general.
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SteveF: “IMO, the covid-19 pandemic has already put the USA on a very slippery slope towards public control of all private actions. I frankly find it frightening.”
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I share that feeling. It is indeed very scary.
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A “libertarian” plan like lucia’s would just hasten that. Constantly having to prove your covid status would be a huge hassle, for both businesses and individuals. That would create a great deal of public support for government mandated vaccination.
SteveF,
Whether employers do require it is different from whether they should be allowed to not employ people who don’t get the vaccine. In part because it’s not effective, I would imagine few employers would require the vaccine, especially not if they require a workforce with in demand skills.
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As I said, the requirement of vaccination would be a close legal call.
I don’t see how it would be in a state that has at will employment. Unless the employee can argue that the requirement is a proxy for excluding people in a protected class I don’t see how it could be a close legal call.
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The requirement isn’t going to exclude women vs men, blacks, hispanics, asias etc vs whites. It might exclude some people whose religious believes bar vaccines but then one could tailor that. MikeM above is not objecting to vaccines for religious reasons.
Indeed. Libertarians don’t just oppose government coercion; they oppose coercion in general.
Yes. That’s why I oppose coercing employers, or business owners. The employers and business owners should get to decide their own standards as freely as possible.
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A “libertarian†plan like lucia’s would just hasten that.
No. Coercing employers and business owners to follow the rules you prefer that would hasten loss of liberty. .
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Constantly having to prove your covid status would be a huge hassle,
Sure. An avoidable hassle. Just don’t buy tickets form Ticketron and find a job from someone who doesn’t make it a policy to check vaccination or infection status. That leaves you lots of choice without you imposing your choice on those who want to make a different choice.
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That would create a great deal of public support for government mandated vaccination
I should think it would do the opposite. If the public knew the problem of uncontrolled outbreaks was being handled through private choices, there should be no need for a government mandate.
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Those who want to get tickets through Ticketron could get them. Those who prefer to not follow Ticketrons rules wouldn’t have too– but couldn’t buy tickets. That’s no different from those who are against drinking not going to bars and looking for jobs somewhere other than the corner liquor store. Vegetarians will be well advised to not seek employment at a specialty butcher. But I don’t think any one thinks the “libertarian” solution is to force the liquor store to hire a person who won’t sell liquor.
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Provided employers are given choices, I imagine there will be plenty who will hire people who don’t get vaccinated. I still think employers should have the option to require it. I imagine meat packers might want to exercise this option.
There will be a a “government policy†on the vaccine, that policy may very well be a non-policy of people and businesses can make their own choices.
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The extreme ends are nobody shall take the vaccine (FDA refusal) and everyone must take it (public health mandate). Neither of these is likely to happen in my view, especially until there is widespread availability.
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The public and the Twitterati can put lots of pressure on private businesses to require vaccination of their employees. We have seen these name and shame campaigns get way out of control. In response to that I can see (especially red) states passing laws that businesses may not require vaccinations or (especially blue) states passing laws that certain industries must vaccinate their employees. I don’t think there is any chance a national mandate either way makes it through the federal system.
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As far as libertarian goes, my simplistic ideology here is that you are free to behave as you wish as long as it doesn’t harm others. Not getting vaccinated and potentially spreading covid is a gray area and people will have justifiable views both ways. I think there will be plenty of screaming in the months ahead related to this. The talking point for school vaccinations prior to covid was that not vaccinating your child was endangering other children who could not take vaccinations for other health related reasons.
lucia,
Actually it’s worse than just ‘might’. According to Pfizer and at least one other source that I linked in an earlier thread, COVID19 is a lower respiratory tract infection, not an upper tract. Also, Pfizer did animal challenge studies where the vaccine prevented infection from a large dose of active virus.
This may be the breeding ground for several sorts of natural experiments, where ingrained opposition to vaccinations of any sort leave policy makers scratching their heads on how to incentivize take-up by 70% of the general population.
I think Nudges as exemplified by Sunstein and Thaler are the optimal solution.
Ex: United Airlines can say, ‘Of course you don’t have to fly–drive a car! You have freedom of travel. You just can’t fly on our planes unless you have proof of vaccination.’
As long as there are real and practical alternatives to situations like these, Americans’ love of comfort (and need for speed) can work wonders.
Example 2: Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Liberty Mutual Insurance.
‘Of course you can get insurance without a vaccination. But you must realize you are at higher risk of illness or death without a vaccination, so if you want life insurance (and millions of people live happily without life insurance) you will have to pay a higher premium.
Example 3: Ladies and gentleman, please welcome the President of the United States. (Cue Hail to the Chief)
“My fellow Americans, as part of our reforms to education in America, I’m proud to announce that we will be forgiving large portions of student debt as an important element of our far-reaching efforts to make America Great Again. Oh, whoops, I read that wrong.
We will be forgiving 60% of student loans for those who have been vaccinated. Those who refuse to be vaccinated will have 45% of their loans forgiven. It is my hope that this will work hugely and strongly (I gotta get a new speechwriter…)…”
9/11 scared the sh** out of everyone and there was government overreach in response to it, that overreach was * demanded * by the public at the time. Covid is similar, and I think we can expect that the lockdown regimes will be tempered over time as cooler heads prevail. NYC is reopening elementary school again for example. The next outbreaks will be better managed. The worst government policy tends to come from a scared public and it takes a lot of guts to stand up to that.
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Part of the problem with covid is nobody knew how bad it was. The next time around we need to find out how bad it really is much faster. The initial containment effort needs to be harsher unfortunately.
Last example: Cue same dude, same music.
“Our plans for Social Security will help all older Americans have safety and security in their golden years. Our proposed increases will benefit all Americans–but they will benefit the vaccinated more.”
Insurance companies would love to be able to discriminate with their customers in a myriad of ways, they just aren’t allowed to. When you sign up on the insurance exchange you are asked about age and smoking history. End of story. Obvious things like weight are not allowed.
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I do agree that the media and government are underestimating the scope of the challenge to get a high number of people to take the vaccine. There is plenty of FUD associated with vaccines and as the cases pile up people are going to observe that the vast majority of people recover completely. As one who follows sports, there are literally hundreds of reported positives in the college and professional leagues without a single instance of anyone even being hospitalized to my knowledge. They have consistently overplayed the danger and that will hurt their credibility.
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I’ll take the vaccine mostly because I just don’t want to worry about it going forward. It’s an anti-anxiety move.
I think Lucia has the libertarian view of these matters well covered and particularly in the case of business owners having the right to make rules for employment. It is also unfortunately true that the government can legislate some of these rights away, but I do not think rules for controlling Covid-19 infections come under those that have been taken away – at least not yet.
Thomas Fuller,
“Ex: United Airlines can say, ‘Of course you don’t have to fly–drive a car! You have freedom of travel. You just can’t fly on our planes unless you have proof of vaccination.’”
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I rather think United Airlines would be cutting off their nose to spite their face. That policy would offend lots of people, including lots who already had gotten the vaccine… or the illness.
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If the vaccine is widely available (and hopefully it will be by late 2021), then anyone who is worried about catching covid has the option of getting the vaccine. Once you are effectively immune, why would you even care if someone on the plane has not been vaccinated? Or why would you care if someone in the restaurant or supermarket has not been vaccinated? It is hard to imagine “vaccination guards” at the doors of every commercial establishment, checking government issued “covid immunity cards”, and even harder to come up with a rational justification for it. It is crazy talk; nothing but a wet dream for closet totalitarians who think humans are incapable of making their own decisions, and so should not be allowed to, but understand that is not going to fly politically. ‘Nudging’ is not going to fly politically either.
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Real question: why is it that ‘liberals’ (or ‘progressives’) always want to force other people to do what liberals/progressives want? It is something I have never understood.
Tom Scharf, broadly speaking you are completely correct about the lesser burden of mortality borne by the young. I will just sound a cautionary note–more Americans under the age of 40 have died due to coronavirus than the entire death toll of 9/11. And over 100 children under the age of 5.
Sort of a Primrose Everdeen kinda thing.
SteveF, the whole point of ‘nudges’ is to incentivize a desired behavior, not mandate it. You’ll note that I try to make clear there are viable alternatives to each nudge I propose.
DeWitt,
So you are saying that evidence that exists suggests the vaccine will likely prevent (or at least dramatically reduce) transmission? If so, I’m glad to hear that.
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I know the evidence that exists suggests most who recover from infection gain durable long term immunity from t-cell and b-cells, although that is not cleansing immunity from antibodies. Those do decline. (This is typical of many diseases which never the less are associated with long term durable immunity.)
Kenneth,
My question is if someone who considers themselves pretty libertarian (oh say…. me) would force their employees to get covid vaccinations as a condition of employment. I never would. I do not doubt many business owners would want to force their employees to get the vaccine, I just doubt those owners would be libertarians.
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Outside of kids, I hate forcing anyone to do anything.
Oh–SteveF, in response to your ‘real question,’ I don’t want to force you to do stuff. I value freedom. But your right to wave your fist ends at some point short of my nose.
Those who insist on their freedom to not wear a mask are arrogating unto themselves the right to infect. But I don’t think that’s freedom. I have other words to describe it.
SteveF
Once you are effectively immune, why would you even care if someone on the plane has not been vaccinated?
I as an innoculated passenger wouldn’t care.
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But the airline might want to reduce the likelihood of suits or bad publicity associated with a passenger testing positive soon after a flight. Or, the might want their rule to allow uninnoculated children to fly (provided they are tested) but require innoculation for adults.
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What they would chose would depend on their judgement which might be imperfect. The thing is: it would be their judgement. Not that of the government. Not that of those who want to chose non-innoculation but then bend all choices to their own convenience. (Yes. If airlines chose to require innoculation or testing that would be a “hassle” for the non-innoculated. Ho. Hum.)
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I am not suggesting I the passenger would create the rule. I am suggesting the company that runs the airline would.
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As Thomas observed, even if entirely barred from taking a flight, those who don’t get innoculated would be able to drive a car to their destination. (Those who want to fly across the ocean are going to have to deal with immigration rules in other countries anyway.)
. Kenneth: Thanks you for confirming my view is closer to the libertarian one. I know you are more specifically informed about what the official views are! I know it is my view and I struck me as more libertarian.
Thomas Fuller,
“the whole point of ‘nudges’ is to incentivize a desired behavior”
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The whole question is who decides what is “desired behavior”. My guess is that it is always going to be the behavior ‘progressives’ want to require of everyone, but can’t due to unpleasant things like the Constitution. Obamacare’s individual mandate was designed from the get-go to be coercive, but I am sure you would call it a ‘nudge’. How about instead we flip it, and religious conservatives get to make the decisions on desired behavior….. the ‘nudges’ then might not seem such a good idea to you.
Thomas,
But your right to wave your fist ends at some point short of my nose.
I take this view. That’s why I think employers shouldn’t be forced to require employee vaccination. But I think they should be allowed to do so.
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There is no rule that says employers are required to be libertarian, democrat, socialist, or anything else. It would certainly be odd for libertarians to say other people are also required to be libertarians!! That totally sets freedom to make up ones own mind or opinion aside so it would be weird.
SteveF, I would suggest you go about electing religious conservatives so you can nudge us all towards a promised land.
Isn’t that what elections are all about?
SteveF
religious conservatives get to make the decisions on desired behavior….. the ‘nudges’ then might not seem such a good idea to you.
Yep. They would “nudge” you into going to church. I think they do try to do this. 🙂
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I think it would be find for United Airlines to have policies to bar people who were not vaccinated and/or did not test negative if they want. It is also true that it might be a bad business decision.
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I know, for example, that if United Airlines didn’t let Vlad (my dance instructor) know he had 100% certainty of being able to board a flight to Nashville when he bough the ticket, then they would lose out on selling approximately 5 tickets. Vlad, his wife, and at least 3 students would bundle up and drive to Nashville rather than by tickets.
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Some other dancer would do the same. But I bring up Vlad because I know he is reluctant to get a vaccine when it comes. Two of his students (including me) told him we’d protect him through our vaccine obtained immunity. (I do hope DeWitt is correct about the evidence about infection after vaccination.)
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But still, I think United Airlines should have a right to make their decision. Then I have a right to make mine. (If I were planning to go to Nashville, I’d trundle in the car with Vlad too. That would give me more flexibility without worrying about what to do about pre-paid tickets that I had to cancel.)
Tom Scharf, I hope this link works. There’s a video from a 29-year old on this Twitter thread that may be instructive.
Thomas Fuller makes a good point which might not be intended: when governments give benefits it might later use those benefits to leverage an individual or organization to do something that it would not otherwise have the power to do.
I’m not sure the link worked. Kenneth seemed to have seen it. But I just seemed to go to leahmcelrath’s twitter feed. I couldn’t figure out what Thomas thought was relevant there.
SteveF (Comment #194494)
OK_Max,
I am many years past 40, but I have not the faintest clue what your last comment is suggesting. That I can’t relate to my kids? Weird, really.
_______
I’m sorry my comment wasn’t clear. I will try to explain. While at age 70, for example, you can imagine what it would have been like if you had died at age 30, you don’t think like you did 40 years ago. You are seeing it as a 70 year old, not as you would see it as a 30 year old.
But I could be wrong. Maybe you are different, and your thinking has not evolved, or better, you are able to switch back and forth, thinking like you are age 70 or age 30. If so, I wish I were like you.
Lucia, there’s a video from a 29-year-old woman who is ‘recovering’ from covid.
I’ll try this
Woman in her 20s survived COVID-19 and has kidney failure as a result.
Ah, Lucia, you’re better than me at everything. Haiku, higher math… now linking. Is there no end to your talents?
I’ll bet you’re a better dancer than me, too.
Tom was that the video? It tells us that a young person got covid and has lasting ill effects. I already know that happened to some. She says something about thinking she might have avoided this if she wore a mask. I’m sure she now things so. This may or may not be true. (We don’t know what else she did.)
I was expecting something that related to “nudging”. This is supposedly a response to Tom Scharf…. but I don’t see much of a connection.
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Could you perhaps tell me the point you were trying to make. Because it escapes me.
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If it was some other video, perhaps send a more directl link? (I can insert them but only bey clicking “edit” after posting.)
The testing regime is being contested in courts and is starting to be found wanting.
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Said the ruling, dated November 11: “In view of current scientific evidence, this test shows itself to be unable to determine beyond reasonable doubt that such positivity corresponds, in fact, to the infection of a person by the SARS-CoV-2 virusâ€.
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At a cycle threshold (ct) of 25, about 70% of samples remain positive in cell culture (i.e. were infected): in a ct of 30, 20% of samples remained positive; in a ct of 35, 3% of samples remained positive and in a ct above 35, no sample remained positive (infectious) in the cultureâ€.
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“This means that if a person has a positive PCR test at a threshold of cycles of 35 or higher (as happens in most laboratories in the USA and Europe), the chances of a person being infected is less than 3%. The probability of a person receiving a false positive is 97% or higherâ€.
No, Lucia, Tom Scharf wrote above, “As one who follows sports, there are literally hundreds of reported positives in the college and professional leagues without a single instance of anyone even being hospitalized to my knowledge. They have consistently overplayed the danger and that will hurt their credibility.”
I was trying to provide evidence to the contrary.
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Lucia,
“But the airline might want to reduce the likelihood of suits or bad publicity associated with a passenger testing positive soon after a flight.”
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An airline run by crazy people might think that way, but it effectively assumes the airline is somehow responsible for the infection of a passenger who chooses to not get vaccinated, but then flies on an airplane. It is for me, a very strange, paternalistic (and very non-libertarian!) POV. I believe it is also moot; no airline is going to do it. Nor any supermarket or restaurant. “Show us your papers!” is just not a good way to attract business.
SteveF, fear of liability might outweigh concerns about reputational risk.
Thomas fuller,
“I would suggest you go about electing religious conservatives so you can nudge us all towards a promised land.”
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Wow, you really don’t get it. First of all, I am an atheist and don’t think there is any promised land except perhaps personal liberty. Second, it is not that I want people to be nudged one way or another, it is that I don’t want government nudging people at all!
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“Isn’t that what elections are all about?”
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That is clearly what elections are about for ‘progressives’, of course, but you are mistaken if you believe everybody sees elections that way. I see them mostly as a way to keep ‘progressives’ from telling me, and everyone else, how to live their lives.
lucia,
Sounds like a great example of why vaccines should be released sooner rather than later and why everyone should get vaccinated even if they are in a low risk demographic.
Now kidney failure caused by the vaccine is exactly the sort of reason why the FDA likes to drag things out. But you aren’t going to see low probability events until a vaccine has been approved and the numbers vaccinated gets into the millions. That’s called Phase IV.
Lucia #194580,
The nose ring and tats make we wonder about that young woman’s judgement. But worse, it is the kind of 0.001% story that conveys no useful information: Young people almost never die from covid-19 nor have any serious after-effects. The heart-rending video is designed to distract from the frequency of such rare events and make people want to adopt policies which make zero sense.
That’s why events like that are called anecdotal and also why the press loves to run them. But it isn’t science, it’s human interest. The extreme is where they stick a microphone in some grieving person’s face and ask them how they feel.
Thomas,
I read the wikipedia article on nudging. I seems to me that your United Airlines example would not fit the definition of nudge. It’s an overt policy by an airline.
A nudge is supposedly
Nudges are small changes in environment that are easy and inexpensive to implement.[12] Several different techniques exist for nudging, including defaults, social proof heuristics, and increasing the salience of the desired option.
. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory#cite_note-Why_a_nudge_is_not_enough:_A_social-4
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So, it seems to me a “nudge” might consist of an employer providing free vaccines to people who report to work along with permitting them take the vaccine during work hours without losing any pay. Then, perhaps to make it more “nudge” like, email them a time for their appointment which they can skip if the wish. But the appointment already existing means they don’t need to make the appointment.
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A previous employer tried to “nudge” us into giving the the United way by “requiring” us to return forms even if that meant checking “no”. If you didn’t send it in, they sent a clerk around to ask you to turn it in. After that, nothing happened.
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Quite a few people (including me) did not return the form and I know from talking to like minded people that the “nudge” pissed us off.
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Not all nudges strike me as annoying, but that one did. Regardless, a direct policy by an employer stating a condition of employment doesn’t strike me as a “nudge”. The United Airlines hypothetically not allowing people to travel doesn’t either.
DeWitt,
Yes. Her example explains why it is likely advisable for younger people to also get the vaccine. I think it ought to be voluntary, and they should have lower priority. (Well… unless they work in a job that makes them more vulnerable.)
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Tattoos appear to go hand in hand with recklessness and impulsivity.
People with visible tattoos are more likely to be reckless and impulsive than those without ink, according to a new study reported by the Daily Mail.
It’s worth noting that she self-reports covid as the reason for her renal failure. I would not be surprised that it might be a contribting factor. But we know nothing more about her. We don’t know whether she used drugs, had urinary tract problems or had other contributing factors. Maybe she had none. Or…. not.
MikeM
” Would it be libertarian to allow a bank to refuse service to a business that sells guns or ammo? Nope.”
Banks do this. Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citigroup have made announcements of refusing service to the gun industry, essentially trying to force regulations that could not pass the legislature.
OK_Max,
“Maybe you are different, and your thinking has not evolved, or better, you are able to switch back and forth, thinking like you are age 70 or age 30.”
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It is true that I now have some knowledge and information that I did not have when I was 30, so I would sometimes make a different decision now than when I was 30…. but I suspect my 30 year old self, provided with the knowledge/information my 70 year old self has, would make the same decision as my 70 year old self would.
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I don’t believe my method of thinking has changed much at all, only my information/knowledge. For example, I often learn something which solves a technical puzzle I could not solve 30 years ago… and I immediately return to the ancient puzzle to verify that the puzzle is in fact solved. My thinking didn’t change, my information base did.
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On a much fluffier level: before my first marriage (at 21!), I thought that an unhappy person (my fiance, in that case) was unhappy due to their circumstances. But I learned that happy people are mostly happy no matter their circumstances, and miserable people mostly miserable no matter their circumstances. My first marriage provided all the information I needed to disabuse me of my earlier thinking.
†Would it be libertarian to allow a bank to refuse service to a business that sells guns or ammo? Nope.â€
I disagree with your answer. I think it would be more libertarian for the government to allow a private bank to refuse service than to force them to accept service.
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Mind you, if the bank is owned by a libertarian, they probably wouldn’t refuse to serve that business. But the bank might not be owned by a libertarian. And it is against the policy of libertarians to remove the banks choice.
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If libertarian, neither the third party, the government nor the business that sells guns and ammo should be allowed to force the bank to provide service. It should be the bank should be allowed to make choices about bank policy.
SteveF
But I learned that happy people are mostly happy no matter their circumstances, and miserable people mostly miserable no matter their circumstances. My first marriage provided all the information I needed to disabuse me of my earlier thinking.
Often true. Really objectively bad circumstances can make a person miserable. But quite often, when you meet a persistently miserable person, you will see their circumstances are not really that miserable. Or they could change them. But they refuse to change them to become less miserable.
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Honestly, I’ve also come to believe that some “ill” people (especially mentally) partially chose illness. ( FWIW: Munchausen– not by proxy– does exist. That’s a mental condition where a person inflicts illness on themselves. This is generally physical illness. But I have a friend… and while I’m mostly reluctant to be an armchair psychoanalyst, I sort of suspect her of having it. And part of her inflicted illness is, I believe mental!)
Lucia,
“Tattoos appear to go hand in hand with recklessness and impulsivity.”
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And in other news, the sun rose in the East this morning. They needed research to figure this out? Really, all you have to do is talk with a few people who have visible tattoos, nose rings, and face piercings to understand there is some lack of prudence involved in these decisions.
SteveF,
I read a Tweet about the study and that was the general reaction.
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My dance teacher got a huge tattoo when he was about 16 yo. Of course, youth is also associated with impulsivity. So it might have been lack of parental supervision to get in the way of his impulse.
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Adults getting tats…
“Outside of kids, I hate forcing anyone to do anything”
Except that societies rely on some kind of “social contract”, where we expect limits on individual liberty to protect others safety. Some are very straightforward. We dont allow murder for instance. But then it cloudier. What about road rules, eg speed and alcohol limits? Even cloudier, what about second-hand smoke? And dont discuss gun control with US citizens..
I would be very much surprised if ardent libertarians rejected road rules, but I am curious as what criteria people use in judging whether a proposed rule that limits personal liberty for larger society safety should be permitted. For instance, the Scandinavians “Zero-2000” approach to road safety seemed a step too far to me but I had trouble deciding what was driving my gut reaction. Some of it has to be about personal tolerance of risk but projecting to others perception of risk is much tougher.
When I was in the Navy I met a lot of people in the bars and other environs of San Diego who had been tattoed in their youth.
Tattoos do not enhance the appearance of people past middle age.
The efforts many made to cover up their past indiscretions was evidence I was not alone in my opinion.
Lucia,
“If libertarian, neither the third party, the government nor the business that sells guns and ammo should be allowed to force the bank to provide service.”
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Your analysis of libertarian thinking is that businesses should be allowed to explicitly discriminate against, gays, or African-Americans, Asians, Conservatives, or, indeed, Libertarians themselves. I don’t think you will find too many libertarians (or people in general) who think that. Libertarians want everyone offered the same services by businesses, not services subject to discrimination.
Thomas,
Tats don’t enhance anyone’s appearance. They can be neutral or project an “image” when one is young. But they definitely don’t look good on sagging skin or less than great physique.
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Vlads is on his arm. As far as I know, it doesn’t go beyond the sleeve. He played drums. I’m guessing he had a rock-and-roll drummer image he wanted to project.
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Vlad definitely has a policy of wearing long sleeves when he meets a new client and for a while there after. I’m not sure how many lessons I’d had before I saw the tattoo. I do think he knows it was a mistake, though perhaps not the worst mistake a young person might have made.
SteveF
Your analysis of libertarian thinking is that libertarians should be allowed to explicitly discriminate against, gays, or African-Americans, Asians, Conservatives, or, indeed, Libertarians themselves.
Yes. I think that’s the position of many libertarians.
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Here’s a Cato institute article that says libertarian thinking is consistent with allowing people to have the right to discriminate against said groups:
. https://www.cato.org/policy-report/marchapril-2016/libertarianism-right-discriminate
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I am not a fullbore libertarian and deviate from them in some regards. So I support laws barring restaurants from excluding minorities on the basis of race (for example.) But I do know that is a deviation from fullbore libertarian thinking.
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Libertarians want everyone offered the same services by businesses, not services subject to discrimination.
I agree they want this. But I think they also generally believe that would be the natural market outcome in an utterly free market…. eventually…..
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I’m not so sure it would be the natural market outcome. I do support some deviations for 100% libertarian thinking.
I find it surprising that I managed to be in the Navy for four years, toured the South Pacific, was stationed in San Diego and San Francisco and emerged without a single tattoo.
Phil Scadden,
” I am curious as what criteria people use in judging whether a proposed rule that limits personal liberty for larger society safety should be permitted.”
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I think the first step is to define societal safety. Some things (murder, assault, drunk driving, etc.) are pretty easy.
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But your apparent horror about gun control suggest that you are not able to consider both costs and benefits in some cases. Yes, if all privately held guns were confiscated, there would be fewer deaths by guns, but probably not as many fewer as you think…. criminals often find ways to get guns even in countries where they are generally prohibited. But the reason many people in the USA are supportive of private gun ownership is that it acts as a deterrent to extreme government action, and the US Constitution has the second amendment right to guns specifically for that reason. I have often heard people say things like “Small arms in private hands wouldn’t stop…” some egregious action, but I think that is wrong. The very first hing a despot like Chavez in Venezuela does after gaining power is to confiscate guns. Private small arms are not going to be used against an army, they are going to be used against government officials and the friends and families, or army officers off duty, and their friends and families. The threat of small arms (especially high power long rifles) is that they present a continuing threat to an illicit government. I know plenty of people able to consistently shoot a prairie-dog (about 30 cm tall) from nearly half a Km away. That is a threat that is not going to go way, no matter the superior firepower of an army.
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All that said, I think most public safety decisions ought to be made on a cost/benefit analysis. Yes, we could set a strictly enforced speed limit at 30 Km per hour and eliminate almost all traffic fatalities, but at a huge cost in lost time. A balance has to be struck. Where that balance is depends a great deal on people’s knowledge of actual risk and their personal tolerance of risk. If covid 19 has taught anything it is that there is big gap in risk tolerance, and one that seems to divide left from right.
I think perhaps tattoos should be limited to Maoris. And extras from the movie Braveheart.
Thomas,
“I find it surprising that I managed to be in the Navy for four years, toured the South Pacific, was stationed in San Diego and San Francisco and emerged without a single tattoo.”
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You must be a closet conservative.
Ssh. Don’t tell anyone.
And for God’s sake don’t tell anyone that I have a list of things Trump did that I liked. E.g., strengthen support for Taiwan.
Lucai,
The fellow who wrote the article you linked to is… well… simply delusional.
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He seems to think the SC’s cake-maker’s decision was about discrimination, when the SC made clear it was not. If the baker had refused to allow gay people to buy the backed goods on display at his shop, the SC would never have ruled the way it did.
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This part:
Admittedly, prior to the Civil Rights Act, free markets might have produced segregated public accommodations. It’s hard to be certain. Markets were impeded by Jim Crow, corrupt law enforcement, biased judges, extralegal violence, and even denial of services such as water and electricity to firms that wouldn’t toe the segregationist line.
shows just how delusional the guy is. It is not hard to be certain. There was zero chance anything other than segregated accommodations would have remained the rule. If that crazy man represents “true libertarian thinking”, then he is dooming libertarians to remain forever irrelevant politically.
Steve,
He could be mistaken about what the SC cakemaker decision is about and still be correct about the libertarion position vis-a-vis discriminiation. But… he wrote that article in 2016. The actual scotus decision was in 2018 and sidestepped the question about the bakers right to discriminate. But in 2016, people were arguing about whether the baker had that right. So he isn’t delusional about what the case was about. He just couldn’t have known the court would end up ruling for the baker on other grounds.
Anyway, David Bernstein at Voloks says essentially the same thing about the libertarian position vis-a-vis anti-discrimination laws.
Because of the long, sorry history of American racism, perhaps nothing is more harmful to the libertarian “brand” than skepticism of antidiscrimination laws that apply to private parties.
By “skepticism” he means libertarians are against these laws.
Later
Given their strong anti-statist presumptions, libertarians will generally remain presumptively opposed to the panoply of modern private sector antidiscrimination laws.
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Bernestein does talk about why libertarians ought to prioritize what they work to change. But wrt to libertarian position on discrimination laws, his description is no different to the Cato guys.
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I do think libertarians who totally oppose anti-discrimination laws can be unrealistic (perhaps delusional) about just how much can be achieved by the free market. But the idea that the free market would have worked is a libertarian idea.
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It’s one of the ideas that makes me deviate from full-on libertarians because I think they are wrong to believe their “pure” free market ideas will always work. But I do recognize it’s a libertarian idea!
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If that crazy man represents “true libertarian thinkingâ€, then he is dooming libertarians to remain forever irrelevant politically.
Well… yeah. Full-on libertarians are on the fringe end of the political spectrum.
Steve, gun control is not an all or nothing and strawman arguments are of little interest. Personally, I support Australian-style arms control with ban on automatic weapons, military-style semi-automatics, licencing gun owners and registration of every weapon. NZ banned pistols in early 1920s and I havent seen a downside to that. Recreation hunting and pest control fully justify use of guns and I dont see those rules limiting that here, in Oz, or the UK. The US paranoia that the only thing between people and totalitarian government is a heavily-armed populace seems laughable to me, but then I dont live in your country.
Is the divide on risk tolerance between left and right about personal risk tolerance or what someone is prepared to do to reduce the risk to others?
Lucia,
I think there is a argument to be made for private individuals to be able to discriminate on things like who they will associate with. You can’t be forced to date an Asian if you don’t want to. No law can block an individual from holding odious views and acting on those odious views in their private lives. So the existence of private clubs that don’t want to admit Jews, whites, blacks, Hispanics, etc is something a libertarian can logically accept, no matter how odious.
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The guy at Volokh is right that libertarians opposing laws against racial discrimination in hiring, school admission, accommodations, real estate sales, and the offering of goods and services to the public is “harmful” to the Libertarian brand. It is more than harmful: it puts libertarians in bed with racists and Nazis, and makes them irrelevant.
Phil
The US paranoia that the only thing between people and totalitarian government is a heavily-armed populace seems laughable to me, but then I dont live in your country.
Not all US gun advocates think this. Some do. Others want guns for self defense. For example, if a BLM riot broke out and people came after you for some reason, while the cops weren’t responding to complaints, they would like to have guns to protect themselves.
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SteveF
It is more than harmful: it puts libertarians in bed with racists and Nazis, and makes them irrelevant.
It makes people think they might be in bed with them. It’s not entirely fair. But I do think to the extent someone thinks the free market can solve the problem of Nazis and other racists, they are naive.
The libertarian point is not a value judgement of behavior or even individual morality but rather a matter of what property rights entail and require to be a right. True freedom where others individual rights are not being violated and imposed upon by force or fraud must allow one to make choices and even bad ones. Jim Crow laws were enforced by government which is totally different than a business person making a bad and not smart or economical decision. Governments deal with these problems with coercion whereas individuals and even those making bad decisions deal with other individuals on a voluntary basis.
Individuals can use free speech to say bad and unwise things as long as they are not committing fraud or directly endangering people with their speech like yelling fire in a movie theater. Here the government has not yet attempted to control bad speech or decide what is good or bad speech and even in a totally government controlled setting.
There is also a distinction between what happens in a government space and a private one like a private versus a public schools where the government can make all kinds of rules and restrictions that have to follow the legalities controlling government spaces, whereas ideally in a libertarian world a totally private one without any government financing could discriminate in anyway who they allow into their school and create their own rules without concern for all those legalities for a public school.
When governments can control for and legislate what a business can do in dealing with others in a non violent and voluntary way the business owner(s) have lost their property rights. A logical next step would be the government getting involved with what happens in ones home were people are dealing with one another in a non violent and voluntary manner.
Phil Scadden,
“…the only thing between people and totalitarian government is a heavily-armed populace seems laughable to me, but then I dont live in your country.”
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Clearly not the only thing. But one of the things. The opposition to licencing and registration is for the same reasons. I am not sure what strawman argument you see, but as you say, you don’t live here. And Oz never revolted against merry old England either.
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I think the divide on risk is mostly not “what someone is prepared to do to reduce the risk to others”, but what someone is prepared to have forced upon them to reduce risk to others. It is again a balance of opposing values.
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Should certain behaviors be forced upon everyone by the majority? Those on the left pretty much always answer in the affirmative (especially if they believe they will always be in the majority!). But ours is not a majoritarian democracy, it is a republic, with a very non-majoritarian structure and a very non-majoritarian list of personal rights in the constitution, rights which a majority in government is not ever allowed to take away.
Kenneth,
Do you support the revoking all laws requiring businesses to not discriminate against people based on race or creed?
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I look forward to your answer.
“Should certain behaviors be forced upon everyone by the majority”
I think it would be more accurate to say that certain liberties are restricted by the majority (harking to Locke’s view of liberty which I support). And yes, I would say that I am very happy to be living in a majoritarian democracy rather than chained to a constitution written to fight 18th century phantoms. We are both clearly happy with our choices however.
Phil Scadden,
They aren’t phantoms. Majoritorian democracy was known to be unstable then and recent history has not provided any evidence of improvement. You’re always just one election away from catastrophe. Venezuela, e.g.
Phil,
We aren’t chained to the constitution. It can be amended and has been many times!
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I am generally happy with the bill of rights and a number of other amendments.
Dewitt – I find that amazing notion. Do you really think American politics and society so close to Venezuela that only personal ownership of guns are keeping totalitarianism at bay?
As for here, I have much more faith in common law than that. I think the only failures of Westminister-style democracies have been in African states without any tradition of democracy. A parliamentary democracy has the great attribute of dilution of power. A prime minister has far less power than your president. The more dilute the better as far as I am concerned.
Lucia – I appreciate amendment was done, is still theoretically possible but in the polarized state of USA at moment, I very much doubt it is now possible. Again, I am outsider looking in with what may be very limited perception but history of the ERA doesnt fill me with confidence.
Phil Scadden (Comment #194621): “I think the only failures of Westminister-style democracies have been in African states without any tradition of democracy. A parliamentary democracy has the great attribute of dilution of power. A prime minister has far less power than your president. The more dilute the better as far as I am concerned.”
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Not just in Africa. Also Burma, Grenada, and, for a time, India. The tradition of democracy is important.
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I too am a big fan of diluted power; that is a strength of the U.S. system, albeit an eroding strength. There is little check on majority party power in the Westminster system. It is not at all clear to me that the President has more power than the Prime Ministers of Canada or Singapore.
Phil,
You said “the only thing between people and totalitarian government is a heavily-armed populace seems laughable to me..”
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To which I answered directly: “Clearly not the only thing. But one of the things.”
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Then DeWitt writes: ” You’re always just one election away from catastrophe. Venezuela, e.g.”.
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To which you ask again the same question: “Do you really think American politics and society so close to Venezuela that only personal ownership of guns are keeping totalitarianism at bay?”
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I am pretty sure DeWitt does not think guns are the only thing keeping totalitarianism at bay. You can keep asking the same question as many times as you want, but I suspect the answer will be pretty consistent: many people who support the right to individual gun ownership (without licencing and registration) will say that an armed populace is one of the things that ensures government does not become totalitarian. You may find that “laughable” or “amazing” or related to 18th century phantoms, but it is not a fringe notion in the USA at all.
SteveF (Comment #194617)
November 29th, 2020 at 4:38 pm
I support property rights as being the basis for a free society and therefore am against government infringement of those rights. The negative brand label for libertarians who support property rights misses the point. Would a supporter of freedom of speech be labeled a racist or sexist for advocating for free speech even if there were those who use that freedom to make hurtful racist and sexist speech?
Looking at advocacy on the other side of the political spectrum should those who advocate for more government controls be branded in the realm of a Mao Zedong or Stalin or Hitler?
In the past it has been governments that have been the major source of racial and sex discrimination and the perpetuation thereof. In a libertarian view of things the individual is the prime mover and importance and that can hardly result in racial or sexual generalizations.
Well for starters, a prime minister can be ditched at any time if their own party doesnt like them. You vote for a party, with its parliamentary leader being a secondary concern. Very few decisions are the prerogative of the PM (choosing the election date and assigning cabinet portfolios is all that comes to mind quickly)- the executive level is the elected cabinet. The parliamentary process by which a law is created is primary check. No equivalent to a presidential executive order.
India still does have a Westminster democracy as far as I know. I dont know anything about Grenada.
No government is immune to a military coup just through the nature of its constitution. That has to come from the wider culture.
“it is no a fringe notion in the USA ”
I completely accept that – I am sure that is not a media distortion. I just fail to comprehend why people believe it.
Phil,
For what it is worth, those on the left in the USA seem, like you, to want a strictly majoritarian form of government. They are very frustrated with the US Constitution, the existence of the Senate, the electoral process for the president, and the extent of local state control over much of government. Progressives have done their best to undermine the Constitution with Orwellian up-is-down and love-is-hate “interpretations” by successive left leaning Supreme Courts.
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The Current court is the very first truly conservative court in my lifetime. I expect US jurisprudence is going to change over the coming years when it comes to paying attention to the Constitution.
Technically the government “allows” murder, you just have to pay a penalty. One can imagine scenarios where a person could evaluate this and decide murder is the correct option. This is rarely the case of course, it’s usually momentary bad judgment combined with access to deadly weapons and drugs. You can speed, you just have to pay the fine. One could prevent speeding by an elaborate system of automatically restricted speeds by GPS, road and so forth mandated by the government.
Kenneth,
Very nice, but you didn’t answer the question:
“Do you support the revoking all laws requiring businesses to not discriminate against people based on race or creed?”
A simple yes or no would do.
I would suggest businesses fear covid lawsuits more from their employees than their customers. Flight attendants who get infected because United Airlines failed to provide a safe working environment likely make corporate lawyers lose sleep at night. Because there are no legal standards yet I predict a legal feeding frenzy of covid lawsuits over the next several years.
Phil,
“I just fail to comprehend why people believe it.”
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Two things come immediately to mind: 1) I have during my adult life watched the Supreme Court willfully undermine the Constitution, adding lots of things not present, and ignoring things that actually are present. 2) I have listened to and read the legislative priorities by the “Progressive caucus” in the US House (about half of all Democrats). They want to severely restrict personal liberties of all kinds and pass laws in plain violation of the Constitution. I find their proposals a cross between laughable and frightening. Nowhere in their agenda are proposed amendments to the Constitution to allow the things they want.
Tom Scharf,
“Flight attendants who get infected because United Airlines failed to provide a safe working environment likely make corporate lawyers lose sleep at night.”
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Is there some reason that flight attendants can’t get vaccinated when it becomes widely available? If they choose not to get vaccinated while United Airlines forces passengers to get vaccinated, then we have the most extreme tail wagging the dog story in history.
Well I prefer government to be as local as possible but accept necessity for many things at national level too. You have convinced me of need for senate and that it should not be a majority representation since I cannot imagine why states would enter a commonwealth on that basis. But slashing presidential power as well as reforming the patently outdated electoral college system is certainly something I would have sympathy with if I was unfortunately enough to live there.
Libertarianism as a pure ideology is unworkable in practice, as is capitalism, socialism, etc. That’s why everyone is running hybrids of one sort or another. However it’s a good place to start as a baseline in my view.
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My guess is pure libertarians want the ability to discriminate in the abstract but are perfectly fine with almost everyone choosing to not discriminate as a wise choice. They aren’t advocating discrimination, they are advocating for the right to choose, there is a difference and it isn’t subtle. The well gets poisoned with the choice of discrimination as the topic.
Vaccines are only 95% effective. So 5% of vaccinated flight attendants can get infected by a customer. Those would be better cases for lawyers, but that is a reason you want to force flight attendants to get vaccinated. Maybe they could give up their right to legal action if they refuse vaccination or some other workable solution.
Phil,
“if I was unfortunately enough to live there.”
Seems you just can’t stay away from gratuitous insults.
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If you did live here, you could actually work for the Constitutional amendments required to make the changes you want. Unfortunately, those who do live here and share many of your views have no intention of trying to change the Constitution. The seem enamored of the words of singer/songwriter Jackson Browne:
And while the future’s there for anyone to change, still you know it’s seems It would be easier sometimes to change the past…â€
Phil,
What would you suggest changing in the US Constitution beyond the 2nd Amendment (gun rights)?
Tom Scharf,
“Vaccines are only 95% effective. So 5% of vaccinated flight attendants can get infected by a customer.”
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It is a little more complicated than that, and unfortunately we do not have all the data we need. The Moderna data show 11 severe cases, all among the control group, and none in the vaccine group. There was one severe case among the vaccine group in the Pfizer trial, but the criteria for declaring a case “severe” have not been explained (at least not that I have found). As more data become available, the true risk of severe disease after vaccination will be better known. If the chance of a mild case is ~5%, but of a severe case (hospitalization/death) is near zero, then the flight attendants will need to show why their post vaccination risk from covid is different from the ongoing risk they face of picking up a cold or the flu.
The legal sharks are going to be coming with real cases, not just suing over improved working conditions. People who basically had to work to survive, were given representations that the work environment was safe, and subsequently got covid and died. There are over 200,000 possibilities of this. Easily 200 of these will result in jackpot juries is my guess.
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It will be real messy. Proving the exposure was at work, proving that there was misrepresentation of how safe the environment was, etc. The companies will say they were doing the best they could given the information they had, and the other side will say they could have done much more, the jury will decide.
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The problem now is nobody knows what is enough. My wife’s company had a big presentation on all the stuff they were doing, but they never said the words “this makes it safe”. It’s a dual edge sword, get the employees to come back by inferring it is safe, but never actually really tell them that for legal reasons.
I think you can feel pretty safe advocating Constitutional amendments given that 12 deeply conservative states representing less than 10% of the population can block any amendment or I am reading the rules incorrectly?
(Used Wyoming,Alaska,North Dakota,South Dakota,Montana,Idaho,West Virginia,Nebraska,New Mexico,Kansas,Mississippi,Arkansas,Nevada if anyone wants to check my maths – more like 7%)
Don’t forget Alabama.
Phil Scadden (Comment #194640): “I think you can feel pretty safe advocating Constitutional amendments given that 12 deeply conservative states”
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New Mexico and Nevada are not conservative states. And it would take 13 to block an amendment.
Phil
I appreciate amendment was done, is still theoretically possible but in the polarized state of USA at moment, I very much doubt it is now possible.
That depends on what you want to pass. But difficulty in amending is a feature, not a bug.
Ok, then try Wyoming,Alaska,North Dakota,South Dakota,Montana,Idaho,West Virginia,Nebraska,Kansas,Mississippi,Arkansas,Utah,Oklahoma
13 states, 8% population.
Chuck in Kentucky,Alabama,South Carolina as well and it is 12%
I rather wonder whether framers of constitution meant to be that hard? Probably the political expedient of the time, but I can see why people wouldnt want to waste time on trying to get a “progressive” amendment through.
Pretty sure I could put together 13 pretty small progressive states that could also block a conservative amendent with tiny % of population.
Phil,
I think they meant it to be pretty hard to amend. Or at least it’s supposed to be hard if there is no strong will supporting the amendment.
Right now I don’t think a “progressive” amendment could get even get out of congress. Ignoring the “convention” method of amending (which has never happened under the current constitution and is really risky for all parties) the first step is getting 2/3rd votes from both the house and the senate. The President is irrelevant.
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After that, they need an up/down vote in both houses state legislatures. They need both houses to vote and then need 3/4s of the states to ratify. The governor is irrelevant.
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Most state senates are controlled by Republicans. Evidently after Nov 2018 that was 36 GOP to 18 DEM. (The exact count isn’t precisely known currently.) Meanwhile 29/40 house chambers were held by GOP.
https://ballotpedia.org/Partisan_composition_of_state_legislatures
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There is no way an amendment opposed by GOP can pass currently. This is not a matter of only 13 states– it’s more like at least 36 states that would not pass a GOP opposed amendment.
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I really don’t know what amendment progressive might want to pass. I guess some what to set aside the electoral college, but there is no way to do that with at least 36 states refusing to pass .
Some people might want to set aside the 2nd amendment, but that’s really pretty hopeless.
My point really was that you could theoretically have an 80+% majority in favour of change but the system makes it possible for around 10% to block. Theoretically – I cant really imagine an 80% percent majority, especially in USA. That is certainly strong protection against majoritarianism, and obviously suits conservatives who are more or less by definition opposed to change.
I guess I am unabashed majoritarian. I dont think a minority should have that power in a democracy.
Phil,
The Constitution was specifically designed to avoid simple majoritarian rule. Besides the structure of the Federal government, it also contains the “bill of rights” to ensure a majority could not by law strip the personal rights of the minority. I note the 10 amendments that make up the “bill of rights” were written as a response to concerns by nearly all the states that the initial Constitutional wording did not provide sufficient protection of rights from a majority in Congress. The amendments were written, passed by Congress and approved by the States within about 2 years, and in force by 1791.
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It most certainly doesn’t take 80% support of the voters to pass an amendment, it takes a 2/3 majority in both houses of congress, and a simple majority vote in the legislative chambers of 38 states. There clearly does have to be a very broad consensus for an amendment to pass. Lots of amendments have past, just none without a broad consensus.
Phil,
Well, the problem with that math is it’s largely irrelevant. California being liberal doesn’t mean everyone in California is liberal. So saying Wyoming’s blocking California is equivalent to 579,759 people blocking 39,510,000 people isn’t correct. Given views across the country, something really, really popular in CA but unpopular in WY would more likely have 60% support in ca with only 40% in WY. That ends up with about 59.7% for with 40.3% against.
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Also, bear in mind, states don’t have to pass the amendment on the first round. There is usually a sunset clause for enacting, but a legislature that hopes to pass it usually can keep trying for 10 years!
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It is true the amendment needs broad super majority support. But as a practical matter, the math doesn’t work the way you are thinking about it. In reality, given how peoples views are distributed across the country, if 70% of individual people wanted something passed as an amendment it would pass quickly. (Prohibition did. Then it was reversed!)
Phil,
I’d also like to ask you some questions related to majority rule.
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1) Suppose a simple majority of the population wanted to amend the constitution to outlaw people from practicing Islam in the US. Would you say: well, that’s what the majority wants. So fine?
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2) Suppose further the simple majority decreed that those convicted of owning and reading a Koran would be put to death. Would you say, well, majority rules! Go for it!
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3) Suppose a simple majority decreed that restaurants, hotels and schools were not allowed to serve children of Moslems. Would you say, “hey! Majority rules!”
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These are hypotheticals. But the constitution is designed to consider what hypothetical laws a legislature is permitted to enact. Our constitution doesn’t permit the above and it is difficult to amend the constitution to change that.
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And of course, religious persecution has existed in the past. It definitely existed when our country was founded, was pretty prominent in Germany during WWII and appears to be on going in China. Likely it exists elsewhere too.
Tom Scharf (Comment #194634)
November 29th, 2020 at 7:48 pm
Libertarianism as a pure ideology is unworkable in practice, as is capitalism, socialism, etc. That’s why everyone is running hybrids of one sort or another. However it’s a good place to start as a baseline in my view.
When you cannot or choose not to make a case for or against something make a pronouncement.
SteveF (Comment #194629)
November 29th, 2020 at 7:25 pm
I would to the extent that businesses are private and the laws would infringe on individual property rights. Do you feel that free speech to the extent it allows users to make hurtful racist and sexist statements should be limited by legislation?
Modern day liberals are often for personal rights and freedoms put have problems with property rights. I have a link to an article below that relates property rights to human rights and how human rights in order to be exercised require property rights.
As a practical matter in today’s world I doubt that many businesses would discriminate if they wanted to succeed. It would be great to compete against a business that did discriminate. Here I am not talking about some artificial rules and indicators that are used in making laws against discrimination.
Phil,
“I dont think a minority should have that power in a democracy.”
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You keep saying things like this; I don’t know why. The USA is NOT a pure democracy, and never has been. It is a constitutional republic, where the constitution restricts the power of elected representatives by various means, including the specified structure of the government, and the sharing of power with the governments of individual states. The first 10 amendments are just a list of things the Federal government is not ever allowed to do.
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Of course, in practice, there has been some undermining of the Constitution by “progressive” Supreme Court Justices, since policies they supported were in violation of the Constitution, but that is a different issue. I am pleased the current members of the SC will almost certainly reverse some of the of the undermining.
Kenneth
As a practical matter in today’s world I doubt that many businesses would discriminate if they wanted to succeed.
The difficulty for libertarianism is you really do have to put in “in today’s world” to make that true. And if you change the world, it’s pretty clear that “free market” is sufficient to ensure businesses that discriminate won’t succeed.
Phil Scadden,
You’re not paying attention. You’re assuming that there will be some sort of vote. But as we have seen, all that’s necessary is to declare a global crisis.
Phil
“I dont think a minority should have that power in a democracy.â€
I think minorities should have sufficient power to prevent themselves from being persecuted.
Kenneth,
I think I understand your position as you have described it. You doubt businesses would ever practice discrimination. This is something I find odd considering the explicit racial discrimination routinely practiced in school admissions and business hiring today. After all you have written, I still don’t know if you support revoking all laws against racial discrimination by businesses. I suspect you do, but refuse to say so; I am unsure why.
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One thing is clear to me: so long as Libertarians can’t answer a simple question about revoking laws against businesses practicing racial discrimination, libertarians are never going to be more than, at best, a footnote in US politics, or, at worst, spoilers who give very close elections to those candidates who are most supportive of the policies Libertarians say they oppose.
Looks like the final House membership will be: 212 Republicans, 223 Democrats.
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Pelosi can lose not more than 5 votes from her caucus to pass legislation. The 20% unhinged left of her party will press always for crazy sh!t, while Dems from competitive districts (who just had the scare of their political lives) will refuse to support the crazy sh!t. Result: Nothing of substance can pass without support of Republicans.
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Of course, compromise with the opposing party is not Pelosi’s style of governance. So nothing of substance will pass.
SteveF,
It also remains to be seen if Biden will accept absolutely crazy shit. He may. Or not. I think realistic Dems have to know if they pass things that are too extreme, there is a risk they lose the House in 2022. When they thought they’d have enough power to pack the court, the might have had an incentive to do that provided they finished up in 2 years so they could be sure the next senate didn’t get to finish the job of appointing new justices. That would have had a long lasting effect even if they did lose the Senate.
Now… they know they can’t increase the number of justices in and pack. Without a Senate majority, there is very little they can do quickly and avoid reversal in 2 years. If it’s too out there, they’ll lose both house and senate.
SteveF
One thing is clear to me: so long as Libertarians can’t answer a simple question about
Yes. Some questions need to be answered directly. A philosophical discussion about the libertarian’s thoughts isn’t enough. People want to know: If I voted you in place, would you move to removes these legal protections? The answer has to be yes or no. After saying yes or no, you can explain.
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If you answer yes, you plan to remove anti-discrimination laws that touch on race, your explanation needs to be something voters accept. Otherwise, they won’t vote for you.
I don’t think those 13 states would block a progressive amendment. Many of those states have elected Democrats as governor recently. They have passed many progressive policies. Kansas in particular has had a big split among Republicans with Planned Parenthood supported candidates getting elected.
Minimum wage laws have passed in many of those states.
If Congress were to pass an amendment with no sunset law, then progressives just need supportive candidates to get elected at some point in the ensuing decades to pass the amendment
The Equal Right Amendment has been passed in 38 states.
Several of those states revoked their ratification, and there was a deadline on the amendment when it passed Congress.
Nevertheless the hope is to have it declared as ratified.
Lucia,
“I think realistic Dems have to know if they pass things that are too extreme, there is a risk they lose the House in 2022.”
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Just the shift of house seats based on the 2020 census and expected redistricting will almost certainly put Republicans in control of 6 more seats in 2022. I agree that Dems are going to be wary of adopting crazy sh!t, but at the same time, if they don’t, their base is not going to be motivated in 2022…. which could lead to a bloodbath for the Dems. An imponderable is Biden. If by 2022 he is clearly declining into more advanced dementia (assuming he has not already been removed via the 25th amendment!), then voters will need to entertain the possibility of a very light weight president Kamala as they head to the polls. I have no doubt Kamala would motivate the Dem base, but she would REALLY motivate most everyone else to limit her power by taking away the House. I mean, even Democrats don’t like her… her campaign collapsed before the primaries even started.
Other examples of majoritarian madness include Portland, OR, defunding the police while confiscating guns and arresting people for defending themselves against mostly peaceful protests, Antifa and BLM.
mikeN
Many of those states have elected Democrats as governor recently.
Governors have no official role in ratifying amendments. Surprising, yes. But I read up yesterday!
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If either the the state house or the state senate fails to achieve a simple majority, that state has voted “no”. (The governor can’t veto if the vote yes. So, the governor is technically no more relevant than the Press or dog catcher.)
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Most state senates and most state houses are GOP controlled. Not Illinois…. But most. The 13 states Phil picked is only a subset of the states that will not ratify an amendment GOP state legislators don’t support.
DeWitt, ummm, I live in Portland and have not seen what you describe. Police have not been defunded. BLM protests have been peaceful, although they occasionally are infiltrated by agitators from both antifa and white supremacist groups. I have literally not seen what you describe. Are you talking about Portland, ME?
Even at the height of the protests this summer, one block away from the building at the center of the controversy mothers were walking hand in hand with children. I was walking there too. It was calm, peaceful–it looked like Main Street Small Town Anywhere.
Yes, but the proponents of the amendment just need to get control once to pass the amendment, over 5-10 elections. In the case of the 27th amendment, 200 years.
Maybe not even full control, just close enough that they get some Republicans to vote with them.
Thomas Fuller
The Associated Press seems to think the protests in Portlans or have been violent.
No one is claiming there aren’t long stretches during which no one is hurling fireworks, rocks and so on. But that’s similar to war zones. Most of the time, in most places no one is hurling anything. Often, one block away from an invasion, people can walk around most of the time (and do.)
People don’t take this as evidence that the war zone is not a war zone, or that war is peaceful– other than for the existence of the combatants.
It’s all find and dandy to say “but that’s not BLM, it’s Antifa and white supremicists” but (a) they are attracted by the ongoing protests and (b) I’m pretty sure if you asked an Antifa member they would say they are there in support of ‘Black Lives Matter’.
Violence has been breaking out at BLM protests. Stores have been burned; windows broken. People have been killed.
SteveF, NY-22 isn’t done. A judge decided to review the ballots personally, and decided the Democrat won by 13 votes instead of the previous Republican lead of 100 votes. Then another county issued an update of 35 net for the Republican and 10 for the Democrat, giving a lead of 12 votes.
If this holds, then it would put Republicans at 213 seats.
“While some Catholic priests claimed coronavirus lockdowns that shuttered churches infringed on religious liberties, Pope Francis has adhered to Italy’s strict lockdown.”
“He halted all public Masses at the Vatican, livestreamed his morning liturgies during the peak of Italy’s outbreak, and at one point even admonished priests who balked at the measures for their “adolescent resistance.â€
Our SC has sided with the adolescents, ruling government can’t temporarily prohibit religious services, thus making it possible to spread Covid-19 around. Worshippers get the disease while in church, then later before knowing they are infected, spread it to people outside the church.
Thank God no one in my household will be going to church.
Regarding Portland, Andy Ngo documents antifa actvity which does seem to be continuing in Portland:
. https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo
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There is a matter of framing and context with twitter, of course. Idiots break the law everywhere, but this does seem troubling.
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The mug shots indicate wild eyed twenty somethings, many of whom appear to have meth sores.
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Marshall MacLuhan warned of increasing tribalism as media became less reading and more video ( and now instant social ).
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Eric Hoffer warned of mass movements when people felt worthless and hopeless.
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Is Portland a portent of these trends?
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Or is it a narrow focus of a few people on a few blocks?
Turbulent Eddie, I strongly maintain that it is the latter.
I’ve commented here before that (most of–of course there are a handful of locals) both the antifa and the white supremacists/nationalists drift down here from our neighboring state of Washington. The antifa seem to come from Seattle, the white s/n’s from nearby Vancouver, WA. The BLM protestors are 90% Portlanders, 10% people from all over the country.
What Lucia describes as a ‘war zone’ really, really isn’t.
MikeN,
Where are you getting the information about NY 22? Everything I have found shows the Democrat ahead by ~12 votes.
SteveF (Comment #194661)
November 30th, 2020 at 9:19 am
Not to get into a pi$$ing contest with you, Steve, but I did answer your question. Instead of giving you a yes or no I described what legislation I would oppose. You did not, however, answer my question that I put to you.
I am a libertarian and not a Libertarian – as in the party that runs candidates in political contests. The ideas and philosophy of libertarianism are not ready for political contests given the dominant intelligentsia of today being to the left of the voting public but very influential in shifting the public to the left and in a big part through the MSM. Political philosophies are debated best at a very different level than is seen in political contests where the debate is emotional and filled with untruths exaggerations and non sequiturs (Trump did not invent that style). Political ideas that win out at the higher levels of debate filter down to the intelligentsia and finally to the voters. Currently the debate is being won at nearly all levels by the far left and those that advocate for bigger and more intrusive government. Modern Monetary Theory that was not long ago considered a non serious and unrealistic approach to government spending is the main strategy for handling the huge government expenditures resulting from government restrictions invoked for the Covid emergency. This is a big win for the far left whether it is recognized as such by the general public or not.
There is hope in the observation that more people who are not strict advocates of government control of people’s lives recognize the failures, limitations and problems with this approach. They are not, however, ready to question what controls could be gotten rid of or the seeming security that they think government controls provide. The even more negative side of this situation is what I see in the people’s reaction to the Covid-19 “emergency” and their unquestioned willingness to have the government and its experts control their lives and in turn look disapprovingly upon those who would dare question government control.
What happens when the 50.1% of the population votes to relieve the other 49.9% of the population of their voting rights?
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Democracy and majorities are a good system of government, but “tyranny of the majority” is a serious issue. In the US example certain foundational rights are laid down beyond the reach of the majority, such as the right to vote. So majorities must have limitations.
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Example: WV, WY, KY are basically being told they will no longer be able to use their own coal to produce electricity in their own states if the climate do-gooders have their way. Their opinion on the matter will not count.
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People who are absolutely convinced of their own righteousness tend to always thinks of their side being the majority imposing righteous outcomes on the hapless minority morons for their own good. They rarely envision the hapless morons gaining a majority and shoving them up against the wall and imposing outcomes on their side. Trump winning an election should have put the fear of God into the “majority is always right” thinking. EVERYONE thinks their side is benevolent, it’s not.
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Experts can be badly mistaken. Majorities can be mistaken. Priorities and culture of the US cities should not be forced upon the US rural areas. Cities already have the power to govern themselves, but it is the clear desire of many city dwellers to force their will upon everyone that creates problems. Somehow the framers of the US Constitution apparently got a pre-release of The Hunger Games, ha ha. Actually these problems no doubt have existed since the cave men (oops, cave persons) started joining up tribes.
Kenneth,
This is what I asked: “Do you support the revoking all laws requiring businesses to not discriminate against people based on race or creed?”
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Here is how you replied:
I would to the extent that businesses are private and the laws would infringe on individual property rights. Do you feel that free speech to the extent it allows users to make hurtful racist and sexist statements should be limited by legislation?
Modern day liberals are often for personal rights and freedoms put have problems with property rights. I have a link to an article below that relates property rights to human rights and how human rights in order to be exercised require property rights.
As a practical matter in today’s world I doubt that many businesses would discriminate if they wanted to succeed. It would be great to compete against a business that did discriminate. Here I am not talking about some artificial rules and indicators that are used in making laws against discrimination.
Then you provided a link explaining (yet again) how property rights are very important to libertarians.
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“I would to the extent that businesses are private and the laws would infringe on individual property rights.”
That sounds to me a lot like begging the question. Clearly most businesses are private, but we are left to draw our own conclusions about “the extent to which the laws would infringe on property rights”. This is not a hypothetical question (“would”). There are existing laws explicitly prohibiting racial discrimination.
They are by no means uniformly enforced…. certain discrimination is considered ‘good’ and so encouraged…. but enforced they are. Do you think those laws infringe on property rights and so should be revoked?
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With regard to your question: No, free speech is free speech, and should not be prohibited except in the very limited case of causing immediate physical harm (eg falsely shouting “fire!” in a crowded theater). Saying really dangerous hurtful things like “On average women do not run as fast as men”, or “On average, black athletes can run faster than comparable white athletes” should never be restricted.
“BLM protests have been peaceful, although they occasionally are infiltrated by agitators from both antifa and white supremacist groups”
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This is a circular statement that “peaceful BLM protestors are non-violent”. It is also true that good cops aren’t bad cops, and when I talk about cops then I’m referring to the former. Why are there protests against “cops”? A common definition of BLM protesters is everyone who shows up at a protest organized by and for BLM. The organizers of these protests have failed to police their own protests of undesirables, either because they can’t or they don’t want to. This tainted the entire effort (along with defund the police).
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Leaderless groups keep falling into the same trap, they are infiltrated or welcome extremists and the opposing side paints them with that brush because they can’t effectively counter that message without effective leadership.
Ah, yes. Those dastardly white supremacists ie anyone, regardless of color, who disagrees with the far left. At this point, they’re more diverse than antifa.
Tom Scharf,
BLM is not leaderless. They have a published agenda that includes brilliant ideas like the complete elimination of the nuclear family. As if the preponderance of single female parent households in the Black community hasn’t done enough damage already.
However, a lot of BLM demonstrations had little or no connection with the BLM organization.
In NZ criminal cases, there must be agreement of 11 out of 12 jurors. Why not a simple majority?
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There is more or less a definition of “weighty” decisions that societies define as having major impacts if a new decision is made positively to proceed. Altering the voting system would be one of those.
As far as I can tell all local BLM organizations are self proclaimed and founded by local people without any kind of formal rules, or being granted any authority to do so from a national organization. There are all kinds of different specific agendas although much of it is shared. If you want a statement from the ACLU you know where to go, if you want one from BLM then … ? On that aside, what the heck happened to the ACLU? They have lost their mind.
All this discussion of libertarians and power of government, but I noticed one topic missing. In practice the Libertarian Party is about drugs. It has been for a long time. Twenty years ago, Ann Coulter wanted to run on their line to take out Chris Shays in Conn. for voting against impeachment. They denied her the ballot line because she refused to support legalization.
Thomas,
I didn’t describe Portland as a war zone. I pointed out that no one says there is no war merely because the bombing is not going on 24/7. Likewise, you can’t decree the demonstrations as peaceful merely people are not hurling things and setting the town aflame 24/7.
Kenneth,
If I understand you correctly, you would
1) remove civil rights laws baring racial discrimination as they apply to private business like restaurants, stores, any employer public accomodation.
2) keep civil rights laws barring the same discrimination by the government.
Regarding BLM and the nuclear family, I was pretty upset at hearing this and then realized – they’re too late!
. https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/assets_c/2013/05/Screen%20Shot%202013-05-12%20at%2012.29.08%20AM-thumb-570×454-121210.png
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Not a good thing, of course, a very bad thing.
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It’s a reminder of how badly astray BLM is with their ideals as well as how badly astray the US, and indeed, all of western civilization is with their practice.
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Things are multifactoral, so automation may be as much a factor. But so too may be the enabling social programs which foster childbirth out of wedlock ( Japan, without much support for single mothers, has much lower out of wedlock births ).
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It’s not clear we can continue as a nation without intact families.
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I was reading Eric Hoffer and he says mass movements are born of broken families, because unattached offspring seek identity in groups.
MIkeN
Big L vs small l matters when discussing libertarian. Big L is a political party. Small l is a political view point.
Lucia and Tom, those are fair questions. I do think weighty matters like constitutional change require much higher than a simple majority. Here it is 75% of parliament or referendum. This principle could itself be challenged but would likely face both electoral backlash and resistance by her majesty ( in form of governor-general).
Steve, I am well aware that US is not a democracy. I think the world would be better if it was.
Phil,
Our US President has no official role in amending the constitution. This is (generally) a purely legislative function. There is a “constitutional convention” path too.
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That doesn’t happen. Among other things there is an open question about whether a constitutional convention can be limited once convened. Our current constitution pop-out from a constitutional convention and the entirety of the old articles of confederation went out the window. It’s not entirely clear what would happen if the feds organized a constitutional convention to consider a particular article. Those at the convention might not consider themselves bound to stay inside some restricted scope!
Turbulent Eddie (Comment #194689)
Regarding BLM and the nuclear family, I was pretty upset at hearing this and then realized – they’re too late!
Not a good thing, of course, a very bad thing.
___________
Children born out of wedlock (no marriage license) aren’t necessarily without fathers. Some couples don’t want marriage licenses. I don’t know how these couples are treated in the article.
OK_Max, Mostly children born out of wedlock have less stable family lives and don’t have two parents present.
The reality of governing is pretty messy, even if you think you live in a democracy. We only elect people who get to vote, not actually vote on stuff ourselves in most cases. In theory these people would go investigate things to get a much fuller understanding and make wiser decisions on the trade offs than having a voter referendum on everything. I’m not a big fan of referendums for the most part, my rule is always vote no unless there is a compelling reason to think the elected officials are getting it wrong (e.g. they have conflicts of interests with government employee unions). I also think there needs to be at least a 60% majority on referendums, the wording on referendums is usually contested like warfare in the courts.
As I remember, it was the expansion of Aid to Families with Dependent Children that led to the rapid increase in out-of-wedlock births. Before that the numbers were stable or even decreasing. Moynihan wrote a seminal article about it, for which he was ostracized.
Also, as I remember, even the children of well off single mothers don’t do as well as children in a nuclear family. I suspect that no one in academia would even suggest a study of children raised by gay couples. Too dangerous.
ucia (Comment #194694)
November 30th, 2020 at 3:52 pm
OK_Max,
Mostly children born out of wedlock have less stable family lives and don’t have two parents present.
________
Probably true, but you don’t have to marry to have children, so a growing number of fathers may prefer to remaining unmarried rather than face the possible financial consequences of divorce.
OK_Max,
Well… they still face the financial consequences of child support. I think it’s equally likely women prefer to remain unmarried, get child support and avoid having to hold a job and do all the housework.
They moved me out of the COVID wing, so I guess I have officially recovered.
lucia (Comment #194688)
November 30th, 2020 at 1:58 pm
Your view of my comments about private property legislation are correct. Perhaps you could translate for SteveF and me.
There are some gray areas with government in the picture and to which SteveF might be referring. The recent Harvard discrimination case where the university receives government funds could put it under the umbrella of government discrimination. Where it was placed in this lawsuit was not a decision for the courts since they must view the matter the same for government or private parties.
In my ideal world there would be no government funding for a private university and if that university wanted to provide easier entrance for a certain race or group of people that would be fine with me. We have a private religious college in Wheaton called Wheaton College and I do believe that they have certain religious requirements for entry. I do not know if that would be considered discrimination in a world where government decides these matters.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #194700)
November 30th, 2020 at 4:41 pm
That is good news, DeWitt, and I’ll have a glass of wine to it right now.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #194700)
November 30th, 2020 at 4:41 pm
They moved me out of the COVID wing, so I guess I have officially recovered.
____________
Glad to hear it, DeWitt. I hope you have a rapid recovery.
Good news DeWitt. Hope you are back to full speed asap.
Great DeWitt!!! I too will go have a glass of red wine!
According to a recent editorial in the WSJ, banks refusal to lend to an unpopular industry like guns violates Dodd-Frank. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is attempting to finalize a rule to that effect.
It’s too early for wine, will have to raise a glass later. But very happy for you!
DeWitt
…by nationally chartered banks
Does anyone know what national charting entails? Of it there is such a thing as a not nationally chartered bank? (I don’t know either. I’m hoping someone knows.)
I guess non-chartered banks must exist, but it doesn’t actually say.
I believe there are state chartered banks – but I should Google that.
Kenneth,
I did find state chartered banks.
The national ones are involved in stabilizing the currency. So that starts to mix in being involved in the actions of the federal government. In that sort of case, the feds do get to make more rules about their operation because they are no longer merely “private”.
My encyclopedic son was verseing me on the banking system a while back and as I recall told me that state banks are more numerous than national ones. National banks are part of the Federal Reserve system.
Banks and especially those in the Federal Reserve domain are probably out of the grey area between private and government entities and can in the libertarian view be considered an arm of the government.
Banks historically have been a purchaser of a large number of government issued bonds. If currently the Federal Reserve was not keeping the borrowing cost artificially low the Federal government would have a much more difficult time financing the huge debt it has incurred. Fed chairman Powell has in an unprecedented manner called for more fiscal spending and implied that Federal Reserve would print money (through the Treasury) to cover it. In my view that sounds a lot like Modern Monetary Theory.
I certainly am not surprised that a lot of banking executives are liberal Democrats and would due the bidding of the Democrat left in their lending decisions.
Kenneth,
Yes. It looks like “national chartered banks” are lean pretty strongly toward “being” government. So it does seem to me they should not be allowed viewpoint discrimination or “business” discrimination with regard to their lending.
I don’t know about state banks. The question is then going to be whether all banks are actually at least “sort of” government. (If yes, the real issue will be whether that is right.)
Once again… should have googled. Private banks exist:
The additional data from the Moderna trial is very limited (full results to be peer-reviewed published), but even with a large study (30,000 participants) it is still not possible to say with certainty that the m-RNA vaccine completely protects against severe illness. There were 11 symptomatic cases in the vaccine group and 185 in the placebo group. There were 30 “serious” illnesses, all in the placebo group, one of which led to death.
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So my question is: Does the vaccine just protect against infection in general (best estimate is 94.1% effective), or does it ALSO additionally protect against severe illness (that is, reduce the chance of severe illness, even if you get symptomatic illness)?
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Someone can tell me if I have the numbers wrong, but it looks to me like overall probability of mild illness (pooling all cases from both trial groups) is 166/196 = 0.8469. So if someone catches covid 19, the chance of a mild case is 84.69%. Assuming the vaccine offers no additional protection against severe illness (just a lower overall rate of illness), then the chance of all 11 cases in the vaccine group being mild is then: (0.8469)^11 = 0.16.
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So the chance of no severe cases among the cases suffered by vaccine group is about 16%, and we can’t say with high confidence the vaccine reduces the chance of severe illness beyond the overall reduced chance of getting symptomatic illness. But the data at least suggest that may well be the case. Only a much larger number of vaccinations will answer the question definitively.
NYT’s reports on Facebook’s recent algorithm changes:
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“The change was part of the “break glass†plans Facebook had spent months developing for the aftermath of a contested election. It resulted in a spike in visibility for big, mainstream publishers like CNN, The New York Times and NPR, while posts from highly engaged hyperpartisan pages, such as Breitbart and Occupy Democrats, became less visible, the employees said.
It was a vision of what a calmer, less divisive Facebook might look like. Some employees argued the change should become permanent, even if it was unclear how that might affect the amount of time people spent on Facebook. In an employee meeting the week after the election, workers asked whether the “nicer news feed†could stay, said two people who attended.
Guy Rosen, a Facebook executive who oversees the integrity division that is in charge of cleaning up the platform, said on a call with reporters last week that the changes were always meant to be temporary. “There has never been a plan to make these permanent,†he said. John Hegeman, who oversees the news feed, said in an interview that while Facebook might roll back these experiments, it would study and learn from them.”
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Color me disgusted. This from the legions of people who proudly say they read 1984 recently. If only I had a Facebook account to delete, ha ha.
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As expected, Glenn Greenwald is not pleased. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/demanding-silicon-valley-suppress
SteveF (Comment #194717): “So my question is: Does the vaccine just protect against infection in general (best estimate is 94.1% effective), or does it ALSO additionally protect against severe illness (that is, reduce the chance of severe illness, even if you get symptomatic illness)?”
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I think there are two related but different questions. One is whether the vaccine reduces the chance of severe illness. I think it clearly does, at least as long as antibodies are high. If the expectation value (true mean) for the number of severe cases in the control group was 20 cases (as high as my table of Poisson distribution values goes), then the chance of 30 or more cases is just under 2% (if I am reading the table right). An expectation value of 4 in the test group would give a 2% chance of zero cases. I think that means that reduction in the chance of sever illness is at least 80% (from 20 to 4) with p=0.02; higher for a less stringent p. Very encouraging.
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The second question is whether if you get sick in spite of the vaccine, is there still a benefit in reducing the chance of severe illness. I think that is the question SteveF is asking. I think he has taken a reasonable first cut at that. I am not sure it is correct, but off hand I don’t know how to improve on it.
Mike M,
We know the vaccine reduces the risk of illness.
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But as you note, my question is a little different: does the vaccine reduce the chance of severe illness to an even greater extent than it reduces the chance of symptomatic illness? There is not enough data to answer with confidence, but it looks encouraging. The reason this matters is that severe illness (and death!) matter much more than total (mostly mild) cases. If the vaccine reduces the risk of death from the virus to a significantly greater extent than 94%, that will be very important to know.
Lucia, among those “private” banks listed in that link you posted is Goldman Sachs which is NY state chartered bank and is part of the Federal Reserve system. I think their definition of private is merely privately owned.
Tom Scharf, you DO have a Facebook account, you just haven’t activated it yet. Facebook keeps shadow profiles of every user and also non-users.
For example, if I have an account and I give phone number 123-456-7890, Facebook will have that in my account. In my shadow account, Facebook will have my cell number 234-567-8901, that a friend of mine has listed in their contacts.
“OKLAHOMA CITY (Nov. 30, 2020) – Governor Kevin Stitt announced today he is declaring Thursday, Dec. 3 as a statewide day of prayer and fasting for all Oklahomans affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Source: Oklahoma Governor site
I’m not sure prayer will help, but it probably won’t hurt. But fasting ?
Mike M,
If the evidence is clear and convincing, I have no doubt a court will intervene.
OK_Max,
Most people could use to lose a little weight (or a lot!).
Today Attorney General Barr said there is no evidence of fraud that would change the outcome of the election.
“n an interview with The Associated Press, Barr said U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they’ve received, but they’ve uncovered no evidence that would change the outcome of the election.”
Source:USAToday, Dec.1, 2020
The USAToday article didn’t mention Pennsylvania.
SteveF
There were 30 “serious†illnesses, all in the placebo group, one of which led to death.
We think there were 50% – 50% distribution of placebo vs. treatment.
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I’m not sure how the define the level of protection. But suppose we thought the treatment had no protection against serious illness.
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The likelihood of getting 30/30 of those with “serious” illness were in the placebo group and non in the vaccine group is 0.5^30. That’s tiny. So it looks to me like your odds of getting a serious illness is lower with the vaccine.
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Whether the distribution of “mild-serious-death” given that you got sick changes, I can’t say. But it looks to me like you are much less likely to get a “serious” illness if you take the vaccine compared to if you don’t. take the vaccine.
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SteveF
But as you note, my question is a little different: does the vaccine reduce the chance of severe illness to an even greater extent than it reduces the chance of symptomatic illness?
I think you are correct that we don’t know this for sure. Maybe.
I do know that if we assume that the rate of severe illness in vaccinated is 1/9 times that in the placebo group, then we’d expect the chance that a ill person had was from the placebo group would be 90%. (I think…) Then the chances of getting all 30 severe illnesses from the placebo group would be 0.9^30= 0.04239116
So the protection for severe illness is better than 90%.
Lucia,
Sure, we can be reasonably confident the protection against severe illness is at least 90%. We could just as well assume the rate of severe illness in the vaccinated group is proportional to the rate of symptomatic illness: ~1/16, so 0.94^30 = 16% chance of no severe cases in the vaccinated group by pure chance…. not statistically significant.
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I was trying to figure if there is a way to be confident there is protection above the (relatively) well defined protection against symptomatic illness. (94%) Looks to me like there are just not enough severe cases to know that yet. The study would have to be about twice as big to better define the level of protection against severe illness.
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I assume there are now 15,000 very happy subjects who have been told their chance of illness has been drastically reduced.
SteveF (Comment #194733): “I assume there are now 15,000 very happy subjects who have been told their chance of illness has been drastically reduced.”
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I hope not. The study is not complete. Maybe the protection wears off in a few months.
Mike M,
“I hope not.”
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You hope they are not happy, or you hope they have not been told they got the vaccine?
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The level of protection for sure does ware off, but it is far too early to tell how quickly. The earlier Moderna dose/response study showed clearly that the antibody titres are quite high, and comparable to titres from a “natural” infection. The lack of documented re-infection cases (only 5 worldwide) suggests the resistance is not terribly short lived.
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Of course, you should have as much skepticism of the vaccines as you like; but I will get it when it becomes available.
SteveF
Looks to me like there are just not enough severe cases to know that yet.
I agree with this.
MikeM.
I’m sure they have not been told that duration of immunity is known.
Both: I’m not sure whether the study is fully unblinded yet. It may be it was only unblinded with respect to the people who got sick. But I imagine it will be fully unblinded when the vaccine gets approval.
Like SteveF, I suspect the immunity will be somewhat long lived. That’s what the data we actually have suggests. But of course, we don’t have longer term observations on anything to do with Covid. That includes both long term effects on those infected or longer term effects of the vaccine.
I mean… for all we know, everyone who recovered will suddenly turn into a man eating brainless zombie exactly 2 years after recovery. We have no observations about that. So we have no evidence that won’t happen.
I’d be happy to learn I’d gotten the vaccine. 🙂
Lucia,
“for all we know, everyone who recovered will suddenly turn into a man eating brainless zombie exactly 2 years after recovery.”
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OK you have convinced me to abandon everything I know and all available data on vaccines in general and covid vaccines in particular, and not get the vaccination. 😉
lucia,
Zombies eat brains. Didn’t you watch iZombie? Kristen Bell was really funny. The premise was that if a zombie ate some brains, it could appear to be normal. Also the zombie temporarily gained the memories and personality of the person whose brain they ate, which made it a useful tool to solve murders. Conveniently, she worked at the Medical Examiners office.
DeWitt,
Clearly, my knowledge about Zombies is imperfect. I’ll learn more if I turn into one after having my Covid vaccine.
OK_Max (Comment #194729): “Today Attorney General Barr said there is no evidence of fraud that would change the outcome of the election.”
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That is actually not what he said. He said that the evidence they have so far is not of that magnitude. The investigation is ongoing. It sounds like Trump’s lawyers have not forwarded a lot of their evidence to DoJ. Maybe they figure that a 3 year long investigation by DoJ won’t do any good.
lucia (Comment #194716)
December 1st, 2020 at 8:56 am
Lucia, not to belabor that link but I went back and actually read it and I had it wrong when I said privately owned – although those banks are privately owned and probably most publicly traded. The private bank part is banking for special customers who invest some of their money with these banks and in so doing get special treatment. The banks are still either state or federally chartered and those large banks are going to be part of the Federal Reserve System.
I bank with JP Morgan Chase and when I go into the bank for some rather mundane chore like retrieving or returning items to my safety deposit box there is a lady in there who looks up my banking history and attempts to talk me into investing with the bank and getting special privileges. I am sure there are levels of privileges that go with the amount invested and I would not be at the top of that list. I tell the lady that I do my own investing and that I am not interested. I used to get rather impatient with others at the bank doing the same sales pitch but it has become a game with this lady. She calls me the “stubborn one” and I call her the “hard seller lady”.
Kenneth,
Thanks. Yes… it appears “private” designation has more to do with what product are available to lure in wealthy clients! It may be that like educational institutions, all banks are at least somewhat entangled in state business. (At a minimum, nearly all colleges enroll students who take out student loans, and many have staff who apply for and get government grants.)
Update on NY-22. After the Democrat was ahead by 13 votes when the judge did a personal recount, and then the Republican was ahead by 12 after one county found some errors, another county has found 55 early votes that were never counted.
MikeN,
It’s NY. The Republican is at a distinct disadvantage.
The UK approves vaccine for use, FDA sitting on their a** thinking about what to order for lunch for the pre-meeting of initial discussions on who will be on the committee to select the committee to consider dinner options.
Tom Scharf…. yep.
Yes, the huge disaster that is Brexit.
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The UK broke with EU regulators to approve the vaccine early, the vaccine by an American company. The EU just delayed their assessment a week and said they would have a ruling by Dec 29. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-timeline-for-vaccine-approval-around-the-world-as-u-k-authorizes-covid-19-shot-11606917375
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The FDA process is opaque. All we know is there will be a meeting on Dec 10. There seems to be no further information and nobody in the media seems to care. Obviously they need to do their job but it seems like going slow and doing their jobs are the same thing to many career employees.
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“Recently, there has been disagreement between federal officials about how quickly after the Dec. 10 advisory panel an emergency use authorization could occur. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, has said that such a decision could occur almost immediately after the panel. But Peter Marks, who heads the FDA center responsible for the decision, has said instead that the decision would happen within “a few weeks.â€
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A few weeks, that will go over well. Really, what are they going to find? This is a foregone conclusion unless the vaccine companies are hiding something.
Tom Scharf,
“A few weeks, that will go over well. Really, what are they going to find? This is a foregone conclusion unless the vaccine companies are hiding something.”
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It will go over just fine; the MSM love (embrace, adore, admire) that the permanent bureaucracy of “experts” can act to punish the populace in any way they want. It is exactly what most in the MSM would themselves do if they could; you will hear hardly a peep about the crazy delay from the MSM. Yes, a delay will cost many thousands of lives. No, the bureaucrats absolutely do not care about people dying. They care about maintaining control of all regulatory actions and demonstrating that nothing will change that, not even when lots of people die as a result. Biden and his handlers won’t say a peep either.
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I will make a prediction: no significant number of people will get the vaccine until well after January 1, and maybe not until Biden takes office.
Woo from Sweden, how and when does the Covid-19 pandemic end?
Mike M. (Comment #194742)
December 1st, 2020 at 9:25 pm
OK_Max (Comment #194729): “Today Attorney General Barr said there is no evidence of fraud that would change the outcome of the election.â€
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That is actually not what he said. He said that the evidence they have so far is not of that magnitude. The investigation is ongoing. It sounds like Trump’s lawyers have not forwarded a lot of their evidence to DoJ. Maybe they figure that a 3 year long investigation by DoJ won’t do any good.
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Yes, Barr said his department doesn’t have information so far that would make a difference in the outcome of the election, but Trump’s lawyers suggesting they have such information keeps donations to Trump coming, some of which can be used as he sees fit rather than on legal fees. That’s a pretty good deal for him.
I don’t know why Trump’s lawyers wouldn’t share information with Barr, unless the information is too weak to make a difference, and nothing would be gained by sharing it.
My local paper headline today.
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Face masks reduced Tampa Bay coronavirus cases by 1.4 million, says USF professor https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/12/02/face-masks-reduced-tampa-bay-coronavirus-cases-by-14-million-says-usf-professor/
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Another awesome model proving SCIENCE and MATH!!!!!
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“Modeling predicted the four-county region of Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Polk will have 140,000 cases by Dec. 12. With no face mask mandate, the model forecast 1.5 million people would have been infected.”
““Something as simple as a mask works so well, as we can see from the data,—
“He warned warning that even a moderate decline in social interventions will increase daily cases and could overwhelm hospitals.”
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When people are “warned warning” at you, you know it’s serious experts at work. If you don’t believe that, then you are a math den**r. Clearly this was run on a computer so it can’t possibly be wrong. The article didn’t provide links to the model, but I have reproduced it here:
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Maskless_Infections = Mask_infections x 10.714.
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I’m glad we finally settled this. Mask mandates reduce infections by 10x. I suppose we could check actual infections rates at nearby counties without mask mandates but that would be rather silly and presumptive.
“The UK has become the first country in the world to approve the “Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, paving the way for mass vaccination.” Source: today’s BBC site.
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I thought the US was going to be the first country to approve ( or use) this vaccine.
OK_Max
I thought the US was going to be the first country to approve ( or use) this vaccine.
Oh you naive boy. . .
The media reports the quick EUA from the UK is causing “grumbling” from unnamed entities (citizens?). Nowhere in evidence is there grand news analysis on how many people are dying and becoming seriously ill while scientists do science things, but there are endless boilerplate statements on how the review process must be done carefully. The knowledge class must never be criticized.
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As much as I like hammering on the usual suspects for their lack of focus here, the reality is this will be a production limited problem for a long time. Production isn’t waiting on approvals. So there will be a number of people who could have gotten their vaccines a few weeks earlier, but the rest of will still get it at the same time months from now when the factory churns enough out.
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The pressure on the vaccine production guys is even heavier and longer term.
Lucia, being naive isn’t necessarily bad. Sometimes I think the less I know, the better. For what UK approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine means to the US, see
Tom Scharf (Comment #194753): “A few weeks, that will go over well. Really, what are they going to find? This is a foregone conclusion unless the vaccine companies are hiding something.”
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Indeed. Personally, I am not getting the vaccine until it has full approval, which probably won’t be until next summer. But it seems perverse to foot drag on the EUA. Perverse might be too kind.
I still think it’s odd that so many people seem to be more afraid of a vaccine than the disease itself. Maybe they think they’re invulnerable and won’t get it so they don’t need the vaccine.
OK_Max (Comment #194763): “I don’t know why Trump’s lawyers wouldn’t share information with Barr, unless the information is too weak to make a difference, and nothing would be gained by sharing it.”
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We don’t know that they won’t share. We only know that they have not done so. I can think of an excellent reason for that: They have not had the time to do so. Trump’s lawyers are working against an extremely tight deadline. They are not going to do anything that is time consuming and does not help them meet that deadline. Sharing information with DoJ gains nothing as far as the task at hand is concerned.
MikeM
I and everyone suspect the reason is the one identified by DeWitt. It’s also the reason they haven’t been able to come with much to share judges in court.
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But it is true that sharing with the DOJ is pointless. Law enforcement can’t move in the time frame required.
OK_Max,
They seem to suggest UK approval could get the FDA off their bureacrat lardasses. They don’t say it that way… but that’s what this amounts to
The UK’s approval is expected to place extra pressure on FDA regulators to swiftly approve the vaccine – American regulators will examine the same data.
Hhmmm, woo from Sweden appeared at the dance forum where I discuss dance. He must be following me around. . .
DeWitt wrote: “I still think it’s odd that so many people seem to be more afraid of a vaccine than the disease itself.”
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I don’t really think it’s odd. This is rather new technology for vaccines. Getting your cells to produce the antigen could go catastrophically wrong for a proportion of the population if the immune system gets the wrong idea. It’s the known vs the unknown risk. You could take precautions against even catching covid, but the risk of a vaccine backfire must be faced upfront.
There is no doubt that the “unknowns unknowns” of the new biotech of mRNA is the risk here, not clear how one would gauge that without a lot of expertise.
DaveJR,
I agree there is a chance of a vaccine misfire. It’s not zero risk. I don’t think it’s irrational for some people to want to wait.
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What I find odd (though likely I shouldn’t) is the fraction who say they will eventually take it but want to wait given reasons other than “unknown-unknown”. E.G:
* protection might be short lived. (Well… get another shot!)
* Maybe the virus will mutate. Well..it might. Then we’ll want another vaccine– just like flu.
* Developement “should” take longer. Well… usually development time involves a lot of bureaucracy. It’s not really a much longer time testing.
* There have been production problems in the past. This is a reason to never take it, not a reason to “wait”. Production problems are always possible in everything.
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Unknown- unknowns is a sane reason to wait especially if you can wait it out and think the contagion is fading naturally or you expect it will fade when other people do take the vaccine you won’t take.
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I don’t think the vaccine will turn us into Zombies two years from now. I know the current dangers actually exist. But yes, I know that taking the vaccine puts me at risk of “unknown-unknowns”. So does getting Covid itself. They still don’t know what the long term consequences of Covid itself are. Some people’s recoveries are … not really recoveries.
If I hadn’t already had the virus, I would want the vaccine to avoid what sounds like an extremely unpleasant possible side effect of the disease: parosmia. Temporary loss of one’s sense of smell would be annoying, but having ordinary things smell like rotting meat or worse would be very hard to endure.
We’re not going to find out about unknown unknowns until an EUA is approved and we get at least a few million people in the pool.
DeWitt,
“We’re not going to find out about unknown unknowns until an EUA is approved and we get at least a few million people in the pool.”
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And wait many months to see and unexpected side effects to arise. For most younger people, their wait for the vaccine will be longer than the time needed to see any unexpected side effects, since they won’t be getting the vaccine until mid-late next year.
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I think it is good to keep in mind that the vaccinations with the m-RNA vaccines started back in late July. There were enough people in those studies that we can be sure within a few months from now any unexpected effects will be either very rare or show up after 6 months or more.
DeWitt,
Absolutely. And similarly, we wouldn’t find out about unknown-unknowns until after lots of people took the vaccine even if it has ordinary approval. Likewise, with respect to anything very long term, we won’t know unknown-unknowns about the disease itself.
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We don’t know what lingering long term side-effects might be hidden right now, especially not rare ones. We don’t know whether current side effects like parsomia will last or reverse itself.
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We do currently have some known-knowns and some known-unknowns . The disease is bad enough to take some risks to avoid.
SteveF
…any unexpected effects will be either very rare or show up after 6 months or more
Yes. Based on observations we know that that either it takes more than 6 months to turn the vaccinated into Zombies or it rarely happens.
SteveF (Comment #194783): “any unexpected effects will be either very rare or show up after 6 months or more.”
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I think that is correct. The problem with the Wuhan virus is that it can trigger a dysfunctional immune response. We now know that the vaccine will significantly reduce that during the initial surge of antibodies. What will happen with the secondary immune response after the antibodies decay? Might that be dysfunctional? We don’t know.
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It is not like we have experience to go on. So far as I know, there is no common disease that does what the Wuhan virus does.
lucia,
“The disease is bad enough to take some risks to avoid.â€
Indeed. People are dying. I would think that justifies taking some risks. Apparently not the FDA, though.
“Smell loss is a prominent symptom of Covid-19 and the pandemic is leaving many people with long-term smell loss or smell distortions such as parosmia. Parosmia happens when people experience strange and often unpleasant smell distortions. Instead of smelling lemon you may smell petrol.” From E. Anglia U.
HOLY COW ! Covid-19 can make Lemon-aid smells like gasoline.
On the plus side, might help over-weight people shed some pounds.
OK_Max
I guess I’d prefer to keep my excess poundage rather than have lemon-aid smell like petrol and other prefectly good things smell like putrid meat.
Lucia,
I would bet against vaccinated people becoming zombies; brain eating zombies seem to me even less likely than regular zombies. I’ll get the vaccination.
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Fauci today said the USA will take weeks to approve the vaccine because the FDA doesn’t trust the drug companies to get the efficacy math right. I have met both bureaucrats and pharma house scientists. The bureaucrats are far more likely to get the efficacy numbers wrong. Fauci did not explain why it would take two weeks to schedule the first hearing, but I can: bureaucrats always drag their feet.
Well, at least we aren’t Australia https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-03/pfizer-biontech-covid19-vaccine-britain-rollout-what-we-know/12944410
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“When would Australia approve it?
On Wednesday night Mr Hunt said the UK’s move would not change the timeline for Australia’s assessment of the Pfizer vaccine.
“Our advice remains that the timeline for a decision on approval is expected by the end of January, 2021, and our planning is for first vaccine delivery in March, 2021,” he said.”
Get the math right???
The math is in the vaccine test protocol, which was published in June or July. Once again Fauci proves he’s an idiot. As if more proof were needed. How could you possibly get the math wrong? There are only two numbers, placebo infections and vaccinated infections. The rest is what should be well understood statistics. I guess you might dispute who is infected and who isn’t. But they collect a lot of data from the subjects.
Now if the press were doing their job, someone would have asked him to cite some examples where a drug company didn’t get the efficacy math right and how much difference it made. And someone else would have raised the point that every delay in approval costs actual lives, not the theoretical lives that might be saved by more mask wearing.
DeWitt,
In fairness to Fauci, he didn’t say “math”, he said it takes the FDA a long time to review the application because they don’t trust the manufacturer’s analysis. He said the FDA has to do their evaluation starting with “only the raw data”. I guess they act as if the manufacturer’s analysis did not exist. It’s a mealy-mouth excuse to delay approval. The fellow in charge of the FDA vaccine approval process confirmed (again) approval will come “probably within a few weeks” of December 10. IMHO, they should all be taken out back and shot. OK, that is too extreme… they should all be summarily discharged.
DeWitt,
Or if the press really had specialists who knew something about the protocols, they would say they thought the protocol spelled out the math and then ask why it should take weeks to check.
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The formality of the entire process means they aren’t hunting around for “mystery” or “novel” statistical methods to tease something out of weird samples-of-opportunity!
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Even if the underlying math was “hard”, anyone could have had a simple script in place ahead of time. When the numbers come in, you input the numbers and the efficacy spits out. Of course someone would still “check”, but that shouldn’t be time consuming!
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Lucia,
The FDA has had the formal application for approval in hand for far longer than any half smart person would need to evaluate it…
even if you ignored the company’s analysis. It is just bureaucratic foot dragging, nothing more.
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The frightening part is that this is the “expedited emergency” application, not a normal application. The public is never even aware how long the FDA delays every new drug…. which can be years. It is the craziest system you could possibly devise if your goal is to help sick people. That is obviously not the goal.
SteveF (Comment #194825): “He said the FDA has to do their evaluation starting with “only the raw dataâ€. I guess they act as if the manufacturer’s analysis did not exist. It’s a mealy-mouth excuse to delay approval.”
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Nah. It is just self-important control freaks doing what they do. They have power. There is no way they will surrender even one iota of that power. It is not like they need to fear any personal consequences of their delay.
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Now, if Trump’s lawyers were to pull of a miracle and get him a majority of the electoral votes, it might be different. In that case the mandarins at the FDA might have to worry about personal consequences.
The mRNA vaccine stimulates the production of B cells. Does anyone know if it also stimulates the production of T cells?
et’s put this in perspective. First, a relative risk reduction is being reported, not absolute risk reduction, which appears to be less than 1%.
Yes. It is the relative risk that is reported. That’s what matters for a vaccine. So iotw: they are reporting the correct, relavant metric rather than the irrelevant one this writer knows exists and mentioned.
Second, these results refer to the trials’ primary endpoint of covid-19 of essentially any severity, and importantly not the vaccine’s ability to save lives, nor the ability to prevent infection, nor the efficacy in important subgroups (e.g. frail elderly). Those still remain unknown.
Yes. We want the vaccine to make people not get sick. This is a necessary and sufficient end point to make the vaccine useful.
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We hope it does the other things too. But saying evaluation is “hard” because we can’t know these yet is just silly. But I guess someone needed to write an article to get eyeballs. Or has been told something my someone, and now thinks they can distill this down for us mere mortals.
Third, these results reflect a time point relatively soon after vaccination, and we know nothing about vaccine performance at 3, 6, or 12 months, so cannot compare these efficacy numbers against other vaccines like influenza vaccines (which are judged over a season).
No. We don’t. Also fairly irrelevant because this could be addressed with protocols when we do learn. Not approving and letting people die because we can’t have 12 month long data when the vaccine is only 6 months old is lunacy.
Fourth, children, adolescents, and immunocompromised individuals were largely excluded from the trials, so we still lack any data on these important populations.
Also easily dealth with using protocols. Giving it to adults with normal immune systems would give those adults protection.
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That can come up with irrelevant “questions” whose answers are “unknown” does not make evaluation of this vaccine “complicated”. That writer is just wrong headed.
Expanded access is fundamentally different from emergency use authorization, and the distinction between the two is vitally important. Expanded access will preserve the integrity of ongoing large-scale clinical trials under the banner of experimentation while ensuring that high-risk individuals have a pathway to access experimental vaccines that could mean the difference between life and death. An emergency use authorization would not.
That makes sense. But it sounds like expanded access has to be done one patient at a time, which would be unreasonably cumbersome.
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There ought to be some way to make the vaccine available to those at high risk without undermining the trials.
MIke M,
Unfortunately for them, the authors of that article appear to have undergone rather complete recto-cranial inversions, from which their recoveries are very doubtful. I can’t say for sure, but I would bet most have been intimately involved in promulgating bureaucratic garbage rules.
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What they are suggesting would cause even more delay in getting the vaccine to the…. oh say…. billion or so people at risk of serious illness or death. IMHO, they should be completely ignored, and I am confident they will be ignored. Production has already been funded, Phase 3 trials are well underway; results are overwhelmingly positive. We already know that the vaccines reduce the risk of serious illness by 90% or more. Approval for use has already been granted in the UK, and soon will be elsewhere.
SteveF,
Beyone the recto-cranial inversion of that author, there is another issue: The answers to whether or not those questions are relevant to the approval process have nothing to do with math or data analysis. They are all questions that should have been addressed before the protocol was approved as valid for getting approval.
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If the FDA’s position had been that we need the trial to provide empirical data to test whether it prevented people from dying then the protocol should have said we won’t unmask until at least “N” people die. That decision about that objective was around July. The decision was to unmask when “N” people got sick.
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Similar things can be said about “we must show it also works for kids” and so on and so on.
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The reason the FDA didn’t make the approval “prove people don’t die” is that’s not the remotely normal standard. If it were, we wouldn’t have a shingles vaccine. We wouldn’t have a cervical cancer virus vaccine.
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The same can be said for “prove ‘absolute’ risk” is lowered. Yes. Absolute risk (by that guys notion– which is of death) can only possibly be lowered by the actual absolute risk of death– which over the whole population may be 1%. (A fraction that includes the fact that young people don’t die but that elderly have a much higher risk of death. ) So, reducing that by 95% only lowers absolute risk to 0.05% which is… aww geeh… less than 1%. So by omission, this silly author is somehow suggesting that my 87 yo mom should be able to have access to a vaccine that reduced her relative risk hugely because … well… looking at the whole population, the vaccine reduced the “absolute” risk of death by only 1%. The magic in the argument is hidden, but we all know it: Her risk of death if she gets COVID is much higher than 87 yo.
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None of the issues that guy brings up should “complicate” approval now. They were already addressed. Most of them are just stupid. Others are shifty. Others are making up requirements for Covid vaccines that don’t apply to any other vaccine.
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Those pointing to these sorts of arguments often like to say “Because Covid” as some sort of phrase to suggest lockdowns and so ons are over reactions. But here, that argument sure seems to be “Because Covid”, because he’s “worrying” about stupid things that are easily decided when it’s Not Covid.
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That guy is (fortunately) not “the FDA” and can “worry” about whatever he wants.
Expanded access is the use of an investigational new drug product outside of clinical trials to treat patients with serious or immediately life-threatening diseases of conditions when there is no comparable or satisfactory alternate treatment options.
Uhmmm… iow, if the rule is ti’s available only for those with “rious or immediately life-threatening diseases of conditions”, expanded access means no one gets the vaccine. It’s a preventative, not a treatment. (They go on later to explain who this rule is tweaked for two other vaccines. But that tweak would essentially mean everyone can apply and get the vaccine since Covid is now everywhere, not just at a few college campuses. But everyone getting it is precisely what he wants to block.)
So the idea that it should be distributed under that policy is would fall under the category of “logic fail”.
The author says other amazingly stoooopid things.
This was never the intent of emergency use authorization, which was actually designed for counterterrorism measures to address chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear hazards — not necessarily a pandemic.
So what if it was designed for widespread threats of contagion that happened for other reasons. It happens to suit a pandemic well. Not using it because … well.. we really planned it from when everyone was doused with anthrax not for a pandemic is just silly.
We fear that an emergency use authorization for Covid-19 vaccines at this stage of development would not require careful reporting of adverse events and could potentially undermine ongoing and future clinical trials that are still necessary to determine safety and efficacy.
Oh. “They fear”. That’s the argument that these things might happen. Well, there other steps that can be taken to address this fear. Be vigilant about reporting adverse events.
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And.. what is the magic step that suddenly makes Emergency Authorization “undermine” future trials? Their argument works by just “fearing” it might happen without explaining precisely how it would undermine it.
Roughly 40% of reported Covid-19 deaths in the United States have occurred in long-term care facilities such as skilled nursing facilities, assisted living centers, veterans’ homes, and the like, and the virus continues to surge across the United States. While it is important to allow ongoing vaccine trials to finish, we simply cannot wait to inoculate the most vulnerable citizens. Vaccination of high-risk individuals and clinical trials should proceed in concert, with doctors and eligible high-risk patients deciding when benefits of inoculation outweigh risks.
IOW: He wants them to get it. He doesn’t want me to have it. But he doesn’t want to quite say: Sorry Lucia. Your only 61. You don’t have health conditions. I decree you can’t make the decision to want it.
. HE wants to put a protocol in place that doesn’t let me protect myself.
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Nope: Emergency Authorization is the way to go.
The Pfizer Phase II/III trial is complete according to the published protocol. That doesn’t mean they stop monitoring the subjects, just that the protocol objectives to show that vaccine is better than 50% effective has been achieved.
After seeing “peer review” in academia routinely allow gross violations of proper math I’ll say it is refreshing to know the FDA checks the math and the data. It’s another question on whether they are unduly delaying their inspection.
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And they do check the math, and the data. I’ve been through it, it is agonizing sometimes.
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Let me give you a real example. Let’s say you are calculating accuracy for your medical device, and your raw data shows errors of:
0.1, -0.2, 0.0, -0.3, 0.2, 39.7, 0.1, 0.1, -0.3
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See a potential problem for your standard deviation calculation here? This happens almost every test cycle when you have automated measurement and recording. The error is usually a test setup or test execution error, in this case the sensor detached from the patient.
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You cannot just remove that data from the FDA’s view, that will get you in big trouble. You can exclude the data from analysis but you better have a pretty good record of why it happened. The FDA will find it, and will ask you about it. If you don’t have a good documented reason for excluding it, then too bad, so sad, the data lords will instruct you that your device fails the qualification you just spent $50K on.
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These guys (at least the ones I dealt with) knew all the p-hacking tricks and red flags to look for with data analysis.
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Also with some device claims there are known algorithms and statistical methods that are standard, simple enough. However if your claim is a newish or broad such “as resistant to motion artifact” or “no adverse side effects” then the FDA basically tells you “tell the FDA a convincing story” without any formal guidance. They will then examine your data, your test methods, etc. and the data lords will instruct you on whether that passes muster.
Tom Scharf,
OK, the FDA is very careful about approvals…. of anything, device, medication, or vaccine. But that very careful standard is not appropriate in all cases. We have a 1% death rate overall for confirmed cases, but a maximum death rate over 20% for the oldest cohort. What on Earth are they expecting to happen that would reasonably delay approval for those at the highest risk? I see nothing. The trial data are very, very clear. The vaccine will for certain avoid lots of cases of serious illness, and almost certainly avoid a lot of hospitalizations and deaths. At this point the FDA is simply sentencing a fraction of the elderly to death by bureaucratic delay. They should be ashamed of themselves.
“Well, at least we aren’t Australia”
Australia (and for that matter NZ) can take their time approving the vaccine because they cant manufacture locally and are at the back of the queue (probably rightly so) for actually getting the vaccine. Both countries have said March for any actual deliveries, even if approved tommorrow.
I am rather hoping Astrazenica/Oxford will get their act together quickly. The Pfizer vaccine is useless for the Pacific. Enough problems there with normal vaccines https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50625680
If they are going through *the data* to see if there was some sort of mystical magical massaging, ok. But if it’s just “to check the math”…. well.. no that can’t take long. It still shouldn’t take too long to look at “the data”.
But meanwhile we wait.
Phil,
Would the Moderna vaccine work for you guys?
Oh, and evidently, Johnson and Johnson vaccine might be close.
Lucia,
I would not bet on the J&J vaccine. First, by the time it is approved, there will be many hundreds of millions of doses of other vaccines already distributed and injected into patients. Short of some unexpected negative outcome from the m-RNA vaccines, the most critical patients will have already received a vaccine before J&J gets off the starting blocks.
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Second, agencies will become ever more critical about approvals once a couple of other vaccines are approved, and hundreds of millions of doses of those approved vaccines are in the pipeline. Truth is, in the USA about 50 – 60 million people are at significant risk, for most of the rest, it is little more than a cold.
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Once those 50 million are protected, death rates will drop dramatically, and the FDA will be much less motivated to approve another vaccine on an emergency basis. Approval on a “normal track” basis pushes approval to late next year or later, when deaths will be drastically lower, and the crisis effectively over.
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J&J is way late to the party. Really, I just don’t see approval in a reasonable time. It is the FDA after all.
Moderna is obviously better than Pfizer than respect but it is hard to see Pacific island vaccinations (or numerous other places) going well without something that is happy in an ordinary fridge. The Oxford vaccine (if it actually works) has huge advantage in that respect – plus could theoretically at least be manufactured locally.
Phil,
Just wait ’till the winter months and keep the Moderna vaccine outdoors in Christchurch in July (south facing shaddows would be best)… I think Moderna says 30 days at refrigerator temperatures.
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The Pfizer vaccine needs dry ice, but when I was in Wellington years ago, I saw dry ice in a research lab; I expect it is still available in spite of green sensibilities.
J&J’s shot is expected to remain stable for up to two years at that temperature, about -4° Fahrenheit. Once it goes out to distributors and customers, it can be kept stable at 2 to 8° Celcius (a range of about 35.6° to 46.4° Fahrenheit) for up to three months, not much colder than your average refrigerator, Lefebvre said.
Maybe Australia will give it emergency approval. It’s one shot and done also. That’s useful on remote islands.
Steve – LOL!
NZ isnt really a problem for Pfizer, but the Islands are another story altogether. No winter and no dry ice.
The Oxford vaccine has some really weird things going on. The half dose/full dose regimen that worked much better (90% vs 60%) was actually just a mistake in the execution of the protocol. Then they combined data from several different studies in different countries and it was a bit circumspect on how that selection came about. If the Oxford vaccine was hitting the FDA first then I think it would get a very hard look before approval.
Tom,
I agree. The flub on following the protocol (because I think that wasn’t planned) would be a problem. Then the counter-intuitive results.. ?
lucia,
“Scrutinize the data†is perfect bureaucrat speak. It makes you think that important things are happening while conveying zero information because the terms are not defined.
DeWitt,
It can be nothing more than bureaucrat speak. If a spokeperson uses that word in response to a question, they should be asked precisely what activities are involved. Are they requesting and looking at raw data? Is someone internal assigned to plowing through it? If not, they aren’t “scrutinizing data”. They are just having meetings, asking stray questions ans asking others to re-scrutinize.
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What Fauci says certainly hasn’t given any clarity. All I’ve read him say is that our system is “Gold standard” and somehow the UK one is not. But he hasn’t identified any activity the UK actually left out. As far as what he’s said, it looks like “taking a long time” is the same as “careful”. We all know that’s bogus. You can take a long time by simply doing nothing for a while and then cramming all activity into the hasty window at the end.
Fauci’s comments are equivalent to attack as the best form of defense.
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In other news, video evidence of not widespread ballot stuffing in Georgia using the same tactics alleged to have occurred in other states ie clearing out observers and then counting mysterious boxes of votes.
The other perplexing bureau-speak they keep using is that they need a slow meticulous process because people in the US are wary of vaccines. This just doesn’t make a lot of sense. Slow != good, good = good. They can add people to review the raw data faster, they can do rolling reviews ahead of time etc.
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One problem is Trump on the brain, there are some people (especially the media) who don’t want Trump to get any credit. I could care less. Trump wanted to “rush” the vaccine, well so did about a literal billion other people.
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They are apparently reviewing data patient by patient I read somewhere. For the people who aren’t skewed by politics they may be looking for adverse reactions that weren’t noticed by the pharma companies. Pharma is going to be motivated to downplay adverse reactions. The worst case scenario for the FDA is to give approval, a problem crops up later, and that data was already evident in the original submission but missed.
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The FDA said they were going to be transparent, but what they are actually doing yesterday, today, and tomorrow is a mystery to me. Either it isn’t getting reported, or they aren’t actually saying.
Fauci had to apologize to the UK yesterday for inferring their process was sub-standard. He was challenged to point out exactly where their process was inferior and he obviously had no data.
Tom,
Yep. Fauci’s criticism seemed to be based on the claim that “too fast” == “sub-standard”. That’s bunk.
Tom
The FDA said they were going to be transparent, but what they are actually doing yesterday, today, and tomorrow is a mystery to me. Either it isn’t getting reported, or they aren’t actually saying.
Yep. Transparent would mean providing the public a description of what they are doing. This would include telling us what factors take time.
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Even just saying: “We want to have public comment. That means we need to announce two weeks before the meeting” would be useful. Then we outsiders would be informed. They aren’t even doing that.
What’s more, the FDA said in a statement, “rolling review†does not have the same meaning at the European Medicines Agency as in the U.S. “The EMA does not have access to the same scope of data for an investigational product that the FDA has while the product is under development,†the statement said. The FDA said it has “tremendous insight†into the manufacturing processes and preclinical and clinical research that the EMA rolling review would provide.”
Tom, Thanks for that link. At least that’s explaining something!!
I read the Link Tom Scharf provided. This says it all:
This type of analysis, routine for new drug approvals at the FDA, is not legally necessary for emergency use authorizations during a pandemic. But given that Covid-19 vaccines could be given to hundreds of millions of people, the agency decided a thorough review was needed.
IOW, “We didn’t need to do this ponderous, many weeks long review, and it is not required by law, but it as what we wanted.”
There are obviously far too many complete rectocranial inversions at the FDA. Really, these folks haven’t the faintest idea that they are literally sentencing thousands and thousands of people to die for no reason beyond “Well, this is the way we want to do it.” They are evil idiots, disconnected from all reality outside their bureaucratic bubble. Fire them all.
Fauci has many times over the last year said one thing, then when called on it, backtracked.
I’d like to see him at an extended discussion with Rand Paul.
MikeN,
I’d like to see him fired.
SteveF,
And I want a Ferrari. I’m not holding my breath on either of our wishes. Didn’t Biden just say Fauci would be his chief medical adviser or something?
Ed,
Yes. Of course, in the case of thalidomide, the problem they addressed as “trouble sleeping” as opposed dying. For drugs like that,waiting longer isn’t much of a problem.
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Obviously, we also want to avoid birth defects from Covid vaccines. There haven’t been trials with pregnant women. I assume they won’t give emergency approval for pregnant women.
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I’m pretty itchy to see this vaccine. I realize there may be a good reason for the delay but it hasn’t been communicated clearly. That may just be a coms issue, but it’s still an issue.
Lucia,
“I’m pretty itchy to see this vaccine,”
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You will need som calamine lotion. Everything I have read puts your cohort in the last third of those who will get the vaccine, behind homeless people, first responders, prisoners, teachers, politicians (of course), people over 75, people over 65, and bar-hoping 20-somethings, who are said to be ‘dangerous’ super-spreaders.
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My wife (close to your age) told me that as best she could figure, her cohort was in line after about 250 million people. So you can probably cound on vaccine availability some time in late 2021…. assuming toddlers don’t get placed before you.
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It is all so absurd that offering criticism it almost pointless. Give the vaccine to everyone over 60-65 if you want to save lives. Do the other crap if your motives are political.
Lucia,
BTW, My analysis of Florida deaths (first 52,000 conformed cases) placed the life-years lost at a maximum for people who contracted the illness at age 72. All younger and older victims represented lower lost life-years; younger, because many fewer died, older because they would not live as long, even in the absence of covid. I am guessing age 72 will not be the highest priority for the vaccine-misters.
SteveF,
In today’s twitter nooooose, I read that taking low doses of sheep dip might help me avoid covid:
Invermectin
(That it’s an ingredient in sheep dip aside, it looks like this may have anti-viral properties and may be a good prophelaxis. But I’m not going to order sheep dip to take a drop a day, nor am I going to take horse dewormer.
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Notwithstanding the twitterati excitement over a recent test of efficacy as a prophelaxis, I doubt the FDA is going to approve this any time soon. (And yet, I am sure, it will become available under-the-counter somehow. But who the heck knows what else is in the sheep dip or horse paste!)
The I-MASK+ protocol
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I†is for Ivermectin, “MASK†simply means wear a mask, and the “+†is differing amounts of vitamin D3, vitamin C, Quercetin, melatonin, zinc, and aspirin.
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Ivermectin is already FDA approved and in fact does have a well-known safety profile
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I would rather take hydroxychloroquine, zinc and azithromycin than ivermectin and some random collection of other supplements. But it’s moot to me at this point. If ivermectin does work, than almost certainly so does hydroxychloroquine.
Ed Forbes,
Yes. It’s approved. But I can’t just buy invermectin on my own over the counter. I need a prescription. I could buy the sheep dip over the counter….. But that obviously sounds unsafe!
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Heh… I should ask my brother or sister. Sis would definitely refuse. Bro would probably refuse. I need more maleable relatives.
SteveF (Comment #194955)
December 5th, 2020 at 4:18 pm
I am wondering whether age alone should be a criteria for priority in vaccination for Covid-19. Would an 80 year in great shape be less likely to die or have major complications from an infection than a younger person without comorbidities but not otherwise in good shape? One of my daughter-in-laws had a 95 year old grandmother who had Covid-19 and came through with only mild symptoms.
I suspect the politician calculation will be what age group is most likely to vote in the next election.
Kenneth,
We know that the survival rate for people 85+ years old is about 70%, so there is at least a reasonable chance of not dying, no matter your age. I suppose it could be possible to evaluate the risk for each person, including a host of factors. But in practice that seems to me impractical. If you simply give the vaccine to everyone over age x, with x based on population-wide risks, then you can make a very good estimate of number of deaths avoided. IIRC, if x were 65, you eliminate 90+% of deaths.
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Of course, the politically powerful will be at the head of the line, even if those doses don’t make much difference in deaths.
84% reduction in hospitalization with a 95% confidence interval of 50% to 94%.
SteveF (Comment #194717): “The additional data from the Moderna trial is very limited … There were 11 symptomatic cases in the vaccine group and 185 in the placebo group. There were 30 “serious†illnesses, all in the placebo group, one of which led to death.”
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The numbers seem a little off. The control group (15K) is about one in 17K adults in the U.S. During Oct. and Nov., there were 6.3 million new cases in the U.S. So we would expect about 370 cases in the control group. A factor of two difference is believable. But the study participants (at least according to the Pfizer protocol) were told to report any symptoms so that they could get tested. Only a fraction of the symptomatic people in the general public seem to get tested. So the difference would seem to be a lot more than a factor of two.
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During that period there were 62 thousand reported deaths in the U.S., so we might expect 4 in the study. One is consistent with that, but also consistent with a much lower incidence in the trial.
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I guess the Moderna trial was not entirely in the U.S., but rates in Europe are not all that different (I think). Oct. & Nov. is not quite the right comparison period, but I don’t think that would be a big error.
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I don’t know if that means anything. Just seems a bit odd.
Mike M,
I suspect volunteers for a vaccine trial may not have living conditions and personal behavior typical of the general public, and definitely not that of the typical covid-19 case. If I had to make a SWAG, I’d say volunteers for a placebo controlled vaccine study will be richer, more conscientious, and better educated. That alone could easily explain a lower than expected rate of infection in the placebo group.
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In my county in Florida, there is a huge discrepancy in case rates between non-Hispanic and Hispanic populations. Hispanics make up 13.9% of the population but have had at least 31% of documented cases, and likely more… in about 25% of confirmed cases, the patient refuses to disclose their ethnicity. There are lots of undocumented Hispanics around, so refusing to give ethnicity doesn’t surprise me at all.
Luica,
I’d stay away from sheep dip. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep_dip#:~:text=Sheep%20dip%20is%20a%20liquid,%2Dfly%2C%20ticks%20and%20lice.
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Only placebo controlled studies will verify if invermectin actually works or not. I don’t know if any such trials are under way. Two months ago, I would have guessed the vaccines would be quickly approved and given mostly to people actually at risk of death, so there would be much less motivation for a controlled trial of something like invermectin. But with the nightmarish FDA approval process for the vaccines and the even more nightmarish USA distribution priorities, both of which guarantee lots of unnecessary covid-19 deaths among those over 65 for the next ear or more, any treatment which actually reduces the chance of severe illness and death would be very valuable. Of course, chances are very good the FDA would interminable delay approval of off-label use, even with strong evidence of efficacy.
SteveF,
I had the exact same thought you did: Volunteers for the vaccine study differ from the ordinary population. The researchers will try to shift toward ordinary population to the extent they can, but I suspect it’s really hard to avoid the fact that volunteers are likely to be “more aware” of health issues and those who don’t volunteer “less aware”. This would likely be true regardless any other visible demographic feature (i.e. age, race, sex, job category and even level of formal education, etc.)
SteveF,
I posted something about finding the sheep dip and horse paste on Amazon. Someone contacted me. He’s taking the horse paste! He evidently knows other horse-paste consumers. I had a conversation with him in DM on twitter. I asked about the apple-flavor. He says he think it tastes the way WD-40 would taste if you ate WD-40.
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So far no sheep dip consumers have contacted me.
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Yesterdays news out of Argentina was a placebo controlled trial comparing prophylactic use of invermectin drops and caraggeenan nasal spray together. The dose of invermectin was quite low. Out of curiosity I looked at the amount, and 1 tube of horsepaste would be a 3 month’s supply.
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There do seem to be ongoing studies of how well the invermectin works. If there was an over the counter thing available for humans I might be tempted. But I think 1/8 th tsp (or whatever) of horsepaste a day is a bit….well.. not going to do that!)
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So, I have NOT ordered the horsepaste and don’t plan to. It is manufactured very near here. In fact, I drive by the manufacturer on One Tower Lane, Oakbrook Terrace Tower, Oakbrook Terrace, IL 60181 on my way to dance lessons! (Irrelevant to saftey or efficacy, of course. Just noticed it.)
Oh.. I should note the does being “quite low” was compared to the horse paste” . It’s not that low compared to the pills available by prescription on Amazon. Taking the dose the Argentines took would be quite expensive even if your MD gave you a prescription off label.
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So for those who want to self medicate, it looks like you need to go for the tubes of horsepaste. . .
Hhnnnn maybe I misintrepreted the weight of the whole tube for the weigth of active ingredient? Oh… well.. (Still not taking it!)
Ivermectin is an interesting drug…. it led to a share of the Nobel prize for Medicine for its inventors. It is a very potent nerve inhibitor, and kills rapidly via paralysis, but mostly in invertebrates. It is said to not cross the mammalian blood-brain barrier, so even though you are effectively taking a fatal dose of a neurotoxin, not enough of it reaches your brain to cause problems.
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The most interesting thing is that the base material it is produced by a strain of streptomycese bacteria, which produce many antibiotics (eg streptomycin). It is unclear what benefit this (very complicated) molecule infers to the bacterium. Perhaps resistance to viruses (bacteriophages)?
The pill dose of ivermectin is said to be 3 milligrams for people. The tube of apple flavored paste for horses contains ~38 doses of 3 milligrams. Of course, most treatments for parasites are short term; once the worms, lice, etc are dead, then there is no need to keep taking the drug.
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Apparently there have been field trials where everyone in a region takes the drug for some time, and then every mosquito that bites a person dies from paralysis, drastically cutting the local mosquito population. It was reported to be very effective against the spread of malaria.
SteveF
I think the dose in the Argentine trial was 12 mg/week. This is by memory, so it could be wrong. They also used a carageenan spray in their nose 4 x a day. I don’t know the concentration.
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Carageenan is very cheap and easily obtained as a food ingredient. I haven’t found carageenan nasal sprays on amazon. I have found sprayers and, of course, the food ingredient for chefs.
The evil Swedes seem to have gotten lucky again… in spite of nearly 4 thousand confirmed cases per day (equal to 130,000 per day in the States), their death rate per confirmed case sits at about 1 in 300. Still no masks, no lock downs, and no school closures. It must be the devil helping them. It could not possibly be that their policies make more sense than the gestapo-inspired rules we have in the States.
SteveF (Comment #194980): “I suspect volunteers for a vaccine trial may not have living conditions and personal behavior typical of the general public, and definitely not that of the typical covid-19 case.”
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That is certainly true, which is why I said that a factor of two would not surprise me. But I doubt that can explain a larger disparity.
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For instance, race is a big effect. But still, the U.S. has had 82K deaths per 100K overall and 59 deaths per 100K among whites. So even completely excluding minorities would not come close to a factor of two error.
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The only state with over twice the national average deaths is New Jersey. A handful of states, mostly small ones, have had fewer than half the national average deaths.
Mike M,
I think you are not considering how much individual behavior/circumstances change the risk of infection. If the trials offered US$500 to volunteers who completed the trial, I rather suspect the number of cases would have be much, much higher.
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In any case, the slowness of case accumulation really doesn’t matter in evaluating the efficacy…. the two groups differed hugely in outcome. We still have to wait for more details (like the age profile of all cases and especially the age profile of “serious” cases… 4 more days for the Pfizer data, and probably 14 days for the Moderna data.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/mask-wars-revisited-11607118961
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“And yet a national survey from researchers at Harvard, Rutgers, Northeastern and Northwestern throws cold water on any idea of masks as a simple fix. Mask usage increased impressively across the U.S. right into the current outbreaks even as physical separation fell by the wayside. “We find that social distancing has decreased dramatically since the spring, while mask wearing has increasedâ€
“A country full of independent-minded, self-starting people has advantages in many situations, but not in every situation, and not when trying to enlist mass conformity to any stricture. And yet learning does occur.”
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This gives some ammo to the original theory that masks would make people behave with more risk. It might just be pandemic fatigue and the necessity of opening the economy.
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It also throws water on the masks as prophylactic theory. The counter to this is that “it would have been much worse without masks”. Perhaps, but when people use motivating reasoning they stop at whichever level of evidence suits them. Here we have first level evidence of more masks, more disease. If the recent data was less masks, more disease they would have stopped analysis there and brought out the moral megaphones.
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Just like about everything else in the real world, it is a multi-factor phenomena that isn’t easy to parse without isolating things in a lab. My current theory still is they don’t really understand the ups and downs of this thing very well and have a built in reluctance to say that. They fear people will not take their guidance if they admit any amount of ignorance. Over the past few decades I have noticed this more and more, experts (especially public facing) pretending certainty where it is evident there is none. This has become a red flag.
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It’s a complicated world.
Very nice review of the fraudulent PCR testing numbers for virus cases being reported.
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This entire mask and shutdown regime is strictly political
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SteveF (Comment #194993): “I think you are not considering how much individual behavior/circumstances change the risk of infection.”
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Do we actually know that? We assume that. It is a perfectly plausible assumption. But what evidence is there? There is certainly some effect. But is there evidence that it might be more than a factor of two? All real questions.
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But even if it can be a large factor for individuals, we are dealing with a large sample of people for which an effort has been made to make it representative. That would move the average behavior in the sample toward the average behavior of the general population. Seems a bit more than passing strange.
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If it is individual behavior, then there must be a lot of valuable information in who gets sick and who does not.
Tom Scharf (Comment #194994): “This gives some ammo to the original theory that masks would make people behave with more risk. It might just be pandemic fatigue and the necessity of opening the economy.”
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Indeed. It is probably a combination of the two.
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It is human nature that if you convince people that a rabbit’s foot will keep them safe, then many people will take greater risks when provided with a rabbit’s foot. If the rabbit’s foot does not actually work, then those with a rabbit’s foot will suffer more unfortunate outcomes than those without.
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Masks are surely better than a rabbit’s foot. But the effectiveness of masks is probably much closer to a rabbit’s foot than to what the public has been led to believe.
Ed Forbes (Comment #194995): “Very nice review of the fraudulent PCR testing numbers for virus cases being reported.”
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It is good to know that at least one state is now requiring cycle numbers to be reported.
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I would not call the PCR testing fraudulent. I think it is probably well intentioned, but misguided. But inflated numbers do serve the agenda of some who are not well intentioned.
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There are three possible reasons for a positive PCR test. One is an active infection. Another is either a recent infection or a sub-clinical infection. Finally, there are false positives.
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There are legit reasons for the first two, but they ought to be distinguished. Hence the wisdom of reporting cycle number. They last ought to be determined and reported. The scandal is not the testing, it is the worthless reporting.
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Is it normal to do a gel electrophoresis after each cycle of a PCR? I know that can be done, but I would not think it standard. So reporting a meaningful cycle number might not be so easy.
MikeM
Do we actually know that? We assume that. It is a perfectly plausible assumption. But what evidence is there? There is certainly some effect. But is there evidence that it might be more than a factor of two? All real questions.
There is no evidence it can’t be a factor of two. That’s not a big factor as health effects of human behavior go. Also, all the public health advice is based on the assumption that we think behavior has a quite large effect. I would think the burden would be on you to explain why an effect as small as 2 is seen.
for which an effort has been made to make it representative.
“Representative” by race, gender blah… blah…. They aren’t making representative by “level of caution”. They can’t even know that in advance.
If it is individual behavior, then there must be a lot of valuable information in who gets sick and who does not.
Perhaps. But that would be the subject of a different study. Lots of people are reporting demographics of who gets sick by income, age, etc. But they probably aren’t doing it by “whether you volunteer for medical research studies”. If you use the data for the efficacy studies for that, you end up with a circular result. You can’t use that result to check if these illness rates are representative of what you usually get.
Ed,
Like it or not, even if those people are now recovering, they at least were new cases at some point. So the high PCR cycles are still useful for knowing the number of people who got infected. It’s just that they were infectious a bit in the past.
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That’s not “fraudulent”. It’s just that there is a lag in detecting.
Rudy Giuliani, has corona-19 virus. At age 76, he is in the high-risk category for the virus. I wish him a rapid recovery.
Mike M,
I was trying to point out how much the rate of infection can vary in the same county between identifiable groups (hispanic vs non-Hispanic); in this case by a factor of three. These groups go to the same supermarkets, schools, etc. yet have very different rates of infection. Logically, if you stayed always at home and had contact with nobody, you chance of infection is zero… so it seems to me there is no lower bound to how much individual behavior can reduce rate of infection.
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It is obviously true that the rates of infection for the vaccine trial volunteers was much lower than the general population. I just don’t find it surprising.
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I do think more information about the trial volunteers would be interesting and probably informative (income, education, etc) but I doubt much will be released. What surely will be released (also interesting) are age profiles for those who became ill and seriously ill.
OK_Max,
An average 76 year old has about an 18% chance of death from covid-19. Rudy appears to be in better than average health, and will surely have access to the same “compassionate use” drugs that Trump had. Chances are good that Rudy will be fine.
I hope for the best for Rudy too. I’m sure he’ll get something more than calcitrol or invermectin!
lucia (Comment #194999): “all the public health advice is based on the assumption that we think behavior has a quite large effect.”
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Indeed. And all the results indicate that the effect is nowhere near as large as assumed.
I see that some unnamed (or unnoticed names on my part) commentators are claiming that the recent Covid-19 surge was accompanied by more masking wearing adherence and less social distancing. How do these people determine these changes? I have never seen how or where they get their information.
As I said in a previous post my observation for the local area in IL is that people have not changed their behavior with regards to mask wearing or social distancing and yet the cases have gone up dramatically in the recent surge. I get input for friends and relatives in other areas of the state and country and I have not heard of this behavior change. Are there some super spreader events that have gone undetected?
I saw Rudy G on 2 different occasions talking on TV. Both times he was dripping sweat and seemed to be out of breath when he was talking. I thought he might have had Covid-19 at that time, but that was more than a week ago. He was obviously not bedridden but he does not look in very good shape to me – even without the sweat and breathing issue.
Kenneth,
Seems to me everything Pritzker does makes the situation in Illinois worse. Maybe if Pritzker resigned the state would make progress. 😉
I think you can only measure mask wearing rates from surveys which I believe CDC does.
Despite Mike’s objection, I think you have to invoke some kind of magic to decouple infection rate from contact rate in the absence of masking. Contact rate is surely behaviour driven. Massively reducing the contact rate has been the way Australia and NZ have eliminated the virus (at the moment) from all but managed quarantine.
Tom Scharf (Comment #195015)
December 6th, 2020 at 9:39 pm
Tom, the data in that survey appeared to mostly become level in June and not correspond to the timing of the current surge. They should have asked the people who they were going to or did vote for as a proxy for validity of responses.
There were no uncertainty limits put on the data and the wording in the report indicated an agenda.
I have linked a plot of the Covid cases where I reside in Wheaton IL from March through November 2020. In my observations, if anything, people are more adhering to social distancing. Mask wearing has been near 100 percent for the entire period and thus should not be a factor.
Phil Scadden (Comment #195012): “Massively reducing the contact rate has been the way Australia and NZ have eliminated the virus (at the moment) from all but managed quarantine.”
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Do you have any evidence for that claim, other than the post hoc fallacy? It seems to me that what you guys have done is mostly to stop the virus at your borders. Haven’t you been quarantining infected people? That should make a difference.
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Lots of countries have greatly reduced contacts with little apparent benefit and lots of obvious harm. Other countries, like Japan, have done pretty well without drastic measures. Correlation is not causation, but lack of correlation pretty well undermines the claim of causation.
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The great tragedy of science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
– Huxley
Sweden has ended its experiment with voluntary restrictions. Their death rate is going up rapidly.
I should have included a link to some interesting Covid-19 statistics from the county where I reside which is DuPage with a population of approximately 925K. It gives me a different perspective than what I hear from national news reports.
Mike M.
Stopping people at borders and quarantining is reducing contact rate. Obviously, reducing it specifically among identified people does a better job than just having everyone isolate. But isolation works because if the uninfected don’t contact the infected , the uninfected don’t get sick.
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There isn’t anything difficult in understanding this.
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BTW: Japans rates have been rising recently.
Most people think Japan had a defacto lockdown because the people happened to voluntarily social distance. So they aren’t an counter example to the idea that lower contact reduces spread.
You need to not assume the only way to get less contact is through an actual law or order enacting a lockdown. What matters is whether or not people isolate.
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Chicago had a “stay at home” type order. People still partied on the south side. The same is happening in NYC.
lucia (Comment #195046): “Stopping people at borders and quarantining is reducing contact rate. Obviously, reducing it specifically among identified people does a better job than just having everyone isolate.”
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I agree. But Phil Scadden did not say that they selectively and thoughtfully reduced contact. He credited their success to an across the board lockdown.
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lucia: “But isolation works because if the uninfected don’t contact the infected , the uninfected don’t get sick.”
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Isolation of everyone is not possible and no society has come even close to attempting it. Isolating the infected is at least somewhat possible and might work. The lockdowns have been partial; banning some things and allowing others. They have caused huge damage, to no apparent effect. Probably because there has been little effort to actually isolate the infected.
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lucia: “There isn’t anything difficult in understanding this.”
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Indeed. Which is why I am puzzled as to why so many people can’t seem to understand it.
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lucia: “BTW: Japans rates have been rising recently.”
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Yeah, their per capita rate has reached nearly 3% of what we have in the U.S. And it seems to be leveling off.
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lucia: “Most people think Japan had a defacto lockdown because the people happened to voluntarily social distance. So they aren’t an counter example to the idea that lower contact reduces spread.”
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Once again, we have the madness of citing the success of not locking down as evidence for the effectiveness of locking down.
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The Japanese have continued going to work and riding public transit. No doubt, there has been some modification of behavior, but far less than here. So either there is a sweet spot for the right amount of modification (highly unlikely) or there are certain measures far short of a lockdown that are actually effective.
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lucia: You need to not assume the only way to get less contact is through an actual law or order enacting a lockdown.
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I am NOT assuming that. I am complaining about all the idiots who ARE assuming that.
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lucia: “What matters is whether or not people isolate.”
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For that to make sense, you need to define what you mean by “isolate”.
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I think it makes sense to avoid certain things, like they do in Japan. I think it makes sense to actually isolate those who are infectious, like they seem to do in places that have been successful. I think it makes sense for people to behave prudently.
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I think it makes no sense at all to implement top-down policies that are both massively damaging and ineffective.
MikeM
He credited their success to an across the board lockdown.
No he didn’t. He wrote
Despite Mike’s objection, I think you have to invoke some kind of magic to decouple infection rate from contact rate in the absence of masking. Contact rate is surely behaviour driven. Massively reducing the contact rate has been the way Australia and NZ have eliminated the virus (at the moment) from all but managed quarantine.
That’s attributing the reduction to a drop in the contact rate. It is true that Aus and NZ did it by accross the board lockdown, but he is attributing the control to the drop in the contact rate.
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Isolation is not possible and no society has come even close to attempting it.
You are trying to shift the question from whether or not reducing contact works to how and if reducing contact can be achieved. We can certainly discuss both questions, but make no mistake: reducing contact does work.
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Beyond that, it is not utterly impossible. Societies have isolated the individual infectious people (or nearly done so) in the past. Typhoid Mary was effectively isolated. That isolation did prevent her from passing infection.
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How well this can be achieved at larger scale is debatable. But as I noted: you’ve switched to a different issue from the one we were previously discussing.
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we have the madness of citing the success of not locking down as evidence for the effectiveness of locking down
No one here has cited the success of not locking down as evidence for locking down. You are simply mistaken about what others are saying.
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lucia: You need to not assume the only way to get less contact is through an actual law or order enacting a lockdown.
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I am NOT assuming that. I am complaining about all the idiots who ARE assuming that.
YOU are the one using Japan’s low rate as evidence that reduced contact doesn’t work. In fact: It is believed they did reduce contact and more than some other countries.
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I think you need to read more carefully and notice when people saying “reduced contact means X” they actually mean “reduced contact means X”. You seem to be putting words in their mouth and insisting that when they say “contact” they mean “lockdown”. They don’t.
MikeM
ucia: “What matters is whether or not people isolate.â€
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For that to make sense, you need to define what you mean by “isolateâ€.
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I think it makes sense to avoid certain things, like they do in Japan. I think it makes sense to actually isolate those who are infectious, like they seem to do in places that have been successful. I think it makes sense for people to behave prudently.
I think we both used isolate the same way: Stay away from other people.
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I think it makes no sense at all to implement top-down policies that are both massively damaging and ineffective.
Other than you, in the recent posts no one has been debating whether top-down policies work.
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Others are only discussing whether people keeping apart- especially infectious fro non-infectious– reduces transmission. It’s rather obvious that it does. More over you know it does because you think it makes sense to isolate those who are infectious from those who are not infected.
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That means, in fact, you do know that reducing contact does reduce transmission. It has to do so.
I should have included a link to some interesting Covid-19 statistics from the county where I reside which is DuPage with a population of approximately 925K. It gives me a different perspective than what I hear from national news reports.
As an aside, while I agree that contact is a key to the spread of Covid-19, my quandary is that if the observed contact has not increased significantly what other factor(s) might be operating here to increase the infection rate in the latest surge. If it is mostly due to the approaching winter weather in the NH it is going to be a long winter.
Kenneth,
It might be winter. Lots of respitory diseases get worse in winter. It may be vitamin D. It may be more crowding indoors. Even if people do perceive the increased contact, it could be happening.
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Yep. It could be a long winter.
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Jim laughs at me… but I bought carageenan and nasal spray bottles. 🙂
DeWitt,
I am very surprised the Swedes have instituted binding rules. Their case counts did rise rapidly in November, but their death rate remains relatively low compared to the number of cases (Worldometers 7-day trailing average). Unless there is some problem with the worldometers data, the number of deaths per day in Sweden peaked on November 24, and have been falling since then (now about 1 death per 300 confirmed cases). 85% of deaths in Sweden happened in the spring and early summer, and only 15% since the beginning of November.
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Sweden has a rate of death per million population of 698, 24th in the world, and lower than many countries in Europe and elsewhere. It will be interesting to see what effect the new rules in Sweden have.
Lucia,
I understand ivermectin is a active drug substance, with known strong physiological properties. But carageenan is just a water soluble (edible!) ionic polymer from sea weed. What is the proposed reason a carageenan solution sprayed into you nose would make any difference?
I do only prescription drugs, lucia, so I had to google carrageenan to find out what it is. The link below would indicate some caution in its use – not that you would follow my advice any more than my kids do.
Lucia,
Never mind, I found a reference to a placebo controlled study with a nasal spray of the iota form of carageenan as a nasal spray as a treatment for rhino-virus colds. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4595062/
The study indicated subjective improvement in symptoms relative to the placebo at P~0.04, but fell short of statistical significance for speed of viral clearance (P~0.1).
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Other studies have noted statistically significant reductions in cold symptoms, and some improvement in viral clearance.
SteveF,
I found several papers. Basically, it’s in the “not absolutely proven”, but also “cheap/safe/easy”. There is an over the counter nasal spray available at least on ebay.
BETADINE COLD DEFENCE NASAL SPRAY 20ML (Iota-Carrageenan Spray)
It costs $20.97 for 20 ml, which would be easy. But if used as a prophalixis, that’s too expensive. You can get the food grade Carrgeenan ingredients and bottles very cheaply.
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So basically: either I’ll be taking what amounts to placebo, or something with some non-zero efficacy. But it’s cheap and safe.
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Might not work. OTOH, masks may not work. I’m not going to advocate everyone do this. I will report if mixing is messy. (Do I have to heat? Etc.)
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The other thing that might be useful from invitro is Xytol. It’s food but can give people gas (like beans do). Its used in some sugar free gums and mints (including some Mentos). If I chewed gum or ate mints I’d probably switch to those. It’s basically “why not?”
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I’m not going to chew gum just for the Xytol though.
I should add: the papers I found were for cargeenan and common cold or influenza, not Covid-19.
Kenneth,
For what it is worth: The concerns appear to be based on the possibility (not demonstrated) that the polymer could be hydrolyzed (broken down) by stomach acids into small pieces which are known to be harmful. The ether links in the polymer chain are quite resistant to hydrolysis, and certainly not expected to hydrolyze under the temperature/pH conditions in the stomach. The FDA and other food safety agencies consider carageenan a dietary fiber.
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All of the claims/worries in your linked article appear to be based on pure speculation, not actual data. Carageenan has been used as a food additive for over a thousand years.
The biggest factor in the virus spread is unlikely social distancing or masks, it is an uninfected population exposed to an uncontained outbreak of a very contagious virus. The virus gets a vote, and it’s vote unfortunately includes contagious people without symptoms.
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This thing behaves more like forest fires IMO, there are certain things that make them worse, but they pop up and go out based on many factors beyond Smokey the Bear’s guidance. We should do what we can, but the toolbox is pretty sparse.
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There’s a reason Ebola is not currently progressing through the US population, it was successfully contained. It’s also not as contagious as covid. The US lost the covid containment battle early, and has been in pandemic management mode ever since. It’s not clear the US could have ever avoided it given it’s open border, tourism, and large amount of business travel. If you examine population contact rates before covid, it probably matches the outbreak centers pretty closely.
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China managed to clamp down on it with very restrictive measures, if you can believe their data. It took population level testing and empty streets.
Lucia,
Iota-carageenan is what appears to have been used in all the studies. The iota grade has a medium level of sulfation (sulfation is what makes the polymer soluble). I do not know if all food grade carageenan is the iota grade or not. The extent of sulfation on the polymer controls both solubility and the reaction with divalent ions like Ca+2. Higher sulfation leads to stronger binding of calcium ions and the formation of a stronger (more solid) gel when in contact with calcium ions.
Tom Scharf,
I agree that is is unlikely a country like the USA (or for than matter, lots of other developed countries with high travel levels) could have contained the virus at low levels like Japan. But I do think there are real differences in effectiveness of policies. For example, Belgium and next-door Netherlands have vastly different death rates per million population, different by a factor of 2.6 times. This shows up as well in the number of deaths per confirmed case (although you have to be careful with this measure since there are differences in efficiency of testing).
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When the nightmare is over, I think it will turn out that isolating/protecting the elderly will be recognized as the biggest factor in explaining differences in death rates.
Three more days to the FDA hearing on the Pfizer vaccine.
SteveF (Comment #195063)
December 7th, 2020 at 11:19 am
Yeah but, Steve, I thought we were being super cautious here like spraying stuff up our noses. I personally will be spraying that stuff on my mask.
Kenneth,
When it dries out on your mask, I don’t expect it will make much difference… it will be a hard surface on the fibers. Of course, it might not make much difference in your nose either.
SteveF,
I’ve ordered iota from Amazon! They also had kappa.
Kenneth,
I read those warnings. They are from the sort of “health food”, “food purity types”. Generally, they are against everything that is remotely processed. So I do take their warnings with a huge block of salt.
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I did also read the acid/base processing issue. The FDA cleared this. Sure they’ve made mistakes. But all my life I’ve been aware of the sort of “food purity” people. Collectively, they will object to everything. Pasturization? Some think that’s bad. I think you are supposed to be drinking straight from the cow.
I personally will be spraying that stuff on my mask.
I thought about that too. 🙂
Lucia, thanks for making those clarifications to Mike. I might go further. I do believe, with a couple of centuries of germ theory behind us, that Covid19 is spread from an infectious person to others that they are contact with. I would further project that the no. of people a person will infect is closely related to no. of people they are in contact with and nature of the contact.
The hassle with testing any hypothesis on contact rate is that infection rate would be dependent on absolute contact rate which varies enormously not only between cultures but within a country or even a county. We only have measures of change in contact rate from a base line.
Lockdowns, NZ or China style, work by reducing contacts to non-interacting bubbles where the virus rapidly runs out of steam. Huge cost.
Tracing and isolating every single contact is far more effective. Evidence from the large no. of countries, particularly in Asia that are doing it. We have had a no. of border incursions and undoubtedly will get more, but so far test and trace has been effective without restriction except for the belately discovered August infection which used a local semi-lockdown as well.
The trouble with test and trace is capacity. If every contact has 20 other effective contacts in a 3 day period, then capacity is quickly overwhelmed. Getting a very significant proportion of the population to reduce contact rate (or effective contact rate by wearing masks) seems a key component when contact-tracing is being used. And of course, contacts and infected people also need to really isolate. Compliance on that has to happen as well.
I agree that protecting the elderly is key to low death rate but when the elderly need assistance or live in multi-generational households, then this is tough. Unless you have near-instant results, even daily testing isnt effective. You are relying on PPE. Both PPE and testing capacity were in short supply at start of pandemic.
Iota-carrageenan is effective against a wide range of viruses, enveloped (herpes simplex viruses 1 and 2, human cytomegalovirus, vesicular stomatitis virus, Sindbis virus, influenza virus and human immunodeficiency virus9,13,18–20,22) and non-enveloped (hRV,21 human papillomavirus10) ones, with a vast number of different viral and cellular receptor molecules involved in the infection process.33 This rules out a specific interaction of iota-carrageenan with viral attachment proteins and demonstrates that its mode of action is unspecific and solely physical. Based on these considerations, we propose that the antiviral activity of carrageenan is based on a two-step-mechanism:
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*first, iota-carrageenan forms a viscous layer at the mucosa, in which virus particles entering the nasal cavity become trapped. Therefore, they cannot infect mucosal cells; primary infection is prevented.
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*Second, newly synthesized virus particles that are excreted from the cells adhere to the carrageenan film as well, resulting in an inhibition of secondary infection. This leads to a significant reduction of viral load in the nasal fluid and hence a reduction of duration of disease.23–26
This mechanistic scenario is further supported by permeation experiments as described by Hebar et al34 in which the permeation behavior of methyl anthranoyl-labeled iota-carrageenan on bovine nasal mucosa was evaluated at pH 7.5 (healthy nasal mucosa) and pH 5.5 (infected nasal mucosa). No permeation was observed at both pH values over a period of 3 hours, indicating that carrageenan was still present on the surface as a film. We then wanted to know how long carrageenan stays in the nasal mucosa before it is removed by the mucociliary clearance system. To this end, we performed an adapted saccharin test, which was first described by Andersen et al35 in 1974 to evaluate the time to taste clearance in the presence and absence of 0.18% iota-carrageenan. We conducted a cross-over study in which the nasal mucociliary clearance (NMC) time was determined in 5 healthy volunteers (4 females, 1 male; age 32–59 years) in a double blinded setup. To this end, two nasal spray formulations containing glycyrrhizin as a taste marker with and without 0.18% iota-carrageenan were prepared and blinded. 140 µL of test formulation were applied into each nostril; the time of application, the first detection of taste and the time of absence of taste were noted. From these data, NMC mean values (± SD) were calculated for both groups. The mean NMC time was 127 (± 43) minutes in the carrageenan-free group; when carrageenan was present, NMC was extended by 100.78% to 255.8 (± 163.38) minutes. From these data, we conclude that carrageenan forms a protective layer on the mucosa, which stays for about 4 hours. During this time, the mucosa is protected from viral infection.
Of course this is speculation. But there are experiments showing some effectiveness in people who already had colds. Another didn’t achieve significance, but the authors noted they enrolled people who thought they were coming down with a cold. Turned out many in both placebo and treated group never did. So in the end, the test lacked power because not enough people go sick in either group.
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There is “enough” evidence that the nasal spray with these ingredients is approved in the EU and in a number of other countries. But as I noted, what I can get on ebay is expensive relative to the raw ingredients. So I ordered raw ingredients. I’ll report whether it’s a PITA to mix and use. Obviously, I won’t be providing results of any sort of scientific study.
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I will spray some on a mask to see if it affects breathability, or other features of the mask for Ken. (Hey… I’m making spray. I might as well spray and see what it does to the mask!)
Lucia,
If you are going to put some on a mask, then it might be easier to form a very dilute solution (~1%) and just soak the mask, wring it out, and let it dry. That will coat all the fibers, and minimize obstruction. If the cloth gets stiff…. then maybe too concentrated. Do you have a balance? If not, and you have a 1 ml syringe, then you can make a pretty good balance with a12″ wooden ruler, a couple of condiment cups, some epoxy adhesive and a round pen.
I don’t have a balance. I figure I can make a solution that’s approximately 0.12% iota-carrageenan/0.5% sodium saline using volume measurements– just like cooking. I’m not making this for sale so if it’s 0.13% or 0.11%, that can’t be a huge deal. I do have a kitchen scale, but it’s for largish- masses compared to what I’ll mix up.
I did think of dipping. The only advantage of spraying is economy. I can probably try spraying on the way one might do spray starch when ironing. I can report whether the mask has a film, seems sticky, crackly or whatever bad features it might have.
Of course none of that would tell us if spraying the mask had any hope of being useful. (Some reading might! 🙂 )
Lucia,
The bulk density of powdered materials varies a lot. I don know what the bulk densities of the materials you will be using. Table salt is probably not far from 1g/ml bulk density, but carageenan? No way to say. You can judge the bulk density by measuring the volume for the weight of powder you receive. Good luck.
SteveF,
My plan was to measure the volume of the 4 oz batch to get the bulk density. It shouldn’t be too difficult.
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I suspect the purpose of the salt is mostly as a preservative. But yes, that packs down nicely and I can measure the mass of a cup worth. After that, I can use volume.
The salt plus sodium carageenate in the mixture are set to be close to the osmotic strength of body fluids… neither too high nor too low in osmotic pressure. Mucous membranes (nose, throat, eyes, etc) like contacting osmotically neutral liquids, which neither swell them (plain water) nor dehydrate them (sea water). Only very much higher salt concentrations (like in salt cured foods) act as a preservative…. mainly by sucking the water out of any pathogen that might try to grow on the salt-preserved food.
Ah! Ok. I knew we salted things to prevent fungal and bacterial growth. But obviously, I had no idea how much salt is required for that!
Looks like it’s the Northeast’s time back in the box again. 7 day case load:
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CN: +76%
MA: +92%
NJ: +24%
NY: +42%
NH: +63%
RI: +48%
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There was a Thanksgiving bump in total US cases. Xmas likely to be worse. The WP notes:
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“As of Thanksgiving, covid-19 had been documented in every U.S. county except the country’s smallest, Kalawao County, Hawaii, which is home to fewer than 100 people and is so remote that it was the site of a leper colony.”
SteveF (Comment #195054)
December 7th, 2020 at 10:49 am
I am very surprised the Swedes have instituted binding rules.
Sweden’s chief epidemiologist has now decided that his quest for herd immunity is not “ethically justifiable”.
The FDA posted the pre-meeting document summarizing the trial results. Figure 2 on page 27 tells the story: 10-11 days after the first dose (and long before the second dose) the rate of illness in the vaccine group dropped instantly by 90+% compared to the placebo group. There is no visible change in rate of illness after the second dose. So there is protection against illness provided almost immediately.
The rate of new illness was identical in the two groups before 10 days post vaccination.
SteveF (Comment #195121): “10-11 days after the first dose (and long before the second dose) the rate of illness in the vaccine group dropped instantly by 90+%”
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How is that possible? There is no way that there were enough cases to provide that sort of time resolution. Are they making a correction to the date to determine date of infection?
MikeM,
I wondered the same thing. How can they know the drop in the rate of illness that fast? I guess I’d have to look at the table. 🙂
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The same graph is in the Pfizer submission.
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The cumulative rate of infection curve for the vaccine group looks almost flat out to the end of the data… a little over 3 months from first dose, so there is good evidence the efficacy lasts at least that long. The long term efficacy will be better defined over the coming months via followup monitoring.
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The handling of the vaccine is also described, and the -70C storage now makes more sense. A 5-dose vial is “hydrated” with saline just before use (1.8 ml total volume after hydration; 0.3 ml each with some extra volume to account for syringe loses), and has to be used within 5 days to avoid loss of efficacy. Apparently the active material is ‘lyophilized’ (freeze-dried), then stored in a dry state at -70 to avoid degradation. So from the POV of distribution and handling, the Moderna vaccine is much easier.
Mike M, Lucia,
Look at the graphic of cumulative cases. The “knee” in the data at 10-11 days is very clear.
SteveF,
Wow!
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-design.html
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“You may be surprised to learn that of the trio of long-awaited coronavirus vaccines, the most promising, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, which reported a 94.5 percent efficacy rate on November 16, had been designed by January 13. This was just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public”
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Obviously it’s a bit more complicated to test and get to market, but interesting that it was that quick. A future pandemic with a higher mortality could potentially be rolled out quicker. The discussion of having some baseline parts of a vaccine pre-tested might be worth noting.
Lyophilization is often done to avoid the use of extreme storage conditions to prevent degradation during transport. I’d take -80 as an ideal, not as an operational necessity.
“Among 3410 total cases of suspected but unconfirmed COVID-19 in the overall study population, 1594 occurred in the vaccine group vs. 1816 in the placebo group.”
SteveF (Comment #195126): “Look at the graphic of cumulative cases. The “knee†in the data at 10-11 days is very clear.”
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Not clear at all. The text says “approximately 14 days”. That might be so. But one should always be extremely cautious in interpreting highly autocorrelated time series. It is clear that there seems to be an effect by by 3 weeks or so. Even two weeks seems odd.
MikeM
I think the existence of a knee is very clear. You are quibbling about dating the knee at it’s “beginning” vs “middle” vs “clearly finished bending” date. Knees have curvature in time. These are different times. But there is definitely a knee.
Here is the most troubling thing about the data:
The original criterion for a “first look” was 32 cumulative cases In both arms, starting 7 days after the second dose. Figure 2 strongly suggests that original criterion would have shown very clear evidence of efficacy. The delay by the FDA to 90+ cases after the second dose looks to me like nothing but naked politics, and probably cost Trump the election.
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The cynic in me notes that the first look data release took place after the election, on the day that the Pfizer CEO and the Pfizer CFO had both scheduled “insider sales” of shares worth many millions of dollars. These sales had been scheduled with knowledge of the near certainty of data release happening before the sale date. I can imagine the FDA/Pfizer CEO having the conversation:
FDA: “We want you to not do the analysis until after the November election.”
CEO: “OK, but we have to do it in time for me to make a fortune selling shares…. the date is set, and I can’t change it. If the data is not released before the sale, I will lose a fortune!”
FDA: “Fine, just make sure it doesn’t happen until several days after the election.”
CEO: “Agreed.”
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I can only imagine the fire the CEO must have lit under his staffs’ behinds when they delayed the analysis even more, and risked passing the scheduled stock sale date!
Lucia,
“But there is definitely a knee.”
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Not only that, the knee happens long before a second dose of vaccine…. showing clear protection from illness from even a single dose. The document notes the protection, but adds that since there was no “single dose” arm, it is not possible to draw strong statistical conclusions. But to me it isa pretty damned obvious a single dose is protective.
SteveF,
Yep. Looks like one does protects. Protocol requires them to stick with what they planned to test. . .
Tom Scharf,
” A future pandemic with a higher mortality could potentially be rolled out quicker.”
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For certain. The m-RNA incorporated into the liposome particles in the Moderna vaccine can be rapidly synthesized once the target sequence is known. (see for example: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0142961217307639#:~:text=2.2.,to%20the%20natural%20eukaryotic%20mRNA.) The liposome delivery scheme would be the same.
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Problem is, there is no limit to the delays the FDA can force, no matter the circumstance, so if there ever were a much higher mortality rate pandemic, I expect the FDA would not even take the higher mortality rate into consideration. As the covid vaccine approval process demonstrates, the FDA is an inherently evil and stupid organizartion.
” Republican state officials in Texas sued Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan in the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday in a long-shot bid to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, an effort election experts derided as nearly certain to fail, marking the latest in a deluge of far-fetched lawsuits GOP interests have filed to overturn the election results.” Source: Forbes online, Dec.8, 2020
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May be another far-fetched lawsuit, but it could help raise money for Trump. I wonder if there’s a downside to all the lawsuits challenging the election. I’m not sure “poor loser” is a downside.
For Trump poor loser may not be a down side.
Washington Post: September 26, 2019 :
“Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate president†and suggested that “he knows†that he stole the 2016 presidential election in a CBS News interview to be aired Sunday.”
…
“In June, former president Jimmy Carter used similar language to diminish Trump’s presidency. Carter said that in his view Trump lost the 2016 election and was put in office by the Russians. Asked if he considered Trump to be illegitimate, Carter said, “Based on what I just said, which I can’t retract.—
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We won’t even bother with the “Gore won” endless diatribes.
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Politicians don’t admit defeat very easily. These claims are either fact based legitimate reporting, others are far fetched, it depends on your point of view I guess.
OK_Max,
We have just endured four years of totally baseless claims that Trump was not a legitimate President. It should not be surprising that Trump is playing the same game but with stronger evIdence. If Republicans retain control of the Senate, then you can expect a slow rate of approval of Biden appointments, just like the Democrats did to Trump. The press, conveniently forgetting recent history, will blow a gasket or three.
42% of the Moderna study participants were either over 65 or suffered from one of several co-morbidities that put them at risk of sever disease. The results suggest that vaccination of those at risk will eliminate most all deaths from covid-19, since people below 65 and without co-morbidities are a quite low risk of severe illness. Since it was a randomized 50:50 study and none of the 11 severe cases were in the vaccine group, the odds of that happening by chance are (I think): 1/(2^11), or P=0.00048….. not bad.
42% of the Moderna study participants were either over 65 or suffered from one of several co-morbidities that put them at risk of sever disease.
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Nice!
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Dr. Scott sez: 2021 looks to be a rapidly improving year.
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I promise not to pollute this thread with anymore gloom!
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And, since pandemic lockdowns are known to cause social upheavals ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolefisher/2020/03/21/historyand-psychologypredict-riots-and-protests-amid-pandemic-lockdowns/?sh=c2408f914a64 ),
then perhaps post covid, our mass insanity will resolve.
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🙂
And the raging outbreak in the US means the trials will end sooner!
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I think about 42% of the general population has these co-morbidities depending on which ones they are talking about, so I don’t think they selected for them, but it does mean they likely didn’t select to have them not part of the trial.
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It looks like the results are pretty much the same as previous +- a few subjects. All good news to have two different vaccines under production. Hopefully there won’t be a bottleneck that inhibits the total number of doses. I read in the WSJ that Corning vials might become a limiting factor.
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We are still months away from getting that two shot vaccine in our bodies and effective (takes a month once you start). The current US outbreak will have peaked and diminished by then, at least let’s hope so.
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The population evidently won’t tolerate a strict lockdown anymore, even though now would have been a much better time to do it versus last spring. One lesson to learn here is you don’t lockdown the local population early when the outbreak is already uncontained because they won’t tolerate it later when it might be more effective. The timing of these things is a guessing game.
Tom Scharf,
Yes. I read Moderna is applying for approval in early December. Moderna expects to have enough for… (gotta google..) something like 10 million doses. Pfizer is more. That’s not enough to protect anywhere near the number of people who will want protection. But between the current rate of infection (sigh) and the vaccine, there could be a sizeable dent in the pandemic by March.
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I’d rather get the vaccine than the disease. 🙂
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I think part of resisting lockdown is not entirely believing it works. Another part is thinking it’s ok as long as other people are locked down. (That prominent politicians are seen violating doesn’t help this.) Another, is, of course, just being tired of all the partial lockdown.
BTW: Moderna’s safety trials involve 30,000 participants
https://www.channel3000.com/moderna-says-its-covid-19-vaccine-is-effect-putting-a-second-shot-closer-to-us-approval/
Normally, Phase 3 trials appear to involve 300-3000
https://www.fda.gov/patients/drug-development-process/step-3-clinical-research
Obviously, you can’t catch long term side effects in a short time. BUT these are very large trials.
Lucia,
Considering that New York and California have floated the idea of penalties for family gatherings over the coming holidays, I suspect the resistance to lockdowns will only grow. But I think the biggest reason people resist continuation of draconian restrictions is that they do real economic and social damage. It is not political, it’s practical.
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I am betting that the FDA is going to delay approvals of both vaccines for as long as possible. It is what bureaucracies do. That fact they will be sentencing lots of people to death for no good reason won’t matter a bit to the FDA. I will be shocked if anyone outside the trials gets the vaccine before January. Count also on politicians being at the head of the line when it finally happens.
Yes, politicians doing what they do.
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States Vow Extra Scrutiny of Coronavirus Vaccine
Special committees, mostly in Democratic-led states, will seek to reassure the public that an F.D.A.-approved vaccine is safe and effective amid doubts about the Trump administration’s virus response.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/16/us/coronavirus-vaccine-states-trump.html
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“The committees — most of them in states led by Democratic governors — are in part a response to the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic and concerns that political considerations would influence vaccine approvals.
“The people of this country don’t trust this federal government with this vaccine process,†Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York said in September when announcing his state’s vaccine committee, led by a Nobel-winning virologist.”
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“Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said the F.D.A.’s transparency and guidelines helped assuage the fears of many public health experts who felt “the White House was putting their thumb on the scale in a very big way.â€
Now, he said, he was “absolutely confident in the F.D.A. process—
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Obviously the Trump vaccine is so much different than the Biden vaccine. Everything has changed. Thank goodness our unbiased public health experts are here for trust and guidance now. Hopefully the Minneapolis city council will also weigh in with their recommendation.
I would be fine with Illinois getting vaccine before NY. 🙂
Lucia,
“I would be fine with Illinois getting vaccine before NY.”
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Sure, and I would be fine with Florida getting the vaccine before NY. But I don’t think it is going to work out that way; there are too many cooks in the kitchen for the process to be anything but a political nightmare. States like NY and California will get in the way of distribution, and nobody will get the vaccine until the craziest of the crazies have delayed the end of the pandemic for as long as possible. Kill 25,000 extra? Who cares, exercising political power over everything is far more more important.
lucia: “I would be fine with Illinois getting vaccine before NY.”
I’ve heard lots of talk about who gets the vaccine first, usually mentioning medical personnel & first responders at the head of the list. Not so much about geography…but it would make sense to direct the vaccine to areas with high current rates. IL before NY based on that criterion.
But IL would be behind SD, MN, IA, ND, & a half-dozen other states. (Going by yesterday’s new case count at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ . Weekly counts would be more appropriate but that takes work.)
Lucia,
Looks like the reactions to the vaccine after the second dose are significant (fever, body aches, headache, tiredness, etc.), but they probably don’t last much past 24 – 48 hours. No fun, but better than severe illness.
Tom Scharf,
““Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said the F.D.A.’s transparency and guidelines helped assuage the fears of many public health experts who felt “the White House was putting their thumb on the scale in a very big way.â€
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IOW, the FDA insisting on a delay in releasing the results from Pfizer trial until after the election, ensuring Trump’s defeat, means that the FDA was not really working for Trump after all, and so they can now be trusted.
I don’t have much of an opinion on the timing of the announcements. They can easily cover up any intentional delay and I would not be surprised that it was “managed”. The important clock starts ticking when the formal submission for emergency use is sent to the FDA. Standard FDA process means slow and painful but the eyes of the world are watching this time. After their initial testing failures they cannot screw this up.
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The irony is pretty high that the proposed solution to a perceived politicization of the vaccine is to inject more partisan politics into it. Naturally all these political critters want to get credit for it, and to pre-distance themselves / setup a fall guy in case it goes sideways later. These committees will rubber stamp anything that comes out of the FDA. Delaying things a week will be met with high derision.
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Distribution of the vaccine will be highly political. Nobody will be happy. I’d like to see identity politics kept out of it, but that is wishful thinking.
My estimate of the chances that Trump would still pull out a victory was south of 1%. But it has now ticked up: Sidney Powell is on the job. And she is making a stunning claim:
“He” is Smartmatic chairman of the board and Biden transition team member Peter Neffenger. Let that sink in.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trump-attorney-sidney-powell-says-they-are-fixing-to-overturn-the-results-of-the-election-in-several-states
Tom Scharf,
“Distribution of the vaccine will be highly political.”
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For sure. Which is one of the reasons I think the FDA will drag its feet to delay most distribution until after Trump leaves office… they want to make sure that the Biden administration gets to make identity politics the focus of the distribution plan.
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If I sound cynical, it is because I am.
I found a good summary article on lipid vesicles used to carry messenger RNA: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c01386
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The particles are in the range of 100 nm size, which is definitely small enough for phagocytosis to capture and internalize the particles.
Where the “surge” in cases is taking place, and where it is not:
https://apnews.com/article/travel-family-gatherings-coronavirus-pandemic-thanksgiving-holidays-3c759ab924a0d9de27803527ddf36c1c
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Interesting that States like New York, New Jersey, and California are imposing new restrictions, but don’t really have that much of a surge in cases.
Re SteveF (Comment #193952)
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Maybe NY and NJ are trying to get ahead of an anticipated seasonal surge. Don’t know about Calif.
Mike M. (Comment #193911)
November 16th, 2020 at 2:49 pm
My estimate of the chances that Trump would still pull out a victory was south of 1%. But it has now ticked up: Sidney Powell is on the job. And she is making a stunning claim:
______
I can’t find any current odds on Trump winning. But it seems like a very very long shot. I’m not sure you can place a bet on it, but you can wager on whether Trump will attend Biden’s swearing-in. The betting is saying he won’t. I might bet the other way.
SteveF (Comment #193952): “Interesting that States like New York, New Jersey, and California are imposing new restrictions, but don’t really have that much of a surge in cases.”
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Positive tests in those states (and Washington, Oregon) have been rising as fast as in places like Michigan and New Mexico. But the rises started later, so current rates of new positive tests are not as high. So it is not unreasonable for those states to look at the Midwest and mountain states and conclude that is where they are headed and that they don’t want to go.
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The real question is whether the lockdowns do any good.
OK_Max,
Those states are hunting for rabbits where there are very few to be found. The deaths per confirmed case in those states is running about 1 in 120 (0.008), and trending downward; most people catching the virus in those states are not in the population at high risk of death. At present, covid-19 deaths in NY state are running at about 5% to 6% of the “normal” rate of deaths. Whatever steps Cuomo takes, they are not going to have much effect on the overall death rate in New York.
Mike M,
“The real question is whether the lockdowns do any good.”
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Widespread lockdowns, if complied with, pretty much have to reduce the number of cases, at least in the short term. I don’t think the right question is if lockdowns do any “good”, but if they do more good than harm. I would argue that in most places, they cost far more then they are worth. OTOH, a “lockdown” of long term care facilities can save lots of lives at relatively low cost.
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“So it is not unreasonable for those states to look at the Midwest and mountain states and conclude that is where they are headed and that they don’t want to go.”
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Except much of the population in NY has already been exposed, and either were resistant or recovered. Places that are now “surging” never had the high rates of exposure like New York and New Jersey.
I agree the question is really how well these lockdowns work. I’m not arguing they don’t lower risk, but the media coverage of lockdowns has becomes so moralized and politicized that it’s difficult to get to the bottom of how well they really work. I think they simply don’t really know and it’s one of the only levers a government can pull so they pull it.
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For example national coverage about FL’s initial surge was all about DeSantis not issuing a * statewide * lockdown. However every metro area in FL had local lockdowns and mask orders. We are still under mandatory indoor mask orders where I live.
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Then you get still ongoing smug verbiage about motorcycle festivals with happy uncritical coverage about street parties after the election. Politicians get caught disobeying their own orders routinely now.
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What you don’t get is an actual real understanding of the efficacy of which lockdowns work and what doesn’t because it’s really hard to measure. Stay at home orders likely do the most, but at an expense most aren’t willing to pay now. This is not to say we know nothing or have learned nothing. Outdoor restrictions are ridiculous for the most part, but restrictions on crowded indoor places make the most sense.
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NY and NJ can do what they want, but the reason they have done well lately has more to do with explosive initial surges than public policy. The virus is contagious enough that we cannot have anywhere near a normal life and keep it suppressed (once the outbreak became uncontained). NZ and a few other places can still fight the battle to keep it under containment, we can’t.
It looks like ND is at or near peak, that’s a good indicator for the rest of the Midwest. It’s a gigantic peak though.
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And in something counterintuitive, it looks like births are down by the hundred of thousands in the US, one might argue lockdowns would have increased such activity.
Tom Scharf,
In my county there is also a mask order for indoor commercial establishments (except when eating at restaurants). But DeSantis made it almost unenforceable (the county sheriff is not going to get involved), so smaller establishments are a lot more relaxed in their requirements than larger ones. Supermarkets, chain drug stores, and places like Home Depot require masks and actually insist on them. You will now have to share a golf cart in my county, rather than have one for each player, because as we all know, covid-19 virus is not contagious on golf courses. Icewater containers have returned to the golf courses, but still no rakes in the traps…. I don’t even try to understand all the odd rules the covid mania has inspired.
New study: Durable immunity for Covid 19 is possible in most individuals.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.15.383323v1.full.pdf
As Covid-19 Surges, the Big Unknown Is Where People Are Getting Infected
The U.S. and Europe struggle to identify where coronavirus infections are occurring, making it hard to impose targeted restrictions
https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-covid-19-surges-the-big-unknown-is-where-people-are-getting-infected-11605474874
“In Germany, authorities say they don’t know where 75% of people who currently test positive for the coronavirus got it. In Austria, the figure stands at 77%. In Spain, the health ministry said that it was able to identify the origin of only 7% of infections registered in the last week of October. In France and Italy, only some 20% of new cases have been linked to people who previously tested positive.
Jay Varma, senior adviser for public health in the New York City mayor’s office, said 10% of the city’s infections are due to travel, 5% from gatherings, and another 5% from institutional settings such as nursing homes.
“The vast majority of the remainder—somewhere probably around 50% or more—we don’t have a way to directly attribute their source of infection,†Mr. Varma said. “And that’s a concern.—
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I’d like to know how many people got the virus while strictly adhering to government guidelines.
Two people in a golf cart for 4 hours seems like high risk to me. Much better than riding in a car for 4 hours. Get a lot more dispersal certainly. These are the type of situations that could be analyzed and measured for risk but we have almost nothing.
Lucia,
Good paper. The interesting thing in that paper for me was the rise in b-memory cells during the 6 months post-infection; which indicates a robust long term resistance (many years) to symptomatic illness, even if a falling titre of circulating spike specific antibody does not render the person absolutely “sterile-immune” to the virus upon re-exposure.
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I read a recent published review of the Moderna vaccine dose response at 25, 100, and 250 micrograms (active) injected. They showed that the antibody titre at 28 days is roughly proportional to dose for the first innoculation, but that the response to the second innoculation is many times stronger, and tended to max out a bit at the highest dose. The profile of side effects showed the highest dose (250 micrograms of active lipid/RNA particles injected) caused the most severe side effects, but especially for the second dose. Looks to me like the most effective dosing would be a relatively high first dose (100-125 micrograms?) and a lower second dose (25 to 50 micrograms?) to minimize undesirable side effects. The side effects were: headache, fever, injection site soreness, muscle pain, joint pain, nausea, and general malaise.
It doesn’t surprise me they can’t figure out where most individuals got the virus. Testing turn around here is too slow to permit good tracing and communication. Testing is taking about 4 days to report results back around here. (One of Jim’s brothers got tested Friday. We haven’t heard back.)
Probably almost no one because almost no one is strictly adhering to real guidelines!!! (Meanwhile, extra “rules” get made up. Likely there is no rule against rakes.)
“And in something counterintuitive, it looks like births are down by the hundred of thousands in the US, one might argue lockdowns would have increased such activity.”
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Absence makes the heart grow fonder…. and the opposite is also true.
Well… Lockdowns only really started in March. So we shouldn’t expect any effect on births yet.
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Beyond that, birth control is widely available. I imagine lots of people might avoid a planned pregnancy when they aren’t sure about jobs. It’s possible limited dating possibilities reduced unplanned events.
This is what can actually happen in a recount. GA county finds 2600 ballots that were never counted, A net +800 for Trump. Not nearly enough to matter here, but greater than the Gore/Bush difference. Looks like incompetence.
https://www.ajc.com/politics/georgia-recount-uncovers-2600-new-votes-in-presidential-race/I75NSPYYGNF43HQZBPYKJWJ5MA/
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“Martin said these ballots rectify a discrepancy between the number of people who checked in to vote early and ballots that were counted in Floyd County, located in northwest Georgia.
The issue appeared to occur on an optical scanner that stopped working after a couple of weeks of early voting, Martin said. County election officials were supposed to rescan all paper ballots cast on that machine, but roughly half of them weren’t recorded.”
Paper in Nature assessing the effectiveness of non-pharma interventions on R across the globe. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0
“The most effective NPIs include curfews, lockdowns and closing and restricting places where people gather in smaller or large numbers for an extended period of time. This includes small gathering cancellations (closures of shops, restaurants, gatherings of 50 persons or fewer, mandatory home working and so on) and closure of educational institutions. While in previous studies, based on smaller numbers of countries, school closures had been attributed as having little effect on the spread of COVID-19 (refs. 19,20), more recent evidence has been in favour of the importance of this NPI28,29; school closures in the United States have been found to reduce COVID-19 incidence and mortality by about 60% (ref. 28). This result is also in line with a contact-tracing study from South Korea, which identified adolescents aged 10–19 years as more likely to spread the virus than adults and children in household settings30. Individual movement restrictions (including curfew, the prohibition of gatherings and movements for non-essential activities or measures segmenting the population) were also amongst the top-ranked measures.”
It notes that these can very expensive however, and there are effective interventions that are cheaper.
“We also find a number of highly effective NPIs that can be considered less costly. For instance, we find that risk-communication strategies feature prominently amongst consensus NPIs. This includes government actions intended to educate and actively communicate with the public. The effective messages include encouraging people to stay at home, promoting social distancing and workplace safety measures, encouraging the self-initiated isolation of people with symptoms, travel warnings and information campaigns (mostly via social media). All these measures are non-binding government advice, contrasting with the mandatory border restriction and social distancing measures that are often enforced by police or army interventions and sanctions. Surprisingly, communicating on the importance of social distancing has been only marginally less effective than imposing distancing measures by law.
PhilScadden,
“Surprisingly, communicating on the importance of social distancing has been only marginally less effective than imposing distancing measures by law.”
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Paredo’s law in action. If you accurately inform people of the relative risks of different behaviors, a large majority will do their best to avoid the risky behaviors. Try to force everyone to comply, and you will still have nearly 20% who flip the bird at the rules, and 80% who follow them…. but many of that 80% will be pissed off by the process. When rules are disconnected from risks, the compliance level will be lower, of course. Except in China, where they will throw you in prison if you don’t follow crazy rules.
For anyone interested: I have evaluated the Brave browser, desktop and laptop. Very good, very fast, very small footprint. It imports your bookmarks and settings from other browsers. It really does eliminate all the irritating ads that chase after you when you search any subject. Select DuckDuckGo as your default search engine, and you will stop supporting the evil Google cabal as well.
Phil,
Thanks for that. This is the problem here:
“Using a comprehensive, hierarchically coded dataset of 6,068 NPIs implemented in March–April 2020 (when most European countries and US states experienced their first infection waves) in 79 territories23, here we analyse the impact of government interventions on Rt using harmonized results from a multi-method approach consisting of (1) a case-control analysis (CC), (2) a step function approach to LASSO time-series regression (LASSO), (3) random forests (RF) and (4) transformers (TF). We contend that the combination of four different methods, combining statistical, inference and artificial intelligence classes of tools, also allows assessment of the structural uncertainty of individual methods24.”
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Hmmmm … inference and AI tools. Perhaps this all worked and the results sound plausible but I’ve done enough algorithm work that this sounds remarkably like a fancy random number generator. They are unscrambling eggs here and I don’t trust black boxes to do that even if it uses “AI”. This is better than guessing, but how much better I really can’t tell.
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I read an article today that said simple numerical analysis clearly shows the number one cause of increasing outbreaks was increased testing availability. They were kidding, wet streets make it rain and all, but that is a simple example of why this problem is so hard to analyze. They “inference” these things away. Once you get into that business then you start saying things like “We also find no evidence for the effectiveness of social distancing measures in regard to public transport.” That sounds debatable on inference.
Tom Scharf,
I long ago stopped looking at “cases” more than 2 month in the past; they are 100% meaningless. The only real measure of success against covid-19 is the rate of deaths per million population. Everything else is too subject to distortion and confusion.
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That said, most everywhere (even most places where there is a surge in cases) the number of deaths per confirmed case has been dropping. Which indicates that measures taken to isolate/protect the most vulnerable have in fact been at least partially effective. Except for places like NY and NJ, where Cuomo and Murphey outright killed many thousands to remain politically correct in their policies. They were and are idiots, and history will not be kind.
Well I live my working life in algorithms and, yes, I am suspicious of use by people that not extremely familiar with code, but I think blanket “I saw AI and inference so I can dismiss it” is not useful either. Particularly when published in Nature. I would certainly be watching for criticism of methods by other researchers in the field but for moment, this is best actual analysis I have found and beats uninformed guesswork hands down.
That said, I havent delved into the tables too far yet.
Furthermore it pretty much backs up conclusions from an earlier paper I posted on evaluation of NPI but based on US states alone and using google mobility data.
Pfizer says vaccine 94% effective in over 65 age group.
What is a naive algorithm going to tell you about the latest outbreaks in the US and Europe? Wearing masks makes things much worse. People are wearing masks much more now and the outbreak is considerably worse than the spring.
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We “know” this isn’t true, so the algorithm must be corrected. We know more testing doesn’t create cases, so this must be corrected. We know the full extent of the spring outbreak wasn’t recorded so this must be estimated. We don’t have good information on regional mask use over time, so this must be estimated. On and on and on.
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We keep tweaking until we get a reasonable output from the magic number cruncher. What does reasonable mean? It matches our prior expectations.
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This can be a grand exercise in numerically modelling our existing biases against very bad noisy data. If you don’t think that can be true then go read 10+ year of Climate Audit and tree ring data. This is a rare example of a numerically complex algorithm being put under strict scrutiny and a lot of dirty algorithm underwear being exposed.
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Why did they choose to use these numerically complex tools with inference, AI, etc? Very likely because the basic numeric tools were tried and didn’t work. They didn’t work possibly because the input data is inadequate or the answer is unknowable because of the complex dynamics at play.
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How can we tell the difference between sophisticated bad guessing and sophisticated good guessing? I can’t really tell but there are red flags here that make me skeptical. It’s perfectly OK to treat it as the best data we have, but not as definitive.
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If they are capable of sorting out all this mess looking backwards, then the same numeric methods should be able to predict the future looking forwards with newly acquired data. This is typically where these things fail miserably.
I wish Pfizer and Moderna would just release the trial data. Pfizer had one severe case in the vaccine group, and 10 in the placebo group, but no information about the age or heath profile of the severe cases. The description of side effects for the Pfizer vaccine make it sound like milder symptoms than the Moderna vaccine.
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The description of the distribution plan (all dry ice) sounds really complicated. The Moderna vaccine should turn out cheaper.
I think the Moderna vaccine is going to be nicknamed “The Dolly”. 🙂
Lucia,
The Dolly? Why?
Dolly Parton donated $1Million to fund the Moderna Vaccine.
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I think the PR campaign for the vaccine should point it it’s not Trump’s vaccine. It’s not Biden’s vaccine. It’s Dolly’s. 🙂
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This may not be entirely fair to Trump who actually DID organize things to get regulators out of the way, nor Biden who may in the future do something useful vis-a-vis the vaccine. BUT Dolly is possibly the least polarizing person in America. She funded her friend a researcher at Vanderbilt when he explained the need.
Yes, it would be nice to attach this to something largely nonpolitical.
Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vacciiiiiiiiine…
Yes. And I think Dolly tends to avoid politics. Her main view is to love everyone.
Tom Scharf (Comment #194021): “We keep tweaking until we get a reasonable output from the magic number cruncher. What does reasonable mean? It matches our prior expectations.”
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An excellent diagnosis. The studies claiming that lockdowns or masks work are never straigth forward. They always use a non-obvious figure of merit and generally have cherry picked start and end dates. And whatever lag time is needed for agreement is the correct lag time.
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Maybe there are in fact small benefits that are difficult to extract from the data. But the claim made for lockdowns and masks is that the benefits are dramatic. If that were so, a simple analysis would suffice to show the effect.
Tom, I am really struggling to connect your objections to what was actually done in paper. The results from each of “simpler” techniques are included in the supplementary materials.
Perhaps the easiest way to understand your objections would be if you could explain what methods you think should have been used to rank NPIs given the data sets available, and why they are superior to the methodologies actually used?
I believe we already know from the first surge that elements of the lock down reduced the Rt below 1. The study in Nature was attempting to find which elements were the most effective and rank them. That is a very tall task. They use methods suited for such a task when attempting to model with in-sample data, but as Tom eludes to that does not quarantee the model will work out-of-sample.
Any practical benefits from this study would be for those calling the shots to eliminate restrictions that have little or no effect on Rt and might well have very detrimental side effects. Will politicians calling the shots use this information? I doubt it very much.
I also think this study does not deal with two very important issues in these matters. One is the trade-off in health/death considerations and damage to the economy and detrimental effects of lock downs on mental and physical health and the other is whether this model is useful with the second and third surges and applying to NH winter conditions.
Like the tree ring case with climate science it would be better to have a prior theoretical criterion to test with in-sample data, but in the case of Covid-19 infection spreading I do not think we have a good handle on it.
The Nature study admits to much population heterogeneity at nation level in their results and on a first reading I am unsure of how much that could effect their results when that heterogeneity is taken down to the local level.
I should make it clear here that the tree ring modeling and studies in climate science did not make use of a prior criteria from theory in selecting tree ring proxies but rather selected posterior from in- sample results – which is a statistical no no that none in the field appreciated.
” They use methods suited for such a task when attempting to model with in-sample data, but as Tom eludes to that does not quarantee the model will work out-of-sample.”
How do you interpret their runs againt validation sets then?
The study was making no attempt at cost benefit analysis, but it did note that many of the policies that were effective were also very expensive. It was trying to identify effective baskets of policy that we not necessarily so expensive and also noted that heavy-handed laws werent much more effective than good communication.
I dont think “leadership” that claims it a just a little flu, a hoax, or that masks are “un-American” are examples of effective communication.
I was surprised that the method ranked school closures so high for both cases and mortality, given that we know cases are much less common among children and fatalities are massively less common among children. (It was second most effective overall, after small gathering cancellation). This was apparently surprising to the authors as well, as they call it out specifically:
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While in previous studies, based on smaller numbers of countries, school closures had been attributed as having little effect on the spread of COVID-19 (refs. 19,20), more recent evidence has been in favour of the importance of this NPI28,29; school closures in the United States have been found to reduce COVID-19 incidence and mortality by about 60% (ref. 28). This result is also in line with a contact-tracing study from South Korea, which identified adolescents aged 10–19 years as more likely to spread the virus than adults and children in household settings.
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Reference 28, used twice in these sentences, is Auger from June 2020, and it too is trying to extract a specific NPI from a host of other NPIs adopted at the same time. It uses state-level school closures in March 2020 and attempts to tease it out from other measures taken. Besides the eye-catching large increases in cases in mortality (between what actually happened and what they modelled would happen given exponential growth), their main takeaway was that the earlier the better — the states that were “early” had a larger percentage impact than those that closed “late”. This deserves more elaboration.
Early and Late refer to the point in time compared to the diseases progression, not the calendar time (all states closed schools between March 13 and March 23rd). In essence, the states with lower Covid rates at the time schools were closed in March did better at avoiding modelled cases/deaths through May 7th. Given that it was a few high-quartile states that failed to “flatten the curve” back then, this does not surprise me, but I imagine it would be true of any intervention.
This is based on publicly available data about cases/deaths between March 9th and May 7th. It is described as “more recent” than references 19 and 20. 19 (Banzholzer, preprint Apr 28) is based on cases through April 15th at the country level (using US, Canada, EU-15, Switzerland, Norway, Australia). Auger has three more weeks at the end of the data, though it needs it for the mortality analysis (10-12 days lag between case diagnosis and death used), and some of the countries involved were ahead of US on disease progression. It seems implausible to me that three weeks of additional data would turn an 8% case reduction into a 62% case reduction using #19’s methodology, especially since their largest case impact (venue closures) is only 35%. 20 (Flaxman, June 2020) uses 11 European countries from February 20th until May 4th; describing Auger as “more recent” is a stretch given they are from the same month and the end-date is only 3 days different (while #20 starts earlier). Their model only can identify lockdown as a large positive effect, while all other interventions can’t be teased out at all.
I suspect the different results have to do with models and methods, and not at all how “recent” the paper is. With so little agreement, falling back on an explanation on *how* they work would be agreeable. Auger is almost apoplogetic in this regards, hypothesizing that it may not be the school closure itself, but the disruption to adult schedule — i.e., by forcing adults to stay home to watch the de-schooled kids, transmission is disrupted. Interestingly, Auger references four contradicting studies about modest fatality effects from school closures, those four do not overlap with the two referenced by Haug.
Reference 29 is Lui (pre-print August) which uses 130 countries and data from January through June, so can claim recency, at least. They don’t try to estimate scale, only if the effect is deemed significant in all the regression models they used. Only two interventions made the cut in all of them — school closures and internal movement restrictions. As they noted, “we found temporal clustering between many of the NPIs”.
It seems to me the effect of school closures and other interventions might be more detectable on the other end — all the interventions tend to come in clustered together, but the ending of interventions is more spread out.
Phil Scadden (Comment #194045)
November 18th, 2020 at 5:58 pm
Cross validation is no guarantee of out-of-sample model performance because it is based on in-sample data just as are the data it is attempting validate. It is better than the post facto selection of proxies in climate science studies of ancient temperature trends but can still suffer from some weaknesses. For example, an investigator could peak at the entirety of available data and select that piece of data that fits some prior subjective assumptions. Cross validation of data within that piece is likely to find some degree of validation. Further as I noted previously the conditions prevailing in the modeled period may not persist into the future. There also should be some a prior theories to guide such analysis and put bounds on it.
Using reported cases in this study to measure Rt gets complicated by the varying amounts of testing, asymptomatic cases not tested and the heterogeneity of the population to susceptibility to Covid-19 and the spreading of it.
The crazies on all sides of these issues will not stop being crazy based on analyses that they either will ignore or refute out of hand. That situation, however, should not be used to discourage legitimate criticism of these analyses or pointing to the limitations of the results.
This reference also popped out at me, since it seems to contradict the what-we-know about children spreading the disease:
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“This result is also in line with a contact-tracing study from South Korea, which identified adolescents aged 10–19 years as more likely to spread the virus than adults and children in household settings.”
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The study by Park is from Jan 20-Mar 27 data in Korea, and does show that *if* the index patient in a household is 10-19, they have the highest chance of a household contact getting it (18.6%, CI 14.0-24.0%), while if the index patient is 0-9 they have the lowest chance (5.3% CI 1.3-13.7%). As you can tell from the 95% confidence intervals of lowest and highest nearly overlapping, there aren’t a lot of index patients in either bucket, 0-9 represented just 0.5% of index patients and 10-19 just 2.2%. And these are household contacts during school closures, meaning the index patient 10-19 is likely home all day, every day — for nonhousehold contacts in the same study 10-19 was tied for the lowest, with 0.9% (0.1-2.9%).
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Honestly I’m surprised that this highly infectious virus is infecting just 11.8% in the first place in the same household, I would’ve expected a lot higher. Given that 10-19 was *vastly* less likely to be the index patient, I don’t know that it’s worth worrying that *if* they have it there’s a 3-13% additional chance of it spreading. I also wonder if the buckets are well chosen — 20-29 has a large number of index patients, and I suspect 19 year olds may be more like 24 year olds than 14, and 10 years old may be more like 2 year olds than 18 year olds with respect to this disease. Why not make buckets based on the age ranges of particular school levels instead?
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There are, of course, LOTS of studies that reinforce the same thing that this study also shows — school age children are much less likely to get the disease in the first place. Surely that’s relevant to whether school closures are a good idea?
One more thing that caught my eye:
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‘Wearing a mask’ exhibits a significant impact on Rt in three methods (ΔRt between −0.018 and –0.12).
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-0.018 is significant? Oddly enough, “Wearing a mask” is not shown on their table one, though from the range given I suspect it is “Personal Protective Measures”, listed about midway on the list of impacts. Of the four methods used, the Z-score heat map shows two with no significant effect (CC and LASSO), below 5 for RF and somewhere around 25 for TF. TF seems to be very all-or-nothing, almost everything is dark red or grey.
Dale S,
“Surely that’s relevant to whether school closures are a good idea?”
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I don’t think so. School closures are mainly about protecting teachers, not protecting children. And teachers have plenty enough political influence to keep the schools closed until all teachers have received vaccinations. So maybe schools will return to normal operation in the fall of 2021… maybe.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #194042): “I believe we already know from the first surge that elements of the lock down reduced the Rt below 1.”
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I do not think we know anything of the sort. (R-1) is proportional to ln(P(i)/P(i-n)), where P(i) is positive tests on day i and n is a suitable interval of days. Plots of that quantity indicate that R often started to decrease well before any lockdowns and even before changes in mobility. In other cases, R started to increase after lockdown. So far as I am aware, one can not look at such plots and reliably identify any events that altered the progression of infections.
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The lack of sharp changes in R does not prove that there was no effect of interventions. With the 7 day cycle in reporting and the spread in interval from one infection to the next, the data are naturally smeared out, so even a relatively sharp change could end up not being obvious. But it is now clear that R goes up and down with no real connection to behavior. So it seems clear to me that behavior is not a dominant factor in the progression of the epidemic.
Mike M. (Comment #194071)
November 19th, 2020 at 9:49 am
When I use the term elements of lockdown I include those that were undertaken voluntarily before governments made the elements mandatory. I suspect that voluntary actions are a big part of the control of the spread of the virus and there are studies I have read that imply what I suspect.
I also agree that smearing of the infection data over time can and does occur. In my analysis I found that Rt is changing over time to a significant degree and a static Rt paints a very incorrect picture.
We do know that human actions can reduce the rate of spread of the Covid-19 infections and that it can be tracked by way of reported cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Looking at 43 actions, that can be tightly clustered in time of application but can vary individually over time in degree of compete application, and attempting to rank the effectiveness of those actions would appear to be a nigh onto impossible task of unconfounding the results.
The media screaming pandemics and deaths make people change their behavior. One can reel off lots of problems with the forcing data they are using. It’s very hard to get reliable results in multifactor analysis from data that isn’t reliably measured in the first place. Combining lots of disparate unreliable data isn’t like averaging white noise, it’s not making things easier to analyze in most cases. Putting it into the math blender and through the algorithm strainer results in brown mush of varying tones.
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Saying this is difficult is not saying it isn’t potentially useful or should be dismissed. Does this provide “actionable intelligence” that should be used to change policy? I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone is saying that right now.
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What I do see is increasing evidence that surface contamination and outside activities are less risky. I also suspect we are missing something very important about this virus and its spread. Perhaps there are certain environmental conditions that affect R much more than mask compliance and our other tribal obsessing over human behavior. Maybe it stays aerosolized much longer at certain narrow ranges of temperatures and humidities etc. Who knows. One of the least dense states has one of the largest outbreaks per capita.
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Stay away from other humans is good advice, and the goal of this study is great, rank where the risks are. My only skepticism is that they can really wring this out from the data they have.
“Honestly I’m surprised that this highly infectious virus is infecting just 11.8% in the first place in the same household”
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I’ve seen other estimates close to this that itemized spouse transmission at around 23% and other members around 15% or so, can’t remember the specific numbers. I was also surprised by how low this number was. On the other hand anytime one member of a family got flu it didn’t necessarily spread inside the house like fire, and we didn’t treat family members with the flu like they had Ebola. We might have a a high degree of varying contagiousness of spreaders combined with a high degree of susceptibility of victims. Perhaps it is this way for most diseases of this type.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #194075): “When I use the term elements of lockdown I include those that were undertaken voluntarily before governments made the elements mandatory. I suspect that voluntary actions are a big part of the control of the spread of the virus and there are studies I have read that imply what I suspect.”
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I think the only studies that show a big effect are based on models (i.e., fantasy). The model shows some enormous number of deaths if no action was taken, reality is very different, and they attribute the difference to actions taken rather than the model having been wildly wrong.
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There is probably some effect, but there is no evidence that it is large or that voluntary actions actions could not achieve almost the entire effect.
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Imagine educating the public as to potential super spread situations and advising the public to avoid such. For the sake of argument, let’s say that results in a uniform 50% reduction in attendance at such events. With the simplistic logic of a SIR model, that would reduce transmission by 75%; half the chance of an infected person at a given event and half as many people potentially infected. With an initial R0 of 3, that would be enough to stop the epidemic. With an 80% reduction in attendance, there would be a 96% reduction in spread; sufficient to crush any epidemic.
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I suspect that argument is essentially why the models show spectacular effects from lockdowns. And it is obvious that such dramatic results have not been achieved. The reason remains unclear.
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That argument, implies an important conclusion. Voluntary action should be sufficient to achieve most of the limited benefit of a lockdown. And voluntary action would lead to far less harm and be far more sustainable.
Tom Scharf (Comment #194078): “I also suspect we are missing something very important about this virus and its spread.”
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I think that is obvious. We have no idea how to control the virus.
“ We have no idea how to control the virus.â€
We have no idea how to control the virus and have anything like a normal economy and normal lives.
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I expect the complexity of spread will ultimately be shown due mostly to a wide range of individual susceptibility to the virus, even among people of the same age and general health. My guess is it is due to different exposures to other coronaviruses in the past.
The study I posted last month https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Arnon-et-al-conference-draft.pdf
(USA only) indicated voluntary action from fear was a very important factor. ie google mobility data was showing sharp changes before any NPIs.
“NPIs introduced by state and local governments explain a
small fraction of the nationwide decline in contact rates but nevertheless reduced COVID-19 deaths by almost 30% percent—saving about 33,000 lives—over the first 3 months of the pandemic”
However, it also shows that voluntary precautionary behaviour has a very large economic impact too. (See Fig 10 in the paper).
Phil Scadden (Comment #194091): “The study I posted last month …”
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Results from a never validated model. Proves nothing.
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Phil Scadden: “However, it also shows that voluntary precautionary behaviour has a very large economic impact too.”
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Sure, but that misses the point. Voluntary behavior allows individuals to minimize damage to themselves in accord with what they value. A person who can afford to take a large financial hit in exchange for greater safety might choose to do so while a different person might make a different choice. A person who can choose which activities to forego will choose to skip the things that are less important to him. So for the same level of economic impact, voluntary behavior produces much less damage to individuals.
It’s a bit striking if you compare previous answers to “why is the flu seasonal?” to current conversations on covid. What is striking is conversations on the flu are focused on the behavior and characteristics of the virus itself, while conversations about covid are almost entirely about people’s bad behavior.
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2014/the-reason-for-the-season-why-flu-strikes-in-winter/
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“The results from the study suggest that influenza actually survives longer at low humidity and low temperatures. At 43°F with very low humidity, most of the virus was able to survive more than 23 hours, whereas at high humidity and a temperature of 90°F, survival was diminished at even one hour into incubation (3).”
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I’m not comparing these two diseases directly, just how one is de-personalized and that makes a difference in the way they are framed in discourse.
Mike, I am not sure any study would satisfy your criteria if you didnt like the result. Have you thought what data might convince you?
I believe the hypothesis on financial hits have almost nothing to do with personal wealth on choice. Scared people do not go to bars, restaurants, shows, events, cinemas, gyms, planes and cruise ships identified with spreading the virus. Switching to online kills other shopping. (Online businesses prospered). The lack of custom is the killing economic cost.
Tom, if summer heat is killer (and I suspect it is a factor), then I would expect big differences between climatic zones. It hasnt raged through Finland, but has through Brazil which would suggest behaviour is more important than climate.
Regarding seasonality, consider not the virus, but the hosts:
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https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8000
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Epigenetics appear to make us more vulnerable during winter, perhaps in phase with vitamin D.
Phil Scadden (Comment #194097): “I am not sure any study would satisfy your criteria if you didnt like the result. Have you thought what data might convince you?”
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It has nothing to do with whether I like the result. What would convince me would be something that actually shows evidence of a significant effect.
Mike, models are inherent in science, implicit or explicit. How would propose to investigate effects of NPIs without a model (probably many)? Both papers are built on big datasets available to analyze these now.
Phil Scadden (Comment #194108): “models are inherent in science, implicit or explicit.”
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That is rather like saying that any analysis makes assumptions, therefore one can make any assumptions one likes.
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I did not say “models”. I said “a never validated model”. The scientific literature is full of papers based on models that are really nothing more than science fiction.
“Never validated”? Is this an objection to their contact rate metric from Unacast, Google mobility et al?
I wasnt proposing NPIs have a big effect – the papers suggest quite the opposite, compared to precautionary efforts. I was asking how you propose measure the effects of NPI when there are confounding factors.
The idea that NPIs are completely useless I think is unsupportable from experience in Korea, NZ, China, Taiwan and Australia. Whether they are cost-effective is another story entirely.
Kenneth complained that validation in the second paper was in sample which I find hard to support. The validation dataset was not used in creating the model, only for testing.
Phil
Yes. But the relevant behavior may be taking vitamin D supplements in Finland.
It’s quite possible that because the NPIs occurred in such close proximity that disentangling their effects is not possible, and even if a model is lucky enough to get the disentangling right, would not be verifiable. For that reason, it makes more sense to focus on the mechanics of disease transmission to see how the NPIs should work *mechnically*. For example, if the risk of transmission is negligible between two strangers (one infected) passing within six feet of each other for a few seconds, policies designed to suppress that brief contact are not going to do much good. There’s depressingly little information that hones down on exactly what the risks of transmission are in various scenarios, and that would be useful not just for public policy but also for informing private behavior.
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Informing private behavior is vital even for public policy. One of the reasons cloth masks were dismissed as useless in March was that it was feared that individuals would assume more risk when “protected”. One of the reasons that cloth masks were hailed later that it would remind people to be cautious in other ways. The human response is unpredictable, and can change over time as fatigue sets in. If you give people the tools to more effectively manage their own risk — and give business the tools they need to reshape how risky their activities are — I think you’ll end up in a better place than using a blunt on/off instrument.
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It’s true that the fear response had more dramatic effects back in March than governmental actions, at least in many sectors. The fear response had the effect of making close extended contacts much less likely. My kids went to see a movie before the theatres were closed — they were the only ones in the entire theatre. The last time I went to our favorite sushi restaurant before it was closed, all the tables were empty at dinnertime — I could have dined-in with no more human contact than I incurred while getting my takeout. When my daughter flew home from Hawaii, she was the only one seated in her row. The loss of traffic can and did leave to revenue loss, and it’s possible that some businesses would not be capable of making their business safe enough to overcome fear without reducing capacity to an unsustainable point. But if we are going to pump vast amount of borrowed dollars into keeping businesses alive, perhaps it would preferable to use that money to fund equipment/building to make businesses permanently safer rather than just to keep alive a business that posed no significant elevated risk but was closed by government fiat anyways.
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I also question the estimated reduction of death following from driving mobility lower. It’s been known for a long time that the risk of fatality is *very* uneven according to age and underlying conditions; what matters to fatalities isn’t the contact rate of the less vulnerable population, but exposure of the more vulnerable population. When the vulnerable population is much less likely to have a job and extremely unlikely to be in school, reducing non-household contacts by business closure and school closures won’t have anywhere near a linear effect on fatalities.
I haven’t seen the Danish control trial on masks mentioned here ( in my cursory scan ).
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What do we think?
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Masks don’t prevent incoming disease, but help limit our infections of others?
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The study provided high quality masks, regularly replaced, with instructions to the using group. These conditions are practiced by at most a scant minority, at least in my locale.
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Makes me think a cloth mask to limit my coughs or sneezes but otherwise be comfortable may be preferable.
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A benefit of this is rededicating to limiting the other factors: crowds, closeness and duration.
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https://unherd.com/thepost/danish-mask-study-professor-protective-effect-may-be-small-but-masks-are-worthwhile/
Dale S (Comment #194129)
“When the vulnerable population is much less likely to have a job and extremely unlikely to be in school, reducing non-household contacts by business closure and school closures won’t have anywhere near a linear effect on fatalities.”
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Dale, I’m not sure I understand what you are saying. Covid-19 fatalities are rising again, and we don’t yet know whether fatalities from this virus will be greater than before nor do we know the age distribution of these future fatalities.
Phil, I think the confusion here is due to the term and meaning of out-of-sample data. There is true out-of-sample data which means data not available to the model maker and most often would mean future data. In cross-validation there is pseudo out-of-sample data which is data withheld from the available in-sample data on which the model can be tested after using the in-sample data to construct the model. That pseudo out-of-sample data are available to the model maker before making the model. It is important to understand the difference between true out-of-sample and pseudo out-of-sample data and for some of the reasons I gave in my post on this topic.
https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/74865/difference-between-in-sample-and-pseudo-out-of-sample-forecasts
The modeling under discussion here could have benefited from some theoretical considerations to limit and bound their analysis to unconfounding many fewer behavior changes and restrictions. The fact that it did not would lead me to believe that the theory was and probably remains lacking.
From practical considerations an analysis/model that attempts to disentangle actions that were initiated on nearly the same starting date, were actually probably put into effect over varying time spans and under national differences gets to be a very complicated matter to model. The combination of 43 inputs to fit some final results over many nations would require very high powered computing and tend to put analysis and understanding of it in a blackbox.
Phil,
It’s unclear what you are arguing here. Nobody can prove these results to be either useful or non-useful without a major effort to validate methods and data. Assuming they could be proven useful then what are you arguing here? Less human contact results in less disease transfer, this is accepted.
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This entire class of curve fitting exercises has a lot of issues that everybody is aware of, taking results like this with a grain of salt isn’t a controversial position. If you input flu data and winter coat sales into this class of algorithms they will tell you selling coats causes the flu to spread. It’s not just selecting the right data inputs with high quality data, it is is also not * leaving out * important data inputs.
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You cannot use A, B, C as inputs to these curve fitters to prove that the output is dependent on A, B, C. It’s a circular argument. They do their best with the limited data they have, they present their efforts, and their rankings are probably a good first pass estimation on reality, but it is really just that, an estimation that is difficult to judge the quality of.
OK_Max,
“ nor do we know the age distribution of these future fatalities.â€
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That is simply crazy. Everywhere, at every phase of the pandemic, nearly all fatalities have taken place among those either over 60 (and especially over 70) and/or with other significant co-morbidities. That is not going to change; we are not suddenly going to have mostly young people die from the virus. Every published study has shown the same; any suggestion otherwise is wild speculation without data to support it. I note that the two recent phase 3 vaccine trials focused on recruiting more elderly volunteers than the population as a whole. That is not a coincidence…. those are the people most at risk.
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BTW, all life on Earth *could* be exterminated next week by a large meteor…. and that seems to me to have about the same probability as lots of young people suddenly start dying from covid-19.
OK_Max,
When evaluating the “lives saved” from past NPIs, it does not matter if the disease will skew differently for age/condition in the future than it did in the past. When evaluating whether to apply an NPI to a future NPI a change in disease behavior would be relevant, but the default assumption would be that a disease will continue to behave as it has in the past until you have evidence otherwise.
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Cases are rising here in Georgia and fatalities are likely to rise at well (due to lag in reporting, that won’t be clear for some weeks; using actual date of death fatalities are falling consistently since a peak in early August, but it seems likely that last week will be higher than the week before). 18-29 year olds can certainly get Covid (they’re our highest count age range for confirmed cases, but they had just 51 deaths as of 16 September and now 58 as of Nov 6th — 0.07% of confirmed cases, and in that age range there’s going to be a lot of unconfirmed cases.
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For pediatric fatalities, in Georgia there have been 7, two without co-morbidities. Those two were a seven year old who drowned in a bathtub after a seizure, and a 17 year old who died in the hospital after a serious auto accident. A policy that results in a reduction of pediatric cases (the rationale behind school closings) simply will not have a corresponding effect of the same size on mortalities. When a model suggest similarly-sized and massive reductions for school closings, that doesn’t pass the sniff test for *this* disease.
Phil Scadden, Mike M, et al.
I think the use of “in sample, but not used data” as a “validation” of a model suffers from problems of “data snooping”, and confirmation bias (see the many tree-ring vs temperature studies, which are essentially garbage).
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If you can convince people to avoid most all contact with others, then that will for certain reduce the spread of the virus; convince them to be locked in isolation cells, and you will stop the spread of the virus. I really don’t see that the study in question tells us much of anything more illuminating than this.
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WRT mandated mask wearing: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817
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While there was a modest effect in illness rates among 3000 volunteers who did not wear a mask versus 3000 who did, the difference was not statistically significant.
SteveF (Comment #194140)
Everywhere, at every phase of the pandemic, nearly all fatalities have taken place among those either over 60 (and especially over 70) and/or with other significant co-morbidities. That is not going to change.
_________
According to CDC, almost one-quarter of the covid-19 deaths were below age 67, the age for drawing full Social Security benefits. In the future, persons below retirement age may account for an increasing proportion of covid-19 deaths if retirement homes do better at protecting their residents from this virus than they did in 2020. Persons in retirement, however, should continue to represent a large majority of covid-19 deaths.
Dale S (Comment #194141)
OK_Max,
When evaluating the “lives saved†from past NPIs, it does not matter if the disease will skew differently for age/condition in the future than it did in the past. When evaluating whether to apply an NPI to a future NPI a change in disease behavior would be relevant, but the default assumption would be that a disease will continue to behave as it has in the past until you have evidence otherwise.
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Dale S, I think I understand what you are saying.
There might have been an initial die off of people who were particularly susceptible to the disease and much more likely to die from it. This might also account for part of the the reduction in death rates.
Tom Scharf,
Maybe, but I suspect it was mostly the relative lack of protecting the population in long term care facilities in the first few months of the pandemic that gave the high death rates (New York, NJ, and other states). Most states, even with much older populations like Florida, have never come close to the deaths per million in the Northeast states. It probably is true that in those states with very high deaths per million many of the most vulnerable of the elderly population have already died. But regardless of the death rate, Gov Cuomo is a hero.
My guess is that there is one non-pharmaceutical intervention that could be more effective than all the others put together: staying home if sick. No, that is not right. It should be staying home if you have any symptoms whatsoever. I do not think that I have seen, heard, or read a single public service announcement advising people on when they should implement that. I am in New Mexico. Is it different where you guys live?
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The Wuhan virus causes a disease that is much worse than the flu, which is pretty bad. Obviously WAY worse than a cold. It has scary and unusual symptoms, like difficulty breathing and loss of taste and smell. And of course, fever. We all know that if you don’t have a fever, you don’t have the Wuhan virus. Even if you do have it, you wear a mask , every one else is wearing a mask, and masks are wonderful at stopping the spread. So if you have a sore throat, a bit of a cough and/or headache, but no fever, you are good to go. No need to get tested or stay home.
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That paragraph is bunkum. But I am guessing that a lot of people, perhaps even a substantial majority, would be hard pressed to find much wrong with it. Thus, the single most important NPI is rendered inoperative.
MikeM,
I’m confused about your claim and your point. You wrote a bunch of whooey in the first two paragraphs. Then you seem to admit it’s whoeys. Then you claim that people not knowing it’s whooey renders NPI in operative?
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I think many, many people know it’s whooey.
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I’m not goign to argue though because I’m not sure what your claim is .
Written bunkum needs to be sufficiently clear. Sort of like Johnathan Swift’s “A modest proposalâ€. When you present bunkum that many people would accept as truth, then you only obscure your views.
You must be referring to the newly announced Emmy Award winner for covid “leadership”, Gov. Cuomo? I literally did LOL when I heard this. I suppose it depends on what you think he was leading, perhaps death count leadership. There is a certain segment of people who care much more about performative displays to the absolute exclusion of results.
A “mask works” type paper has evidently been withdrawn (oweing to new data.)
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/researchers-withdraw-study-showing-efficacy-of-mask-mandates-after-increased-virus-cases-in-areas-observed
I see absolutely nothing with regards to public service announcements on television, billboards, etc. with regards to basic behavior on lowering risk (avoid people, staying home, how to wear a mask, stay away from crowded indoor places, etc.). Comparing the amount of money spent on campaign ads in FL relative to basic covid risk reduction is instructive. Maybe they think everybody knows these things.
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The CDC website is pretty good, but I very much doubt most people even know it exists. Example:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/about-face-coverings.html
Republicans are now +10 in the House.
Two more races look like ~100% certain, and one more a coin flip. So +12 or +13. A far cry from the projected -5 to -15 projected from the pre-election polls.
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It is clearly not just “shy Trump†voters; the polling companies simply can’t reach a representative sample of voters. Here is my modest proposal: public release of polls more than 2% away from the actual vote within 4 weeks of an election should be a felony. It’s a joke, but virtually all polls should be ridiculed and then ignored; pollsters really have not a clue what they are doing.
Masks are just one component of a multi-layer risk reduction strategy. People tend to get too reductionist in whether one thing or another solves the problem when all these components do is change probabilities. I think simultaneously that masks are oversold for their efficacy and people should wear them anyway because they aren’t harmful and potentially beneficial.
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Put a 100 volunteers in one room with masks, 100 in a room without masks. Stream contagious people through the rooms. Count up how many get infected. Repeat the experiment except contagious people with and without masks. This type of experiment has to be done carefully like anything else, but is much better than these correlation study nightmares.
I read a story about polling that said the type of people who answer and talk to pollsters tend to be those who trust government institutions more, these people also happen to be more liberal in general. The solution to this problem was unknown. A lot of people used to answer pollster’s calls relative to now, and because these people are now rare (and thus kind of weird) they also tend to be much less representative of the population. Apparently the old screening parameters they used to weight answers no longer work.
Tom Scharf,
“The solution to this problem was unknown.”
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The only solution is to ignore pollsters. They really have no clue how to reach a representative voting population.
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Of course, it is not all the pollsters fault; the name and shame ‘woke left’ constantly threatening to have you thrown out of your job adds to it. Why even talk about your views when they will provoke only ridicule and condemnation? The pollsters are way off because sane people on the right want to avoid ugly confrontations with friends and family who are on the left….. people willing to ‘write off’ anyone, friend or family, who disagrees with their political views.
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It is a very ugly business, but is 100% the fault of those on the left who can never accept anyone could possibly rationally hold different political views or reach different conclusions. That is always the problem on the left. It is why I loath the left.
Tom
That’s my view. I think people get overly emotional about them in both directions. I think they likely help especially for spread. But if you don’t want to get Covid…. do you imitation of a cloistered monk or nun.
Of course no one is going to do the experiment spraying people with the masks. That’s one of the difficulties with getting convincing data. In fact no one thinks they are sufficiently protective to do that experiment so everyone would say it’s unethical.
Tom Scharf,
“Put a 100 volunteers in one room with masks, 100 in a room without masks. Stream contagious people through the rooms. Count up how many get infected.”
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I assume this was meant as a joke. Real experiments to test politically correct policies like cloth masks on everyone everywhere are not ever going to be done. Shame on you to even imagine it.
Lucia,
“I think people get overly emotional about them in both directions.’
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It is not for me even slightly emotional, it is rational. I have yet to see convincing evidence in a real trial that cloth masks on everyone make a bit of difference. It does clearly make people feel better. I rode from Seattle to Charlotte yesterday night with a couple immediately to my right (both in their late 20’s) who were obviously spooked by covid. I probably seemed scary to them…. even with a mask…. but if there were any risk to speak of, it was that they could infect me. The madness is out of control.
SteveF,
The increasingly poor poll results in not merely a result of “the left”. It’s also caused by increasing use of texting and email and, to the extent relevant, phone screening. I don’t answer my landline. It’s nothing but robo-callers. Fewer and fewer people are answering phones at all, so those who answer at all are starting to likely be “different” in some way.
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Of course… I used to lie to polsters. But that’s a different issue. 🙂
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This isn’t polsters “fault”, but they should be aware that the decline in phone answering was a bad sign for accuracy.
Lucia,
“It’s also caused by increasing use of texting and email and, to the extent relevant, phone screening. I don’t answer my landline.”
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I don’t now own a land line. But if I did, I still wouldn’t participate in a telephone poll (I have been asked many times… this is Florida, after all). I don’t lie to pollsters, I just think they are evil in intent and outcome, and so refuse to respond.
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If I were a pollster (and if I didn’t commit suicide), I would start by trying to figure out why I am not talking to conservative voters…… of course, that is not going to happen.
I was standing on a main street in Seattle 48 hours ago at about 5:30 PM local time, while waiting for my taxi (or Uber…turned out they were the same) to arrive…. 6 Seattle city buses passed. On those 6 buses, I saw exactly 2 passengers. This is not surprising…. after months of raising fear of covid, no sane person would ever ride a bus. At the airport in Seattle, I rode a passenger train between terminals. I was the only person on the train… twice: once to visit the executive lounge of Alaska Airlines, and one to return to my boarding gate in another terminal.
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On my return flight, we were informed by the pilot that the Utah flight control center had “unexpectingly closed” due to COVID cases among the air traffic controllers. So the flight could either go into Canadian airspace (apparently an expensive proposition without any pre-existing agreement), or fly south to the LA area to avoid the Utah control center… adding an hour-plus to travel time on our flight.
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We ended up flying over Canada… for which I am forever grateful.
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Covid fear is totally, competently, insanely, out of control.
Lucia,
“Of course no one is going to do the experiment spraying people with the masks. That’s one of the difficulties with getting convincing data. In fact no one thinks they are sufficiently protective to do that experiment so everyone would say it’s unethical.”
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There’s no shortage of governments in the world that don’t let ethics stop them. Why don’t our CCP friends run experiments like this and share them with the world?
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More seriously, I personally don’t see an ethical problem with medical research performed with volunteers who are both fully aware of their risks and financially compensated for their risk. This particular disease is deadly to some and vanishingly unlikely to kill others — researched performed with healthy 18-27 year old volunteers to characterize exactly how the disease spreads has the potential to save thousands of lives in the 65+ set.
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Behaving as if Covid19 was the only disease in the world continues. Way back in March, one of the reasons that masks weren’t recommended is that people might touch and handle their masks often, increasing their risk of picking up any contact-spread disease. Now the state of California recommends you put your mask back on *between bites* while dining.
“More seriously, I personally don’t see an ethical problem with medical research performed with volunteers who are both fully aware of their risks and financially compensated for their risk.”
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Count me in Dr. Mengele! Ha ha. Seriously though we are already performing this experiment by the millions, we just aren’t tabulating the data correctly. Imagine we took a large school and fully instrumented it so it was monitored 24/7 and every person in the school was tested every day … but not informed of the results. We could monitor the contagious, who got infected, get a really good idea of the common routes and try to figure out why certain people didn’t get infected.
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The ethical part here is knowingly allowing infected people to spread the disease, but the outcome of people’s lives in this experiment is identical with and without monitoring. Perhaps if this disease was killing kids by the truckload then these type of tests might cross more people’s ethical barrier.
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There needs to be enough justification to put people at risk, would we gain enough knowledge from challenge tests to justify it? In the example of vaccine challenge tests if we got a vaccine a month earlier then the answer is pretty obvious in my mind.
DaleS,
You got me. I suspect there are some governments who would do the experiment.
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I do agree mask rules have been… uhm…. evolving.
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FWIW: I’ve never thought positively about the concern that people would touch their masks. Those concerned just elicited my eyerolls. My view was some people were mistaking the function, requirements and benefits of masks in the operating theater with those out in public.
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My view has always been that masks could plausibly help in public by (1) trapping some droplets emitted during speaking, sneezing coughing and just taking , ( 2) reduce the forward momentum of air and droplets during the same activities and thus reduce viral load on other people. Someone touching their own mask is utterly irrelevant to this issue.
SteveF, you write: “Covid fear is totally, competently, insanely, out of control.”
Trite thought experiment for you, but I’d really like to understand the mechanism(s) by which you have reached that opinion:
Imagine any other cause of death leading to between 1-2,000 deaths a day. The ones I see mentioned are terrorist attacks and airplane crashes, but let’s be less melodramatic.
If we were seeing this level of death from any new cause–poisoning, bridge collapse, whatever–in your opinion would there be a) widespread fear and b) would that fear be insanely out of control?
Thomas Fuller (Comment #194199): “Imagine any other cause of death leading to between 1-2,000 deaths a day.”
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That happens every year. It is called “flu season”, although most of the excess deaths are not influenza. But they correlate extremely well with pneumonia deaths, so they are likely due to respiratory infections.
Peak weekly excess deaths above baseline for the last few flu seasons (peak in January of specified year):
2016 6.8K
2017 11.2K
2018 17.0K
2019 7.3K
2020 8.4K
———
Thomas Fuller: “If we were seeing this level of death from any new cause–poisoning, bridge collapse, whatever–in your opinion would there be a) widespread fear and b) would that fear be insanely out of control?”
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I vote for c): It might be almost completely ignored. I think that we are in fact seeing that. The new cause in coronamonomania. It kills via suicide, drug overdoses, stress, and avoidable deaths from lack of timely medical intervention.
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Unlike the Wuhan virus, those deaths shorten lives by decades, not months.
Kenneth, thanks very much for your comments on in-sample, out-of-sample, but using a data set for validation that wasnt included in making the model does seem a good method for model validation. Of course, the worsening situation in USA with Covid19 is seeing a whole raft of NPIs being applied in different states. I assume evaluating the model against the dataset that should be produced over the next few months would be seen as sufficient validation? (though hopefully the vaccines will make the matter moot, but could guide future response to new contagions).
So despite the skepticism here, I would predict that over the next few months:
– The NPIs being applied in the UK will reduce the infection rate below 10k per day in 2-3 weeks and deaths will drop of accordingly.
– In US , states will apply ever-more drastic NPIs till infection rate drops and I would expect the effectiveness of those NPIs to pretty much in line with assessments of those papers.
Thomas Fuller,
We have 600,000 per year die from heart disease, and another 600,000 form cancer. That is year in year out, every year. The country is not turning itself inside out over those deaths. We have about 2.8 million deaths each year from all causes. Like cancer and heart disease, covid kills mostly people over age 60.
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Covid’s death profile looks remarkably similar to the overall risk of death with age. Shockingly enough, elderly people (like me!) are always at much greater risk of death. The risk profile for Covid 19 is no different… nor is the relatively low risk of death among younger people much different with Covid 19. It is a serious disease of old age.
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As a society, we spend massively on research on cancer and heart disease, and we have made some progress, but what we have not done is drastically damaged businesses and peoples’ ability to earn a living. The burden of the covid illness has been in large measure bourne by people who receive little or no reduction in risk of serious illness or death. The costs of public policies (financial, personal, and educational) are astronomical, and strike me as wildly disproportionate to the benefits in quality life years potentially gained. Worse yet, the policies are not even really focused on protecting those truly at risk, but rather trying to ‘protect’ a much larger population from infection that is not at significant risk.
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The example of the air traffic control center in Utah suddenly closing is typical of the over-the-top reactions to the illness. Surly those controllers at real risk (age or co-morbidities) could be sent hone while others not at significant risk continue operation. If meat packing companies can continue operation, in spite of some covid cases, surely air traffic control centers can do the same. It is all just wildly inappropriate rules. It is driven by fear, not reason. It is adopting policies which save few lives but do great damage. It is IMO crazy.
Phil
Sure… but I think that’s mostly because the infection rate dropping will be the cause of relaxed NPIs!
Whether the NPIs also cause lower infection rates… I think we won’t really know. I think some must lower infection rates. Others may. But it’s absolutely certain the infection rate influences Governors decisions, so infection rate is causal for imposed NPIs!
Lucia, Phil,
There will be many states where the governor will not impose more draconian policies. For example…… Florida. The rates will fall in those states as well. Then there will be the truly bizarre places like New York, were ever more draconian policies will be promulgated, even without much increase in deaths.
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As an instructive exercise, a comparison of Covid outcomes in Michigan and Sweden is appropriate. Sweden ~10 million, Michigan ~10 million. Climate: strongly seasonal both. First peak in deaths: Sweden ~April 18, 100 deaths per day, Michigan: April 16, 144 deaths per day. Current surge: Sweden peak 25 deaths per day, currently 13 deaths per day, Michigan ~70 deaths per day, now at peak. Total deaths to date: Sweden 6,406, Michigan 8,875.
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Covid rules: Sweden- no gatherings above 50 people, no visits to elder-care facilities, recommendations to minimize contacts; schools, restaurants, gyms, hair salons continuously open; no masks required anywhere. Michigan- almost too many rules to describe, but including travel restrictions, lockdowns, mask mandates, school closures, restaurants closed then limited operation, gyms closed, hair salons closed then limited operation.
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A reasonable person might ask what all of Michigan’s covid regulations have accomplished save for economic damage and social friction. My answer to that question: Michigan’s covid policies have accomplished worse than nothing. Those policies fail to protect the most vulnerable while tormenting the rest.
Are you trying to say that if Michigan had same rules as Sweden, then it would have same outcomes for deaths? That if whole of US had only the same restrictions as Sweden, then it would have had fewer deaths? Frankly, I dont buy it. My guess is that contact rate in Michigan is still higher than Sweden despite restrictions from cultural factors but I cant think what data you could use to measure it. Unacast is only USA.
Swedish joke: We will be glad with 2m restriction on closeness is over – then we can go back to the usual 5m.
If an NPI is successfully reducing infection rate, then removing the NPI should see infection rate go up again. Broadly this seems to happen but a hell of a lot of other compounding factors at play hence the “models” to tease them out. In particular, fear alone without any intervention will drive caution, and indeed this alone seems to be a major factor. I would bet on fear beating growing herd immunity as a reason for decline but you can only be sure of that by watching what happens to infection rate when fear recedes. Again, I hope vaccine induced herd-immunity is going to be the real winner.
Lucia,
“FWIW: I’ve never thought positively about the concern that people would touch their masks. Those concerned just elicited my eyerolls. My view was some people were mistaking the function, requirements and benefits of masks in the operating theater with those out in public.”
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My view is that the focus on Covid-19 is causing people to ignore all other source of risks. I think the risk of catching *covid* from handling your mask frequently may be insignificant, but there are plenty of other sicknesses that can be caught from repeatedly handling warm, most, and sometimes dirty cloth, and depending on age and health some of those could be more dangerous to a mask-wearer than Covid-19.
Dale S,
What disease? Real Q.
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I tend to think if you wash your facemask daily you are fine. If you are really worried, own multiple masks and change every two hours.
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My mask doesn’t seem to get moist, but perhaps other people drool.
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But I really don’t see much of a concern provided you wash your mask which is easy enough to do. If you’re worried that you can get sick from moist dirty cloth well, you could get sick from your underwear. Few people worry about that.
Phil, it isn’t 5 meters, nor even 2: https://citymonitor.ai/community/what-its-been-like-living-in-one-of-the-few-places-that-never-locked-down
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The Swedes mostly recognized that young people are not at significant risk, and old people are, and adopted policies based on that. The article linked above points out that they made a series of recommendations very early, when it became clear what the risk profile is. They did not close schools for kids under 16. They did tell people over 70 that they should stay home to reduce their risk. They did prohibit visits to elderly care facilities. They also urged people to work from home if possible and be cautious about interacting with large numbers of people.
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Most of all, they gave individuals the best information available, and let those individuals make their own choices about acceptable risks. They did not force on everyone rules and regulations that took all personal decisions away, and provide mostly breathless pronouncements which were devoid of useful information but inspired only panic. The single most important piece of information to reduce deaths is a clear statement that people over 70 are at substantial risk and should avoid most social contacts, while those under 50 at very low risk, and children at essentially zero risk. Nowhere in the States (that I am aware of) are these irrefutable facts regularly promoted by health authorities. Every destructive policy instituted in places like Michigan flys in the face of those simple facts. Since uninformed fear sets the rules in Michigan (and in many other places) adopting Swedish style rules is in Michigan not going to happen. That does not mean they would not yield very similar results if adopted. But the experiment will never be done.
Phil,
“I hope vaccine induced herd-immunity is going to be the real winner.”
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Sure. In most places, costly and foolish public policies have precluded any real progress toward herd immunity absent an effective vaccine.
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Of course in practice giving people the vaccine is more politically complicated. The FDA recently announced they have formed a committee to evaluate applications for emergency vaccine approval… but have not scheduled the first meeting until December 10. They explicitly state in the announcement they have no timetable for approval, nor what they will require for approval. Very standard bureaucratic fare, of course, but oddly inappropriate for ending a “national emergency”. When I saw that announcement, it told me those at the FDA really don’t give a sh!t if an extra 50,000 die before the vaccine is distributed to those most at risk of death; preserving (and demonstrating!) their control over the process by delaying approval is far more important than saving lives.
SteveF,
Yeah.. I’d ask “Why wait 3 weeks…?” But the answer is obviously. “It’s the FDA”.
Link to their announcement
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-announces-advisory-committee-meeting-discuss-covid-19-vaccine
I hope they’ve at least already appointed committee members.
In contrast UK’s NHS is getting prepared to start administrating the Pifzer vaccine on December 1st. The plan is to target nursing home staff and residents in the first push and are expecting to have 10 million doses on hand by the end of the year.
Andrew P,
I guess that means the FDA is getting the UK to do extra testing for the US. 🙂
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That’s the way it always is. The FDA usually waits for evah! Waiting to see what happens in other countries is not FDA official policy. But it always happens!
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Oh. well….
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8976265/Britons-Pfizer-vaccine-Americans-regulator-prepares-decide.html
Well… at least it appears we might have vaccine in US arms by Dec 11 or 12!
Lucia,
The committee members exist already, they don’t have to be appointed: https://www.fda.gov/advisory-committees/vaccines-and-related-biological-products-advisory-committee/roster-vaccines-and-related-biological-products-advisory-committee
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Pfizer formally applied for the emergency use licence on November 20. Perhaps the Pfizer application came as complete shock to the FDA staffers, after all they would have to believe Pfizer’s press releases to expect an application, so they could not months ago have prepared to immediately start the review process. Then there is the immense complexity of making travel arrangements for the committee members to visit Washington DC.
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The FDA is a huge bureaucracy. It is bad, really, really bad.
Phil Scadden (Comment #194201)
November 22nd, 2020 at 2:42 pm
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0#Tab1
https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41562-020-01009-0/MediaObjects/41562_2020_1009_MOESM1_ESM.pdf
Since the Nature article and SI, linked above and by Phil initially, discussed here had some interesting results, I went back to reread the Nature article and SI to better analyze the details of what the authors did in modeling and validating.
The reported results detailed in the main paper (and not the SI) are from in-sample data from the smallest data set, CCCSL. The validation used comes from using in-sample data from the other two data sets, CoronaNet and WHO-PHSM and the use of four different models. I do not see any actual cross-validation in the normal sense that would ordinarily be carried out with pseudo out-of-sample data. The lack of performing cross-validation (or at least not reporting results) is probably due to the results being very regionally dependent. Without cross-validation there is no way of determining model over fitting. The methods use many features, covariates and hyperparameters and are thus susceptible to over fitting.
The models using the four methods of Case Control Analysis, LASSO, Random Forests and Transformers, were applied to the three data sets, CCCSL (6,068 NPIs), CoronaNet (31,5322 NPIs) and WHO-PHSM (24,077 NPIs). Since the methods were applied to in-sample data and not tested with pseudo out-of-sample data (or at least not reported) for all three data sets, I do not understand why the smallest data set is the one detailed in the paper proper. The two largest data sets evidently include all or most of the data from CCCSL.
Although the 4 methods differ in attaching statistical significance to the decrease in Rt for a given NPI they do essentially all agree on which NPI categories are ranked highest and lowest. That agreement in ranking follows for the three data sets. I credit the authors of the paper for including some of the issues discussed here that could affect the paper’s results, e.g. the lack of formal harmonization of all NPI categories, assuming compliance being the same across all NPIs and NPIs occurring together over a short time span. They also point to the second and third surges of the Covid-19 infections being an opportunity to test the paper’s findings. That would be with true out-of-sample data.
I had noticed that most of the NPIs show a median decrease in Rt whether its uncertainty range makes it statistically significant or not. That decreasing relationship appears to follow all the way down to level 4. (The hierarchy is from Level 1 with less than 10 groups, to Level 2 with approximately 40 to 100 groups and down to Level 3 and Level 4 with thousands of groups). At this point in my understanding of the processes and methods used in the paper I am not certain how the Rt decreases for the Level 2 (level discussed in detail in the paper) are combined from the lower levels. If there were any biasing of the top ranked NPIs I judge it would come from that grouping and perhaps the number of groups at Level 4. Another aspect of the paper results that could bring the validity into question would be the those NPIs that show a statistically significant increase in Rt and that from a common sense view would not be expected to increase Rt. It could mean that the models are actually over fit and looking at noise. I am probably not motivated to look further into this matter, but do think that the results of this paper could get tested with the current surges and resulting data.
Lucia,
“Dr Moncef Slaoui, head of Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, said yesterday that inoculations could begin ‘a day or two after approval, on the 11th or the 12th.'”
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I fear the good doctor is quite delusional; it would not surprise me if the review process takes 3 weeks or longer.
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So the UK will start inoculating people with the exact same vaccine, 10 days before the FDA starts to consider the application for approval. The FDA seems to me run by a bunch of criminally negligent bureaucrats…. who likely conspired to delay announcement of the Pfizer vaccine’s efficacy for three weeks to ensure Trump would not gain re-election.
lucia (Comment #194198):”I’ve never thought positively about the concern that people would touch their masks. Those concerned just elicited my eyerolls. My view was some people were mistaking the function, requirements and benefits of masks in the operating theater with those out in public.”
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Is there any real difference, other than the strictness of precautions? Real question.
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lucia: “My view has always been that masks could plausibly help in public by (1) trapping some droplets emitted during speaking, sneezing coughing and just taking , ( 2) reduce the forward momentum of air and droplets during the same activities and thus reduce viral load on other people. Someone touching their own mask is utterly irrelevant to this issue.”
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But we don’t really know that. The issue with touching masks is fomites. You touch the mask and pick up virus from it, transfer the virus to the apple you examine, then someone else comes along and picks up the same apple. It does seem like fomites are not as big a deal as originally feared, but CDC guidelines on that have not changed and people are still madly disinfecting things.
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If the mask is doing anything, then it collecting large amounts of virus. The question of what happens to that virus is not irrelevant.
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lucia (Comment #194207): “I tend to think if you wash your facemask daily you are fine. If you are really worried, own multiple masks and change every two hours.”
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Again, we don’t really know, do we? We are left to use our own judgement and are not provided with the information needed to make that judgement. Thus reducing the wearing of masks to theater.
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lucia: “My mask doesn’t seem to get moist, but perhaps other people drool.”
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I think the issue is absorbed moisture rather than actually being wet. Once again, we don’t know. And of course, if you cough or sneeze into the mask, it will get moist.
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lucia: “If you’re worried that you can get sick from moist dirty cloth well, you could get sick from your underwear. Few people worry about that.”
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I strongly disagree that few people worry about that. I think that very few people would be willing to wear dirty underwear over their mouths.
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The mask collects stuff. There is no guarantee that stuff stays on the mask. It can be re-aerosolized while breathing out and breathing in. The more stuff on the mask, the more gets re-aerosolized, thus reducing the usefulness of the mask. Unless the virus particles collected on the mask quickly become non-viable.
I should have been clearer in my view of the paper’s handling of the the three data sets. The 4 methods were used in all three but the fitting was to the data in the individual data set. It was not accomplished by finding a well fitting model in one data set and applying it directly to another data set’s data.
I have some real political questions that I do not know where to post – so I will impose them here.
When will the Republican party as a whole cut loose Trump and his apparently out of touch view of the election results? Are the Georgia Senate races being leveraged by Trump to maintain Republican support? What is with Rudy’s profuse sweating in his interviews and TV appearances? Will Trump finally concede defeat or go out kicking and screaming?
There have been no government edicts / NPI’s for the flu over the years, yet it waxes and wanes every year over the seasons, with significant variability from year to year. People are overly focused on the start of the virus spread but why the flu stops is even more perplexing. Why have ND and SD covid cases peaked? The entire region is peaking. Heroic government interdiction? People’s fear? Herd immunity? We.don’t.know, and there are far too many people in science who are afraid of those words.
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NPI’s help with flu as well, so my point continues to be that it is reductionist to model covid spread as only a factor of government edicts on human behavior. It is quite possible this “natural” variability is playing the leading role in the transmission, and remains missing from models. Natural variability may be dominated by climate driving people indoors, environmental conditions allowing the virus to stay alive much longer, etc. They still don’t understand the flu spread, and it has been with us a very long time.
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The proper response to this argument is not “models are assumed perfect until proven otherwise” but instead we can’t stop winter from coming but we might be able to slow down virus spread through its other factors. NPI’s will work better if people trusted they were effective, we aren’t there yet and overselling it hurts credibility.
I think so. At least two:
1) In ORs, the medical staff are cutting people and laying hands on people. Getting material on their hands or instruments has a potential for direct transfer to a patient– including inside a patient.
2) In ORs the concern is for a bunch of different diseases each of which might transfer in different ways. Our masks are only intended to prevent Covid.
And it’s thought fomite transport is insignificant with this disease. That might be wrong, but it is still the thinking and has been from nearly the start.
I didn’t suggest they would. But I also think very few guys are constantly worrying about getting jock itch from wearing underwear for a day. Nor are they worried about getting athletes foot from wearing socks one day.
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Obviously, you should wash these things. But that’s the same with masks.
AstraZeneca-Oxford Vaccine:
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Full dose, followed by full dose: 62% effective
Half dose, followed by full dose: 90% effective
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Mysterious. Also the EU has been doing a “rolling review” of this vaccine all along. The FDA better not drop the ball on this, it doesn’t get any more high profile than this. BAU will put a stain on the FDA that will last decades, I hope they realize this.
Kenneth,
“When will the Republican party as a whole cut loose Trump and his apparently out of touch view of the election results? Are the Georgia Senate races being leveraged by Trump to maintain Republican support? What is with Rudy’s profuse sweating in his interviews and TV appearances? Will Trump finally concede defeat or go out kicking and screaming?”
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If the legal challenges all fail (which it appears they will), most elected Republicans will tell him to give it up and call for him to concede. He won’t.
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I suspect Trump’s continuing bad behavior will, if anything, jeopardize the Georgia Senate seats. That would be terrible, and something Trump should carefully consider… he won’t.
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No idea about Rudy’s sweating. But he needs to be more careful about applying cheap hair dye just before a press conference.
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I do not think Trump has it in him to ever concede defeat (no doubt learning from the thoughtful and enlightened ‘governor’ Stacy Abrams). Trump will for sure leave the White house, but will not go to Biden’s inauguration, and will always claim the election was stolen.
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Of course, there was plenty of voter fraud (the evidence is irrefutable and overwhelming), but because of the way widespread mail-in voting was handled, it is going to be just about impossible to prove enough fraud to overcome the deficits in close states.
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I want to make a couple of other political observations here: Unlike Democrats in November 2016, Republicans are not calling for electors from very close states to renege on their promises… nor any of the other unhinged suggestions made by Democrats to overturn the 2016 election result.
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Many Republicans view Biden’s election for what it is: a career politician, obviously descending into dementia, who has never had scintilla of personal principles, is about to assume office. It is very bad for the country, since his already limited competence will only grow worse, and will almost certainly lead to “President Kamala” within a year or two…. and that will be a true catastrophe. Considering all that, the Republicans are actually handling the situation pretty well. I have to conclude Republicans are far more responsible that are Democrats.
SteveF (Comment #194204)
“As an instructive exercise, a comparison of Covid outcomes in Michigan and Sweden is appropriate. Sweden ~10 million, Michigan ~10 million. …Total deaths to date: Sweden 6,406, Michigan 8,875.”
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Sweden with comparatively non-restrictive anti-covid-19 policies has had 63 deaths (per 100,000 population) from this disease, compared to 89 in Michigan, which has restrictive measures. On the other hand, countries that border Sweden have very low death rates from the disease (Norway 6, Finland 7, and Denmark 14). These three countries do have far more restrictive measures than Sweden.
I’m not sure what all of this means, but maybe comparing the experiences of Sweden and Michigan is an “apples and oranges†comparison.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
“When will the Republican party as a whole cut loose Trump and his apparently out of touch view of the election results?”
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I grow weary of this ridiculous fight. I think he has about another week to find something (chances = 0) before the establishment declares Biden the winner without his input. The resistance put up a similar fight for HRC for a while, I can’t remember when it ended, mostly after all the states formalized results as I recall.
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I predict Trump will leave the WH in Jan saying all his usual crazy things but will fade into the sunset because he will be ignored and have no power. Be ready for Senator Trump from FL though!
Tom Scharf,
“BAU will put a stain on the FDA that will last decades, I hope they realize this.”
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BAU and bureaucrat are permanently joined at the hip. They are career Federal employees, impossible to fire and untouchable. It is already clear from the delay to December 10 that they don’t give a sh!t.
OK_Max,
“I’m not sure what all of this means, but maybe comparing the experiences of Sweden and Michigan is an “apples and oranges†comparison.”
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Most all comparisons will be “apples and oranges” comparisons. My only point is that the economic and social damage caused by Michigan’s policies do not lead to low rates of death. I have no doubt that policies which actually focus on protecting those at risk could reduce deaths, but few countries (or states) are even trying that approach. After a poor start, Sweden does appear to be trying.
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For example: If you want to keep elderly people from catching covid 19, why not provide N95 masks (and appropriate training) to those truly at risk (mostly people over ~65, and especially over 70) when they need to leave home? N95 masks actually do filter out most all airborne particles, and greatly reduce the risk of infection for all respiratory diseases…. which is why they are used in hospitals. But nobody has suggested so simple and cheap an approach. Instead, even the sale of that grade of mask is prohibited in most places. It is crazy.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #194219)
Will Trump finally concede defeat or go out kicking and screaming?
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Trump may be receiving enough in contributions to make not conceding worthwhile. And the money doesn’t have to be used for challenging the election.
@ OK_Max
Heck, he could be spending it on crack and strippers.
OK_Max (Comment #194224): “countries that border Sweden have very low death rates from the disease”
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True. Part of that is that Sweden got hit early and initially did a poor job of protective people in nursing homes. Also, Sweden has a lot more old people; the per capita death rate in Sweden is 16% higher than Norway, solely because of different age distributions.
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Comparing Wuhan virus deaths per capita, Sweden has had about 5700 more deaths than if the rate was the same as in Norway. But if you look at all cause deaths in the two countries, the difference is half that. But Sweden had an unusually low number of deaths in the year before the epidemic. Over the last two years, all cause mortality in Sweden has not been higher than in Norway, after allowing for the older population in Sweden.
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That suggests that the main effect of the epidemic was the harvesting of people close to the end of their lives, with little effect on overall life expectancy.
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My source for the above (the link I thought I had seems to be broken): Frederik E. Juul et al., “Mortality in Norway and Sweden before and after the Covid-19 outbreak”. Their interpretation:
One of the reasons I groan and moan so much about black box model fitters is my own experience. I wrote a neural net based horse racing selector many years ago. It took data from daily racing forms and ranked the horses. A couple observations is when you have access to the models you can examine their internal weightings. When I added more data these weightings tended to shift dramatically and unexpectedly. You need a lot of good data.
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Secondly ranking horses is not the game, you are betting against other bettors. You need to find undervalued horses. The house takes about 25% of the take for horse betting depending on the state so you need to win by a lot to make this effort worthwhile.
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It worked, kind of. It did relatively well but not as good as an experienced horse bettor. The effort was eventually abandoned. It should be noted that some people were more successful at this:
https://www.wired.com/2002/03/betting/
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Another point is you need to make sure you are asking a model the right question and give it the appropriate data. Let’s say you were giving a naïve model the electrical signals for a pulse oximeter and gave it an enormous amount of normal clinical data and asked it to give you the answer that was most likely correct. Almost all normal clinical data will read ~98% for healthy people. The “correct” answer to that question is to always output 98%. Not a useful model.
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When the readings are low these devices tend to have a much higher incidence of false low readings than real low readings. You can fix this problem in different ways, you can give the model a signal quality input, you can restrict the input data so that it covers a more evenly weighted set of output readings, etc. What you can’t do is drop a crapload of data blindly into these things and get magic.
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These things are a problem with naïve models, and naïve modelers will eventually find them with experience. I imagine the modern tools can flag for these but there are fundamental things the modeler must do.
SteveF,
“Heck, he could be spending it on crack and strippers.”
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LOL. 😉
SteveF
My only point is that the economic destruction caused by Michigan’s policies do not lead to low rates of death.
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But you don’t know what the death rate would be without those policies. Nor do you know what the infection rate would be.
OK_Max,
What we do know is that if you expose very elderly people to the virus, there will be a lot more deaths (see New York and New Jersey, where state rules required infected elderly be returned from hospitals to elderly care facilities, nearly doubling overall death rates). We know that the probably of death after infection raises exponentially with age, with near zero chance below age 40, ~2% chance of death near age 60, but reaching about 30% change of death after age 85. So we know that if only younger people were exposed to the virus, there would be relatively few deaths.
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Public policies should reflect those obvious facts. In Michigan (and most places) they don’t. We instead torment and financially damage many who are not at risk and fail to adequately protect those who are.
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BTW, the “infection rate” is so poorly measured as to be almost meaningless; I long ago stopped looking at the infection rate. People who recover are almost always going to be perfectly OK in a few weeks (and most often within a few days). Dead people are not.
Mike M. (Comment #194230).
That suggests that the main effect of the epidemic was the harvesting of people close to the end of their lives, with little effect on overall life expectancy.
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I wouldn’t put it exactly like that. Something about “harvesting of people” makes me shudder.
Why would Sweden have relatively more old folks in nursing homes than neighboring Denmark, Norway, and Finland?
The number of Covid-19 cases in Sweden has risen sharply recently but deaths from the disease haven’t risen much. I don’t know whether restrictions have been tightened.
SteveF (Comment #194234)
So we know that if only younger people were exposed to the virus, there would be relatively few deaths.
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But young people with Covid-19 can infect older people. This can happen even before the young know they have the disease. In multi-generational households this can be a serious problem.
OK_Max,
“But young people with Covid-19 can infect older people.”.
Sure, and old people can infect young as well. But the older people, who are at risk, are the ones who should be protected not the young. Multi-generational households have to evaluate risks and act accordingly. But they are are not even being given the right information, never mind simple things like N95 masks for those at risk. There are lots of prfectly sensible ways to reduce the risk to the elderly. What we have been doing in most places (like Michigan) isn’t among them. Just keep in mind: in Michigan, a family could drive in the same car from their home to a lake, but were prohibited by Michigan’s thoughtful Governor from sitting in the same boat on that lake. All arbitrary, all nutty, all useless.
Kenneth, thanks again for your studied and careful examination of the paper. I really appreciate your perspective here.
Tom Scharf, in college we built a model for baseball teams making the playoffs, based on stats like HR, strikeouts, hits, ERA, etc.
One guy on our team had a very high performing model, which also uses as inputs team wins and team losses.
MikeN (Comment #194240)
November 23rd, 2020 at 10:15 pm
MikeN, if enough models are built and evaluated covering the same variables, one or a few can outperform – by chance.
Kenneth,
I think MikeN’s comment was tounge-in-cheek (he can correct if I am wrong). Wins and losses always tell you which teams make the playoffs.
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But yes generate enough models, and a random one will outperform by chance. Of course, in the case of baseball, you could run the same model against historical data from many years, where random chance should be much less important.
The baseball type of models are somewhat fair tests, at least they get validated. As Kenneth says though you have to separate lucky from good. People have been trying to mathematically model the stock market for a very long time with varying degrees of success, some of these models read the WSJ.
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One can simply look at last year’s sports records and be pretty successful for predicting this years best teams, so the important question is what your reference is, the null model. If people bet money on it then typically that is a good place to start, are you consistently outperforming the Vegas line? If so then I would suggest your model has some value to some casinos, ha ha. Read Moneyball for baseball analytics, and the Ray’s recent success is apparently an analytics story as well.
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I’d love to see what a betting market would reveal for sea level rise. I think I would take the “under” from the academic estimate as reported by the media. It would be revealing to see what they would wager with their own money.
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As far as lucky goes there is a story of selecting a 1024 wealthy people to send your random stock picks to, wait a week, then choose the 512 best outcomes and send those people a new list of random stock picks, wait a week, 256, 128, 64, etc. By the end there will be few wealthy people who think you are the world’s greatest stock picker who are likely to buy your very pricey services, at least for a while.
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Things can be modeled successfully, but even games with rigid rules such as chess and Go took some ingenuity and a long time to master.
I have seen the claim that 80% of Wuhan virus cases are transmitted by 10-20% of those infected.
I have seen the claim that only about half of cases can be traced.
Those two claims are contradictory.
Maybe the superspread events are 80% of the cases that can be traced? Does anyone here have information that might explain the contradiction?
MikeM,
Perhaps the claims are made by different people looking at different data. Sort of like we have claims masks DO work and claims masks DON’T work. These obviously contradict each other but are made by different people. Those people may have different views on whether evidence is strong or weak.
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My view is they probably help some. At the same time, I know I sort of have to laugh at some people’s inconsistencies.
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There is a dancer at my studio who is VERY, VERY careful about masks including those worn by others. YET, she has gotten on airplanes and flown to vacation destinations, was going to compete in a huge competition in Ohio and so on. The balance of caution vs. lack of caution strikes me as… well… She wants to dance. She wants to feel responsible. She wants to feel she is doing something.
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I on the other hand do wear my mask. But I basically know I’m taking a risk. I ended up not competing in the local competition because it was cancelled. I have NOT signed up for any “away” competition that would involve travel, hotel, restaurant and do on.
Covid transmission data is pretty much chaos. Some conclusions like primarily indoor transmission seems well founded, others not so much. Difficult to judge competing claims. There are certainly super spreader events but what percentage they are of total cases is unknown.
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A recent claim is contact transmission (versus respiratory) is not a big threat, but they still say wash your hands. I haven’t really seen any data that supports this new claim other than assertions.
SteveF (Comment #194253)
November 24th, 2020 at 10:27 am
I see it now. I was assuming the data used were from the previous season. Using the current season would be making great use of in-sample data, but probably not of any use in betting.
lucia (Comment #194257)
November 24th, 2020 at 10:56 am
The air in an airplane is normally filtered with a hepa filter with probably a fair rate of turnover. If your mask was as effective as a hepa filter you might suffocate unless you breathed really hard.
Of course, if someone on the plane were breathing directly on you that might be a different story even if both individuals were masked, but that would be no different than masked dancing partners.
I play chess against a computer program on my android pad and have gotten to the point that I can win or draw most of the time against the highest level. That is not saying much for my chess playing ability and more about this particular chess program. It is good in the opening and middle game where it probably goes deeper into possible future moves than I do, but appears to be comparatively not that good in the end game were going deeper into moves is not as important.
The games are a great indicator of how well my brain is working and/or attentive I am. Consuming a good sized martini will usually show unless I play at a very slow pace.
Tom Scharf, Kenneth, it was a class in data mining. So we were using various tools like PCA and neural networks to search for good models, and then testing against separate data.
And yes, it was a joke. The entire room was staring at us as we were laughing at our teammate, and he had no idea why.
Kenneth,
“ Of course, if someone on the plane were breathing directly on you that might be a different story even if both individuals were masked, but that would be no different than masked dancing partners.â€
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Planes do have high turnover of air, it takes only about 3 minutes to replace the internal volume. The replacement air is also well filtered (HEPA). Unfortunately, that doesn’t save you. With a plane full of 200 breathing souls, the air you.breath is always going to be ~1% freshly exhaled by others. I have taken thousands of flights over the past 25 years, and I have many times gotten sick when I happened to be seated near someone who was onviously not well…. especially on long international flights. I traveled by air to Seattle and back last week and I am now sick; I don’t yet know if it is covid or something else, but my test results should be available by Saturday. Of course I and everyone wore a mask at the airports and on the planes. Masks will not save you. The only way to not catch anything is to have no contact with anyone.
Lucia,
I have three certified N95 masks from 3M that I purchased long ago… before covid. If you want to go dancing in relative safety, I could send them to you….. they include instructions for proper use. 😉
“Unfortunately, that doesn’t save you. ”
That indeed seems to be true based on cases here in managed isolation. We see multiple cases with the same genome from the same plane showing up in day 3 testing. Got 25 from plane load of foreign fishermen, all of who tested negative before getting on a plane. Either airports or planes seem very bad for spreading.
Some detail on study of one the flights here. https://www.newsroom.co.nz/how-covid-19-spread-on-a-flight-to-nz
I guess it depends on the route the air takes before getting to the HEPA filter. You probably don’t want to be the person closest to the air intake. Time x Dose = Bigger Risk.
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The NYT is claiming that they now believe an early mutation made the virus more contagious.
Evidence Builds That an Early Mutation Made the Pandemic Harder to Stop
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/world/covid-mutation.html
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“But a host of new research — including close genetic analysis of outbreaks and lab work with hamsters and human lung tissue — has supported the view that the mutated virus did in fact have a distinct advantage, infecting people more easily than the original variant detected in Wuhan, China.”
“One study found that outbreaks in communities in the United Kingdom grew faster when seeded by the 614G variant than when seeded by its Wuhan ancestor. Another reported that hamsters infected each other more quickly when exposed to the variant. And in a third, the variant infected human bronchial and nasal tissue in a cell-culture dish far more efficiently than its ancestor.”
“Even so, Dr. Andersen said that the variant’s higher transmissibility could help explain why some countries that were initially successful in containing the virus became susceptible to it later. The virus may have been “harder to contain than the first time around,†he said.”
“The 614G variant clearly won the race, the analysis found. The precise rate remains uncertain, but the most likely value gives 614G roughly a 20 percent advantage in its exponential rate of growth.”
“ Either airports or planes seem very bad for spreading.â€
I’d guess planes.
Lucia,
“What disease? Real Q.”
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A real question deserves a real answer. The glib answer is that any infectious disease whose germs can live on or in a cloth facemask could transmit it to someone who frequently touches it — and I think that covers the vast majority of infectious diseases, including Covid-19. But that’s true of every cloth thing a person could conceivably touch. While actually on your face it’s not likely to get contaminated by anything external that doesn’t also contaminate you, and stuffed in a pocket while not being worn might make it dirty, but that’s probably not a high-likelihood vector for infectious disease. Unless you’re setting your mask on the restaurant table when you take it off to dine (this seems very common where I live), the most likely source of contamination for a mask-handler is the handler’s own hands. So the specific diseases where masks could pose a risk to an improper handler are those where the germs will live longer on or in a mask then they will on hands.
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This is common with viruses. For example, the influenza virus lasts only five minutes on hands, but lasts 8 to 12 hours on fabric — that’s better than hard surfaces, but it’s two orders of magnitude longer than hands. So a person who gets flu germs on his hands and touches his mask within five minutes can stash those germs for *hours*, even though if he’d touched nothing at all it would go away within a few minutes.
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Bacteria in general prefer soft surfaces to hard, and like warm moist conditions. Unlike a virus, bacteria can multiply outside the body. But it can also last a long time on hands, so the use case for contamination would be handling your mask before washing your hands, or a mask getting contaminated at the same time (such as getting coliform bacteria from airborne toilet water, and only washing your hands).
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“I tend to think if you wash your facemask daily you are fine. If you are really worried, own multiple masks and change every two hours.”
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I don’t wash my facemask daily and I’m fine — I’m reasonably healthy, and have no underlying health conditions that make me especially vulnerable. But while I’m not “really worried” about getting sick from my uncleaned facemask, I’m also not “really worried” about getting sick from Covid-19 either, which has a lower death rate if caught *for me* than any number of nasty things my wife could bring home from the hospital. Facemasks present minimal risks IMO — but they also present minimal benefits as well, and daft advice like removing your mask between bites has negligible effect on source control while multiplying the chances of catching something else. But that doesn’t make the chance of catching something else high. Gerba 2014 found fecal coliform in 89% of the kitchen towels they looked at from 5 N.A. cities — but nowhere near 89% of us are catching anything from them or even our sponges. Of course we aren’t trying to breathe through them.
From a CBC article in May that actually acknowledged risks:
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If people are wearing masks for extended periods of time without properly cleaning them, Furness [University of Toronto epidemiologist] said, a bacterial biofilm can build up on the outside layer of your mask.
“If 30 million Canadians are wearing a cloth mask all day long, you’ll see a noticeable spike in bacterial lung infections in a month or so,” he said. “Especially because many people wearing them are often immunocompromised.
“Think about it: Our bodies are not designed to have a dirty cloth in front of our mouth all day.”
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Now to be fair, I don’t know of any evidence that there *was* a spike in bacterial lung infections, or how easily such a spike could be detected in the first place.
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“My mask doesn’t seem to get moist, but perhaps other people drool.”
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Your mask, like everyone else’s mask, has a steady stream of warm, moist air going into it. It doesn’t have to be damp to the touch for bacteria to like that.
But you’re bang-on about the two hours. There’s an interesting study from India in 2013 I found (Kelkar, International Journal of Infection Control) about masks in the Operating Theatre (in this case, for opthamology), but unusually it uses both surgical masks and cloth masks, and it’s specifically looking at bacterial source control — the subjects breathe on a cough plate without mask at time zero, then wearing the mask they performed the same exericse every 30 minutes up to the two and a half hour point. As the masks were worn longer, they became less effective, but both showed large dropoffs at 30 minutes (doing their job) and steadily got worse as time elapsed. Surgical masks were back to normal rates at the 2:30 mark, it’s a pity it didn’t extend further because the cloth masks were back to normal at the 2:00 mark and significantly *higher* at 2:30. Their recommendation was to replace masks every two hours at most, 90 minutes would be better. But that the rise in bacteria kept rising past the control by the 2:30 mark *really* makes me wonder how it would look after eight hours.
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“But I really don’t see much of a concern provided you wash your mask which is easy enough to do. If you’re worried that you can get sick from moist dirty cloth well, you could get sick from your underwear. Few people worry about that.”
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If people were asked to breathe through their underwear, I think you’d find more people worried about it. Certainly washing your mask daily, as the CDC recommends, will greatly reduce your mask-wearing risk. And just as certainly, everyone does *not* wash their mask daily, however easy that may be to do. When ordinary people are required to wear masks on a daily basis, it can be taken for granted that they are not all going to wear them correctly, wash them correctly, wash them *at all*, and certainly not swap them out every two hours or throw their surgical masks away after a single use. You could improve on *all* of these things with publicity and education, but the media messages I see are all focused on whether you mask rather than how you do it. Heck, there’s plenty of people willing to imply there’s no possible downside to mask wearing, which is no way to encourage proper mask hygiene.
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And even in the case of washing, the CDC recommendation to use tap water and laundry detergent or dish soap isn’t exactly designed to return a mask to a pristine state. Tap water isn’t supposed to be higher than 120F for risk of burning, WHO recommends 140 to kill viruses, and 160 for 25 minutes is used for hospital linens to kill assorted pathogens.
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Sorry for the length of this post, but after spending so much time looking into it I wanted to share what I found.
Dale, it was a good read. Thanks for sharing.
DaleS,
WRT wearing underwear over your face….. I guess it depends on the details: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y1mqkU9LukM
I don’t know why people thought I was suggesting wearing underwear over your face. I was thinking of jock itch from underwear.
I didn’t think you were suggesting that.
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BTW, changing underwear more than once per day is one of the suggestions to help control jock itch. But the fungal spores that spread the infection are hard to kill… either over 140F or washing with bleach. Cool washing without bleach and line drying just spreads the spores to everything .
SteveF,
One you have something, it can be difficult to get rid of. No doubt!
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A long time ago we bought a Neptune front loader that doesn’t allow the user to select a specific temperature. Maytag was having all sorts of verbiage on how their engineers had perfect temperatures….. Wrong.
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Washing machines should allow the user to use REALLY HOT water sometimes. I don’t think I would have achieved 140F…. but I don’t like that the machine has thermostats and mixes to “perfect” temperature for me. Their hot isn’t hot.
Lucia, I initially read that you had bought a Neptune front end loader. Probably just a reflection of my biases…
It would certainly help in moving laundry though.
Edit to add: And washing machines and laundry soap assume the cold water is closer to room temperature than what we have in Alaska. I’d hate to see how the Maytag engineers would solve that.
Earle,
It does *mix* the cold with the hot. The problem is IT decides and IT’s choice is less hot that people who want to disinfect really want.
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It was one of the first ones and I suspect newer ones have a hotter cycle because consumers caught on and realized that not even being able to have a real hot cycle is…. to put it mildly… craptastic. Newer machines will describe some cycle as “steam clean”. I suspect it’s not really steam– but they at least want to suggest that the water is really hot.
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Honestly, it’s one of those things where the “energy efficiency” overrides choices but actual people need to exercise some of those choices. (Admittedly, most would exercise it more often than required. But I can probably disinfect my masks better by running the water in my basin really not and hand washing than using my washing machine!)
Lucia,
Unless you have adjusted the thermostat, it is unlikely your water heater can produce 140F at the washing machine or a basement faucet. Most manufacturers are afraid of scald lawsuits, and set the temperature near 120F.
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If you turn off the cold water supply valve you will get the maximum temp available. Of course, some machines only allow cold water for rinse cycles, so you would have to turn the cold water on again to allow any rinsing.
SteveF,
I don’t have my water heater turned to “max” whatever that actual temperature is for my heater. (Probably not 140F. But it is pretty hot.)
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But also, unlike my old machine where I could adjust the temperature by changing cranking hot and cold more or less open, this one has no hand cranks. The flow rate is adjusted by a thermostat. I could probably over ride this, but haven’t looked into it.
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Next washing machine I’m making sure I can get a real HOT cycle even if I use warm and cold most of the time.
My washer has a “sanitize option”.
“Use the deep clean sanitize cycle to clean and sanitize heavily soiled, colorfast fabrics including towels, bedding, cloth diapers, and children’s clothing. It is recommended that you set your water heater to 120° F (49° C) or higher to ensure proper performance during this cycle.”
“The wash water is heated by an internal boost heater to a maximum of 152° F (67° C) as the load tumbles. Cold water is added to cool down the load prior to drain and spin.”
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Some dishwashers also do this, not sure if that is useful for masks.
Lucia,
I am very surprised your washing machine has no local shut-off valves. The last I checked a local (accessible) shutoff valve on both supplies was code required for washing machine connections in most places, and I believe it is in Illinois.
US cases looked to have peaked. The Midwest is in decline:
7 day rolling averages:
ND: -14%
WY: -7%
SD: -24%
MN: -3%
IA: -12%
WI: -10%
IL: -8%
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Some states are increasing but are starting at much lower numbers (AZ, NM). The EU peaked about 3 weeks ago.
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What is really odd here is that on there isn’t a single media outlet that has even noted this, at least via headlines. They have shifted to hospital and death counts. All bad news, all the time. You really have to look at the numbers to know what is happening.
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Vaccines are going to be allocated to states based on population. The states will then make final determinations on how to use them, although recommendations will be given.
Tom Scharf,
When cases were rising in Florida last summer, there was only coverage of impending catastrophe and how monstrous DeSantis is. Not a peep when they fell for a couple of months immediatly afterwards. No comparison of DeSantis with truly monstrous governors like Cuomo and Murphy (NJ) who’s policies killed thousands. News coverage is both dishonest and politically motivated at every level: local, state, national. There is no way they would ever report on things improving until Biden is sworn in. The news media are shameless.
International study of covid transmission etc from contact tracing data for the entire Hunan province has been published.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/11/23/science.abe2424
No great surprises but working from a large data set. It confirms age-related suseptibility to infection, important to modelling and to what herd immunity level is, but doesnt find infectivity is age related.
“We estimate that overall in Hunan, 63% of all transmission events were from pre-symptomatic individuals, in concordance with other modeling studies ”
“Further, transmission risk is higher around the time of symptom presentation of the primary case (Table 1). In addition, susceptibility to infection (defined as the risk of infection given a contact with primary case) by age: children aged 0-12 years are significantly less susceptible than individuals 26-64 years (odds ratio 0.41, 95% CI 0.26 to 0.63); while patients older than 65 years are significantly more susceptible (odds ratio 1.39, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.91). In contrast, we find no statistical support for age difference in infectivity (fig. S3A). These results are in agreement with previous findings”
“The early testing scheme may lead to underestimation of susceptibility in children, as younger individuals are less likely to develop SARS-CoV-2 symptoms (50). However, reassuringly, sensitivity analyses indicate that the age gradient of susceptibility is preserved even after stratification for changes in testing protocol. Further, our finding of lower susceptibility to infection among children under 12 years, relative to adults, remains stable in the period with comprehensive testing”
Tom…. let’s hope we’ve peaked. I like to wait for multi-week declines in 7 day averages. But… fingers crossed.
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It’s still not a great time to go out and mingle. My dance teacher wants to go to a competition in Florida in early December. Of course he’d like me to go. (This is both a business thing and also… I’m a GREAT person to have in the audience. I’m the loudest possible person when I’m cheering. I have a really loud voice combined with willingness to whoop and holler.)
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But with respect to flying anywhere right now: I’m like… noooooooo. Not me. Chicago is still rip-roaring. So anywhere I go, I’ll be in a plane full of people from Chicago which ain’t good right now.
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But fingers crossed on hitting a peak. And the vaccine getting approved.
Gosh, is the US media in the habit of publishing good news? This would make them almost unique in Western world if true. I usually only see such strange behaviour in likes of Pravda or China Daily where there is a party line to follow.
Steve…. there is a single flip switch. So I can turn both on and off. But I can’t turn only one off. I’m sure it would be possible to sort of work around this, but this is the default design.
Lucia,
That explains it. I you want to restore independent operation, you can connect a suitable shut-off valve between the flip valve and the cold water hose.
Phil,
All media tend to report bad things rather than good (‘if it bleeds, it leads’). But Here in the USA, the reporting of bad things, and even more who is blamed, is very selective. Skyrocketing cases in Michigan (100% Democrat control) are Trump’s fault. Skyrocketing cases in Texas (100% Republican control) are the Republican governor’s fault. The selective, politically motivated reporting is the problem.
Lucia, have you thought of driving to Florida.
My Minnesota family is driving to Florida starting tomorrow in a 2 car caravan and stopping at my house for TG dinner. Another MN group is joining them in early December and stopping at my house for an overnight. My other son and his wife and some relatives from IL are driving down to Florida (to another location) in early December. Both groups thought of flying but opted for driving as a safer alternative. Both groups have been isolating in preparation for the trip. The MN group were tested for Covid going into isolation and are getting tested again before leaving.
If you want loud be around the Fritsch family for awhile.
That strange behavior did exist here in the US with the Obama administration and will probably prevail under Biden. When it comes to politicians of both parties I would prefer that the press give them what they deserve and that most often would be negative coverage and criticism. Unfortunately it is pretty one sided in the US and actually one sided from the international press. The economy is the best example of one sidedness where in the main it gets good reviews under Democrats and not so good under Republicans.
All of this could come to good if more people decided that they better figure out and learn what is going on and decide for them selves what is good or bad.
Phil,
As Kenneth rightly points out, Obama was treated with kid gloves. Even when he (unlawfully) granted residency to hundreds of thousands of “dreamers†(who arrived illegally in the States as minors)…. the same people he had publicly and multiple times declared could not be granted residency without an act of Congress, the press fell all over themselves to say what a good president he was for his blatantly illegal executive order. Unless the goal is to push Biden out and install Kamala Harris as president, the MSM will never report harshly on Biden. That he has been pedaling influence for 40 years to enrich himself and his family will absolutly never be raised by the MSM.
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It is sort of like news reporting on Brexit a few years ago…. those supporting Brexit were consistently described as little better than knuckle-dragging primitives, and just as with Trump’s elections in the USA, polls in the UK showed Brexit had no chance. The MSM is truly dishonest, and indeed, deplorable. They are the propaganda arm of “progressive†politicians, nothing more.
Tom Scharf (Comment #194315)
November 25th, 2020 at 12:04 pm
US cases looked to have peaked.
______
That’s good news. With the holidays coming up the peak eventually may be higher, but maybe not.
Self, wife, and son all tested positive last week. This is with the PCR test. So far symptoms are de minimus. I have had a cold for several weeks and tested negative earlier in the month. I’m struggling to identify any symptoms that I can attribute to COVID-19.
We’re keeping quarantine until released by our doctors, which I expect will be in a couple days for my son. He works at the nearby army base doing night janitorial work. My wife coaches for a local swim club and is also looking to get back to work next week.
I’m looking forward to having this behind us. Unfortunately it seems much of the rest of the world will still be in a panic. The biggest inconvenience for me is that our daughter will not be joining us for Thanksgiving.
SteveF (Comment #194328)
It is sort of like news reporting on Brexit a few years ago…. those supporting Brexit were consistently described as little better than knuckle-dragging primitives….
________
Well, they did pine for the old days. Residents of Scotland and N. Ireland didn’t agree.
Why Is All COVID-19 News Bad News?
https://www.nber.org/papers/w28110
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“The negativity of the U.S. major media is notable even in areas with positive scientific developments including school re-openings and vaccine trials… Stories of increasing COVID-19 cases outnumber stories of decreasing cases by a factor of 5.5 even during periods when new cases are declining. Among U.S. major media outlets, stories discussing President Donald Trump and hydroxychloroquine are more numerous than all stories combined that cover companies and individual researchers working on COVID-19 vaccines.”
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“She finds that infection rates among students remain low (at 0.14 percent) and schools have not become the super-spreaders many feared. Guthrie et al (2020) and Viner et al (2020) review the available evidence and reach similar conclusions. However, ninety percent of school reopening articles from U.S. mainstream media are negative versus only 56 percent for the English-language major media in other countries.”
FL has increasing cases and will likely continue to do so for the next several weeks. We shall see what all the travel does for covid cases a few weeks from now, not likely going to be helpful. It might be premature to call the peak now.
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Media framing bias example, The Atlantic today:
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“Vociferously Trump-allied governors in hard-hit states such as Georgia, Florida, and South Dakota have declined to so much as implement a public mask mandate while local caseloads have soared … When places including New York, California, and Massachusetts first faced surging outbreaks, they implemented stringent safety restrictions—shelter-in-place orders, mask mandates, indoor-dining and bar closures. The strategy workedâ€
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Deaths:
GA: 9,221 (87 per 100,000)
FL: 18,383 (85)
SD: 821 (93)
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NY: 35,157 (177)
MA: 10,783 (153)
CA: 18,883 (48)
OK_Max,
“Well, they did pine for the old days.â€
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Not that old.
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Northern Ireland was very concerned they would end up being cut loose from the UK and effectively taken over by Ireland vie the EU common market rules. The Scotts, well, I think they are mostly crazy leftists, so no other rational for their Brexit position is needed. I note the Scotts didn’t walk away from the UK yet, and I doubt they will.
Tom Scharf,
The framing is even more biased than that: California has a median age more than 5 years younger than Florida, and NY 3+ years younger, so Florida is is doing even better than the raw numbers indicate.
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MSM Propaganda: Cuomo is a hero. Reality: Cuomo killed thousands who did not need to die due to woke sensibilities, and blames everyone except himself, and continues to insist on draconian rules where a lighter touch would be adequate, and much less damaging.
Kenneth,
I’d really rather just wait until covid numbers are down rather than drive all the way to Florida to compete. There will be other competitions!
The people who are going are the ones who prepared to dance in Ohio which got cancelled. I was planning to go to that… I’m just going to wait.
I want to see innoculations happening so bad. Even if I don’t get it early, covid numbers will start to drop as people become immune! (Of course they might anyway. It’s now ripping through so fast we might actually hit natural herd immunity.)
Lucia,
Deaths will start dropping long before cases. The total number of people in the USA who will complete the two dose protocol will be not more than 5 -10 million by the time Saint Joe the Corrupt takes office in January. Widespread inoculation (that would be you) seems unlikely until mid to late next year, depending of course on how much the FDA slows things down.
It’s not just the travel to destination part, it’s also the staying part. You are bound to have a much larger number of contacts while on the road. Staying in a hotel or with relatives, eating out, etc. These can be minimized but it kind of takes all the fun out of travel if you do so. I very much look forward to being able to travel again.
Can you imagine the FDA declining to give the vaccine an EUA? The media should be camping out at their headquarters and harassing employees as they walk to their cars. “Are you comfortable going home when 1000’s are dying every day?!?!”. They really barely cover it all. It’s all just bizarre.
Tom Scharf,
No imagination needed. They have already deladed distribution by at least 18 days, and probably much more. As I said up thread: They are untouchable Federal bureaucrats, accountable to nobody, and only interested in preserving their power and exercising it. Usually when someone directly causes many thousands of deaths, there are consequences. Not for FDA bureaucrats. They are bad people, really, really bad people.
Tom Scharf (Comment #194339)
November 25th, 2020 at 7:14 pm
I think if you have a destination in mind where you are staying at a more or less self contained cottage in an open area with friends and/or family the trip itself need be no more exposure than running into a grocery or hardware store if you were staying at home.
I keep track of the people who work at the one grocery store that I go to most frequently and I see the same ones. They have to be more exposed than a vacationer would be and I do not observe any absent where I might expect a Covid infection. I will have to make a note to ask the manager next time I am in the store about any or the number of workers who have been Covid infected.
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The President could order FDA to move, just as he did to get testing approved in early in the year. CDC and FDA told a lab in Seattle to stop testing until they could get approval, then refused to send them the samples they needed to show that their test worked.
Tom Scharf: “I very much look forward to being able to travel again.”
Amen! Traveling to/from FL is now a race keeping exposure to a minimum, rather than a pleasure trip with visits to friends, family, museums, gardens, etc.
In other news, Happy Thanksgiving to all! Although lacking the normal celebrations, we have much to be thankful for, not least that our friends and family are not among the 200+ thousand victims of Covid.
Tom Scharf (Comment #194340): “Can you imagine the FDA declining to give the vaccine an EUA?”
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I can imagine them giving an EUA limited to those at high risk. There is strong justification for that.
———–
MikeN (Comment #194353): “The President could order FDA to move”.
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There might be no better way to undermine trust in the vaccine, at least among Democrats.
Mike M,
What strong justification? Who do you mean by “high risk�
High risk would be people at high risk of exposure (such as health car workers), high risk of transmitting to vulnerable people (nursing home staff), or high risk of serious consequences, such as the elderly.
As a practical matter, it will be a while before the vaccine can be administered to others.
Not limiting use risks undermining ongoing trials before they are complete.
Ideally the FDA would from historical and recent data on vaccinations for viruses let the public know the risk associated with the testing to this point in time and where it might be x months from now. From there individual decisions could be made.. Unfortunately that is not how paternalistic and bureaucratic government agencies operate.
Mike M,
As a practical matter, there will be de facto postponement of vaccine use for most ‘not at risk’ individuals…. with a broad exception for politically favored groups (look for politicians and teachers to be inoculated, at risk or not, as soon as Biden is sworn in). So there will remain a large population of not- vaccinated individuals available for trials, at least until late next year. But it won’t matter much if there are 5 effective vaccines or 9 of them. Nor will herd immunity matter much once the portion of the population truly at risk of death have been vaccinated. 10,000 new colds per day…. with no deaths to speak of…. just doesn’t have the visceral impact of 1,500 deaths per day.
The SC blocks NYC’s bans on religious gatherings. I’m not really for or against these things as a practical matter (people need to avoid indoor gatherings) but there have been several instances of specific restrictions on religion that are not squared with similar restrictions on restaurants and so forth.
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The people who make these restrictions seem to be unacquainted with the 1st amendment and it is necessary to smack them down occasionally. Every time a wacko preacher says something stupid the media amplifies it and paints all of religion with that brush. I only have a passing understanding of what regular churches are doing, but it seems responsible.
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There are really two questions with these things:
1. Can it be done safely?
2. Will it be done safely?
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Happy Thanksgiving to all, and let’s hope next thanksgiving is virus free (or near enough to that to be safe).
SteveF (Comment #194335)
“The Scotts, well, I think they are mostly crazy leftists, so no other rational for their Brexit position is needed. I note the Scotts didn’t walk away from the UK yet, and I doubt they will.”
______
I’m one-half Scottish, which may explain why I’m one-half “crazy leftist.”
Scotland already has some financial independence, allowing it to spend differently than the rest of the UK. A recent example is free period products (tampons and sanitary pads) in women’s public restrooms, a world first.
Nevertheless, Scotland’s economy could be better off if it left the UK and joined the European Union. There may be other reasons for leaving. Recent polls show most Scotts favor leaving the UK.
Kenneth
Perhaps. But a Ballroom Dance competition in Orland would not qualify as staying in a more-or-less self contained cottage.
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I usually have lessons in the morning… so less crowded (which is good on many levels.) Yesterday, I had one at 3:45 pm and two of the women going to the Orlando competition were finishing up and chatting. They are planning a side tour to Disneyworld. Disneyworld!!!
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Let’s just say it’s pretty clear they aren’t into “social distancing”. This fits my pre-conceived notion that the typical dancer going to the competition is less risk averse than the typical dancer not going and by a long shot.
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From my view: What fun would it be to drive down, then isolate myself in a room for every minute other than my competition and then come back.
Tom Scharf (Comment #194378)
I spent much of the early morning reading parts i-iii of Josh Blackman’s series on the ruling to stay Cuomo’s orders at Volokh. Time to read iv.
https://reason.com/volokh/2020/11/26/roman-catholic-diocese-part-iv-governor-cuomos-orders-are-capable-of-repetition-and-will-not-escape-review/
Lucia, I will not question your devotion to dance, but when I was asked in the past by avid golfers and fishing people what I liked about those sports and I would start with being in the fresh air outdoors, nice scenery and a relaxing atmosphere they would stop me and interject with: well then you are not a real golfer/fisherman.
Just saying.
Kenneth,
My response to “You are not a real X” would be “So what?” I don’t need to be a real dancer. I bet you didn’t really care if you were a “real” or “not-real” golfer or fisher.
Hummmm…
Seems to me real dancers dance, real golfers golf, real fishermen (and women) catch fish. The rest is snobbery.
OK_Max,
The Scotts are in a snit ((ok, they most always in a snit), but I doubt they will leave the UK and join the EU. It would mean closing the land border to commerce (and maybe people) and a bunch of other complications.
SteveF
That seems to be the point of view of my teacher, the various coaches and the studio owner and so on. Obviously I am not Karina Smirnov. But the female pros know they aren’t that level either!
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They also know part of the decision to go to competitions is financial. It’s freakin’ expensive especially if you are flying from Chicago to Florida, staying in a hotel, eating out and so on.
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Of course no one can explain why their hobby expensive makes sense and someone else’s doesn’t. But fishermen buy Bass boats, golfers buy ridiculously pricey clubs and join Country Clubs with ridiculous fees and so on. Other people splurge on cars or ‘haut couture’ or overseas travel and so on.
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Lots of these things are on hold because of Covid.
My answer to being a real X was: you are right and you have found me out. Those people I responded to I think took me off their list of people to talk about the finer points of their sport.
I have 2 sons who probably feel obligated to talk to their dear old father about the finer points of various sports so I still have those discussions.
Sounds like SteveF would have found me out.
Government tampons are the very definition of socialism, ha ha. I can’t wait to see the dreary factory where the dreary unproductive people put out their daily quota of tampons designed by an all male government committee who used to design tractors and made from recycled cardboard. Perhaps this is overstating the situation.
Golf is nice exercise in a park with a few curse words randomly thrown about. My favorite part of golf is after striking a ball particularly well on an approach shot to the green, it flies for about 5 seconds and the * anticipation * of those moments watching and waiting for it to land are magic, nothing else in the world matters, pure escape.
The public toilets have free toilet paper, free water, free soap. Someone pays for them to be cleaned. I”m all for free tampons.
Lucia,
“But fishermen buy Bass boats, golfers buy ridiculously pricey clubs and join Country Clubs with ridiculous fees and so on.â€
.
Yes many hobbies are expensive. I owned a 41 foot twin-cabin cruiser for 17 years. (recently sold) It was a huge expense. OTOH, golf can be very expensive, but really doesn’t have to be. I have owned the same set of Irons for 20 years, and I rarely buy any new equipment save for grips that wear out. I do have to buy gloves and some golf balls, but I don’t lose many (I often play 2 or 3 times with the same ball) so that isn’t much money. The real cost is greens fees, but I usually reduce this by getting a membership at a municipal course on (Cape Cod) so $750 per year for about 25 rounds. It is more expensive in Florida, but I play less in Florida
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I do see players buy crazy-expensive equipment on a routine basis, of course, but they are laboring under a delusion: it is the golfer’s skill that matters, not the equipment. And it is usually the former that is lacking. My younger brother (started playing at 11, and was ‘scratch’ from 19 to 60 – placing him in the top ~0.1%) told me when I started playing that he could easily better 95% of golfers using only 3 clubs (normal is 14 clubs), and said “it is skill, not equipmentâ€. I have remembered that and avoided wasting money.
SteveF,
Equipment is always a weird thing. Some equipment is purchased for show.
I have discovered that $100 practice dance shoes really are worth the money. I decided to buy them after I saw a video by the guy who sells Aida dance shoes and could understand what is different about them. I figured I was being a sap…. but actually, they are better.
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OTOH: Practice skirts, dresses and so on are expensive and mostly just prettier. You can learn just as well in cheap leggings, cheap Amazon circle skirts and so on.
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Private lessons with great teachers really do help. Whether it’s “worth” the money? Well, that depends on what you have to give up and whether you enjoy dancing.
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Since last January, my progress in Waltz and other “smooth” dances has been enormous, and it’s hard to explain how much more fun the dance is when you start being good enough to do authentic sway, learn to move forward and backwards correctly and know how to “connect” during dancing. But… well… there an element of being like a kid on a swing or a merry go round.
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Obviously, shoes can’t make you dance right. But bad shoes make it harder. 🙂
It is time for my true story about golfing with a priest.
My neighbor and I were golfing at a local course one day where the fees were modest when after a few holes in a priest hopped over a fence and asked if he could join us. He had one club with him which as I recall was a five iron. He used that club for all his shots including putting and even after we offered him to use ours. He shot an even par for the remainder of the holes. Damn near converted to Catholicism on the spot.
Lucia,
“ it’s hard to explain how much more fun the dance is when you start being good enough to do authentic sway,…â€
.
It is not so different. I have tried to help some (terrible) golfers improve, and would say something like “It is so much better when you learn enough that you can hit it consistently and curve it either direction as you want.â€. But I have learned that very few golfers (who are not young) are interested in (or capable of) changing a really bad swing. A few are, but it is few.. Golf instructors have to have great patience.
Well after reading the Josh Blackman series, it would seem Gorsuch is exactly what I was hoping for in a justice. Strict adherence to the 1st Amendment and Constitution, and he is quite emotional about it (as far as one can read these things in a legal document). He’s not going to split many hairs on these issues.
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I don’t feel particularly strongly that the right of religious exercise is on a higher moral order than the rights of grocery stores, but the fact is that religion is specifically enumerated in the Constitution and this puts it at a much higher legal standard.
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As the pandemic moves along the court is applying more scrutiny and starting to put the burden on the state to prove its emergency restrictions are necessary.
SteveF,
Ballroom dance teachers also need a lot of patience.
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The thing is, I’ve come to understand that there are teachers who really only want to focus on “groovy moves” or “step patterns” and don’t want to do the hard work to get students to deal with posture, basic motion and so on. My dancing has improved because a coach gave me a stern talking to about posture and I then figured out how to fix it.
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To be fair to other teachers, they did all discuss posture. But Rita just flat out told me that people who were worse than me would beat me in competitions because of my posture. I saw videos of dancers in competition and could see how and why this was true. It also turned out fixing my posture allowed me to get better.
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But also to be fair about some other teachers who are less good….the owner of local studio I used to go to really like to encourage people to learn tons and tons of “groovie” steps to be “interesting”. But their fundamentals… He either doesn’t know how to get them to improve or he just doesn’t want to spend time on that. My opinion is he treats it as sort of a special extra “frill” for the “true dancers” and he doesn’t really think most people will become “true dancers”. Of course…. his students generally don’t become true dancers — unless they somehow have some natural positives and also spend time doing outside study!
Tom Scharf,
And imagine… Gorsuch is the token Protestant on this court. 🙂
Tom Scharf
I think one problem is Cuomo wants the right of religious exercise to be a lower moral order than the rights of grocery stores. My understanding is Cuomo wants to treat some things as essential but not put religion on that category.
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His argument seems to be that if some businesses are treated as strictly as religion then it’s ok. But it appears the SCOTUS judges don’t accept that. Their standard is if anyone gets treated better than religion, that’s a problem.
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I’m an atheist, but I lean toward the 5 judge majorities view. It seems to me nothing prevents Cuomo from making 10 or even 100 tiers and putting religion in the most restricted tier. It may be his view that taking the holy eucharist is “not essential”. I don’t need to take it. But… uhmm…..
Trump evidently says vaccine is coming next week. The article also mentions FDA meeting is Dec. 10. It is silent on how the two reconcile. (My guess is Trump is… erhmmm…. mistaken.)
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-says-coronavirus-vaccine-deliveries-will-start-next-week
Lucia,
You can distribute an unauthorized medication, you just can sell it or use it. Probably Pfizer told someone in the administration about pre- approval distribution, not use.
Makes complete sense to me that logistics would start to do their thing before the bureaucrats get around to rubber stamping the affair. My guess is both are correct.
So I get to feeling poorly enough I went to the ER. They do CT scans with contrast of my chest and abdomen. They find abscesses on my liver and a blood clot in my lung. Apparently my white cell count is high so lots of IV antibiotics plus blood thinner for the clot. They put a tube in one of the abscesses and suck out over 100 mL of nasty looking stuff. I get to feeling better and shortly thereafter test positive for COVID. Now I can’t go home because my wife doesn’t have it and she would lose her caregivers. So I’m in the COVID wing of a skilled nursing facility.
My only obvious COVID symptom is fatigue. That seems to have improved recently so maybe I’m out of the woods.
Weren’t we told early on that it was important to implement control measures as soon as possible to minimize the death rate? Why wouldn’t this apply to vaccinations? Oh, that would be applying logic. Can’t have that.
If I prayed, I’d pray for you DeWitt. I don’t…. so I’ll be thinking of you and hoping for the best.
DeWift,
I hope you recover soon and completely. I’d miss your a acerbic comments if you stoped making them. And What Lucia said.
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It does make sense to get the vaccinations going ASAP. But this is the FDA. The same FDA that pressured Pfizer to not release positive vaccine trial results before the election. They are bad people doing bad things.
DeWitt, I was concerned when I did not see you posting. Thanks for the update on your health and hope you recover soon.
Ooof! Sounds like you made a great call, DeWitt! Pulmonary embolism can be nasty and it sounds like the liver absess was a ticking timebomb for septic shock. Wishing you a speedy recovery!
DeWitt, I hope you feel better and better.
DeWitt,
I don’t really believe, but I’ll pray for you anyway.
Be well.
I think I’m well into recovery at this point, but thanks for all the good wishes and prayers.
Did I hear the news correctly that Biden is planning to put the known to be incompetent CDC in charge of all things COVID?
I wish you well.
Tom Scharf, imagine Trump had nominated Kavanaugh and Gorsuch in reverse order. Kavanaugh would have gotten in relatively easily, and Gorsuch would have been accused of rape. He went to the same school, and it was two years later, so Ford could have stuck to her original story to the therapist with the right year.
“The death toll of Americans under the age of 40 from COVID-19 — 3,571 — has now surpassed the total death toll from the 9/11 terrorist attacks.” From an article in today’s USAToday
Still, although may people under the age of 40 get Covid-19, the number who die from this disease is relatively small. I don’t know how many survivors suffer a lot.
OK_Max,
About 150,000 people per year die before 40 in the USA (out of about 175 million), more of them men than women. So 3,571 is not a large increase. Most deaths from covid are after age 65, with a median age at death for all cases of about 79. Covid is a serious illness mainly of the elderly, the infirm, and especially the infirm elderly: even at age 85, 2/3 of covid patients survive the infection.
John Hopkins finds covid has relatively no effect on overall death rate in US. The mob is out with pitchforks for this heresy
Article, editor note on retraction, study below.
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https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/11/27/johns-hopkins-study-saying-covid-19-has-relatively-no-effect-on-deaths-in-u-s-deleted-after-publication-n1178930
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https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19
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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iO0K75EZAF8dkNDkDmM3L4zNNY0X-Xw5/view
If the data used in that analysis are correct it would indicate that comorbidities are playing a part in the Covid-19 deaths and individuals with severe health conditions who contacted Covid-19 might have died from that condition within the 2020 year. That would, not be particularly surprising.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #194476): “If the data used in that analysis are correct”.
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A huge if. The data come from the CDC, so who knows if they are correct.
Why the left is just wrong about PC requirements:
https://www.city-journal.org/the-age-of-cant
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It is all cant all the time.
SteveF (Comment #194472)
About 150,000 people per year die before 40 in the USA (out of about 175 million), more of them men than women. So 3,571 is not a large increase.
______________
If you have already lived past 40, you may not be able to relate to them.
Ed Forbes (Comment #194473)
November 28th, 2020 at 1:00 pm
John Hopkins finds covid has relatively no effect on overall death rate in US. The mob is out with pitchforks for this heresy.
______
Some possibilities
Hospitals and staff fib about being overwhelmed.
Covid-19 patients in hospitals fib about being sick.
The study’s author is misunderstood or wrong.
Kenneth,
“…and individuals with severe health conditions who contacted Covid-19 might have died from that condition within the 2020 year.”
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I suspect we will see a dearth of deaths (relative to expected rates) over the next year or two, since many vulnerable people have died. It is true that covid–19 “harvests” (sorry OK_Max) the most vulnerable…. but that is just like most every other disease…. old people die, and the older, the more likely to die. Life is fatal.
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I calculated how many years of life were lost in Florida per confirmed case earlier this year, using Florida data for 53,000 cases. My conclusion was that the cost of a confirmed case in terms of life-years lost, reached a peak of a little over two years per confirmed case at age ~72 for people who were confirmed to have contracted covid-19. At greater or lesser ages, the average life-years lost was lower that ~2 years. Suggesting the maximum social benefit per avoided case was at ~72 years old…. the age were the potential life-years lost per case was highest.
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Still, politicians and the politically favored will be first in line for the vaccine. Of course, teachers don’t deserve being at the head of the line, but the kids they are punishing with their cowardice need them to be inoculated first.
OK_Max,
I am many years past 40, but I have not the faintest clue what your last comment is suggesting. That I can’t relate to my kids? Weird, really.
They can give the new vaccine to my cold dead body, but not before.
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I don’t trust the CDC as they have been wrong on just about everything over the years.
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I generally take the annual flue shots even though they are usually only about 25% effective. Those taking the new, and rushed, vaccine are signing up to be a lab rat. This for a virus that is pretty benign for someone like me who is not in a high risk group.
Well Ed, giving it to a dead body would be a waste. I’m trying to be first in line. 🙂
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If you don’t want to take it, I’ve got a better shot at getting it.
The freedom to choose is a great thing, although I suspect that some companies will go to requiring employees to have the vaccine if they are public facing. Grocery stores, restaurants, cruise lines, etc.
Tom
Given that employment is “at will” in Illinois, one the vaccine is widely available I suspect some companies will prefer to only hire people who have been vaccinated. An expensive restaurant would probably love to advertise that all the servers are vaccinated. Since the training requirements for a waiter, waitress or bus-person are not too high, I would imagine that at least some restaurants will require the vaccine. If you want to avoid vaccination, well…. work somewhere else! It’s sort of the libertarian solution.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually some venues might not require people buying tickets to prove vaccination. For example: You can go to the Bears game if you show you are vaccinated. Otherwise, no. This protects the 10% of those vaccinated whose vaccine might not have worked.
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Once again: Libertarian solution.
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The libertarian solution will work provided there is someway of keeping track of who was vaccinated. But that won’t be too difficult because while HIPPA bars medical people from disclosing certain stuff, i doubt it bars disclosure if a person requests disclosure. (And if it does, all we need is a legislative change to HIPPA to permit individuals to authorize disclosure of limited information in specific ways.)
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People who don’t want to be vaccinated won’t be required to be vaccinated. Those who are will have access to more conveniences and more services. Totally libertarian solution.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/11/24/938617836/initial-batch-of-covid-19-vaccines-will-go-to-states-based-on-population-not-ris
Evidently, the current plan is to distribute vaccines based on state population. See above.
lucia (Comment #194499): “I’m trying to be first in line.”
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You are welcome to my spot. I won’t get it until fully tested.
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lucia (Comment #194501): “totally libertarian solution.”
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No, slightly short of totalitarian solution.
I don’t see how. It allows:
1) those who want the vaccine to get it.
2) those who don’t to not get it.
3) those running businesses to make their own choices about how they run their own business.
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Everyone gets to make their own choice. What consequences they face will depend on the virulence of the pathogen and free choices of others. That’s a libertarian, not “totalitarian” solution.
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Some who don’t want to take the vaccine might not like because they may wish to bend others to their will so as to reduce the consequences of their choices. But not letting those who don’t want vaccines dictate the choices of everyone else is not totalitarianism.
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They are free to make their choice: not get vaccinated. Then they face consequences, just as others make their choice and face consequences.
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If you want to support your claim that this is some sort of “totalitarian” situation, your going to have to explain how it is. Because it absolutely doesn’t look like one.
Those choosing to take the vaccine early are welcome to it. Personally I will let the early users be the lab rats testing its safety.
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https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-trials-showed-severe-side-effects-fever-and-
November 14, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Mere days after Pfizer announced its new “90% effective†coronavirus vaccine, reports have emerged about “severe†side effects volunteers for the vaccine trial experienced, including fevers and headaches.
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The New York Times emphasized on Monday, “The data released by Pfizer … was delivered in a news release, not a peer-reviewed medical journal. It is not conclusive evidence that the vaccine is safe and effective, and the initial finding of more than 90 percent efficacy could change as the trial goes on.â€
Ed Forbes,
What makes you think the CDC has anything whatsoever to do with vaccines? The FDA is in sole charge of preventing timely distribution of the vaccines, resulting in thousands to tens of thousands of completely unnecessary deaths.
Apparently you have more trust in the NYT than the FDA.
Also it’s the FDA that reviews the application, not a journal.
Kenneth, I don’t think misclassification of deaths to COVID can be more than about 10% of fatalities.
What is the chance at any time that a person has COVID?
Multiply this chance by typical deaths in a year, and you get an estimate for people who died with covid but not because of covid.
Lucia,
Once the vaccine is available to all, the “libertarian” policy is to let people do what they want. Anyone who refuses the vaccine is then responsible if they catch the virus…. not the unknown person they caught it from. When the vaccine is freely available, the libertarian POV is that nobody (not even a waiter) would be required to get the vaccination…. including not by his employer. If the responsibility of risk is 100% with the person who might catch the illness, then everyone else has no responsibility in the case an unwise person chose to not get the vaccine.
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Mike N,
I already looked at the death rate trends over time. Covid 19 for certain is responsible for excess deaths in 2020. That article is utter nonsense.
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Ed Forbes,
The profile of side effects for the Moderna vaccine over a range of doses (50, 100, 250 micrograms) have been published. Most people have fairly mild side effects, mostly the same side effects you expect from a flu vaccination. More people at the 250 microgram dose (IIRC, 7%) reported more severe (flu-like) side effects, especially after the second dose. There were very few severe side effects at the 100 microgram dose (what actually used in the phase 3 study). All side effects, even at the highest dose, lasted less than 2 days. Death, on the other hand, lasts a bit longer. I have sern nothing to suggest the vaccine presents any more risk of side effects than other vaccines. I will definitely get it when it becomes available…. which I fear will not be until late spring next year.
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BTW, the Pfizer vaccine is closely related in composition, so very likely has a similar side effects profile. Unfortunately Pfizee has been slow to publish actual data. We will finally have access when the FDA publicly reviews the Pfizer application on Dec.10.
MikeN, my take on the brief look I had of the withdrawn paper was that the cormorbidities were decreasing somewhat at the rate of Covid-19 morbidity. That would not require misclassification of Covid-19 deaths.
I also thought that the rationale for withdrawing the paper was that not using the absolute numbers for Covid-19 deaths is something that the masses out there could not handle.
I see with the Covid-19 crisis that there is goodly portion of the US population (this probably goes for the world generally) that is much too accepting of government power in these matters in my view of things. The basis that I thought was used to withdraw that paper is part of this concern for me.
Another worrying matter for me is that I do not see much public concern for placing boundaries on the use of government edicts, what the definition of an emergency is and the duration of an emergency.
The ruling on a restriction that is different and more severe in one area than others could be handled by government merely imposing that severe restriction on all areas. Covid-19 has set a precedent for handling a contagious disease and without any major concern from the majority of the population on boundaries. You even have talk of ignore the cost if it saves just one life. Without limits or concern for limits there are many candidates for emergencies out there and government authorities out there willing to impose mandates. Maybe John Kerry will be able to make a case for climate change as our next major emergency or maybe the public needs more prior conditioning like making the post Covid-19 flu season an emergency.
lucia (Comment #194504):
Would it be libertarian to allow your local drug store to refuse service to anyone who can not display a membership card in the Democrat Party? Of course not. Would it be libertarian to allow a bank to refuse service to a business that sells guns or ammo? Nope.
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What you are proposing is to allow private individuals and businesses to act as enforcers of government policy. Enforcement that would extend into every aspect of the individual’s lives. One step short of totalitarian.
Huh? Are you accusing people like Ed Forbes and me of wanting others to take the vaccine for our benefit? If so (I may have misunderstood), that is a disgusting accusation.
How would my not getting the vaccine be dictating your choice? That is nonsense.
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By the way, people who are vaccinated might still be able to spread the virus, even if they don’t get sick themselves. Antibodies don’t have a lot of effect on upper respiratory infections other than to confine them to the upper respiratory tract.
As SteveF explains, the proper consequence of not getting vaccinated is the risk I face from the virus.
SteveF
Yes. What I described is letting people do what they want. That includes letting employers do what they want. If the vaccines is more than 95% effective and widely adopted, I can’t imagine them making any rule at all. But if only 1/3rd of people take it, I can imagine a meat packer or large party venue making a rule. The former won’t want the absenteism associated with an outbreak among the unvaccinated. The later won’t want news stories about outbreaks at a Lady Gaga concert or some such.
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So yeah: letting people do what they want is libertarian and it’s what I described. Forbidding employers or business owners from doing what they want would be the non-libertarian position.
BTW: Ticketron is working on an app to check vaccination or test status
https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/touring/9481166/ticketmaster-vaccine-check-concerts-plan/
There is an option that allows the unvaccinated entry. But people are working on these. I would not consider Ticketron being allowed to do this if they so chose a “Totalitarian” regime. I would think creating a law forbidding private enterprising from doing this is not libertarian. It takes away a choice from businesses.
MikeN (Comment #194511): “I don’t think misclassification of deaths to COVID can be more than about 10% of fatalities.”
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North Dakota distinguishes between people hospitalized because of the Wuhan virus and “with” the virus. The latter includes those hospitalized for some other reason who then test positive. As of a couple weeks ago, the with but not due to was 36% of all hospitalizations and almost 40% of those in ICU. The percent of deaths with but not due to the virus might well be comparable. But that is in a place with a really high current rate of infection.
https://healthy-skeptic.com/2020/11/12/how-to-report-hospitalizations-in-a-more-transparent-manner/
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The above did not give a link to the primary source. If you find the primary source, I’d appreciate your letting me know.
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MikeN : “What is the chance at any time that a person has COVID?
Multiply this chance by typical deaths in a year, and you get an estimate for people who died with covid but not because of covid.”
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The UK has been doing random sampling of the population. That shows the number who test positive at any given time to be about 30 times the daily number of new cases. It is almost a surely an underestimate since they use self-collected swabs, so probably a lot of false negatives.
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That ratio would imply about 2% of U.S. adults currently positive, with the peak in North Dakota having been almost 4 times as high. 2% of all deaths would be almost 200 per day, about 12% of reported covid deaths.
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As I noted above, the factor of 30 could be an underestimate. Also, hospitals might be good places to catch the virus; that would boost the number of deaths “with” the virus. Also, if a single positive test in the somewhat recent past, say the last month, is used to classify a death as covid, that would boost the number even higher.
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So 10% is a plausible guess, but the real number could be a factor of 2 or 3 higher.
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There is an interesting briefing paper in the UK. I lost the link, but the title is:
“PCR-based COVID testing has failed and is not a proper basis to lockdown the nation, let alone decide on tiers for restrictions”.
It claims that the recent surge in cases is largely false positives and that most of the recent surge in covid deaths in the UK are incorrectly attributed to the virus since there has not been a corresponding surge in excess mortality. I don’t know what to make of it.
MIke M
Yes. And besides that, I’m pretty sure pharmacies can exclude people for that reason if they like. There are limited reasons they can exclude customers. Political view does not fall in a protected class barring discrimination.
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This would probably be a poor business move. But the pharmacy should be free to make it.
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Nope. Because I would object to the government imposing the policy. There should be no government policy requiring businesses to do this, but equally none to forbid it. (It appears some are going to do it. See ticketron above.)
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Nope. I haven’t suggested that’s what you want. I am aware that it would be the consequence whether it’s what you want or not.
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Uhhmmm… A free society involves many different types of choices. Forbidding employers from making a policy about who they hire would be the government dictating their choice about who they hire. Forbidding theater owners from making a policy about who they sell tickets to would be dictating theater owners choice about running their private business.
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What I am saying is allowing the unvaccinated to insist employers cant’ do this would be the unvaccinated dictating the employers choice about employement policies. That is clearly not libertarian.
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Yes. This would be a very good reason why a meat packer might want to exclude those who can still get sick from his plant. It’s those who get sick that results in absenteeism and down time.
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A law forbidding the meat packer from doing this would (a) dictate the meatpacker choice and (b) force him to accept the economic consequences of decisions by those who don’t want to take vaccines for any reasons.
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I think you should be allowed to not take the vaccines. But I also think the meatpacker should be allowed to decide who to hire and that means he should be allowed to exclude the unvaccinated. I’m pretty sure this is actually the standard rule in most of the US today. Employers are allowed to have conditions for employment. Changing that rule would move toward totalitarianism, not away.
The following link and excerpt would go along with Covid-19 being at least 2/3 responsible for the excess 300,000 deaths in the US in 2020 through Sept 2020. What puzzles me is the percentage increase in deaths by age groups. Any ideas from posters here for a reason? I guess maybe it is because a lot of older people die every year from many different causes.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm
lucia (Comment #194527): “Ticketron is working on an app to check vaccination or test status”
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Requiring people to disclose medical records. What could possibly go wrong?
Question: Where you live, can anyone who wants one get a covid test?
Here in New Mexico, you typically can not get tested unless you are sick or have a documented exposure. Even health care workers are not regularly tested.
MikeM
People should be allowed to disclose what they chose to disclose. They are so allowed.
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I hope the program is well designed. I suspect it can be. Something might “go wrong”. Oh. Well.
Mike M.
Sort of yes, sort of no. There are places you can just go. It takes some planning. My ballroom dance teacher and all those who planned to go to the Ohio Star Ball championships got tested in the required time frame. (The competition got cancelled.)
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It’s a lot easier to figure out how to get it conveniently if your doctor gives you a prescription. But depending on your doctor they might require you fit some certain priority class.
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But there are drop in locations — those who need them for work and so on figure out where they are. I haven’t. If I didn’t know a bunch of people who got tested just to go to a competition, I wouldn’t be aware that you can get tested “just because”.
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That said: testing availability needs to be expanded. WRT to Ticketron’s proposed policy: it might mean initially, they’ll only be allowing in the vaccinated merely because the unvaccinated have trouble figuring out where to get tested within the necessary time window. That’s what I suggested some businesses might do.
Mike M.,
I reject your assertion that COVID19 vaccinated people could still transmit the disease as being pure speculation unsupported by any evidence. IOW, fake news.
As for becoming infected in the hospital, that’s how I got it.
The county health department where I live in TN has drive through free testing effectively on demand.
DeWitt,
“Might” does the heavy lifting in MikeM’s assertion.
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Of course it’s not actually proven they can’t transmit. Proving it would require careful observations over a period of time along with tracking and so on. Obviously, this hasn’t been done because the vaccine is not available to the public. So this is a case of “we have no evidence” but the reason is “because there is no data”.
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So Mike can just throw out a speculation and include the word “might”.
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But regardless if they “might” be infectious, but can’t get sick that is a very sound reasons for someone like a meat packer exclude the unvaccinated from employment in a meat packing plant. The decision would be economic, and employers are and should be allowed to avoid financial losses associated with absentism that happens during outbreaks.
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The vaccinated being infectious would also be a good reason for someone like Ticketron to exclude the unvaccinated without allowing the “got tested” loophole around that. Ticketron and theater venues would want to avoid both liability and unfavorable publicity related to patrons becoming ill in the venue.
Lucia,
The law may (or may not) allow a private employer to “discriminate” against people who don’t get vaccinated, but I suspect it would be a very close (legal) call, and I am not sure how it would go. If the employee was not past 65 and not suffering other serious disease, then the consequences of them catching the virus (even in a meat packing plant or restaurant) would be no different than the same employee catching the flu, or even a simple cold.
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But allowed under law or not, the employer most certainly would not be a libertarian if they forced employees to get vaccinated. Any more than if they fired anyone who refused to get an annual flu vaccine, or refused register as a Democrat, had the ‘wrong’ kinds of thoughts, etc. Laws and regulations in the USA, both Federal and State, are very far from anything I would consider libertarian. IMO, the covid-19 pandemic has already put the USA on a very slippery slope towards public control of all private actions. I frankly find it frightening.
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I was cheered by the SC decision on NY restricting religious worship, not because I am worried specifically about religious services, but because the court put crazy Dems like Cuomo on notice that they have to tread more lightly on individual freedoms. Alito’s lecture to his three liberal colleagues plus Chief Just Mealy Mouth (who claimed the court should never get involved, no matter how extreme the covid rules) was perfect. He basically told them they were not living up to their oath of office; I would not have liked it more if I had written it myself.
SteveF,
What law would it violate? Real Q.
At will employment is pretty standard. There are specific defined exceptions. This doesn’t prevent someone from suing– but that’s true of any firing or failure to hire. Their suit still has to state a claim to prevail.
States mandate vaccines for health care workers. So the idea of requiring vaccination status for at least some employment is established.
The consequence of many catching something communicable can be disruptive. As for flu: I would imagine employers could require flu vaccines too. Colds are so mild, they probably wouldn’t care. So an employer could view things differently from you. They should be free to do so.
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Perhaps. But a law requiring an employer to be libertarian is, itself, not libertarian. I suspect employers exist who consider it their right to decide for themselves what rules they are going to impose. Certainly, they think it their right to hire and fire who they wish. They can agree to disagree with those who don’t want vaccines and just not hire them. That’s not “forcing” anyone to get a vaccine. Those people can seek other jobs.
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I do too. Which is why I would be frightened by the thought the state would forbid employers or theater owners from making their own rules.
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I also cheered the SCOTUS decision on churches.
The 5-vote majority in the NY covid decision is interesting for two other reasons:
1) The State of NY tried to keep the court from ruling by after-the-fact changing the regulations to render the case “moot”. NY has tried this approach several times in the past, with some success, when they promulgated unconstitutional laws which were challenged by NY citizens, then changed the laws after it was clear they would likely lose at the SC. In this case, Alito and the other four justices pointed out the dishonestly of the NY ploy, and basically laughed at the moot claim. This court is not going to accept such dishonest legal arguments.
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2) The case effectively reverses a series of earlier decisions where the SC had allowed onerous covid regulations to stand, with Chief Justice Mealy Mouth wringing his hands about the loss of constitutionally protected freedoms, but always refusing to prohibit those loses. The conservative 5 has put Mealy Mouth on notice that he will be irrelevant if he sides with the three progressives on constitutional freedoms cases (where I note he has caved every time to avoid reversing many earlier unconstitutional decisions). With any luck the new majority will actually enforce the laws and protect the freedoms the Constitution guarantees.
SteveF
Yes. One of the writers at Volokh described it as a “whack-a-mole” strategy. I think not letting Cuomo get away with that is very important. Otherwise he has complete control to “moot” the case and reimpose. Gorsuch was the especially severe on about that. He wrote
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20a87_4g15.pdf
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Yep. It might have been one thing early one when there really was a lot of uncertainty and governors across the country hadn’t been playing games. But really… now? With Cuomo?
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Gorsuch also wrote this
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You know, the thing is, even if something like “bicycle repair” is essential (on the theory that transportation is essential and that is some people mode of transportation), he still could have had a 10 person limit on occupancy of bicycle repair shops. It would be easy enough to have people drop off their bikes, pick them up and not linger. In fact this is likely normal in most shops which are small and generally not exactly packed to the gills with customers. But he could have made that the rule.
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A similar situation likely applies to acupuncturist and chiropractors. It would likely barely be an inconvenience to limit occupancy to 10 people. Yet… no rule.
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It’s a tougher rule for groceries, but there is no reason people you couldn’t have people switch to curb-side pick up. Yes… it’s an added expense to have people fill orders, but curbside pick up could be done. (In fact, it’s being done in many places without the locality requiring it.)
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You could do it for essential hardware in Home Depot too. Yes.. it would mean fewer people electing to buy Christmas trees which are also sold there along with the small numbers of actual construction materials, but those purchases aren’t essential.
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The fact is: Cuomo didn’t even try to tailor his rule. He just had blanket exceptions for “essential” when he could have easily limited them to 10 only while still allowing people access to the part of the service that is “essential”.
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The to top it all, he’s trying to play games with making things “moot”.
Lucia,
“As for flu: I would imagine employers could require flu vaccines too.”
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I sure hope not. Heck, the flu vaccine is often not even very effective! As I said, the requirement of vaccination would be a close legal call. I am not sure how it would go. I suspect it would come down to whether or not the employer can show a legitimate justification for the requirement. Many people (like me) react poorly to the flu vaccine, and suffer a for-certain 1 day case of flu symptoms. Requiring me to get a flu vaccination every year requires I suffer one day of flu misery each year….. the requirement would not be cost-free. The employee could always resign and find other employment, of course, and I suspect the Mike M’s of the world would do just that. In the case of flu vaccine, I might too.
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Please remember that employers are most certainly not allowed to discriminate in hiring/firing based on race, ethnicity, or religious beliefs. So there are certain restrictions in place already. Forcing someone to get a foreign substance injected into their body is not like telling them to wear a certain uniform while working. There would for sure be a legal case brought if that were required.
SteveF (Comment #194539): “But allowed under law or not, the employer most certainly would not be a libertarian if they forced employees to get vaccinated.”
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Indeed. Libertarians don’t just oppose government coercion; they oppose coercion in general.
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SteveF: “IMO, the covid-19 pandemic has already put the USA on a very slippery slope towards public control of all private actions. I frankly find it frightening.”
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I share that feeling. It is indeed very scary.
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A “libertarian” plan like lucia’s would just hasten that. Constantly having to prove your covid status would be a huge hassle, for both businesses and individuals. That would create a great deal of public support for government mandated vaccination.
SteveF,
Whether employers do require it is different from whether they should be allowed to not employ people who don’t get the vaccine. In part because it’s not effective, I would imagine few employers would require the vaccine, especially not if they require a workforce with in demand skills.
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I don’t see how it would be in a state that has at will employment. Unless the employee can argue that the requirement is a proxy for excluding people in a protected class I don’t see how it could be a close legal call.
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The requirement isn’t going to exclude women vs men, blacks, hispanics, asias etc vs whites. It might exclude some people whose religious believes bar vaccines but then one could tailor that. MikeM above is not objecting to vaccines for religious reasons.
While this Times magazine writer appears unhappy about it, they report discrimination against the fat is legal in most states.
https://time.com/4883176/weight-discrimination-workplace-laws/
Lucia,
Here is a discussion of the issue: https://www.aarp.org/work/working-at-50-plus/info-2020/employer-require-covid-vaccine.html
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I will be very surprised if many employers require covid shots. Just not worth the hassle once those at real risk have the opportunity to get the vaccination.
MikeM
Yes. That’s why I oppose coercing employers, or business owners. The employers and business owners should get to decide their own standards as freely as possible.
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No. Coercing employers and business owners to follow the rules you prefer that would hasten loss of liberty. .
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Sure. An avoidable hassle. Just don’t buy tickets form Ticketron and find a job from someone who doesn’t make it a policy to check vaccination or infection status. That leaves you lots of choice without you imposing your choice on those who want to make a different choice.
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I should think it would do the opposite. If the public knew the problem of uncontrolled outbreaks was being handled through private choices, there should be no need for a government mandate.
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Those who want to get tickets through Ticketron could get them. Those who prefer to not follow Ticketrons rules wouldn’t have too– but couldn’t buy tickets. That’s no different from those who are against drinking not going to bars and looking for jobs somewhere other than the corner liquor store. Vegetarians will be well advised to not seek employment at a specialty butcher. But I don’t think any one thinks the “libertarian” solution is to force the liquor store to hire a person who won’t sell liquor.
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Provided employers are given choices, I imagine there will be plenty who will hire people who don’t get vaccinated. I still think employers should have the option to require it. I imagine meat packers might want to exercise this option.
There will be a a “government policy†on the vaccine, that policy may very well be a non-policy of people and businesses can make their own choices.
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The extreme ends are nobody shall take the vaccine (FDA refusal) and everyone must take it (public health mandate). Neither of these is likely to happen in my view, especially until there is widespread availability.
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The public and the Twitterati can put lots of pressure on private businesses to require vaccination of their employees. We have seen these name and shame campaigns get way out of control. In response to that I can see (especially red) states passing laws that businesses may not require vaccinations or (especially blue) states passing laws that certain industries must vaccinate their employees. I don’t think there is any chance a national mandate either way makes it through the federal system.
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As far as libertarian goes, my simplistic ideology here is that you are free to behave as you wish as long as it doesn’t harm others. Not getting vaccinated and potentially spreading covid is a gray area and people will have justifiable views both ways. I think there will be plenty of screaming in the months ahead related to this. The talking point for school vaccinations prior to covid was that not vaccinating your child was endangering other children who could not take vaccinations for other health related reasons.
lucia,
Actually it’s worse than just ‘might’. According to Pfizer and at least one other source that I linked in an earlier thread, COVID19 is a lower respiratory tract infection, not an upper tract. Also, Pfizer did animal challenge studies where the vaccine prevented infection from a large dose of active virus.
https://www.drugdiscoverytrends.com/pfizer-touts-non-human-preclinical-trial-results-for-covid-19-vaccine-candidate/
This may be the breeding ground for several sorts of natural experiments, where ingrained opposition to vaccinations of any sort leave policy makers scratching their heads on how to incentivize take-up by 70% of the general population.
I think Nudges as exemplified by Sunstein and Thaler are the optimal solution.
Ex: United Airlines can say, ‘Of course you don’t have to fly–drive a car! You have freedom of travel. You just can’t fly on our planes unless you have proof of vaccination.’
As long as there are real and practical alternatives to situations like these, Americans’ love of comfort (and need for speed) can work wonders.
Example 2: Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Liberty Mutual Insurance.
‘Of course you can get insurance without a vaccination. But you must realize you are at higher risk of illness or death without a vaccination, so if you want life insurance (and millions of people live happily without life insurance) you will have to pay a higher premium.
Example 3: Ladies and gentleman, please welcome the President of the United States. (Cue Hail to the Chief)
“My fellow Americans, as part of our reforms to education in America, I’m proud to announce that we will be forgiving large portions of student debt as an important element of our far-reaching efforts to make America Great Again. Oh, whoops, I read that wrong.
We will be forgiving 60% of student loans for those who have been vaccinated. Those who refuse to be vaccinated will have 45% of their loans forgiven. It is my hope that this will work hugely and strongly (I gotta get a new speechwriter…)…”
9/11 scared the sh** out of everyone and there was government overreach in response to it, that overreach was * demanded * by the public at the time. Covid is similar, and I think we can expect that the lockdown regimes will be tempered over time as cooler heads prevail. NYC is reopening elementary school again for example. The next outbreaks will be better managed. The worst government policy tends to come from a scared public and it takes a lot of guts to stand up to that.
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Part of the problem with covid is nobody knew how bad it was. The next time around we need to find out how bad it really is much faster. The initial containment effort needs to be harsher unfortunately.
Last example: Cue same dude, same music.
“Our plans for Social Security will help all older Americans have safety and security in their golden years. Our proposed increases will benefit all Americans–but they will benefit the vaccinated more.”
Insurance companies would love to be able to discriminate with their customers in a myriad of ways, they just aren’t allowed to. When you sign up on the insurance exchange you are asked about age and smoking history. End of story. Obvious things like weight are not allowed.
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I do agree that the media and government are underestimating the scope of the challenge to get a high number of people to take the vaccine. There is plenty of FUD associated with vaccines and as the cases pile up people are going to observe that the vast majority of people recover completely. As one who follows sports, there are literally hundreds of reported positives in the college and professional leagues without a single instance of anyone even being hospitalized to my knowledge. They have consistently overplayed the danger and that will hurt their credibility.
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I’ll take the vaccine mostly because I just don’t want to worry about it going forward. It’s an anti-anxiety move.
I think Lucia has the libertarian view of these matters well covered and particularly in the case of business owners having the right to make rules for employment. It is also unfortunately true that the government can legislate some of these rights away, but I do not think rules for controlling Covid-19 infections come under those that have been taken away – at least not yet.
Thomas Fuller,
“Ex: United Airlines can say, ‘Of course you don’t have to fly–drive a car! You have freedom of travel. You just can’t fly on our planes unless you have proof of vaccination.’”
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I rather think United Airlines would be cutting off their nose to spite their face. That policy would offend lots of people, including lots who already had gotten the vaccine… or the illness.
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If the vaccine is widely available (and hopefully it will be by late 2021), then anyone who is worried about catching covid has the option of getting the vaccine. Once you are effectively immune, why would you even care if someone on the plane has not been vaccinated? Or why would you care if someone in the restaurant or supermarket has not been vaccinated? It is hard to imagine “vaccination guards” at the doors of every commercial establishment, checking government issued “covid immunity cards”, and even harder to come up with a rational justification for it. It is crazy talk; nothing but a wet dream for closet totalitarians who think humans are incapable of making their own decisions, and so should not be allowed to, but understand that is not going to fly politically. ‘Nudging’ is not going to fly politically either.
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Real question: why is it that ‘liberals’ (or ‘progressives’) always want to force other people to do what liberals/progressives want? It is something I have never understood.
Tom Scharf, broadly speaking you are completely correct about the lesser burden of mortality borne by the young. I will just sound a cautionary note–more Americans under the age of 40 have died due to coronavirus than the entire death toll of 9/11. And over 100 children under the age of 5.
Sort of a Primrose Everdeen kinda thing.
SteveF, the whole point of ‘nudges’ is to incentivize a desired behavior, not mandate it. You’ll note that I try to make clear there are viable alternatives to each nudge I propose.
DeWitt,
So you are saying that evidence that exists suggests the vaccine will likely prevent (or at least dramatically reduce) transmission? If so, I’m glad to hear that.
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I know the evidence that exists suggests most who recover from infection gain durable long term immunity from t-cell and b-cells, although that is not cleansing immunity from antibodies. Those do decline. (This is typical of many diseases which never the less are associated with long term durable immunity.)
Kenneth,
My question is if someone who considers themselves pretty libertarian (oh say…. me) would force their employees to get covid vaccinations as a condition of employment. I never would. I do not doubt many business owners would want to force their employees to get the vaccine, I just doubt those owners would be libertarians.
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Outside of kids, I hate forcing anyone to do anything.
Oh–SteveF, in response to your ‘real question,’ I don’t want to force you to do stuff. I value freedom. But your right to wave your fist ends at some point short of my nose.
Those who insist on their freedom to not wear a mask are arrogating unto themselves the right to infect. But I don’t think that’s freedom. I have other words to describe it.
SteveF
I as an innoculated passenger wouldn’t care.
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But the airline might want to reduce the likelihood of suits or bad publicity associated with a passenger testing positive soon after a flight. Or, the might want their rule to allow uninnoculated children to fly (provided they are tested) but require innoculation for adults.
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What they would chose would depend on their judgement which might be imperfect. The thing is: it would be their judgement. Not that of the government. Not that of those who want to chose non-innoculation but then bend all choices to their own convenience. (Yes. If airlines chose to require innoculation or testing that would be a “hassle” for the non-innoculated. Ho. Hum.)
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I am not suggesting I the passenger would create the rule. I am suggesting the company that runs the airline would.
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As Thomas observed, even if entirely barred from taking a flight, those who don’t get innoculated would be able to drive a car to their destination. (Those who want to fly across the ocean are going to have to deal with immigration rules in other countries anyway.)
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Kenneth: Thanks you for confirming my view is closer to the libertarian one. I know you are more specifically informed about what the official views are! I know it is my view and I struck me as more libertarian.
Thomas Fuller,
“the whole point of ‘nudges’ is to incentivize a desired behavior”
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The whole question is who decides what is “desired behavior”. My guess is that it is always going to be the behavior ‘progressives’ want to require of everyone, but can’t due to unpleasant things like the Constitution. Obamacare’s individual mandate was designed from the get-go to be coercive, but I am sure you would call it a ‘nudge’. How about instead we flip it, and religious conservatives get to make the decisions on desired behavior….. the ‘nudges’ then might not seem such a good idea to you.
Thomas,
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There is no rule that says employers are required to be libertarian, democrat, socialist, or anything else. It would certainly be odd for libertarians to say other people are also required to be libertarians!! That totally sets freedom to make up ones own mind or opinion aside so it would be weird.
SteveF, I would suggest you go about electing religious conservatives so you can nudge us all towards a promised land.
Isn’t that what elections are all about?
SteveF
Yep. They would “nudge” you into going to church. I think they do try to do this. 🙂
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I think it would be find for United Airlines to have policies to bar people who were not vaccinated and/or did not test negative if they want. It is also true that it might be a bad business decision.
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I know, for example, that if United Airlines didn’t let Vlad (my dance instructor) know he had 100% certainty of being able to board a flight to Nashville when he bough the ticket, then they would lose out on selling approximately 5 tickets. Vlad, his wife, and at least 3 students would bundle up and drive to Nashville rather than by tickets.
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Some other dancer would do the same. But I bring up Vlad because I know he is reluctant to get a vaccine when it comes. Two of his students (including me) told him we’d protect him through our vaccine obtained immunity. (I do hope DeWitt is correct about the evidence about infection after vaccination.)
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But still, I think United Airlines should have a right to make their decision. Then I have a right to make mine. (If I were planning to go to Nashville, I’d trundle in the car with Vlad too. That would give me more flexibility without worrying about what to do about pre-paid tickets that I had to cancel.)
Tom Scharf, I hope this link works. There’s a video from a 29-year old on this Twitter thread that may be instructive.
https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1332813415845335046%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdigbysblog.net%2F
Thomas Fuller makes a good point which might not be intended: when governments give benefits it might later use those benefits to leverage an individual or organization to do something that it would not otherwise have the power to do.
I’m not sure the link worked. Kenneth seemed to have seen it. But I just seemed to go to leahmcelrath’s twitter feed. I couldn’t figure out what Thomas thought was relevant there.
SteveF (Comment #194494)
OK_Max,
I am many years past 40, but I have not the faintest clue what your last comment is suggesting. That I can’t relate to my kids? Weird, really.
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I’m sorry my comment wasn’t clear. I will try to explain. While at age 70, for example, you can imagine what it would have been like if you had died at age 30, you don’t think like you did 40 years ago. You are seeing it as a 70 year old, not as you would see it as a 30 year old.
But I could be wrong. Maybe you are different, and your thinking has not evolved, or better, you are able to switch back and forth, thinking like you are age 70 or age 30. If so, I wish I were like you.
Lucia, there’s a video from a 29-year-old woman who is ‘recovering’ from covid.
I’ll try this
Ah, Lucia, you’re better than me at everything. Haiku, higher math… now linking. Is there no end to your talents?
I’ll bet you’re a better dancer than me, too.
Tom was that the video? It tells us that a young person got covid and has lasting ill effects. I already know that happened to some. She says something about thinking she might have avoided this if she wore a mask. I’m sure she now things so. This may or may not be true. (We don’t know what else she did.)
I was expecting something that related to “nudging”. This is supposedly a response to Tom Scharf…. but I don’t see much of a connection.
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Could you perhaps tell me the point you were trying to make. Because it escapes me.
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If it was some other video, perhaps send a more directl link? (I can insert them but only bey clicking “edit” after posting.)
The testing regime is being contested in courts and is starting to be found wanting.
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Said the ruling, dated November 11: “In view of current scientific evidence, this test shows itself to be unable to determine beyond reasonable doubt that such positivity corresponds, in fact, to the infection of a person by the SARS-CoV-2 virusâ€.
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At a cycle threshold (ct) of 25, about 70% of samples remain positive in cell culture (i.e. were infected): in a ct of 30, 20% of samples remained positive; in a ct of 35, 3% of samples remained positive and in a ct above 35, no sample remained positive (infectious) in the cultureâ€.
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“This means that if a person has a positive PCR test at a threshold of cycles of 35 or higher (as happens in most laboratories in the USA and Europe), the chances of a person being infected is less than 3%. The probability of a person receiving a false positive is 97% or higherâ€.
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https://www.portugalresident.com/judges-in-portugal-highlight-more-than-debatable-reliability-of-covid-tests/
No, Lucia, Tom Scharf wrote above, “As one who follows sports, there are literally hundreds of reported positives in the college and professional leagues without a single instance of anyone even being hospitalized to my knowledge. They have consistently overplayed the danger and that will hurt their credibility.”
I was trying to provide evidence to the contrary.
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Lucia,
“But the airline might want to reduce the likelihood of suits or bad publicity associated with a passenger testing positive soon after a flight.”
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An airline run by crazy people might think that way, but it effectively assumes the airline is somehow responsible for the infection of a passenger who chooses to not get vaccinated, but then flies on an airplane. It is for me, a very strange, paternalistic (and very non-libertarian!) POV. I believe it is also moot; no airline is going to do it. Nor any supermarket or restaurant. “Show us your papers!” is just not a good way to attract business.
SteveF, fear of liability might outweigh concerns about reputational risk.
Thomas fuller,
“I would suggest you go about electing religious conservatives so you can nudge us all towards a promised land.”
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Wow, you really don’t get it. First of all, I am an atheist and don’t think there is any promised land except perhaps personal liberty. Second, it is not that I want people to be nudged one way or another, it is that I don’t want government nudging people at all!
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“Isn’t that what elections are all about?”
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That is clearly what elections are about for ‘progressives’, of course, but you are mistaken if you believe everybody sees elections that way. I see them mostly as a way to keep ‘progressives’ from telling me, and everyone else, how to live their lives.
lucia,
Sounds like a great example of why vaccines should be released sooner rather than later and why everyone should get vaccinated even if they are in a low risk demographic.
Now kidney failure caused by the vaccine is exactly the sort of reason why the FDA likes to drag things out. But you aren’t going to see low probability events until a vaccine has been approved and the numbers vaccinated gets into the millions. That’s called Phase IV.
Lucia #194580,
The nose ring and tats make we wonder about that young woman’s judgement. But worse, it is the kind of 0.001% story that conveys no useful information: Young people almost never die from covid-19 nor have any serious after-effects. The heart-rending video is designed to distract from the frequency of such rare events and make people want to adopt policies which make zero sense.
That’s why events like that are called anecdotal and also why the press loves to run them. But it isn’t science, it’s human interest. The extreme is where they stick a microphone in some grieving person’s face and ask them how they feel.
Thomas,
I read the wikipedia article on nudging. I seems to me that your United Airlines example would not fit the definition of nudge. It’s an overt policy by an airline.
A nudge is supposedly
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory#cite_note-Why_a_nudge_is_not_enough:_A_social-4
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So, it seems to me a “nudge” might consist of an employer providing free vaccines to people who report to work along with permitting them take the vaccine during work hours without losing any pay. Then, perhaps to make it more “nudge” like, email them a time for their appointment which they can skip if the wish. But the appointment already existing means they don’t need to make the appointment.
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A previous employer tried to “nudge” us into giving the the United way by “requiring” us to return forms even if that meant checking “no”. If you didn’t send it in, they sent a clerk around to ask you to turn it in. After that, nothing happened.
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Quite a few people (including me) did not return the form and I know from talking to like minded people that the “nudge” pissed us off.
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Not all nudges strike me as annoying, but that one did. Regardless, a direct policy by an employer stating a condition of employment doesn’t strike me as a “nudge”. The United Airlines hypothetically not allowing people to travel doesn’t either.
DeWitt,
Yes. Her example explains why it is likely advisable for younger people to also get the vaccine. I think it ought to be voluntary, and they should have lower priority. (Well… unless they work in a job that makes them more vulnerable.)
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SteveF
For your enjoyment
https://triblive.com/news/world/people-with-tattoos-more-reckless-impulsive-study-finds/
It’s worth noting that she self-reports covid as the reason for her renal failure. I would not be surprised that it might be a contribting factor. But we know nothing more about her. We don’t know whether she used drugs, had urinary tract problems or had other contributing factors. Maybe she had none. Or…. not.
MikeM
” Would it be libertarian to allow a bank to refuse service to a business that sells guns or ammo? Nope.”
Banks do this. Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citigroup have made announcements of refusing service to the gun industry, essentially trying to force regulations that could not pass the legislature.
OK_Max,
“Maybe you are different, and your thinking has not evolved, or better, you are able to switch back and forth, thinking like you are age 70 or age 30.”
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It is true that I now have some knowledge and information that I did not have when I was 30, so I would sometimes make a different decision now than when I was 30…. but I suspect my 30 year old self, provided with the knowledge/information my 70 year old self has, would make the same decision as my 70 year old self would.
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I don’t believe my method of thinking has changed much at all, only my information/knowledge. For example, I often learn something which solves a technical puzzle I could not solve 30 years ago… and I immediately return to the ancient puzzle to verify that the puzzle is in fact solved. My thinking didn’t change, my information base did.
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On a much fluffier level: before my first marriage (at 21!), I thought that an unhappy person (my fiance, in that case) was unhappy due to their circumstances. But I learned that happy people are mostly happy no matter their circumstances, and miserable people mostly miserable no matter their circumstances. My first marriage provided all the information I needed to disabuse me of my earlier thinking.
I disagree with your answer. I think it would be more libertarian for the government to allow a private bank to refuse service than to force them to accept service.
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Mind you, if the bank is owned by a libertarian, they probably wouldn’t refuse to serve that business. But the bank might not be owned by a libertarian. And it is against the policy of libertarians to remove the banks choice.
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If libertarian, neither the third party, the government nor the business that sells guns and ammo should be allowed to force the bank to provide service. It should be the bank should be allowed to make choices about bank policy.
SteveF
Often true. Really objectively bad circumstances can make a person miserable. But quite often, when you meet a persistently miserable person, you will see their circumstances are not really that miserable. Or they could change them. But they refuse to change them to become less miserable.
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Honestly, I’ve also come to believe that some “ill” people (especially mentally) partially chose illness. ( FWIW: Munchausen– not by proxy– does exist. That’s a mental condition where a person inflicts illness on themselves. This is generally physical illness. But I have a friend… and while I’m mostly reluctant to be an armchair psychoanalyst, I sort of suspect her of having it. And part of her inflicted illness is, I believe mental!)
Lucia,
“Tattoos appear to go hand in hand with recklessness and impulsivity.”
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And in other news, the sun rose in the East this morning. They needed research to figure this out? Really, all you have to do is talk with a few people who have visible tattoos, nose rings, and face piercings to understand there is some lack of prudence involved in these decisions.
SteveF,
I read a Tweet about the study and that was the general reaction.
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My dance teacher got a huge tattoo when he was about 16 yo. Of course, youth is also associated with impulsivity. So it might have been lack of parental supervision to get in the way of his impulse.
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Adults getting tats…
“Outside of kids, I hate forcing anyone to do anything”
Except that societies rely on some kind of “social contract”, where we expect limits on individual liberty to protect others safety. Some are very straightforward. We dont allow murder for instance. But then it cloudier. What about road rules, eg speed and alcohol limits? Even cloudier, what about second-hand smoke? And dont discuss gun control with US citizens..
I would be very much surprised if ardent libertarians rejected road rules, but I am curious as what criteria people use in judging whether a proposed rule that limits personal liberty for larger society safety should be permitted. For instance, the Scandinavians “Zero-2000” approach to road safety seemed a step too far to me but I had trouble deciding what was driving my gut reaction. Some of it has to be about personal tolerance of risk but projecting to others perception of risk is much tougher.
When I was in the Navy I met a lot of people in the bars and other environs of San Diego who had been tattoed in their youth.
Tattoos do not enhance the appearance of people past middle age.
The efforts many made to cover up their past indiscretions was evidence I was not alone in my opinion.
Lucia,
“If libertarian, neither the third party, the government nor the business that sells guns and ammo should be allowed to force the bank to provide service.”
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Your analysis of libertarian thinking is that businesses should be allowed to explicitly discriminate against, gays, or African-Americans, Asians, Conservatives, or, indeed, Libertarians themselves. I don’t think you will find too many libertarians (or people in general) who think that. Libertarians want everyone offered the same services by businesses, not services subject to discrimination.
Thomas,
Tats don’t enhance anyone’s appearance. They can be neutral or project an “image” when one is young. But they definitely don’t look good on sagging skin or less than great physique.
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Vlads is on his arm. As far as I know, it doesn’t go beyond the sleeve. He played drums. I’m guessing he had a rock-and-roll drummer image he wanted to project.
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Vlad definitely has a policy of wearing long sleeves when he meets a new client and for a while there after. I’m not sure how many lessons I’d had before I saw the tattoo. I do think he knows it was a mistake, though perhaps not the worst mistake a young person might have made.
SteveF
Yes. I think that’s the position of many libertarians.
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Here’s a Cato institute article that says libertarian thinking is consistent with allowing people to have the right to discriminate against said groups:
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https://www.cato.org/policy-report/marchapril-2016/libertarianism-right-discriminate
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I am not a fullbore libertarian and deviate from them in some regards. So I support laws barring restaurants from excluding minorities on the basis of race (for example.) But I do know that is a deviation from fullbore libertarian thinking.
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I agree they want this. But I think they also generally believe that would be the natural market outcome in an utterly free market…. eventually…..
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I’m not so sure it would be the natural market outcome. I do support some deviations for 100% libertarian thinking.
Tattoo’s over time 😳
SNL skit 😄
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https://www.facebook.com/9570276419/videos/1002992428046
I find it surprising that I managed to be in the Navy for four years, toured the South Pacific, was stationed in San Diego and San Francisco and emerged without a single tattoo.
Phil Scadden,
” I am curious as what criteria people use in judging whether a proposed rule that limits personal liberty for larger society safety should be permitted.”
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I think the first step is to define societal safety. Some things (murder, assault, drunk driving, etc.) are pretty easy.
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But your apparent horror about gun control suggest that you are not able to consider both costs and benefits in some cases. Yes, if all privately held guns were confiscated, there would be fewer deaths by guns, but probably not as many fewer as you think…. criminals often find ways to get guns even in countries where they are generally prohibited. But the reason many people in the USA are supportive of private gun ownership is that it acts as a deterrent to extreme government action, and the US Constitution has the second amendment right to guns specifically for that reason. I have often heard people say things like “Small arms in private hands wouldn’t stop…” some egregious action, but I think that is wrong. The very first hing a despot like Chavez in Venezuela does after gaining power is to confiscate guns. Private small arms are not going to be used against an army, they are going to be used against government officials and the friends and families, or army officers off duty, and their friends and families. The threat of small arms (especially high power long rifles) is that they present a continuing threat to an illicit government. I know plenty of people able to consistently shoot a prairie-dog (about 30 cm tall) from nearly half a Km away. That is a threat that is not going to go way, no matter the superior firepower of an army.
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All that said, I think most public safety decisions ought to be made on a cost/benefit analysis. Yes, we could set a strictly enforced speed limit at 30 Km per hour and eliminate almost all traffic fatalities, but at a huge cost in lost time. A balance has to be struck. Where that balance is depends a great deal on people’s knowledge of actual risk and their personal tolerance of risk. If covid 19 has taught anything it is that there is big gap in risk tolerance, and one that seems to divide left from right.
I think perhaps tattoos should be limited to Maoris. And extras from the movie Braveheart.
Thomas,
“I find it surprising that I managed to be in the Navy for four years, toured the South Pacific, was stationed in San Diego and San Francisco and emerged without a single tattoo.”
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You must be a closet conservative.
Ssh. Don’t tell anyone.
And for God’s sake don’t tell anyone that I have a list of things Trump did that I liked. E.g., strengthen support for Taiwan.
Lucai,
The fellow who wrote the article you linked to is… well… simply delusional.
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He seems to think the SC’s cake-maker’s decision was about discrimination, when the SC made clear it was not. If the baker had refused to allow gay people to buy the backed goods on display at his shop, the SC would never have ruled the way it did.
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This part:
shows just how delusional the guy is. It is not hard to be certain. There was zero chance anything other than segregated accommodations would have remained the rule. If that crazy man represents “true libertarian thinking”, then he is dooming libertarians to remain forever irrelevant politically.
Steve,
He could be mistaken about what the SC cakemaker decision is about and still be correct about the libertarion position vis-a-vis discriminiation. But… he wrote that article in 2016. The actual scotus decision was in 2018 and sidestepped the question about the bakers right to discriminate. But in 2016, people were arguing about whether the baker had that right. So he isn’t delusional about what the case was about. He just couldn’t have known the court would end up ruling for the baker on other grounds.
Anyway, David Bernstein at Voloks says essentially the same thing about the libertarian position vis-a-vis anti-discrimination laws.
https://reason.com/volokh/2018/11/20/defending-a-libertarian-position-on-anti/
By “skepticism” he means libertarians are against these laws.
Later
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Bernestein does talk about why libertarians ought to prioritize what they work to change. But wrt to libertarian position on discrimination laws, his description is no different to the Cato guys.
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I do think libertarians who totally oppose anti-discrimination laws can be unrealistic (perhaps delusional) about just how much can be achieved by the free market. But the idea that the free market would have worked is a libertarian idea.
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It’s one of the ideas that makes me deviate from full-on libertarians because I think they are wrong to believe their “pure” free market ideas will always work. But I do recognize it’s a libertarian idea!
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Well… yeah. Full-on libertarians are on the fringe end of the political spectrum.
Steve, gun control is not an all or nothing and strawman arguments are of little interest. Personally, I support Australian-style arms control with ban on automatic weapons, military-style semi-automatics, licencing gun owners and registration of every weapon. NZ banned pistols in early 1920s and I havent seen a downside to that. Recreation hunting and pest control fully justify use of guns and I dont see those rules limiting that here, in Oz, or the UK. The US paranoia that the only thing between people and totalitarian government is a heavily-armed populace seems laughable to me, but then I dont live in your country.
Is the divide on risk tolerance between left and right about personal risk tolerance or what someone is prepared to do to reduce the risk to others?
Lucia,
I think there is a argument to be made for private individuals to be able to discriminate on things like who they will associate with. You can’t be forced to date an Asian if you don’t want to. No law can block an individual from holding odious views and acting on those odious views in their private lives. So the existence of private clubs that don’t want to admit Jews, whites, blacks, Hispanics, etc is something a libertarian can logically accept, no matter how odious.
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The guy at Volokh is right that libertarians opposing laws against racial discrimination in hiring, school admission, accommodations, real estate sales, and the offering of goods and services to the public is “harmful” to the Libertarian brand. It is more than harmful: it puts libertarians in bed with racists and Nazis, and makes them irrelevant.
Phil
Not all US gun advocates think this. Some do. Others want guns for self defense. For example, if a BLM riot broke out and people came after you for some reason, while the cops weren’t responding to complaints, they would like to have guns to protect themselves.
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SteveF
It makes people think they might be in bed with them. It’s not entirely fair. But I do think to the extent someone thinks the free market can solve the problem of Nazis and other racists, they are naive.
The libertarian point is not a value judgement of behavior or even individual morality but rather a matter of what property rights entail and require to be a right. True freedom where others individual rights are not being violated and imposed upon by force or fraud must allow one to make choices and even bad ones. Jim Crow laws were enforced by government which is totally different than a business person making a bad and not smart or economical decision. Governments deal with these problems with coercion whereas individuals and even those making bad decisions deal with other individuals on a voluntary basis.
Individuals can use free speech to say bad and unwise things as long as they are not committing fraud or directly endangering people with their speech like yelling fire in a movie theater. Here the government has not yet attempted to control bad speech or decide what is good or bad speech and even in a totally government controlled setting.
There is also a distinction between what happens in a government space and a private one like a private versus a public schools where the government can make all kinds of rules and restrictions that have to follow the legalities controlling government spaces, whereas ideally in a libertarian world a totally private one without any government financing could discriminate in anyway who they allow into their school and create their own rules without concern for all those legalities for a public school.
When governments can control for and legislate what a business can do in dealing with others in a non violent and voluntary way the business owner(s) have lost their property rights. A logical next step would be the government getting involved with what happens in ones home were people are dealing with one another in a non violent and voluntary manner.
Phil Scadden,
“…the only thing between people and totalitarian government is a heavily-armed populace seems laughable to me, but then I dont live in your country.”
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Clearly not the only thing. But one of the things. The opposition to licencing and registration is for the same reasons. I am not sure what strawman argument you see, but as you say, you don’t live here. And Oz never revolted against merry old England either.
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I think the divide on risk is mostly not “what someone is prepared to do to reduce the risk to others”, but what someone is prepared to have forced upon them to reduce risk to others. It is again a balance of opposing values.
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Should certain behaviors be forced upon everyone by the majority? Those on the left pretty much always answer in the affirmative (especially if they believe they will always be in the majority!). But ours is not a majoritarian democracy, it is a republic, with a very non-majoritarian structure and a very non-majoritarian list of personal rights in the constitution, rights which a majority in government is not ever allowed to take away.
Kenneth,
Do you support the revoking all laws requiring businesses to not discriminate against people based on race or creed?
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I look forward to your answer.
“Should certain behaviors be forced upon everyone by the majority”
I think it would be more accurate to say that certain liberties are restricted by the majority (harking to Locke’s view of liberty which I support). And yes, I would say that I am very happy to be living in a majoritarian democracy rather than chained to a constitution written to fight 18th century phantoms. We are both clearly happy with our choices however.
Phil Scadden,
They aren’t phantoms. Majoritorian democracy was known to be unstable then and recent history has not provided any evidence of improvement. You’re always just one election away from catastrophe. Venezuela, e.g.
Phil,
We aren’t chained to the constitution. It can be amended and has been many times!
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I am generally happy with the bill of rights and a number of other amendments.
Dewitt – I find that amazing notion. Do you really think American politics and society so close to Venezuela that only personal ownership of guns are keeping totalitarianism at bay?
As for here, I have much more faith in common law than that. I think the only failures of Westminister-style democracies have been in African states without any tradition of democracy. A parliamentary democracy has the great attribute of dilution of power. A prime minister has far less power than your president. The more dilute the better as far as I am concerned.
Lucia – I appreciate amendment was done, is still theoretically possible but in the polarized state of USA at moment, I very much doubt it is now possible. Again, I am outsider looking in with what may be very limited perception but history of the ERA doesnt fill me with confidence.
Phil Scadden (Comment #194621): “I think the only failures of Westminister-style democracies have been in African states without any tradition of democracy. A parliamentary democracy has the great attribute of dilution of power. A prime minister has far less power than your president. The more dilute the better as far as I am concerned.”
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Not just in Africa. Also Burma, Grenada, and, for a time, India. The tradition of democracy is important.
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I too am a big fan of diluted power; that is a strength of the U.S. system, albeit an eroding strength. There is little check on majority party power in the Westminster system. It is not at all clear to me that the President has more power than the Prime Ministers of Canada or Singapore.
Phil,
You said “the only thing between people and totalitarian government is a heavily-armed populace seems laughable to me..”
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To which I answered directly: “Clearly not the only thing. But one of the things.”
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Then DeWitt writes: ” You’re always just one election away from catastrophe. Venezuela, e.g.”.
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To which you ask again the same question: “Do you really think American politics and society so close to Venezuela that only personal ownership of guns are keeping totalitarianism at bay?”
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I am pretty sure DeWitt does not think guns are the only thing keeping totalitarianism at bay. You can keep asking the same question as many times as you want, but I suspect the answer will be pretty consistent: many people who support the right to individual gun ownership (without licencing and registration) will say that an armed populace is one of the things that ensures government does not become totalitarian. You may find that “laughable” or “amazing” or related to 18th century phantoms, but it is not a fringe notion in the USA at all.
SteveF (Comment #194617)
November 29th, 2020 at 4:38 pm
I support property rights as being the basis for a free society and therefore am against government infringement of those rights. The negative brand label for libertarians who support property rights misses the point. Would a supporter of freedom of speech be labeled a racist or sexist for advocating for free speech even if there were those who use that freedom to make hurtful racist and sexist speech?
Looking at advocacy on the other side of the political spectrum should those who advocate for more government controls be branded in the realm of a Mao Zedong or Stalin or Hitler?
In the past it has been governments that have been the major source of racial and sex discrimination and the perpetuation thereof. In a libertarian view of things the individual is the prime mover and importance and that can hardly result in racial or sexual generalizations.
Well for starters, a prime minister can be ditched at any time if their own party doesnt like them. You vote for a party, with its parliamentary leader being a secondary concern. Very few decisions are the prerogative of the PM (choosing the election date and assigning cabinet portfolios is all that comes to mind quickly)- the executive level is the elected cabinet. The parliamentary process by which a law is created is primary check. No equivalent to a presidential executive order.
India still does have a Westminster democracy as far as I know. I dont know anything about Grenada.
No government is immune to a military coup just through the nature of its constitution. That has to come from the wider culture.
“it is no a fringe notion in the USA ”
I completely accept that – I am sure that is not a media distortion. I just fail to comprehend why people believe it.
Phil,
For what it is worth, those on the left in the USA seem, like you, to want a strictly majoritarian form of government. They are very frustrated with the US Constitution, the existence of the Senate, the electoral process for the president, and the extent of local state control over much of government. Progressives have done their best to undermine the Constitution with Orwellian up-is-down and love-is-hate “interpretations” by successive left leaning Supreme Courts.
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The Current court is the very first truly conservative court in my lifetime. I expect US jurisprudence is going to change over the coming years when it comes to paying attention to the Constitution.
Technically the government “allows” murder, you just have to pay a penalty. One can imagine scenarios where a person could evaluate this and decide murder is the correct option. This is rarely the case of course, it’s usually momentary bad judgment combined with access to deadly weapons and drugs. You can speed, you just have to pay the fine. One could prevent speeding by an elaborate system of automatically restricted speeds by GPS, road and so forth mandated by the government.
Kenneth,
Very nice, but you didn’t answer the question:
“Do you support the revoking all laws requiring businesses to not discriminate against people based on race or creed?”
A simple yes or no would do.
I would suggest businesses fear covid lawsuits more from their employees than their customers. Flight attendants who get infected because United Airlines failed to provide a safe working environment likely make corporate lawyers lose sleep at night. Because there are no legal standards yet I predict a legal feeding frenzy of covid lawsuits over the next several years.
Phil,
“I just fail to comprehend why people believe it.”
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Two things come immediately to mind: 1) I have during my adult life watched the Supreme Court willfully undermine the Constitution, adding lots of things not present, and ignoring things that actually are present. 2) I have listened to and read the legislative priorities by the “Progressive caucus” in the US House (about half of all Democrats). They want to severely restrict personal liberties of all kinds and pass laws in plain violation of the Constitution. I find their proposals a cross between laughable and frightening. Nowhere in their agenda are proposed amendments to the Constitution to allow the things they want.
Tom Scharf,
“Flight attendants who get infected because United Airlines failed to provide a safe working environment likely make corporate lawyers lose sleep at night.”
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Is there some reason that flight attendants can’t get vaccinated when it becomes widely available? If they choose not to get vaccinated while United Airlines forces passengers to get vaccinated, then we have the most extreme tail wagging the dog story in history.
Well I prefer government to be as local as possible but accept necessity for many things at national level too. You have convinced me of need for senate and that it should not be a majority representation since I cannot imagine why states would enter a commonwealth on that basis. But slashing presidential power as well as reforming the patently outdated electoral college system is certainly something I would have sympathy with if I was unfortunately enough to live there.
Libertarianism as a pure ideology is unworkable in practice, as is capitalism, socialism, etc. That’s why everyone is running hybrids of one sort or another. However it’s a good place to start as a baseline in my view.
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My guess is pure libertarians want the ability to discriminate in the abstract but are perfectly fine with almost everyone choosing to not discriminate as a wise choice. They aren’t advocating discrimination, they are advocating for the right to choose, there is a difference and it isn’t subtle. The well gets poisoned with the choice of discrimination as the topic.
Vaccines are only 95% effective. So 5% of vaccinated flight attendants can get infected by a customer. Those would be better cases for lawyers, but that is a reason you want to force flight attendants to get vaccinated. Maybe they could give up their right to legal action if they refuse vaccination or some other workable solution.
Phil,
“if I was unfortunately enough to live there.”
Seems you just can’t stay away from gratuitous insults.
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If you did live here, you could actually work for the Constitutional amendments required to make the changes you want. Unfortunately, those who do live here and share many of your views have no intention of trying to change the Constitution. The seem enamored of the words of singer/songwriter Jackson Browne:
Phil,
What would you suggest changing in the US Constitution beyond the 2nd Amendment (gun rights)?
Tom Scharf,
“Vaccines are only 95% effective. So 5% of vaccinated flight attendants can get infected by a customer.”
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It is a little more complicated than that, and unfortunately we do not have all the data we need. The Moderna data show 11 severe cases, all among the control group, and none in the vaccine group. There was one severe case among the vaccine group in the Pfizer trial, but the criteria for declaring a case “severe” have not been explained (at least not that I have found). As more data become available, the true risk of severe disease after vaccination will be better known. If the chance of a mild case is ~5%, but of a severe case (hospitalization/death) is near zero, then the flight attendants will need to show why their post vaccination risk from covid is different from the ongoing risk they face of picking up a cold or the flu.
The legal sharks are going to be coming with real cases, not just suing over improved working conditions. People who basically had to work to survive, were given representations that the work environment was safe, and subsequently got covid and died. There are over 200,000 possibilities of this. Easily 200 of these will result in jackpot juries is my guess.
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It will be real messy. Proving the exposure was at work, proving that there was misrepresentation of how safe the environment was, etc. The companies will say they were doing the best they could given the information they had, and the other side will say they could have done much more, the jury will decide.
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The problem now is nobody knows what is enough. My wife’s company had a big presentation on all the stuff they were doing, but they never said the words “this makes it safe”. It’s a dual edge sword, get the employees to come back by inferring it is safe, but never actually really tell them that for legal reasons.
I think you can feel pretty safe advocating Constitutional amendments given that 12 deeply conservative states representing less than 10% of the population can block any amendment or I am reading the rules incorrectly?
(Used Wyoming,Alaska,North Dakota,South Dakota,Montana,Idaho,West Virginia,Nebraska,New Mexico,Kansas,Mississippi,Arkansas,Nevada if anyone wants to check my maths – more like 7%)
Don’t forget Alabama.
Phil Scadden (Comment #194640): “I think you can feel pretty safe advocating Constitutional amendments given that 12 deeply conservative states”
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New Mexico and Nevada are not conservative states. And it would take 13 to block an amendment.
Phil
That depends on what you want to pass. But difficulty in amending is a feature, not a bug.
Ok, then try Wyoming,Alaska,North Dakota,South Dakota,Montana,Idaho,West Virginia,Nebraska,Kansas,Mississippi,Arkansas,Utah,Oklahoma
13 states, 8% population.
Chuck in Kentucky,Alabama,South Carolina as well and it is 12%
I rather wonder whether framers of constitution meant to be that hard? Probably the political expedient of the time, but I can see why people wouldnt want to waste time on trying to get a “progressive” amendment through.
Pretty sure I could put together 13 pretty small progressive states that could also block a conservative amendent with tiny % of population.
Phil,
I think they meant it to be pretty hard to amend. Or at least it’s supposed to be hard if there is no strong will supporting the amendment.
Right now I don’t think a “progressive” amendment could get even get out of congress. Ignoring the “convention” method of amending (which has never happened under the current constitution and is really risky for all parties) the first step is getting 2/3rd votes from both the house and the senate. The President is irrelevant.
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After that, they need an up/down vote in both houses state legislatures. They need both houses to vote and then need 3/4s of the states to ratify. The governor is irrelevant.
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Most state senates are controlled by Republicans. Evidently after Nov 2018 that was 36 GOP to 18 DEM. (The exact count isn’t precisely known currently.) Meanwhile 29/40 house chambers were held by GOP.
https://ballotpedia.org/Partisan_composition_of_state_legislatures
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There is no way an amendment opposed by GOP can pass currently. This is not a matter of only 13 states– it’s more like at least 36 states that would not pass a GOP opposed amendment.
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I really don’t know what amendment progressive might want to pass. I guess some what to set aside the electoral college, but there is no way to do that with at least 36 states refusing to pass .
Some people might want to set aside the 2nd amendment, but that’s really pretty hopeless.
My point really was that you could theoretically have an 80+% majority in favour of change but the system makes it possible for around 10% to block. Theoretically – I cant really imagine an 80% percent majority, especially in USA. That is certainly strong protection against majoritarianism, and obviously suits conservatives who are more or less by definition opposed to change.
I guess I am unabashed majoritarian. I dont think a minority should have that power in a democracy.
Phil,
The Constitution was specifically designed to avoid simple majoritarian rule. Besides the structure of the Federal government, it also contains the “bill of rights” to ensure a majority could not by law strip the personal rights of the minority. I note the 10 amendments that make up the “bill of rights” were written as a response to concerns by nearly all the states that the initial Constitutional wording did not provide sufficient protection of rights from a majority in Congress. The amendments were written, passed by Congress and approved by the States within about 2 years, and in force by 1791.
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It most certainly doesn’t take 80% support of the voters to pass an amendment, it takes a 2/3 majority in both houses of congress, and a simple majority vote in the legislative chambers of 38 states. There clearly does have to be a very broad consensus for an amendment to pass. Lots of amendments have past, just none without a broad consensus.
Phil,
Well, the problem with that math is it’s largely irrelevant. California being liberal doesn’t mean everyone in California is liberal. So saying Wyoming’s blocking California is equivalent to 579,759 people blocking 39,510,000 people isn’t correct. Given views across the country, something really, really popular in CA but unpopular in WY would more likely have 60% support in ca with only 40% in WY. That ends up with about 59.7% for with 40.3% against.
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Also, bear in mind, states don’t have to pass the amendment on the first round. There is usually a sunset clause for enacting, but a legislature that hopes to pass it usually can keep trying for 10 years!
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It is true the amendment needs broad super majority support. But as a practical matter, the math doesn’t work the way you are thinking about it. In reality, given how peoples views are distributed across the country, if 70% of individual people wanted something passed as an amendment it would pass quickly. (Prohibition did. Then it was reversed!)
Phil,
I’d also like to ask you some questions related to majority rule.
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1) Suppose a simple majority of the population wanted to amend the constitution to outlaw people from practicing Islam in the US. Would you say: well, that’s what the majority wants. So fine?
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2) Suppose further the simple majority decreed that those convicted of owning and reading a Koran would be put to death. Would you say, well, majority rules! Go for it!
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3) Suppose a simple majority decreed that restaurants, hotels and schools were not allowed to serve children of Moslems. Would you say, “hey! Majority rules!”
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These are hypotheticals. But the constitution is designed to consider what hypothetical laws a legislature is permitted to enact. Our constitution doesn’t permit the above and it is difficult to amend the constitution to change that.
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And of course, religious persecution has existed in the past. It definitely existed when our country was founded, was pretty prominent in Germany during WWII and appears to be on going in China. Likely it exists elsewhere too.
Tom Scharf (Comment #194634)
November 29th, 2020 at 7:48 pm
When you cannot or choose not to make a case for or against something make a pronouncement.
SteveF (Comment #194629)
November 29th, 2020 at 7:25 pm
I would to the extent that businesses are private and the laws would infringe on individual property rights. Do you feel that free speech to the extent it allows users to make hurtful racist and sexist statements should be limited by legislation?
Modern day liberals are often for personal rights and freedoms put have problems with property rights. I have a link to an article below that relates property rights to human rights and how human rights in order to be exercised require property rights.
As a practical matter in today’s world I doubt that many businesses would discriminate if they wanted to succeed. It would be great to compete against a business that did discriminate. Here I am not talking about some artificial rules and indicators that are used in making laws against discrimination.
Property Rights and “Human Rights”
https://mises.org/wire/property-rights-and-human-rights
Phil,
“I dont think a minority should have that power in a democracy.”
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You keep saying things like this; I don’t know why. The USA is NOT a pure democracy, and never has been. It is a constitutional republic, where the constitution restricts the power of elected representatives by various means, including the specified structure of the government, and the sharing of power with the governments of individual states. The first 10 amendments are just a list of things the Federal government is not ever allowed to do.
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Of course, in practice, there has been some undermining of the Constitution by “progressive” Supreme Court Justices, since policies they supported were in violation of the Constitution, but that is a different issue. I am pleased the current members of the SC will almost certainly reverse some of the of the undermining.
Kenneth
The difficulty for libertarianism is you really do have to put in “in today’s world” to make that true. And if you change the world, it’s pretty clear that “free market” is sufficient to ensure businesses that discriminate won’t succeed.
Phil Scadden,
You’re not paying attention. You’re assuming that there will be some sort of vote. But as we have seen, all that’s necessary is to declare a global crisis.
Phil
I think minorities should have sufficient power to prevent themselves from being persecuted.
Kenneth,
I think I understand your position as you have described it. You doubt businesses would ever practice discrimination. This is something I find odd considering the explicit racial discrimination routinely practiced in school admissions and business hiring today. After all you have written, I still don’t know if you support revoking all laws against racial discrimination by businesses. I suspect you do, but refuse to say so; I am unsure why.
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One thing is clear to me: so long as Libertarians can’t answer a simple question about revoking laws against businesses practicing racial discrimination, libertarians are never going to be more than, at best, a footnote in US politics, or, at worst, spoilers who give very close elections to those candidates who are most supportive of the policies Libertarians say they oppose.
Looks like the final House membership will be: 212 Republicans, 223 Democrats.
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Pelosi can lose not more than 5 votes from her caucus to pass legislation. The 20% unhinged left of her party will press always for crazy sh!t, while Dems from competitive districts (who just had the scare of their political lives) will refuse to support the crazy sh!t. Result: Nothing of substance can pass without support of Republicans.
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Of course, compromise with the opposing party is not Pelosi’s style of governance. So nothing of substance will pass.
SteveF,
It also remains to be seen if Biden will accept absolutely crazy shit. He may. Or not. I think realistic Dems have to know if they pass things that are too extreme, there is a risk they lose the House in 2022. When they thought they’d have enough power to pack the court, the might have had an incentive to do that provided they finished up in 2 years so they could be sure the next senate didn’t get to finish the job of appointing new justices. That would have had a long lasting effect even if they did lose the Senate.
Now… they know they can’t increase the number of justices in and pack. Without a Senate majority, there is very little they can do quickly and avoid reversal in 2 years. If it’s too out there, they’ll lose both house and senate.
SteveF
Yes. Some questions need to be answered directly. A philosophical discussion about the libertarian’s thoughts isn’t enough. People want to know: If I voted you in place, would you move to removes these legal protections? The answer has to be yes or no. After saying yes or no, you can explain.
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If you answer yes, you plan to remove anti-discrimination laws that touch on race, your explanation needs to be something voters accept. Otherwise, they won’t vote for you.
I don’t think those 13 states would block a progressive amendment. Many of those states have elected Democrats as governor recently. They have passed many progressive policies. Kansas in particular has had a big split among Republicans with Planned Parenthood supported candidates getting elected.
Minimum wage laws have passed in many of those states.
If Congress were to pass an amendment with no sunset law, then progressives just need supportive candidates to get elected at some point in the ensuing decades to pass the amendment
The Equal Right Amendment has been passed in 38 states.
Several of those states revoked their ratification, and there was a deadline on the amendment when it passed Congress.
Nevertheless the hope is to have it declared as ratified.
Lucia,
“I think realistic Dems have to know if they pass things that are too extreme, there is a risk they lose the House in 2022.”
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Just the shift of house seats based on the 2020 census and expected redistricting will almost certainly put Republicans in control of 6 more seats in 2022. I agree that Dems are going to be wary of adopting crazy sh!t, but at the same time, if they don’t, their base is not going to be motivated in 2022…. which could lead to a bloodbath for the Dems. An imponderable is Biden. If by 2022 he is clearly declining into more advanced dementia (assuming he has not already been removed via the 25th amendment!), then voters will need to entertain the possibility of a very light weight president Kamala as they head to the polls. I have no doubt Kamala would motivate the Dem base, but she would REALLY motivate most everyone else to limit her power by taking away the House. I mean, even Democrats don’t like her… her campaign collapsed before the primaries even started.
Other examples of majoritarian madness include Portland, OR, defunding the police while confiscating guns and arresting people for defending themselves against mostly peaceful protests, Antifa and BLM.
mikeN
Governors have no official role in ratifying amendments. Surprising, yes. But I read up yesterday!
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If either the the state house or the state senate fails to achieve a simple majority, that state has voted “no”. (The governor can’t veto if the vote yes. So, the governor is technically no more relevant than the Press or dog catcher.)
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Most state senates and most state houses are GOP controlled. Not Illinois…. But most. The 13 states Phil picked is only a subset of the states that will not ratify an amendment GOP state legislators don’t support.
DeWitt, ummm, I live in Portland and have not seen what you describe. Police have not been defunded. BLM protests have been peaceful, although they occasionally are infiltrated by agitators from both antifa and white supremacist groups. I have literally not seen what you describe. Are you talking about Portland, ME?
Even at the height of the protests this summer, one block away from the building at the center of the controversy mothers were walking hand in hand with children. I was walking there too. It was calm, peaceful–it looked like Main Street Small Town Anywhere.
Yes, but the proponents of the amendment just need to get control once to pass the amendment, over 5-10 elections. In the case of the 27th amendment, 200 years.
Maybe not even full control, just close enough that they get some Republicans to vote with them.
Thomas Fuller
The Associated Press seems to think the protests in Portlans or have been violent.
https://apnews.com/article/b57315d97dd2146c4a89b4636faa7b70
That was september 2020.
No one is claiming there aren’t long stretches during which no one is hurling fireworks, rocks and so on. But that’s similar to war zones. Most of the time, in most places no one is hurling anything. Often, one block away from an invasion, people can walk around most of the time (and do.)
People don’t take this as evidence that the war zone is not a war zone, or that war is peaceful– other than for the existence of the combatants.
It’s all find and dandy to say “but that’s not BLM, it’s Antifa and white supremicists” but (a) they are attracted by the ongoing protests and (b) I’m pretty sure if you asked an Antifa member they would say they are there in support of ‘Black Lives Matter’.
Violence has been breaking out at BLM protests. Stores have been burned; windows broken. People have been killed.
SteveF, NY-22 isn’t done. A judge decided to review the ballots personally, and decided the Democrat won by 13 votes instead of the previous Republican lead of 100 votes. Then another county issued an update of 35 net for the Republican and 10 for the Democrat, giving a lead of 12 votes.
If this holds, then it would put Republicans at 213 seats.
“While some Catholic priests claimed coronavirus lockdowns that shuttered churches infringed on religious liberties, Pope Francis has adhered to Italy’s strict lockdown.”
“He halted all public Masses at the Vatican, livestreamed his morning liturgies during the peak of Italy’s outbreak, and at one point even admonished priests who balked at the measures for their “adolescent resistance.â€
https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-italy-religion-vatican-city-pope-francis
Our SC has sided with the adolescents, ruling government can’t temporarily prohibit religious services, thus making it possible to spread Covid-19 around. Worshippers get the disease while in church, then later before knowing they are infected, spread it to people outside the church.
Thank God no one in my household will be going to church.
Regarding Portland, Andy Ngo documents antifa actvity which does seem to be continuing in Portland:
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https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo
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There is a matter of framing and context with twitter, of course. Idiots break the law everywhere, but this does seem troubling.
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The mug shots indicate wild eyed twenty somethings, many of whom appear to have meth sores.
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Marshall MacLuhan warned of increasing tribalism as media became less reading and more video ( and now instant social ).
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Eric Hoffer warned of mass movements when people felt worthless and hopeless.
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Is Portland a portent of these trends?
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Or is it a narrow focus of a few people on a few blocks?
Turbulent Eddie, I strongly maintain that it is the latter.
I’ve commented here before that (most of–of course there are a handful of locals) both the antifa and the white supremacists/nationalists drift down here from our neighboring state of Washington. The antifa seem to come from Seattle, the white s/n’s from nearby Vancouver, WA. The BLM protestors are 90% Portlanders, 10% people from all over the country.
What Lucia describes as a ‘war zone’ really, really isn’t.
MikeN,
Where are you getting the information about NY 22? Everything I have found shows the Democrat ahead by ~12 votes.
SteveF (Comment #194661)
November 30th, 2020 at 9:19 am
Not to get into a pi$$ing contest with you, Steve, but I did answer your question. Instead of giving you a yes or no I described what legislation I would oppose. You did not, however, answer my question that I put to you.
I am a libertarian and not a Libertarian – as in the party that runs candidates in political contests. The ideas and philosophy of libertarianism are not ready for political contests given the dominant intelligentsia of today being to the left of the voting public but very influential in shifting the public to the left and in a big part through the MSM. Political philosophies are debated best at a very different level than is seen in political contests where the debate is emotional and filled with untruths exaggerations and non sequiturs (Trump did not invent that style). Political ideas that win out at the higher levels of debate filter down to the intelligentsia and finally to the voters. Currently the debate is being won at nearly all levels by the far left and those that advocate for bigger and more intrusive government. Modern Monetary Theory that was not long ago considered a non serious and unrealistic approach to government spending is the main strategy for handling the huge government expenditures resulting from government restrictions invoked for the Covid emergency. This is a big win for the far left whether it is recognized as such by the general public or not.
There is hope in the observation that more people who are not strict advocates of government control of people’s lives recognize the failures, limitations and problems with this approach. They are not, however, ready to question what controls could be gotten rid of or the seeming security that they think government controls provide. The even more negative side of this situation is what I see in the people’s reaction to the Covid-19 “emergency” and their unquestioned willingness to have the government and its experts control their lives and in turn look disapprovingly upon those who would dare question government control.
What happens when the 50.1% of the population votes to relieve the other 49.9% of the population of their voting rights?
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Democracy and majorities are a good system of government, but “tyranny of the majority” is a serious issue. In the US example certain foundational rights are laid down beyond the reach of the majority, such as the right to vote. So majorities must have limitations.
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Example: WV, WY, KY are basically being told they will no longer be able to use their own coal to produce electricity in their own states if the climate do-gooders have their way. Their opinion on the matter will not count.
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People who are absolutely convinced of their own righteousness tend to always thinks of their side being the majority imposing righteous outcomes on the hapless minority morons for their own good. They rarely envision the hapless morons gaining a majority and shoving them up against the wall and imposing outcomes on their side. Trump winning an election should have put the fear of God into the “majority is always right” thinking. EVERYONE thinks their side is benevolent, it’s not.
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Experts can be badly mistaken. Majorities can be mistaken. Priorities and culture of the US cities should not be forced upon the US rural areas. Cities already have the power to govern themselves, but it is the clear desire of many city dwellers to force their will upon everyone that creates problems. Somehow the framers of the US Constitution apparently got a pre-release of The Hunger Games, ha ha. Actually these problems no doubt have existed since the cave men (oops, cave persons) started joining up tribes.
Kenneth,
This is what I asked: “Do you support the revoking all laws requiring businesses to not discriminate against people based on race or creed?”
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Here is how you replied:
Then you provided a link explaining (yet again) how property rights are very important to libertarians.
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“I would to the extent that businesses are private and the laws would infringe on individual property rights.”
That sounds to me a lot like begging the question. Clearly most businesses are private, but we are left to draw our own conclusions about “the extent to which the laws would infringe on property rights”. This is not a hypothetical question (“would”). There are existing laws explicitly prohibiting racial discrimination.
They are by no means uniformly enforced…. certain discrimination is considered ‘good’ and so encouraged…. but enforced they are. Do you think those laws infringe on property rights and so should be revoked?
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With regard to your question: No, free speech is free speech, and should not be prohibited except in the very limited case of causing immediate physical harm (eg falsely shouting “fire!” in a crowded theater). Saying really dangerous hurtful things like “On average women do not run as fast as men”, or “On average, black athletes can run faster than comparable white athletes” should never be restricted.
“BLM protests have been peaceful, although they occasionally are infiltrated by agitators from both antifa and white supremacist groups”
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This is a circular statement that “peaceful BLM protestors are non-violent”. It is also true that good cops aren’t bad cops, and when I talk about cops then I’m referring to the former. Why are there protests against “cops”? A common definition of BLM protesters is everyone who shows up at a protest organized by and for BLM. The organizers of these protests have failed to police their own protests of undesirables, either because they can’t or they don’t want to. This tainted the entire effort (along with defund the police).
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Leaderless groups keep falling into the same trap, they are infiltrated or welcome extremists and the opposing side paints them with that brush because they can’t effectively counter that message without effective leadership.
Ah, yes. Those dastardly white supremacists ie anyone, regardless of color, who disagrees with the far left. At this point, they’re more diverse than antifa.
Tom Scharf,
BLM is not leaderless. They have a published agenda that includes brilliant ideas like the complete elimination of the nuclear family. As if the preponderance of single female parent households in the Black community hasn’t done enough damage already.
However, a lot of BLM demonstrations had little or no connection with the BLM organization.
In NZ criminal cases, there must be agreement of 11 out of 12 jurors. Why not a simple majority?
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There is more or less a definition of “weighty” decisions that societies define as having major impacts if a new decision is made positively to proceed. Altering the voting system would be one of those.
As far as I can tell all local BLM organizations are self proclaimed and founded by local people without any kind of formal rules, or being granted any authority to do so from a national organization. There are all kinds of different specific agendas although much of it is shared. If you want a statement from the ACLU you know where to go, if you want one from BLM then … ? On that aside, what the heck happened to the ACLU? They have lost their mind.
SteveF
https://www.syracuse.com/politics/2020/11/claudia-tenney-says-corrected-error-gives-her-13-vote-lead-over-anthony-brindisi.html
All this discussion of libertarians and power of government, but I noticed one topic missing. In practice the Libertarian Party is about drugs. It has been for a long time. Twenty years ago, Ann Coulter wanted to run on their line to take out Chris Shays in Conn. for voting against impeachment. They denied her the ballot line because she refused to support legalization.
Thomas,
I didn’t describe Portland as a war zone. I pointed out that no one says there is no war merely because the bombing is not going on 24/7. Likewise, you can’t decree the demonstrations as peaceful merely people are not hurling things and setting the town aflame 24/7.
Kenneth,
If I understand you correctly, you would
1) remove civil rights laws baring racial discrimination as they apply to private business like restaurants, stores, any employer public accomodation.
2) keep civil rights laws barring the same discrimination by the government.
Regarding BLM and the nuclear family, I was pretty upset at hearing this and then realized – they’re too late!
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https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/assets_c/2013/05/Screen%20Shot%202013-05-12%20at%2012.29.08%20AM-thumb-570×454-121210.png
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Not a good thing, of course, a very bad thing.
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It’s a reminder of how badly astray BLM is with their ideals as well as how badly astray the US, and indeed, all of western civilization is with their practice.
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Things are multifactoral, so automation may be as much a factor. But so too may be the enabling social programs which foster childbirth out of wedlock ( Japan, without much support for single mothers, has much lower out of wedlock births ).
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It’s not clear we can continue as a nation without intact families.
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I was reading Eric Hoffer and he says mass movements are born of broken families, because unattached offspring seek identity in groups.
MIkeN
Big L vs small l matters when discussing libertarian. Big L is a political party. Small l is a political view point.
Lucia and Tom, those are fair questions. I do think weighty matters like constitutional change require much higher than a simple majority. Here it is 75% of parliament or referendum. This principle could itself be challenged but would likely face both electoral backlash and resistance by her majesty ( in form of governor-general).
Steve, I am well aware that US is not a democracy. I think the world would be better if it was.
Phil,
Our US President has no official role in amending the constitution. This is (generally) a purely legislative function. There is a “constitutional convention” path too.
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That doesn’t happen. Among other things there is an open question about whether a constitutional convention can be limited once convened. Our current constitution pop-out from a constitutional convention and the entirety of the old articles of confederation went out the window. It’s not entirely clear what would happen if the feds organized a constitutional convention to consider a particular article. Those at the convention might not consider themselves bound to stay inside some restricted scope!
Turbulent Eddie (Comment #194689)
Regarding BLM and the nuclear family, I was pretty upset at hearing this and then realized – they’re too late!
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/assets_c/2013/05/Screen%20Shot%202013-05-12%20at%2012.29.08%20AM-thumb-570×454-121210.png
Not a good thing, of course, a very bad thing.
___________
Children born out of wedlock (no marriage license) aren’t necessarily without fathers. Some couples don’t want marriage licenses. I don’t know how these couples are treated in the article.
OK_Max,
Mostly children born out of wedlock have less stable family lives and don’t have two parents present.
The reality of governing is pretty messy, even if you think you live in a democracy. We only elect people who get to vote, not actually vote on stuff ourselves in most cases. In theory these people would go investigate things to get a much fuller understanding and make wiser decisions on the trade offs than having a voter referendum on everything. I’m not a big fan of referendums for the most part, my rule is always vote no unless there is a compelling reason to think the elected officials are getting it wrong (e.g. they have conflicts of interests with government employee unions). I also think there needs to be at least a 60% majority on referendums, the wording on referendums is usually contested like warfare in the courts.
As I remember, it was the expansion of Aid to Families with Dependent Children that led to the rapid increase in out-of-wedlock births. Before that the numbers were stable or even decreasing. Moynihan wrote a seminal article about it, for which he was ostracized.
Also, as I remember, even the children of well off single mothers don’t do as well as children in a nuclear family. I suspect that no one in academia would even suggest a study of children raised by gay couples. Too dangerous.
The Changing Profile of Unmarried Parents
A growing share are living with a partner
https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/04/25/the-changing-profile-of-unmarried-parents/
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Married parents: 65%
Solo moms: 21%
Solo dads: 4%
Cohabiting parents: 7%
ucia (Comment #194694)
November 30th, 2020 at 3:52 pm
OK_Max,
Mostly children born out of wedlock have less stable family lives and don’t have two parents present.
________
Probably true, but you don’t have to marry to have children, so a growing number of fathers may prefer to remaining unmarried rather than face the possible financial consequences of divorce.
OK_Max,
Well… they still face the financial consequences of child support. I think it’s equally likely women prefer to remain unmarried, get child support and avoid having to hold a job and do all the housework.
They moved me out of the COVID wing, so I guess I have officially recovered.
lucia (Comment #194688)
November 30th, 2020 at 1:58 pm
Your view of my comments about private property legislation are correct. Perhaps you could translate for SteveF and me.
There are some gray areas with government in the picture and to which SteveF might be referring. The recent Harvard discrimination case where the university receives government funds could put it under the umbrella of government discrimination. Where it was placed in this lawsuit was not a decision for the courts since they must view the matter the same for government or private parties.
In my ideal world there would be no government funding for a private university and if that university wanted to provide easier entrance for a certain race or group of people that would be fine with me. We have a private religious college in Wheaton called Wheaton College and I do believe that they have certain religious requirements for entry. I do not know if that would be considered discrimination in a world where government decides these matters.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #194700)
November 30th, 2020 at 4:41 pm
That is good news, DeWitt, and I’ll have a glass of wine to it right now.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #194700)
November 30th, 2020 at 4:41 pm
They moved me out of the COVID wing, so I guess I have officially recovered.
____________
Glad to hear it, DeWitt. I hope you have a rapid recovery.
Good news DeWitt. Hope you are back to full speed asap.
Great DeWitt!!! I too will go have a glass of red wine!
According to a recent editorial in the WSJ, banks refusal to lend to an unpopular industry like guns violates Dodd-Frank. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is attempting to finalize a rule to that effect.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-fair-banking-rule-11606778173
Great news DeWitt!
It’s too early for wine, will have to raise a glass later. But very happy for you!
DeWitt
Does anyone know what national charting entails? Of it there is such a thing as a not nationally chartered bank? (I don’t know either. I’m hoping someone knows.)
Should have googled for the first.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/national-bank.asp
I guess non-chartered banks must exist, but it doesn’t actually say.
I believe there are state chartered banks – but I should Google that.
Kenneth,
I did find state chartered banks.
The national ones are involved in stabilizing the currency. So that starts to mix in being involved in the actions of the federal government. In that sort of case, the feds do get to make more rules about their operation because they are no longer merely “private”.
My encyclopedic son was verseing me on the banking system a while back and as I recall told me that state banks are more numerous than national ones. National banks are part of the Federal Reserve system.
Banks and especially those in the Federal Reserve domain are probably out of the grey area between private and government entities and can in the libertarian view be considered an arm of the government.
Banks historically have been a purchaser of a large number of government issued bonds. If currently the Federal Reserve was not keeping the borrowing cost artificially low the Federal government would have a much more difficult time financing the huge debt it has incurred. Fed chairman Powell has in an unprecedented manner called for more fiscal spending and implied that Federal Reserve would print money (through the Treasury) to cover it. In my view that sounds a lot like Modern Monetary Theory.
I certainly am not surprised that a lot of banking executives are liberal Democrats and would due the bidding of the Democrat left in their lending decisions.
Kenneth,
Yes. It looks like “national chartered banks” are lean pretty strongly toward “being” government. So it does seem to me they should not be allowed viewpoint discrimination or “business” discrimination with regard to their lending.
I don’t know about state banks. The question is then going to be whether all banks are actually at least “sort of” government. (If yes, the real issue will be whether that is right.)
Once again… should have googled. Private banks exist:
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/060915/which-are-top-10-private-banks.asp
The additional data from the Moderna trial is very limited (full results to be peer-reviewed published), but even with a large study (30,000 participants) it is still not possible to say with certainty that the m-RNA vaccine completely protects against severe illness. There were 11 symptomatic cases in the vaccine group and 185 in the placebo group. There were 30 “serious” illnesses, all in the placebo group, one of which led to death.
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So my question is: Does the vaccine just protect against infection in general (best estimate is 94.1% effective), or does it ALSO additionally protect against severe illness (that is, reduce the chance of severe illness, even if you get symptomatic illness)?
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Someone can tell me if I have the numbers wrong, but it looks to me like overall probability of mild illness (pooling all cases from both trial groups) is 166/196 = 0.8469. So if someone catches covid 19, the chance of a mild case is 84.69%. Assuming the vaccine offers no additional protection against severe illness (just a lower overall rate of illness), then the chance of all 11 cases in the vaccine group being mild is then: (0.8469)^11 = 0.16.
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So the chance of no severe cases among the cases suffered by vaccine group is about 16%, and we can’t say with high confidence the vaccine reduces the chance of severe illness beyond the overall reduced chance of getting symptomatic illness. But the data at least suggest that may well be the case. Only a much larger number of vaccinations will answer the question definitively.
NYT’s reports on Facebook’s recent algorithm changes:
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“The change was part of the “break glass†plans Facebook had spent months developing for the aftermath of a contested election. It resulted in a spike in visibility for big, mainstream publishers like CNN, The New York Times and NPR, while posts from highly engaged hyperpartisan pages, such as Breitbart and Occupy Democrats, became less visible, the employees said.
It was a vision of what a calmer, less divisive Facebook might look like. Some employees argued the change should become permanent, even if it was unclear how that might affect the amount of time people spent on Facebook. In an employee meeting the week after the election, workers asked whether the “nicer news feed†could stay, said two people who attended.
Guy Rosen, a Facebook executive who oversees the integrity division that is in charge of cleaning up the platform, said on a call with reporters last week that the changes were always meant to be temporary. “There has never been a plan to make these permanent,†he said. John Hegeman, who oversees the news feed, said in an interview that while Facebook might roll back these experiments, it would study and learn from them.”
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Color me disgusted. This from the legions of people who proudly say they read 1984 recently. If only I had a Facebook account to delete, ha ha.
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As expected, Glenn Greenwald is not pleased.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/demanding-silicon-valley-suppress
I think the numbers are too small in the vaccine group to draw conclusions on severe illness. The small numbers suggest it protects against severe illness.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/absolutely-remarkable-no-one-who-got-modernas-vaccine-trial-developed-severe-covid-19
SteveF (Comment #194717): “So my question is: Does the vaccine just protect against infection in general (best estimate is 94.1% effective), or does it ALSO additionally protect against severe illness (that is, reduce the chance of severe illness, even if you get symptomatic illness)?”
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I think there are two related but different questions. One is whether the vaccine reduces the chance of severe illness. I think it clearly does, at least as long as antibodies are high. If the expectation value (true mean) for the number of severe cases in the control group was 20 cases (as high as my table of Poisson distribution values goes), then the chance of 30 or more cases is just under 2% (if I am reading the table right). An expectation value of 4 in the test group would give a 2% chance of zero cases. I think that means that reduction in the chance of sever illness is at least 80% (from 20 to 4) with p=0.02; higher for a less stringent p. Very encouraging.
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The second question is whether if you get sick in spite of the vaccine, is there still a benefit in reducing the chance of severe illness. I think that is the question SteveF is asking. I think he has taken a reasonable first cut at that. I am not sure it is correct, but off hand I don’t know how to improve on it.
Mike M,
We know the vaccine reduces the risk of illness.
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But as you note, my question is a little different: does the vaccine reduce the chance of severe illness to an even greater extent than it reduces the chance of symptomatic illness? There is not enough data to answer with confidence, but it looks encouraging. The reason this matters is that severe illness (and death!) matter much more than total (mostly mild) cases. If the vaccine reduces the risk of death from the virus to a significantly greater extent than 94%, that will be very important to know.
Lucia, among those “private” banks listed in that link you posted is Goldman Sachs which is NY state chartered bank and is part of the Federal Reserve system. I think their definition of private is merely privately owned.
Evidence of massive vote fraud, especially in Pennsylvania:
https://spectator.org/pennsylvania-bombshell-biden-99-4-vs-trump-0-6/
Tom Scharf, you DO have a Facebook account, you just haven’t activated it yet. Facebook keeps shadow profiles of every user and also non-users.
For example, if I have an account and I give phone number 123-456-7890, Facebook will have that in my account. In my shadow account, Facebook will have my cell number 234-567-8901, that a friend of mine has listed in their contacts.
“OKLAHOMA CITY (Nov. 30, 2020) – Governor Kevin Stitt announced today he is declaring Thursday, Dec. 3 as a statewide day of prayer and fasting for all Oklahomans affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Source: Oklahoma Governor site
I’m not sure prayer will help, but it probably won’t hurt. But fasting ?
Mike M,
If the evidence is clear and convincing, I have no doubt a court will intervene.
OK_Max,
Most people could use to lose a little weight (or a lot!).
Mike M. (Comment #194724)
December 1st, 2020 at 1:12 pm
Evidence of massive vote fraud, especially in Pennsylvania:
https://spectator.org/pennsylvania-bombshell-biden-99-4-vs-trump-0-6/
_______
Today Attorney General Barr said there is no evidence of fraud that would change the outcome of the election.
“n an interview with The Associated Press, Barr said U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they’ve received, but they’ve uncovered no evidence that would change the outcome of the election.”
Source:USAToday, Dec.1, 2020
The USAToday article didn’t mention Pennsylvania.
SteveF
We think there were 50% – 50% distribution of placebo vs. treatment.
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I’m not sure how the define the level of protection. But suppose we thought the treatment had no protection against serious illness.
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The likelihood of getting 30/30 of those with “serious” illness were in the placebo group and non in the vaccine group is 0.5^30. That’s tiny. So it looks to me like your odds of getting a serious illness is lower with the vaccine.
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Whether the distribution of “mild-serious-death” given that you got sick changes, I can’t say. But it looks to me like you are much less likely to get a “serious” illness if you take the vaccine compared to if you don’t. take the vaccine.
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SteveF
I think you are correct that we don’t know this for sure. Maybe.
I do know that if we assume that the rate of severe illness in vaccinated is 1/9 times that in the placebo group, then we’d expect the chance that a ill person had was from the placebo group would be 90%. (I think…) Then the chances of getting all 30 severe illnesses from the placebo group would be 0.9^30= 0.04239116
So the protection for severe illness is better than 90%.
Lucia,
Sure, we can be reasonably confident the protection against severe illness is at least 90%. We could just as well assume the rate of severe illness in the vaccinated group is proportional to the rate of symptomatic illness: ~1/16, so 0.94^30 = 16% chance of no severe cases in the vaccinated group by pure chance…. not statistically significant.
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I was trying to figure if there is a way to be confident there is protection above the (relatively) well defined protection against symptomatic illness. (94%) Looks to me like there are just not enough severe cases to know that yet. The study would have to be about twice as big to better define the level of protection against severe illness.
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I assume there are now 15,000 very happy subjects who have been told their chance of illness has been drastically reduced.
SteveF (Comment #194733): “I assume there are now 15,000 very happy subjects who have been told their chance of illness has been drastically reduced.”
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I hope not. The study is not complete. Maybe the protection wears off in a few months.
Mike M,
“I hope not.”
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You hope they are not happy, or you hope they have not been told they got the vaccine?
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The level of protection for sure does ware off, but it is far too early to tell how quickly. The earlier Moderna dose/response study showed clearly that the antibody titres are quite high, and comparable to titres from a “natural” infection. The lack of documented re-infection cases (only 5 worldwide) suggests the resistance is not terribly short lived.
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Of course, you should have as much skepticism of the vaccines as you like; but I will get it when it becomes available.
SteveF
I agree with this.
MikeM.
I’m sure they have not been told that duration of immunity is known.
Both: I’m not sure whether the study is fully unblinded yet. It may be it was only unblinded with respect to the people who got sick. But I imagine it will be fully unblinded when the vaccine gets approval.
Like SteveF, I suspect the immunity will be somewhat long lived. That’s what the data we actually have suggests. But of course, we don’t have longer term observations on anything to do with Covid. That includes both long term effects on those infected or longer term effects of the vaccine.
I mean… for all we know, everyone who recovered will suddenly turn into a man eating brainless zombie exactly 2 years after recovery. We have no observations about that. So we have no evidence that won’t happen.
I’d be happy to learn I’d gotten the vaccine. 🙂
Lucia,
“for all we know, everyone who recovered will suddenly turn into a man eating brainless zombie exactly 2 years after recovery.”
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OK you have convinced me to abandon everything I know and all available data on vaccines in general and covid vaccines in particular, and not get the vaccination. 😉
lucia,
Zombies eat brains. Didn’t you watch iZombie? Kristen Bell was really funny. The premise was that if a zombie ate some brains, it could appear to be normal. Also the zombie temporarily gained the memories and personality of the person whose brain they ate, which made it a useful tool to solve murders. Conveniently, she worked at the Medical Examiners office.
DeWitt,
Clearly, my knowledge about Zombies is imperfect. I’ll learn more if I turn into one after having my Covid vaccine.
OK_Max (Comment #194729): “Today Attorney General Barr said there is no evidence of fraud that would change the outcome of the election.”
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That is actually not what he said. He said that the evidence they have so far is not of that magnitude. The investigation is ongoing. It sounds like Trump’s lawyers have not forwarded a lot of their evidence to DoJ. Maybe they figure that a 3 year long investigation by DoJ won’t do any good.
lucia (Comment #194716)
December 1st, 2020 at 8:56 am
Lucia, not to belabor that link but I went back and actually read it and I had it wrong when I said privately owned – although those banks are privately owned and probably most publicly traded. The private bank part is banking for special customers who invest some of their money with these banks and in so doing get special treatment. The banks are still either state or federally chartered and those large banks are going to be part of the Federal Reserve System.
I bank with JP Morgan Chase and when I go into the bank for some rather mundane chore like retrieving or returning items to my safety deposit box there is a lady in there who looks up my banking history and attempts to talk me into investing with the bank and getting special privileges. I am sure there are levels of privileges that go with the amount invested and I would not be at the top of that list. I tell the lady that I do my own investing and that I am not interested. I used to get rather impatient with others at the bank doing the same sales pitch but it has become a game with this lady. She calls me the “stubborn one” and I call her the “hard seller lady”.
Kenneth,
Thanks. Yes… it appears “private” designation has more to do with what product are available to lure in wealthy clients! It may be that like educational institutions, all banks are at least somewhat entangled in state business. (At a minimum, nearly all colleges enroll students who take out student loans, and many have staff who apply for and get government grants.)
Update on NY-22. After the Democrat was ahead by 13 votes when the judge did a personal recount, and then the Republican was ahead by 12 after one county found some errors, another county has found 55 early votes that were never counted.
MikeN,
It’s NY. The Republican is at a distinct disadvantage.
The UK approves vaccine for use, FDA sitting on their a** thinking about what to order for lunch for the pre-meeting of initial discussions on who will be on the committee to select the committee to consider dinner options.
Tom Scharf…. yep.
Yes, the huge disaster that is Brexit.
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The UK broke with EU regulators to approve the vaccine early, the vaccine by an American company. The EU just delayed their assessment a week and said they would have a ruling by Dec 29.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-timeline-for-vaccine-approval-around-the-world-as-u-k-authorizes-covid-19-shot-11606917375
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The FDA process is opaque. All we know is there will be a meeting on Dec 10. There seems to be no further information and nobody in the media seems to care. Obviously they need to do their job but it seems like going slow and doing their jobs are the same thing to many career employees.
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“Recently, there has been disagreement between federal officials about how quickly after the Dec. 10 advisory panel an emergency use authorization could occur. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, has said that such a decision could occur almost immediately after the panel. But Peter Marks, who heads the FDA center responsible for the decision, has said instead that the decision would happen within “a few weeks.â€
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A few weeks, that will go over well. Really, what are they going to find? This is a foregone conclusion unless the vaccine companies are hiding something.
Tom Scharf,
“A few weeks, that will go over well. Really, what are they going to find? This is a foregone conclusion unless the vaccine companies are hiding something.”
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It will go over just fine; the MSM love (embrace, adore, admire) that the permanent bureaucracy of “experts” can act to punish the populace in any way they want. It is exactly what most in the MSM would themselves do if they could; you will hear hardly a peep about the crazy delay from the MSM. Yes, a delay will cost many thousands of lives. No, the bureaucrats absolutely do not care about people dying. They care about maintaining control of all regulatory actions and demonstrating that nothing will change that, not even when lots of people die as a result. Biden and his handlers won’t say a peep either.
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I will make a prediction: no significant number of people will get the vaccine until well after January 1, and maybe not until Biden takes office.
Woo from Sweden, how and when does the Covid-19 pandemic end?
Mike M. (Comment #194742)
December 1st, 2020 at 9:25 pm
OK_Max (Comment #194729): “Today Attorney General Barr said there is no evidence of fraud that would change the outcome of the election.â€
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That is actually not what he said. He said that the evidence they have so far is not of that magnitude. The investigation is ongoing. It sounds like Trump’s lawyers have not forwarded a lot of their evidence to DoJ. Maybe they figure that a 3 year long investigation by DoJ won’t do any good.
_______
Yes, Barr said his department doesn’t have information so far that would make a difference in the outcome of the election, but Trump’s lawyers suggesting they have such information keeps donations to Trump coming, some of which can be used as he sees fit rather than on legal fees. That’s a pretty good deal for him.
I don’t know why Trump’s lawyers wouldn’t share information with Barr, unless the information is too weak to make a difference, and nothing would be gained by sharing it.
My local paper headline today.
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Face masks reduced Tampa Bay coronavirus cases by 1.4 million, says USF professor
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/12/02/face-masks-reduced-tampa-bay-coronavirus-cases-by-14-million-says-usf-professor/
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Another awesome model proving SCIENCE and MATH!!!!!
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“Modeling predicted the four-county region of Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Polk will have 140,000 cases by Dec. 12. With no face mask mandate, the model forecast 1.5 million people would have been infected.”
““Something as simple as a mask works so well, as we can see from the data,—
“He warned warning that even a moderate decline in social interventions will increase daily cases and could overwhelm hospitals.”
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When people are “warned warning” at you, you know it’s serious experts at work. If you don’t believe that, then you are a math den**r. Clearly this was run on a computer so it can’t possibly be wrong. The article didn’t provide links to the model, but I have reproduced it here:
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Maskless_Infections = Mask_infections x 10.714.
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I’m glad we finally settled this. Mask mandates reduce infections by 10x. I suppose we could check actual infections rates at nearby counties without mask mandates but that would be rather silly and presumptive.
“The UK has become the first country in the world to approve the “Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, paving the way for mass vaccination.” Source: today’s BBC site.
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I thought the US was going to be the first country to approve ( or use) this vaccine.
OK_Max
Oh you naive boy. . .
The media reports the quick EUA from the UK is causing “grumbling” from unnamed entities (citizens?). Nowhere in evidence is there grand news analysis on how many people are dying and becoming seriously ill while scientists do science things, but there are endless boilerplate statements on how the review process must be done carefully. The knowledge class must never be criticized.
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As much as I like hammering on the usual suspects for their lack of focus here, the reality is this will be a production limited problem for a long time. Production isn’t waiting on approvals. So there will be a number of people who could have gotten their vaccines a few weeks earlier, but the rest of will still get it at the same time months from now when the factory churns enough out.
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The pressure on the vaccine production guys is even heavier and longer term.
Lucia, being naive isn’t necessarily bad. Sometimes I think the less I know, the better. For what UK approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine means to the US, see
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55149138
Tom Scharf (Comment #194753): “A few weeks, that will go over well. Really, what are they going to find? This is a foregone conclusion unless the vaccine companies are hiding something.”
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Indeed. Personally, I am not getting the vaccine until it has full approval, which probably won’t be until next summer. But it seems perverse to foot drag on the EUA. Perverse might be too kind.
I still think it’s odd that so many people seem to be more afraid of a vaccine than the disease itself. Maybe they think they’re invulnerable and won’t get it so they don’t need the vaccine.
OK_Max (Comment #194763): “I don’t know why Trump’s lawyers wouldn’t share information with Barr, unless the information is too weak to make a difference, and nothing would be gained by sharing it.”
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We don’t know that they won’t share. We only know that they have not done so. I can think of an excellent reason for that: They have not had the time to do so. Trump’s lawyers are working against an extremely tight deadline. They are not going to do anything that is time consuming and does not help them meet that deadline. Sharing information with DoJ gains nothing as far as the task at hand is concerned.
MikeM
I and everyone suspect the reason is the one identified by DeWitt. It’s also the reason they haven’t been able to come with much to share judges in court.
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But it is true that sharing with the DOJ is pointless. Law enforcement can’t move in the time frame required.
OK_Max,
They seem to suggest UK approval could get the FDA off their bureacrat lardasses. They don’t say it that way… but that’s what this amounts to
Vaccination priorities in the UK, of particular interest is the table on page 8.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/940396/Priority_groups_for_coronavirus__COVID-19__vaccination_-_advice_from_the_JCVI__2_December_2020.pdf
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“It is estimated that taken together, these groups represent around 99% of preventable mortality from COVID-19”
Hhmmm, woo from Sweden appeared at the dance forum where I discuss dance. He must be following me around. . .
DeWitt wrote: “I still think it’s odd that so many people seem to be more afraid of a vaccine than the disease itself.”
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I don’t really think it’s odd. This is rather new technology for vaccines. Getting your cells to produce the antigen could go catastrophically wrong for a proportion of the population if the immune system gets the wrong idea. It’s the known vs the unknown risk. You could take precautions against even catching covid, but the risk of a vaccine backfire must be faced upfront.
There is no doubt that the “unknowns unknowns” of the new biotech of mRNA is the risk here, not clear how one would gauge that without a lot of expertise.
DaveJR,
I agree there is a chance of a vaccine misfire. It’s not zero risk. I don’t think it’s irrational for some people to want to wait.
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What I find odd (though likely I shouldn’t) is the fraction who say they will eventually take it but want to wait given reasons other than “unknown-unknown”. E.G:
* protection might be short lived. (Well… get another shot!)
* Maybe the virus will mutate. Well..it might. Then we’ll want another vaccine– just like flu.
* Developement “should” take longer. Well… usually development time involves a lot of bureaucracy. It’s not really a much longer time testing.
* There have been production problems in the past. This is a reason to never take it, not a reason to “wait”. Production problems are always possible in everything.
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Unknown- unknowns is a sane reason to wait especially if you can wait it out and think the contagion is fading naturally or you expect it will fade when other people do take the vaccine you won’t take.
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I don’t think the vaccine will turn us into Zombies two years from now. I know the current dangers actually exist. But yes, I know that taking the vaccine puts me at risk of “unknown-unknowns”. So does getting Covid itself. They still don’t know what the long term consequences of Covid itself are. Some people’s recoveries are … not really recoveries.
If I hadn’t already had the virus, I would want the vaccine to avoid what sounds like an extremely unpleasant possible side effect of the disease: parosmia. Temporary loss of one’s sense of smell would be annoying, but having ordinary things smell like rotting meat or worse would be very hard to endure.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parosmia
We’re not going to find out about unknown unknowns until an EUA is approved and we get at least a few million people in the pool.
DeWitt,
“We’re not going to find out about unknown unknowns until an EUA is approved and we get at least a few million people in the pool.”
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And wait many months to see and unexpected side effects to arise. For most younger people, their wait for the vaccine will be longer than the time needed to see any unexpected side effects, since they won’t be getting the vaccine until mid-late next year.
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I think it is good to keep in mind that the vaccinations with the m-RNA vaccines started back in late July. There were enough people in those studies that we can be sure within a few months from now any unexpected effects will be either very rare or show up after 6 months or more.
DeWitt,
Absolutely. And similarly, we wouldn’t find out about unknown-unknowns until after lots of people took the vaccine even if it has ordinary approval. Likewise, with respect to anything very long term, we won’t know unknown-unknowns about the disease itself.
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We don’t know what lingering long term side-effects might be hidden right now, especially not rare ones. We don’t know whether current side effects like parsomia will last or reverse itself.
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We do currently have some known-knowns and some known-unknowns . The disease is bad enough to take some risks to avoid.
SteveF
Yes. Based on observations we know that that either it takes more than 6 months to turn the vaccinated into Zombies or it rarely happens.
SteveF (Comment #194783): “any unexpected effects will be either very rare or show up after 6 months or more.”
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I think that is correct. The problem with the Wuhan virus is that it can trigger a dysfunctional immune response. We now know that the vaccine will significantly reduce that during the initial surge of antibodies. What will happen with the secondary immune response after the antibodies decay? Might that be dysfunctional? We don’t know.
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It is not like we have experience to go on. So far as I know, there is no common disease that does what the Wuhan virus does.
lucia,
“The disease is bad enough to take some risks to avoid.â€
Indeed. People are dying. I would think that justifies taking some risks. Apparently not the FDA, though.
“Smell loss is a prominent symptom of Covid-19 and the pandemic is leaving many people with long-term smell loss or smell distortions such as parosmia. Parosmia happens when people experience strange and often unpleasant smell distortions. Instead of smelling lemon you may smell petrol.” From E. Anglia U.
HOLY COW ! Covid-19 can make Lemon-aid smells like gasoline.
On the plus side, might help over-weight people shed some pounds.
OK_Max
I guess I’d prefer to keep my excess poundage rather than have lemon-aid smell like petrol and other prefectly good things smell like putrid meat.
Lucia,
I would bet against vaccinated people becoming zombies; brain eating zombies seem to me even less likely than regular zombies. I’ll get the vaccination.
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Fauci today said the USA will take weeks to approve the vaccine because the FDA doesn’t trust the drug companies to get the efficacy math right. I have met both bureaucrats and pharma house scientists. The bureaucrats are far more likely to get the efficacy numbers wrong. Fauci did not explain why it would take two weeks to schedule the first hearing, but I can: bureaucrats always drag their feet.
Well, at least we aren’t Australia
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-03/pfizer-biontech-covid19-vaccine-britain-rollout-what-we-know/12944410
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“When would Australia approve it?
On Wednesday night Mr Hunt said the UK’s move would not change the timeline for Australia’s assessment of the Pfizer vaccine.
“Our advice remains that the timeline for a decision on approval is expected by the end of January, 2021, and our planning is for first vaccine delivery in March, 2021,” he said.”
Get the math right???
The math is in the vaccine test protocol, which was published in June or July. Once again Fauci proves he’s an idiot. As if more proof were needed. How could you possibly get the math wrong? There are only two numbers, placebo infections and vaccinated infections. The rest is what should be well understood statistics. I guess you might dispute who is infected and who isn’t. But they collect a lot of data from the subjects.
Now if the press were doing their job, someone would have asked him to cite some examples where a drug company didn’t get the efficacy math right and how much difference it made. And someone else would have raised the point that every delay in approval costs actual lives, not the theoretical lives that might be saved by more mask wearing.
DeWitt,
In fairness to Fauci, he didn’t say “math”, he said it takes the FDA a long time to review the application because they don’t trust the manufacturer’s analysis. He said the FDA has to do their evaluation starting with “only the raw data”. I guess they act as if the manufacturer’s analysis did not exist. It’s a mealy-mouth excuse to delay approval. The fellow in charge of the FDA vaccine approval process confirmed (again) approval will come “probably within a few weeks” of December 10. IMHO, they should all be taken out back and shot. OK, that is too extreme… they should all be summarily discharged.
DeWitt,
Or if the press really had specialists who knew something about the protocols, they would say they thought the protocol spelled out the math and then ask why it should take weeks to check.
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The formality of the entire process means they aren’t hunting around for “mystery” or “novel” statistical methods to tease something out of weird samples-of-opportunity!
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Even if the underlying math was “hard”, anyone could have had a simple script in place ahead of time. When the numbers come in, you input the numbers and the efficacy spits out. Of course someone would still “check”, but that shouldn’t be time consuming!
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Lucia,
The FDA has had the formal application for approval in hand for far longer than any half smart person would need to evaluate it…
even if you ignored the company’s analysis. It is just bureaucratic foot dragging, nothing more.
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The frightening part is that this is the “expedited emergency” application, not a normal application. The public is never even aware how long the FDA delays every new drug…. which can be years. It is the craziest system you could possibly devise if your goal is to help sick people. That is obviously not the goal.
SteveF (Comment #194825): “He said the FDA has to do their evaluation starting with “only the raw dataâ€. I guess they act as if the manufacturer’s analysis did not exist. It’s a mealy-mouth excuse to delay approval.”
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Nah. It is just self-important control freaks doing what they do. They have power. There is no way they will surrender even one iota of that power. It is not like they need to fear any personal consequences of their delay.
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Now, if Trump’s lawyers were to pull of a miracle and get him a majority of the electoral votes, it might be different. In that case the mandarins at the FDA might have to worry about personal consequences.
The mRNA vaccine stimulates the production of B cells. Does anyone know if it also stimulates the production of T cells?
The CDC says it does
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/how-they-work.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fvaccines%2Fabout-vaccines%2Fhow-they-work.html
Mike M,
Yes, a robust T-cell response: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2814-7
Thanks, SteveF. That is from phase I/II, but it is very encouraging.
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Judging the efficacy of the vaccine is not nearly as simple as we have been assuming:
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/11/26/peter-doshi-pfizer-and-modernas-95-effective-vaccines-lets-be-cautious-and-first-see-the-full-data/
MikeM
Yes. It is the relative risk that is reported. That’s what matters for a vaccine. So iotw: they are reporting the correct, relavant metric rather than the irrelevant one this writer knows exists and mentioned.
Yes. We want the vaccine to make people not get sick. This is a necessary and sufficient end point to make the vaccine useful.
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We hope it does the other things too. But saying evaluation is “hard” because we can’t know these yet is just silly. But I guess someone needed to write an article to get eyeballs. Or has been told something my someone, and now thinks they can distill this down for us mere mortals.
No. We don’t. Also fairly irrelevant because this could be addressed with protocols when we do learn. Not approving and letting people die because we can’t have 12 month long data when the vaccine is only 6 months old is lunacy.
Also easily dealth with using protocols. Giving it to adults with normal immune systems would give those adults protection.
.
That can come up with irrelevant “questions” whose answers are “unknown” does not make evaluation of this vaccine “complicated”. That writer is just wrong headed.
Arguing for making the vaccine available via expanded access rather than an EUA:
https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/09/expanded-access-not-eua-for-distributing-preapproval-covid-19-vaccines/
That makes sense. But it sounds like expanded access has to be done one patient at a time, which would be unreasonably cumbersome.
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There ought to be some way to make the vaccine available to those at high risk without undermining the trials.
MIke M,
Unfortunately for them, the authors of that article appear to have undergone rather complete recto-cranial inversions, from which their recoveries are very doubtful. I can’t say for sure, but I would bet most have been intimately involved in promulgating bureaucratic garbage rules.
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What they are suggesting would cause even more delay in getting the vaccine to the…. oh say…. billion or so people at risk of serious illness or death. IMHO, they should be completely ignored, and I am confident they will be ignored. Production has already been funded, Phase 3 trials are well underway; results are overwhelmingly positive. We already know that the vaccines reduce the risk of serious illness by 90% or more. Approval for use has already been granted in the UK, and soon will be elsewhere.
SteveF,
Beyone the recto-cranial inversion of that author, there is another issue: The answers to whether or not those questions are relevant to the approval process have nothing to do with math or data analysis. They are all questions that should have been addressed before the protocol was approved as valid for getting approval.
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If the FDA’s position had been that we need the trial to provide empirical data to test whether it prevented people from dying then the protocol should have said we won’t unmask until at least “N” people die. That decision about that objective was around July. The decision was to unmask when “N” people got sick.
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Similar things can be said about “we must show it also works for kids” and so on and so on.
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The reason the FDA didn’t make the approval “prove people don’t die” is that’s not the remotely normal standard. If it were, we wouldn’t have a shingles vaccine. We wouldn’t have a cervical cancer virus vaccine.
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The same can be said for “prove ‘absolute’ risk” is lowered. Yes. Absolute risk (by that guys notion– which is of death) can only possibly be lowered by the actual absolute risk of death– which over the whole population may be 1%. (A fraction that includes the fact that young people don’t die but that elderly have a much higher risk of death. ) So, reducing that by 95% only lowers absolute risk to 0.05% which is… aww geeh… less than 1%. So by omission, this silly author is somehow suggesting that my 87 yo mom should be able to have access to a vaccine that reduced her relative risk hugely because … well… looking at the whole population, the vaccine reduced the “absolute” risk of death by only 1%. The magic in the argument is hidden, but we all know it: Her risk of death if she gets COVID is much higher than 87 yo.
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None of the issues that guy brings up should “complicate” approval now. They were already addressed. Most of them are just stupid. Others are shifty. Others are making up requirements for Covid vaccines that don’t apply to any other vaccine.
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Those pointing to these sorts of arguments often like to say “Because Covid” as some sort of phrase to suggest lockdowns and so ons are over reactions. But here, that argument sure seems to be “Because Covid”, because he’s “worrying” about stupid things that are easily decided when it’s Not Covid.
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That guy is (fortunately) not “the FDA” and can “worry” about whatever he wants.
Mike M
From your link
https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/09/expanded-access-not-eua-for-distributing-preapproval-covid-19-vaccines/
Uhmmm… iow, if the rule is ti’s available only for those with “rious or immediately life-threatening diseases of conditions”, expanded access means no one gets the vaccine. It’s a preventative, not a treatment. (They go on later to explain who this rule is tweaked for two other vaccines. But that tweak would essentially mean everyone can apply and get the vaccine since Covid is now everywhere, not just at a few college campuses. But everyone getting it is precisely what he wants to block.)
So the idea that it should be distributed under that policy is would fall under the category of “logic fail”.
The author says other amazingly stoooopid things.
So what if it was designed for widespread threats of contagion that happened for other reasons. It happens to suit a pandemic well. Not using it because … well.. we really planned it from when everyone was doused with anthrax not for a pandemic is just silly.
Oh. “They fear”. That’s the argument that these things might happen. Well, there other steps that can be taken to address this fear. Be vigilant about reporting adverse events.
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And.. what is the magic step that suddenly makes Emergency Authorization “undermine” future trials? Their argument works by just “fearing” it might happen without explaining precisely how it would undermine it.
IOW: He wants them to get it. He doesn’t want me to have it. But he doesn’t want to quite say: Sorry Lucia. Your only 61. You don’t have health conditions. I decree you can’t make the decision to want it.
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HE wants to put a protocol in place that doesn’t let me protect myself.
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Nope: Emergency Authorization is the way to go.
The Pfizer Phase II/III trial is complete according to the published protocol. That doesn’t mean they stop monitoring the subjects, just that the protocol objectives to show that vaccine is better than 50% effective has been achieved.
After seeing “peer review” in academia routinely allow gross violations of proper math I’ll say it is refreshing to know the FDA checks the math and the data. It’s another question on whether they are unduly delaying their inspection.
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And they do check the math, and the data. I’ve been through it, it is agonizing sometimes.
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Let me give you a real example. Let’s say you are calculating accuracy for your medical device, and your raw data shows errors of:
0.1, -0.2, 0.0, -0.3, 0.2, 39.7, 0.1, 0.1, -0.3
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See a potential problem for your standard deviation calculation here? This happens almost every test cycle when you have automated measurement and recording. The error is usually a test setup or test execution error, in this case the sensor detached from the patient.
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You cannot just remove that data from the FDA’s view, that will get you in big trouble. You can exclude the data from analysis but you better have a pretty good record of why it happened. The FDA will find it, and will ask you about it. If you don’t have a good documented reason for excluding it, then too bad, so sad, the data lords will instruct you that your device fails the qualification you just spent $50K on.
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These guys (at least the ones I dealt with) knew all the p-hacking tricks and red flags to look for with data analysis.
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Also with some device claims there are known algorithms and statistical methods that are standard, simple enough. However if your claim is a newish or broad such “as resistant to motion artifact” or “no adverse side effects” then the FDA basically tells you “tell the FDA a convincing story” without any formal guidance. They will then examine your data, your test methods, etc. and the data lords will instruct you on whether that passes muster.
Tom Scharf,
OK, the FDA is very careful about approvals…. of anything, device, medication, or vaccine. But that very careful standard is not appropriate in all cases. We have a 1% death rate overall for confirmed cases, but a maximum death rate over 20% for the oldest cohort. What on Earth are they expecting to happen that would reasonably delay approval for those at the highest risk? I see nothing. The trial data are very, very clear. The vaccine will for certain avoid lots of cases of serious illness, and almost certainly avoid a lot of hospitalizations and deaths. At this point the FDA is simply sentencing a fraction of the elderly to death by bureaucratic delay. They should be ashamed of themselves.
“Well, at least we aren’t Australia”
Australia (and for that matter NZ) can take their time approving the vaccine because they cant manufacture locally and are at the back of the queue (probably rightly so) for actually getting the vaccine. Both countries have said March for any actual deliveries, even if approved tommorrow.
I am rather hoping Astrazenica/Oxford will get their act together quickly. The Pfizer vaccine is useless for the Pacific. Enough problems there with normal vaccines https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50625680
If they are going through *the data* to see if there was some sort of mystical magical massaging, ok. But if it’s just “to check the math”…. well.. no that can’t take long. It still shouldn’t take too long to look at “the data”.
But meanwhile we wait.
Phil,
Would the Moderna vaccine work for you guys?
Oh, and evidently, Johnson and Johnson vaccine might be close.
Lucia,
I would not bet on the J&J vaccine. First, by the time it is approved, there will be many hundreds of millions of doses of other vaccines already distributed and injected into patients. Short of some unexpected negative outcome from the m-RNA vaccines, the most critical patients will have already received a vaccine before J&J gets off the starting blocks.
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Second, agencies will become ever more critical about approvals once a couple of other vaccines are approved, and hundreds of millions of doses of those approved vaccines are in the pipeline. Truth is, in the USA about 50 – 60 million people are at significant risk, for most of the rest, it is little more than a cold.
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Once those 50 million are protected, death rates will drop dramatically, and the FDA will be much less motivated to approve another vaccine on an emergency basis. Approval on a “normal track” basis pushes approval to late next year or later, when deaths will be drastically lower, and the crisis effectively over.
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J&J is way late to the party. Really, I just don’t see approval in a reasonable time. It is the FDA after all.
Moderna is obviously better than Pfizer than respect but it is hard to see Pacific island vaccinations (or numerous other places) going well without something that is happy in an ordinary fridge. The Oxford vaccine (if it actually works) has huge advantage in that respect – plus could theoretically at least be manufactured locally.
Phil,
Just wait ’till the winter months and keep the Moderna vaccine outdoors in Christchurch in July (south facing shaddows would be best)… I think Moderna says 30 days at refrigerator temperatures.
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The Pfizer vaccine needs dry ice, but when I was in Wellington years ago, I saw dry ice in a research lab; I expect it is still available in spite of green sensibilities.
Johnson an Johnson
https://www.fiercepharma.com/manufacturing/j-j-touts-covid-vaccine-supply-chain-stability-eyes-plans-for-2022
Maybe Australia will give it emergency approval. It’s one shot and done also. That’s useful on remote islands.
Steve – LOL!
NZ isnt really a problem for Pfizer, but the Islands are another story altogether. No winter and no dry ice.
The Oxford vaccine has some really weird things going on. The half dose/full dose regimen that worked much better (90% vs 60%) was actually just a mistake in the execution of the protocol. Then they combined data from several different studies in different countries and it was a bit circumspect on how that selection came about. If the Oxford vaccine was hitting the FDA first then I think it would get a very hard look before approval.
Tom,
I agree. The flub on following the protocol (because I think that wasn’t planned) would be a problem. Then the counter-intuitive results.. ?
lucia,
“Scrutinize the data†is perfect bureaucrat speak. It makes you think that important things are happening while conveying zero information because the terms are not defined.
DeWitt,
It can be nothing more than bureaucrat speak. If a spokeperson uses that word in response to a question, they should be asked precisely what activities are involved. Are they requesting and looking at raw data? Is someone internal assigned to plowing through it? If not, they aren’t “scrutinizing data”. They are just having meetings, asking stray questions ans asking others to re-scrutinize.
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What Fauci says certainly hasn’t given any clarity. All I’ve read him say is that our system is “Gold standard” and somehow the UK one is not. But he hasn’t identified any activity the UK actually left out. As far as what he’s said, it looks like “taking a long time” is the same as “careful”. We all know that’s bogus. You can take a long time by simply doing nothing for a while and then cramming all activity into the hasty window at the end.
Fauci’s comments are equivalent to attack as the best form of defense.
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In other news, video evidence of not widespread ballot stuffing in Georgia using the same tactics alleged to have occurred in other states ie clearing out observers and then counting mysterious boxes of votes.
The other perplexing bureau-speak they keep using is that they need a slow meticulous process because people in the US are wary of vaccines. This just doesn’t make a lot of sense. Slow != good, good = good. They can add people to review the raw data faster, they can do rolling reviews ahead of time etc.
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One problem is Trump on the brain, there are some people (especially the media) who don’t want Trump to get any credit. I could care less. Trump wanted to “rush” the vaccine, well so did about a literal billion other people.
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They are apparently reviewing data patient by patient I read somewhere. For the people who aren’t skewed by politics they may be looking for adverse reactions that weren’t noticed by the pharma companies. Pharma is going to be motivated to downplay adverse reactions. The worst case scenario for the FDA is to give approval, a problem crops up later, and that data was already evident in the original submission but missed.
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The FDA said they were going to be transparent, but what they are actually doing yesterday, today, and tomorrow is a mystery to me. Either it isn’t getting reported, or they aren’t actually saying.
Fauci had to apologize to the UK yesterday for inferring their process was sub-standard. He was challenged to point out exactly where their process was inferior and he obviously had no data.
Tom,
Yep. Fauci’s criticism seemed to be based on the claim that “too fast” == “sub-standard”. That’s bunk.
Tom
Yep. Transparent would mean providing the public a description of what they are doing. This would include telling us what factors take time.
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Even just saying: “We want to have public comment. That means we need to announce two weeks before the meeting” would be useful. Then we outsiders would be informed. They aren’t even doing that.
More info on FDA approval process.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/04/how-key-decisions-slowed-fdas-review-of-covid-19-vaccine-but-also-gave-it-important-data/
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Note that these approvals also examine the production process.
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“The EUA process, which allows for clearances based on far less data than a traditional approval, does not have a provision for rolling applications.
What’s more, the FDA said in a statement, “rolling review†does not have the same meaning at the European Medicines Agency as in the U.S. “The EMA does not have access to the same scope of data for an investigational product that the FDA has while the product is under development,†the statement said. The FDA said it has “tremendous insight†into the manufacturing processes and preclinical and clinical research that the EMA rolling review would provide.”
Tom, Thanks for that link. At least that’s explaining something!!
I read the Link Tom Scharf provided. This says it all:
IOW, “We didn’t need to do this ponderous, many weeks long review, and it is not required by law, but it as what we wanted.”
There are obviously far too many complete rectocranial inversions at the FDA. Really, these folks haven’t the faintest idea that they are literally sentencing thousands and thousands of people to die for no reason beyond “Well, this is the way we want to do it.” They are evil idiots, disconnected from all reality outside their bureaucratic bubble. Fire them all.
Fauci has many times over the last year said one thing, then when called on it, backtracked.
I’d like to see him at an extended discussion with Rand Paul.
MikeN,
I’d like to see him fired.
SteveF,
And I want a Ferrari. I’m not holding my breath on either of our wishes. Didn’t Biden just say Fauci would be his chief medical adviser or something?
The historical reason for the agency slow walking drug approval.
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https://helix.northwestern.edu/article/thalidomide-tragedy-lessons-drug-safety-and-regulation
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No downside to the agency for slow walking, but very real downsides to the agency for getting it wrong. The agency is VERY risk adverse due to the thalidomide issue.
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Ed,
Yes. Of course, in the case of thalidomide, the problem they addressed as “trouble sleeping” as opposed dying. For drugs like that,waiting longer isn’t much of a problem.
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Obviously, we also want to avoid birth defects from Covid vaccines. There haven’t been trials with pregnant women. I assume they won’t give emergency approval for pregnant women.
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I’m pretty itchy to see this vaccine. I realize there may be a good reason for the delay but it hasn’t been communicated clearly. That may just be a coms issue, but it’s still an issue.
Lucia,
“I’m pretty itchy to see this vaccine,”
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You will need som calamine lotion. Everything I have read puts your cohort in the last third of those who will get the vaccine, behind homeless people, first responders, prisoners, teachers, politicians (of course), people over 75, people over 65, and bar-hoping 20-somethings, who are said to be ‘dangerous’ super-spreaders.
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My wife (close to your age) told me that as best she could figure, her cohort was in line after about 250 million people. So you can probably cound on vaccine availability some time in late 2021…. assuming toddlers don’t get placed before you.
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It is all so absurd that offering criticism it almost pointless. Give the vaccine to everyone over 60-65 if you want to save lives. Do the other crap if your motives are political.
Lucia,
BTW, My analysis of Florida deaths (first 52,000 conformed cases) placed the life-years lost at a maximum for people who contracted the illness at age 72. All younger and older victims represented lower lost life-years; younger, because many fewer died, older because they would not live as long, even in the absence of covid. I am guessing age 72 will not be the highest priority for the vaccine-misters.
SteveF,
In today’s twitter nooooose, I read that taking low doses of sheep dip might help me avoid covid:
Invermectin
(That it’s an ingredient in sheep dip aside, it looks like this may have anti-viral properties and may be a good prophelaxis. But I’m not going to order sheep dip to take a drop a day, nor am I going to take
horse dewormer.
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Notwithstanding the twitterati excitement over a recent test of efficacy as a prophelaxis, I doubt the FDA is going to approve this any time soon. (And yet, I am sure, it will become available under-the-counter somehow. But who the heck knows what else is in the sheep dip or horse paste!)
The I-MASK+ protocol
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I†is for Ivermectin, “MASK†simply means wear a mask, and the “+†is differing amounts of vitamin D3, vitamin C, Quercetin, melatonin, zinc, and aspirin.
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Ivermectin is already FDA approved and in fact does have a well-known safety profile
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https://trialsitenews.com/real-world-evidence-i-mask-protocol-ivermectin-key-for-prophylaxis-and-early-treatment-of-covid-19/
I would rather take hydroxychloroquine, zinc and azithromycin than ivermectin and some random collection of other supplements. But it’s moot to me at this point. If ivermectin does work, than almost certainly so does hydroxychloroquine.
Ed Forbes,
Yes. It’s approved. But I can’t just buy invermectin on my own over the counter. I need a prescription. I could buy the sheep dip over the counter….. But that obviously sounds unsafe!
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Heh… I should ask my brother or sister. Sis would definitely refuse. Bro would probably refuse. I need more maleable relatives.
SteveF (Comment #194955)
December 5th, 2020 at 4:18 pm
I am wondering whether age alone should be a criteria for priority in vaccination for Covid-19. Would an 80 year in great shape be less likely to die or have major complications from an infection than a younger person without comorbidities but not otherwise in good shape? One of my daughter-in-laws had a 95 year old grandmother who had Covid-19 and came through with only mild symptoms.
I suspect the politician calculation will be what age group is most likely to vote in the next election.
Kenneth,
We know that the survival rate for people 85+ years old is about 70%, so there is at least a reasonable chance of not dying, no matter your age. I suppose it could be possible to evaluate the risk for each person, including a host of factors. But in practice that seems to me impractical. If you simply give the vaccine to everyone over age x, with x based on population-wide risks, then you can make a very good estimate of number of deaths avoided. IIRC, if x were 65, you eliminate 90+% of deaths.
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Of course, the politically powerful will be at the head of the line, even if those doses don’t make much difference in deaths.
Yet another study showing that hydroxychloroquine works when used early with zinc and azithromycin:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920304258?via%3Dihub
84% reduction in hospitalization with a 95% confidence interval of 50% to 94%.
SteveF (Comment #194717): “The additional data from the Moderna trial is very limited … There were 11 symptomatic cases in the vaccine group and 185 in the placebo group. There were 30 “serious†illnesses, all in the placebo group, one of which led to death.”
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The numbers seem a little off. The control group (15K) is about one in 17K adults in the U.S. During Oct. and Nov., there were 6.3 million new cases in the U.S. So we would expect about 370 cases in the control group. A factor of two difference is believable. But the study participants (at least according to the Pfizer protocol) were told to report any symptoms so that they could get tested. Only a fraction of the symptomatic people in the general public seem to get tested. So the difference would seem to be a lot more than a factor of two.
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During that period there were 62 thousand reported deaths in the U.S., so we might expect 4 in the study. One is consistent with that, but also consistent with a much lower incidence in the trial.
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I guess the Moderna trial was not entirely in the U.S., but rates in Europe are not all that different (I think). Oct. & Nov. is not quite the right comparison period, but I don’t think that would be a big error.
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I don’t know if that means anything. Just seems a bit odd.
Mike M,
I suspect volunteers for a vaccine trial may not have living conditions and personal behavior typical of the general public, and definitely not that of the typical covid-19 case. If I had to make a SWAG, I’d say volunteers for a placebo controlled vaccine study will be richer, more conscientious, and better educated. That alone could easily explain a lower than expected rate of infection in the placebo group.
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In my county in Florida, there is a huge discrepancy in case rates between non-Hispanic and Hispanic populations. Hispanics make up 13.9% of the population but have had at least 31% of documented cases, and likely more… in about 25% of confirmed cases, the patient refuses to disclose their ethnicity. There are lots of undocumented Hispanics around, so refusing to give ethnicity doesn’t surprise me at all.
Luica,
I’d stay away from sheep dip. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep_dip#:~:text=Sheep%20dip%20is%20a%20liquid,%2Dfly%2C%20ticks%20and%20lice.
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Only placebo controlled studies will verify if invermectin actually works or not. I don’t know if any such trials are under way. Two months ago, I would have guessed the vaccines would be quickly approved and given mostly to people actually at risk of death, so there would be much less motivation for a controlled trial of something like invermectin. But with the nightmarish FDA approval process for the vaccines and the even more nightmarish USA distribution priorities, both of which guarantee lots of unnecessary covid-19 deaths among those over 65 for the next ear or more, any treatment which actually reduces the chance of severe illness and death would be very valuable. Of course, chances are very good the FDA would interminable delay approval of off-label use, even with strong evidence of efficacy.
SteveF,
I had the exact same thought you did: Volunteers for the vaccine study differ from the ordinary population. The researchers will try to shift toward ordinary population to the extent they can, but I suspect it’s really hard to avoid the fact that volunteers are likely to be “more aware” of health issues and those who don’t volunteer “less aware”. This would likely be true regardless any other visible demographic feature (i.e. age, race, sex, job category and even level of formal education, etc.)
SteveF,
I posted something about finding the sheep dip and horse paste on Amazon. Someone contacted me. He’s taking the horse paste! He evidently knows other horse-paste consumers. I had a conversation with him in DM on twitter. I asked about the apple-flavor. He says he think it tastes the way WD-40 would taste if you ate WD-40.
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So far no sheep dip consumers have contacted me.
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Yesterdays news out of Argentina was a placebo controlled trial comparing prophylactic use of invermectin drops and caraggeenan nasal spray together. The dose of invermectin was quite low. Out of curiosity I looked at the amount, and 1 tube of horsepaste would be a 3 month’s supply.
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There do seem to be ongoing studies of how well the invermectin works. If there was an over the counter thing available for humans I might be tempted. But I think 1/8 th tsp (or whatever) of horsepaste a day is a bit….well.. not going to do that!)
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So, I have NOT ordered the horsepaste and don’t plan to. It is manufactured very near here. In fact, I drive by the manufacturer on One Tower Lane, Oakbrook Terrace Tower, Oakbrook Terrace, IL 60181 on my way to dance lessons! (Irrelevant to saftey or efficacy, of course. Just noticed it.)
Oh.. I should note the does being “quite low” was compared to the horse paste” . It’s not that low compared to the pills available by prescription on Amazon. Taking the dose the Argentines took would be quite expensive even if your MD gave you a prescription off label.
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So for those who want to self medicate, it looks like you need to go for the tubes of horsepaste. . .
Hhnnnn maybe I misintrepreted the weight of the whole tube for the weigth of active ingredient? Oh… well.. (Still not taking it!)
Ivermectin is an interesting drug…. it led to a share of the Nobel prize for Medicine for its inventors. It is a very potent nerve inhibitor, and kills rapidly via paralysis, but mostly in invertebrates. It is said to not cross the mammalian blood-brain barrier, so even though you are effectively taking a fatal dose of a neurotoxin, not enough of it reaches your brain to cause problems.
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The most interesting thing is that the base material it is produced by a strain of streptomycese bacteria, which produce many antibiotics (eg streptomycin). It is unclear what benefit this (very complicated) molecule infers to the bacterium. Perhaps resistance to viruses (bacteriophages)?
The pill dose of ivermectin is said to be 3 milligrams for people. The tube of apple flavored paste for horses contains ~38 doses of 3 milligrams. Of course, most treatments for parasites are short term; once the worms, lice, etc are dead, then there is no need to keep taking the drug.
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Apparently there have been field trials where everyone in a region takes the drug for some time, and then every mosquito that bites a person dies from paralysis, drastically cutting the local mosquito population. It was reported to be very effective against the spread of malaria.
SteveF
I think the dose in the Argentine trial was 12 mg/week. This is by memory, so it could be wrong. They also used a carageenan spray in their nose 4 x a day. I don’t know the concentration.
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Carageenan is very cheap and easily obtained as a food ingredient. I haven’t found carageenan nasal sprays on amazon. I have found sprayers and, of course, the food ingredient for chefs.
The evil Swedes seem to have gotten lucky again… in spite of nearly 4 thousand confirmed cases per day (equal to 130,000 per day in the States), their death rate per confirmed case sits at about 1 in 300. Still no masks, no lock downs, and no school closures. It must be the devil helping them. It could not possibly be that their policies make more sense than the gestapo-inspired rules we have in the States.
SteveF (Comment #194980): “I suspect volunteers for a vaccine trial may not have living conditions and personal behavior typical of the general public, and definitely not that of the typical covid-19 case.”
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That is certainly true, which is why I said that a factor of two would not surprise me. But I doubt that can explain a larger disparity.
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For instance, race is a big effect. But still, the U.S. has had 82K deaths per 100K overall and 59 deaths per 100K among whites. So even completely excluding minorities would not come close to a factor of two error.
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The only state with over twice the national average deaths is New Jersey. A handful of states, mostly small ones, have had fewer than half the national average deaths.
Mike M,
I think you are not considering how much individual behavior/circumstances change the risk of infection. If the trials offered US$500 to volunteers who completed the trial, I rather suspect the number of cases would have be much, much higher.
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In any case, the slowness of case accumulation really doesn’t matter in evaluating the efficacy…. the two groups differed hugely in outcome. We still have to wait for more details (like the age profile of all cases and especially the age profile of “serious” cases… 4 more days for the Pfizer data, and probably 14 days for the Moderna data.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/mask-wars-revisited-11607118961
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“And yet a national survey from researchers at Harvard, Rutgers, Northeastern and Northwestern throws cold water on any idea of masks as a simple fix. Mask usage increased impressively across the U.S. right into the current outbreaks even as physical separation fell by the wayside. “We find that social distancing has decreased dramatically since the spring, while mask wearing has increasedâ€
“A country full of independent-minded, self-starting people has advantages in many situations, but not in every situation, and not when trying to enlist mass conformity to any stricture. And yet learning does occur.”
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This gives some ammo to the original theory that masks would make people behave with more risk. It might just be pandemic fatigue and the necessity of opening the economy.
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It also throws water on the masks as prophylactic theory. The counter to this is that “it would have been much worse without masks”. Perhaps, but when people use motivating reasoning they stop at whichever level of evidence suits them. Here we have first level evidence of more masks, more disease. If the recent data was less masks, more disease they would have stopped analysis there and brought out the moral megaphones.
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Just like about everything else in the real world, it is a multi-factor phenomena that isn’t easy to parse without isolating things in a lab. My current theory still is they don’t really understand the ups and downs of this thing very well and have a built in reluctance to say that. They fear people will not take their guidance if they admit any amount of ignorance. Over the past few decades I have noticed this more and more, experts (especially public facing) pretending certainty where it is evident there is none. This has become a red flag.
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It’s a complicated world.
Very nice review of the fraudulent PCR testing numbers for virus cases being reported.
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This entire mask and shutdown regime is strictly political
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“ A new study from the Infectious Diseases Society of America, found that at 25 cycles of amplification, 70% of PCR test “positives†are not “cases†since the virus cannot be cultured, it’s dead. And by 35: 97% of the positives are non-clinical.â€
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Some labs are known to be running test cycles as much as 40.
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https://www.infowars.com/posts/for-the-first-time-a-us-state-will-require-disclosure-of-pcr-cycle-threshold-data-in-covid-tests/
SteveF (Comment #194993): “I think you are not considering how much individual behavior/circumstances change the risk of infection.”
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Do we actually know that? We assume that. It is a perfectly plausible assumption. But what evidence is there? There is certainly some effect. But is there evidence that it might be more than a factor of two? All real questions.
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But even if it can be a large factor for individuals, we are dealing with a large sample of people for which an effort has been made to make it representative. That would move the average behavior in the sample toward the average behavior of the general population. Seems a bit more than passing strange.
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If it is individual behavior, then there must be a lot of valuable information in who gets sick and who does not.
Tom Scharf (Comment #194994): “This gives some ammo to the original theory that masks would make people behave with more risk. It might just be pandemic fatigue and the necessity of opening the economy.”
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Indeed. It is probably a combination of the two.
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It is human nature that if you convince people that a rabbit’s foot will keep them safe, then many people will take greater risks when provided with a rabbit’s foot. If the rabbit’s foot does not actually work, then those with a rabbit’s foot will suffer more unfortunate outcomes than those without.
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Masks are surely better than a rabbit’s foot. But the effectiveness of masks is probably much closer to a rabbit’s foot than to what the public has been led to believe.
Ed Forbes (Comment #194995): “Very nice review of the fraudulent PCR testing numbers for virus cases being reported.”
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It is good to know that at least one state is now requiring cycle numbers to be reported.
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I would not call the PCR testing fraudulent. I think it is probably well intentioned, but misguided. But inflated numbers do serve the agenda of some who are not well intentioned.
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There are three possible reasons for a positive PCR test. One is an active infection. Another is either a recent infection or a sub-clinical infection. Finally, there are false positives.
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There are legit reasons for the first two, but they ought to be distinguished. Hence the wisdom of reporting cycle number. They last ought to be determined and reported. The scandal is not the testing, it is the worthless reporting.
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Is it normal to do a gel electrophoresis after each cycle of a PCR? I know that can be done, but I would not think it standard. So reporting a meaningful cycle number might not be so easy.
MikeM
There is no evidence it can’t be a factor of two. That’s not a big factor as health effects of human behavior go. Also, all the public health advice is based on the assumption that we think behavior has a quite large effect. I would think the burden would be on you to explain why an effect as small as 2 is seen.
“Representative” by race, gender blah… blah…. They aren’t making representative by “level of caution”. They can’t even know that in advance.
Perhaps. But that would be the subject of a different study. Lots of people are reporting demographics of who gets sick by income, age, etc. But they probably aren’t doing it by “whether you volunteer for medical research studies”. If you use the data for the efficacy studies for that, you end up with a circular result. You can’t use that result to check if these illness rates are representative of what you usually get.
Ed,
Like it or not, even if those people are now recovering, they at least were new cases at some point. So the high PCR cycles are still useful for knowing the number of people who got infected. It’s just that they were infectious a bit in the past.
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That’s not “fraudulent”. It’s just that there is a lag in detecting.
Rudy Giuliani, has corona-19 virus. At age 76, he is in the high-risk category for the virus. I wish him a rapid recovery.
Mike M,
I was trying to point out how much the rate of infection can vary in the same county between identifiable groups (hispanic vs non-Hispanic); in this case by a factor of three. These groups go to the same supermarkets, schools, etc. yet have very different rates of infection. Logically, if you stayed always at home and had contact with nobody, you chance of infection is zero… so it seems to me there is no lower bound to how much individual behavior can reduce rate of infection.
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It is obviously true that the rates of infection for the vaccine trial volunteers was much lower than the general population. I just don’t find it surprising.
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I do think more information about the trial volunteers would be interesting and probably informative (income, education, etc) but I doubt much will be released. What surely will be released (also interesting) are age profiles for those who became ill and seriously ill.
OK_Max,
An average 76 year old has about an 18% chance of death from covid-19. Rudy appears to be in better than average health, and will surely have access to the same “compassionate use” drugs that Trump had. Chances are good that Rudy will be fine.
I hope for the best for Rudy too. I’m sure he’ll get something more than calcitrol or invermectin!
lucia (Comment #194999): “all the public health advice is based on the assumption that we think behavior has a quite large effect.”
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Indeed. And all the results indicate that the effect is nowhere near as large as assumed.
I see that some unnamed (or unnoticed names on my part) commentators are claiming that the recent Covid-19 surge was accompanied by more masking wearing adherence and less social distancing. How do these people determine these changes? I have never seen how or where they get their information.
As I said in a previous post my observation for the local area in IL is that people have not changed their behavior with regards to mask wearing or social distancing and yet the cases have gone up dramatically in the recent surge. I get input for friends and relatives in other areas of the state and country and I have not heard of this behavior change. Are there some super spreader events that have gone undetected?
I saw Rudy G on 2 different occasions talking on TV. Both times he was dripping sweat and seemed to be out of breath when he was talking. I thought he might have had Covid-19 at that time, but that was more than a week ago. He was obviously not bedridden but he does not look in very good shape to me – even without the sweat and breathing issue.
Kenneth,
Seems to me everything Pritzker does makes the situation in Illinois worse. Maybe if Pritzker resigned the state would make progress. 😉
Kenneth – at least one paper was using data from unacast data, eg
https://www.unacast.com/covid19/social-distancing-scoreboard
I think you can only measure mask wearing rates from surveys which I believe CDC does.
Despite Mike’s objection, I think you have to invoke some kind of magic to decouple infection rate from contact rate in the absence of masking. Contact rate is surely behaviour driven. Massively reducing the contact rate has been the way Australia and NZ have eliminated the virus (at the moment) from all but managed quarantine.
This is the paper the WSJ was referring to:
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THE COVID STATES PROJECT: A 50-STATE COVID-19 SURVEY REPORT #26: TRAJECTORY OF COVID-19-RELATED BEHAVIORS
https://kateto.net/covid19/COVID19%20CONSORTIUM%20REPORT%2026%20BEHAVIOR%20NOV%202020
Tom Scharf (Comment #195015)
December 6th, 2020 at 9:39 pm
Tom, the data in that survey appeared to mostly become level in June and not correspond to the timing of the current surge. They should have asked the people who they were going to or did vote for as a proxy for validity of responses.
There were no uncertainty limits put on the data and the wording in the report indicated an agenda.
I have linked a plot of the Covid cases where I reside in Wheaton IL from March through November 2020. In my observations, if anything, people are more adhering to social distancing. Mask wearing has been near 100 percent for the entire period and thus should not be a factor.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/iu196wv50tbp1c3/Covid_Wheaton.pdf?dl=0
Phil Scadden (Comment #195012): “Massively reducing the contact rate has been the way Australia and NZ have eliminated the virus (at the moment) from all but managed quarantine.”
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Do you have any evidence for that claim, other than the post hoc fallacy? It seems to me that what you guys have done is mostly to stop the virus at your borders. Haven’t you been quarantining infected people? That should make a difference.
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Lots of countries have greatly reduced contacts with little apparent benefit and lots of obvious harm. Other countries, like Japan, have done pretty well without drastic measures. Correlation is not causation, but lack of correlation pretty well undermines the claim of causation.
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– Huxley
Sweden has ended its experiment with voluntary restrictions. Their death rate is going up rapidly.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/long-a-holdout-from-covid-19-restrictions-sweden-ends-its-pandemic-experiment-11607261658
I should have included a link to some interesting Covid-19 statistics from the county where I reside which is DuPage with a population of approximately 925K. It gives me a different perspective than what I hear from national news reports.
https://www.dupagehealth.org/610/DuPage-County-COVID-19-Dashboard
Mike M.
Stopping people at borders and quarantining is reducing contact rate. Obviously, reducing it specifically among identified people does a better job than just having everyone isolate. But isolation works because if the uninfected don’t contact the infected , the uninfected don’t get sick.
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There isn’t anything difficult in understanding this.
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BTW: Japans rates have been rising recently.
Most people think Japan had a defacto lockdown because the people happened to voluntarily social distance. So they aren’t an counter example to the idea that lower contact reduces spread.
See https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d00592/
You need to not assume the only way to get less contact is through an actual law or order enacting a lockdown. What matters is whether or not people isolate.
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Chicago had a “stay at home” type order. People still partied on the south side. The same is happening in NYC.
lucia (Comment #195046): “Stopping people at borders and quarantining is reducing contact rate. Obviously, reducing it specifically among identified people does a better job than just having everyone isolate.”
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I agree. But Phil Scadden did not say that they selectively and thoughtfully reduced contact. He credited their success to an across the board lockdown.
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lucia: “But isolation works because if the uninfected don’t contact the infected , the uninfected don’t get sick.”
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Isolation of everyone is not possible and no society has come even close to attempting it. Isolating the infected is at least somewhat possible and might work. The lockdowns have been partial; banning some things and allowing others. They have caused huge damage, to no apparent effect. Probably because there has been little effort to actually isolate the infected.
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lucia: “There isn’t anything difficult in understanding this.”
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Indeed. Which is why I am puzzled as to why so many people can’t seem to understand it.
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lucia: “BTW: Japans rates have been rising recently.”
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Yeah, their per capita rate has reached nearly 3% of what we have in the U.S. And it seems to be leveling off.
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lucia: “Most people think Japan had a defacto lockdown because the people happened to voluntarily social distance. So they aren’t an counter example to the idea that lower contact reduces spread.”
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Once again, we have the madness of citing the success of not locking down as evidence for the effectiveness of locking down.
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The Japanese have continued going to work and riding public transit. No doubt, there has been some modification of behavior, but far less than here. So either there is a sweet spot for the right amount of modification (highly unlikely) or there are certain measures far short of a lockdown that are actually effective.
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lucia: You need to not assume the only way to get less contact is through an actual law or order enacting a lockdown.
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I am NOT assuming that. I am complaining about all the idiots who ARE assuming that.
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lucia: “What matters is whether or not people isolate.”
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For that to make sense, you need to define what you mean by “isolate”.
———
I think it makes sense to avoid certain things, like they do in Japan. I think it makes sense to actually isolate those who are infectious, like they seem to do in places that have been successful. I think it makes sense for people to behave prudently.
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I think it makes no sense at all to implement top-down policies that are both massively damaging and ineffective.
MikeM
No he didn’t. He wrote
That’s attributing the reduction to a drop in the contact rate. It is true that Aus and NZ did it by accross the board lockdown, but he is attributing the control to the drop in the contact rate.
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You are trying to shift the question from whether or not reducing contact works to how and if reducing contact can be achieved. We can certainly discuss both questions, but make no mistake: reducing contact does work.
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Beyond that, it is not utterly impossible. Societies have isolated the individual infectious people (or nearly done so) in the past. Typhoid Mary was effectively isolated. That isolation did prevent her from passing infection.
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How well this can be achieved at larger scale is debatable. But as I noted: you’ve switched to a different issue from the one we were previously discussing.
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No one here has cited the success of not locking down as evidence for locking down. You are simply mistaken about what others are saying.
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YOU are the one using Japan’s low rate as evidence that reduced contact doesn’t work. In fact: It is believed they did reduce contact and more than some other countries.
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I think you need to read more carefully and notice when people saying “reduced contact means X” they actually mean “reduced contact means X”. You seem to be putting words in their mouth and insisting that when they say “contact” they mean “lockdown”. They don’t.
MikeM
I think we both used isolate the same way: Stay away from other people.
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Other than you, in the recent posts no one has been debating whether top-down policies work.
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Others are only discussing whether people keeping apart- especially infectious fro non-infectious– reduces transmission. It’s rather obvious that it does. More over you know it does because you think it makes sense to isolate those who are infectious from those who are not infected.
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That means, in fact, you do know that reducing contact does reduce transmission. It has to do so.
I should have included a link to some interesting Covid-19 statistics from the county where I reside which is DuPage with a population of approximately 925K. It gives me a different perspective than what I hear from national news reports.
https://www.dupagehealth.org/610/DuPage-County-COVID-19-Dashboard
As an aside, while I agree that contact is a key to the spread of Covid-19, my quandary is that if the observed contact has not increased significantly what other factor(s) might be operating here to increase the infection rate in the latest surge. If it is mostly due to the approaching winter weather in the NH it is going to be a long winter.
Kenneth,
It might be winter. Lots of respitory diseases get worse in winter. It may be vitamin D. It may be more crowding indoors. Even if people do perceive the increased contact, it could be happening.
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Yep. It could be a long winter.
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Jim laughs at me… but I bought carageenan and nasal spray bottles. 🙂
DeWitt,
I am very surprised the Swedes have instituted binding rules. Their case counts did rise rapidly in November, but their death rate remains relatively low compared to the number of cases (Worldometers 7-day trailing average). Unless there is some problem with the worldometers data, the number of deaths per day in Sweden peaked on November 24, and have been falling since then (now about 1 death per 300 confirmed cases). 85% of deaths in Sweden happened in the spring and early summer, and only 15% since the beginning of November.
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Sweden has a rate of death per million population of 698, 24th in the world, and lower than many countries in Europe and elsewhere. It will be interesting to see what effect the new rules in Sweden have.
Lucia,
I understand ivermectin is a active drug substance, with known strong physiological properties. But carageenan is just a water soluble (edible!) ionic polymer from sea weed. What is the proposed reason a carageenan solution sprayed into you nose would make any difference?
I do only prescription drugs, lucia, so I had to google carrageenan to find out what it is. The link below would indicate some caution in its use – not that you would follow my advice any more than my kids do.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323117
Lucia,
Never mind, I found a reference to a placebo controlled study with a nasal spray of the iota form of carageenan as a nasal spray as a treatment for rhino-virus colds. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4595062/
The study indicated subjective improvement in symptoms relative to the placebo at P~0.04, but fell short of statistical significance for speed of viral clearance (P~0.1).
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Other studies have noted statistically significant reductions in cold symptoms, and some improvement in viral clearance.
SteveF,
I found several papers. Basically, it’s in the “not absolutely proven”, but also “cheap/safe/easy”. There is an over the counter nasal spray available at least on ebay.
BETADINE COLD DEFENCE NASAL SPRAY 20ML (Iota-Carrageenan Spray)
It costs $20.97 for 20 ml, which would be easy. But if used as a prophalixis, that’s too expensive. You can get the food grade Carrgeenan ingredients and bottles very cheaply.
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So basically: either I’ll be taking what amounts to placebo, or something with some non-zero efficacy. But it’s cheap and safe.
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Might not work. OTOH, masks may not work. I’m not going to advocate everyone do this. I will report if mixing is messy. (Do I have to heat? Etc.)
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The other thing that might be useful from invitro is Xytol. It’s food but can give people gas (like beans do). Its used in some sugar free gums and mints (including some Mentos). If I chewed gum or ate mints I’d probably switch to those. It’s basically “why not?”
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I’m not going to chew gum just for the Xytol though.
I should add: the papers I found were for cargeenan and common cold or influenza, not Covid-19.
Kenneth,
For what it is worth: The concerns appear to be based on the possibility (not demonstrated) that the polymer could be hydrolyzed (broken down) by stomach acids into small pieces which are known to be harmful. The ether links in the polymer chain are quite resistant to hydrolysis, and certainly not expected to hydrolyze under the temperature/pH conditions in the stomach. The FDA and other food safety agencies consider carageenan a dietary fiber.
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All of the claims/worries in your linked article appear to be based on pure speculation, not actual data. Carageenan has been used as a food additive for over a thousand years.
The biggest factor in the virus spread is unlikely social distancing or masks, it is an uninfected population exposed to an uncontained outbreak of a very contagious virus. The virus gets a vote, and it’s vote unfortunately includes contagious people without symptoms.
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This thing behaves more like forest fires IMO, there are certain things that make them worse, but they pop up and go out based on many factors beyond Smokey the Bear’s guidance. We should do what we can, but the toolbox is pretty sparse.
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There’s a reason Ebola is not currently progressing through the US population, it was successfully contained. It’s also not as contagious as covid. The US lost the covid containment battle early, and has been in pandemic management mode ever since. It’s not clear the US could have ever avoided it given it’s open border, tourism, and large amount of business travel. If you examine population contact rates before covid, it probably matches the outbreak centers pretty closely.
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China managed to clamp down on it with very restrictive measures, if you can believe their data. It took population level testing and empty streets.
Lucia,
Iota-carageenan is what appears to have been used in all the studies. The iota grade has a medium level of sulfation (sulfation is what makes the polymer soluble). I do not know if all food grade carageenan is the iota grade or not. The extent of sulfation on the polymer controls both solubility and the reaction with divalent ions like Ca+2. Higher sulfation leads to stronger binding of calcium ions and the formation of a stronger (more solid) gel when in contact with calcium ions.
Tom Scharf,
I agree that is is unlikely a country like the USA (or for than matter, lots of other developed countries with high travel levels) could have contained the virus at low levels like Japan. But I do think there are real differences in effectiveness of policies. For example, Belgium and next-door Netherlands have vastly different death rates per million population, different by a factor of 2.6 times. This shows up as well in the number of deaths per confirmed case (although you have to be careful with this measure since there are differences in efficiency of testing).
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When the nightmare is over, I think it will turn out that isolating/protecting the elderly will be recognized as the biggest factor in explaining differences in death rates.
Three more days to the FDA hearing on the Pfizer vaccine.
SteveF (Comment #195063)
December 7th, 2020 at 11:19 am
Yeah but, Steve, I thought we were being super cautious here like spraying stuff up our noses. I personally will be spraying that stuff on my mask.
Kenneth,
When it dries out on your mask, I don’t expect it will make much difference… it will be a hard surface on the fibers. Of course, it might not make much difference in your nose either.
SteveF,
I’ve ordered iota from Amazon! They also had kappa.
Kenneth,
I read those warnings. They are from the sort of “health food”, “food purity types”. Generally, they are against everything that is remotely processed. So I do take their warnings with a huge block of salt.
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I did also read the acid/base processing issue. The FDA cleared this. Sure they’ve made mistakes. But all my life I’ve been aware of the sort of “food purity” people. Collectively, they will object to everything. Pasturization? Some think that’s bad. I think you are supposed to be drinking straight from the cow.
I thought about that too. 🙂
Lucia, thanks for making those clarifications to Mike. I might go further. I do believe, with a couple of centuries of germ theory behind us, that Covid19 is spread from an infectious person to others that they are contact with. I would further project that the no. of people a person will infect is closely related to no. of people they are in contact with and nature of the contact.
The hassle with testing any hypothesis on contact rate is that infection rate would be dependent on absolute contact rate which varies enormously not only between cultures but within a country or even a county. We only have measures of change in contact rate from a base line.
Lockdowns, NZ or China style, work by reducing contacts to non-interacting bubbles where the virus rapidly runs out of steam. Huge cost.
Tracing and isolating every single contact is far more effective. Evidence from the large no. of countries, particularly in Asia that are doing it. We have had a no. of border incursions and undoubtedly will get more, but so far test and trace has been effective without restriction except for the belately discovered August infection which used a local semi-lockdown as well.
The trouble with test and trace is capacity. If every contact has 20 other effective contacts in a 3 day period, then capacity is quickly overwhelmed. Getting a very significant proportion of the population to reduce contact rate (or effective contact rate by wearing masks) seems a key component when contact-tracing is being used. And of course, contacts and infected people also need to really isolate. Compliance on that has to happen as well.
I agree that protecting the elderly is key to low death rate but when the elderly need assistance or live in multi-generational households, then this is tough. Unless you have near-instant results, even daily testing isnt effective. You are relying on PPE. Both PPE and testing capacity were in short supply at start of pandemic.
SteveF
To your more specific question of why it might work
https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/6037157
Of course this is speculation. But there are experiments showing some effectiveness in people who already had colds. Another didn’t achieve significance, but the authors noted they enrolled people who thought they were coming down with a cold. Turned out many in both placebo and treated group never did. So in the end, the test lacked power because not enough people go sick in either group.
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There is “enough” evidence that the nasal spray with these ingredients is approved in the EU and in a number of other countries. But as I noted, what I can get on ebay is expensive relative to the raw ingredients. So I ordered raw ingredients. I’ll report whether it’s a PITA to mix and use. Obviously, I won’t be providing results of any sort of scientific study.
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I will spray some on a mask to see if it affects breathability, or other features of the mask for Ken. (Hey… I’m making spray. I might as well spray and see what it does to the mask!)
Lucia,
If you are going to put some on a mask, then it might be easier to form a very dilute solution (~1%) and just soak the mask, wring it out, and let it dry. That will coat all the fibers, and minimize obstruction. If the cloth gets stiff…. then maybe too concentrated. Do you have a balance? If not, and you have a 1 ml syringe, then you can make a pretty good balance with a12″ wooden ruler, a couple of condiment cups, some epoxy adhesive and a round pen.
I don’t have a balance. I figure I can make a solution that’s approximately 0.12% iota-carrageenan/0.5% sodium saline using volume measurements– just like cooking. I’m not making this for sale so if it’s 0.13% or 0.11%, that can’t be a huge deal. I do have a kitchen scale, but it’s for largish- masses compared to what I’ll mix up.
I did think of dipping. The only advantage of spraying is economy. I can probably try spraying on the way one might do spray starch when ironing. I can report whether the mask has a film, seems sticky, crackly or whatever bad features it might have.
Of course none of that would tell us if spraying the mask had any hope of being useful. (Some reading might! 🙂 )
Lucia,
The bulk density of powdered materials varies a lot. I don know what the bulk densities of the materials you will be using. Table salt is probably not far from 1g/ml bulk density, but carageenan? No way to say. You can judge the bulk density by measuring the volume for the weight of powder you receive. Good luck.
SteveF,
This paper discusses mechanims for carageenan’s anti-viral action
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1Kk9APQIujAJ:https://www.mdpi.com/1660-3397/18/9/435/pdf+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-b-1-d
SteveF,
My plan was to measure the volume of the 4 oz batch to get the bulk density. It shouldn’t be too difficult.
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I suspect the purpose of the salt is mostly as a preservative. But yes, that packs down nicely and I can measure the mass of a cup worth. After that, I can use volume.
The salt plus sodium carageenate in the mixture are set to be close to the osmotic strength of body fluids… neither too high nor too low in osmotic pressure. Mucous membranes (nose, throat, eyes, etc) like contacting osmotically neutral liquids, which neither swell them (plain water) nor dehydrate them (sea water). Only very much higher salt concentrations (like in salt cured foods) act as a preservative…. mainly by sucking the water out of any pathogen that might try to grow on the salt-preserved food.
Ah! Ok. I knew we salted things to prevent fungal and bacterial growth. But obviously, I had no idea how much salt is required for that!
Looks like it’s the Northeast’s time back in the box again. 7 day case load:
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CN: +76%
MA: +92%
NJ: +24%
NY: +42%
NH: +63%
RI: +48%
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There was a Thanksgiving bump in total US cases. Xmas likely to be worse. The WP notes:
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“As of Thanksgiving, covid-19 had been documented in every U.S. county except the country’s smallest, Kalawao County, Hawaii, which is home to fewer than 100 people and is so remote that it was the site of a leper colony.”
SteveF (Comment #195054)
December 7th, 2020 at 10:49 am
Sweden’s chief epidemiologist has now decided that his quest for herd immunity is not “ethically justifiable”.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fda-set-to-release-analyses-of-the-pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine-11607423403?mod=e2tw
On our way to approval soon. (Hope!!)
The FDA posted the pre-meeting document summarizing the trial results. Figure 2 on page 27 tells the story: 10-11 days after the first dose (and long before the second dose) the rate of illness in the vaccine group dropped instantly by 90+% compared to the placebo group. There is no visible change in rate of illness after the second dose. So there is protection against illness provided almost immediately.
The rate of new illness was identical in the two groups before 10 days post vaccination.
SteveF (Comment #195121): “10-11 days after the first dose (and long before the second dose) the rate of illness in the vaccine group dropped instantly by 90+%”
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How is that possible? There is no way that there were enough cases to provide that sort of time resolution. Are they making a correction to the date to determine date of infection?
MikeM,
I wondered the same thing. How can they know the drop in the rate of illness that fast? I guess I’d have to look at the table. 🙂
Sorry, that should have been Figure 2 on Page 30. (https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download)
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The same graph is in the Pfizer submission.
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The cumulative rate of infection curve for the vaccine group looks almost flat out to the end of the data… a little over 3 months from first dose, so there is good evidence the efficacy lasts at least that long. The long term efficacy will be better defined over the coming months via followup monitoring.
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The handling of the vaccine is also described, and the -70C storage now makes more sense. A 5-dose vial is “hydrated” with saline just before use (1.8 ml total volume after hydration; 0.3 ml each with some extra volume to account for syringe loses), and has to be used within 5 days to avoid loss of efficacy. Apparently the active material is ‘lyophilized’ (freeze-dried), then stored in a dry state at -70 to avoid degradation. So from the POV of distribution and handling, the Moderna vaccine is much easier.
Mike M, Lucia,
Look at the graphic of cumulative cases. The “knee” in the data at 10-11 days is very clear.
SteveF,
Wow!
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-design.html
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“You may be surprised to learn that of the trio of long-awaited coronavirus vaccines, the most promising, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, which reported a 94.5 percent efficacy rate on November 16, had been designed by January 13. This was just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public”
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Obviously it’s a bit more complicated to test and get to market, but interesting that it was that quick. A future pandemic with a higher mortality could potentially be rolled out quicker. The discussion of having some baseline parts of a vaccine pre-tested might be worth noting.
Lyophilization is often done to avoid the use of extreme storage conditions to prevent degradation during transport. I’d take -80 as an ideal, not as an operational necessity.
“Among 3410 total cases of suspected but unconfirmed COVID-19 in the overall study population, 1594 occurred in the vaccine group vs. 1816 in the placebo group.”
SteveF (Comment #195126): “Look at the graphic of cumulative cases. The “knee†in the data at 10-11 days is very clear.”
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Not clear at all. The text says “approximately 14 days”. That might be so. But one should always be extremely cautious in interpreting highly autocorrelated time series. It is clear that there seems to be an effect by by 3 weeks or so. Even two weeks seems odd.
MikeM
I think the existence of a knee is very clear. You are quibbling about dating the knee at it’s “beginning” vs “middle” vs “clearly finished bending” date. Knees have curvature in time. These are different times. But there is definitely a knee.
Here is the most troubling thing about the data:
The original criterion for a “first look” was 32 cumulative cases In both arms, starting 7 days after the second dose. Figure 2 strongly suggests that original criterion would have shown very clear evidence of efficacy. The delay by the FDA to 90+ cases after the second dose looks to me like nothing but naked politics, and probably cost Trump the election.
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The cynic in me notes that the first look data release took place after the election, on the day that the Pfizer CEO and the Pfizer CFO had both scheduled “insider sales” of shares worth many millions of dollars. These sales had been scheduled with knowledge of the near certainty of data release happening before the sale date. I can imagine the FDA/Pfizer CEO having the conversation:
FDA: “We want you to not do the analysis until after the November election.”
CEO: “OK, but we have to do it in time for me to make a fortune selling shares…. the date is set, and I can’t change it. If the data is not released before the sale, I will lose a fortune!”
FDA: “Fine, just make sure it doesn’t happen until several days after the election.”
CEO: “Agreed.”
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I can only imagine the fire the CEO must have lit under his staffs’ behinds when they delayed the analysis even more, and risked passing the scheduled stock sale date!
Lucia,
“But there is definitely a knee.”
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Not only that, the knee happens long before a second dose of vaccine…. showing clear protection from illness from even a single dose. The document notes the protection, but adds that since there was no “single dose” arm, it is not possible to draw strong statistical conclusions. But to me it isa pretty damned obvious a single dose is protective.
SteveF,
Yep. Looks like one does protects. Protocol requires them to stick with what they planned to test. . .
Tom Scharf,
” A future pandemic with a higher mortality could potentially be rolled out quicker.”
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For certain. The m-RNA incorporated into the liposome particles in the Moderna vaccine can be rapidly synthesized once the target sequence is known. (see for example: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0142961217307639#:~:text=2.2.,to%20the%20natural%20eukaryotic%20mRNA.) The liposome delivery scheme would be the same.
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Problem is, there is no limit to the delays the FDA can force, no matter the circumstance, so if there ever were a much higher mortality rate pandemic, I expect the FDA would not even take the higher mortality rate into consideration. As the covid vaccine approval process demonstrates, the FDA is an inherently evil and stupid organizartion.
” Republican state officials in Texas sued Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan in the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday in a long-shot bid to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, an effort election experts derided as nearly certain to fail, marking the latest in a deluge of far-fetched lawsuits GOP interests have filed to overturn the election results.” Source: Forbes online, Dec.8, 2020
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May be another far-fetched lawsuit, but it could help raise money for Trump. I wonder if there’s a downside to all the lawsuits challenging the election. I’m not sure “poor loser” is a downside.
For Trump poor loser may not be a down side.
Washington Post: September 26, 2019 :
“Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate president†and suggested that “he knows†that he stole the 2016 presidential election in a CBS News interview to be aired Sunday.”
…
“In June, former president Jimmy Carter used similar language to diminish Trump’s presidency. Carter said that in his view Trump lost the 2016 election and was put in office by the Russians. Asked if he considered Trump to be illegitimate, Carter said, “Based on what I just said, which I can’t retract.—
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We won’t even bother with the “Gore won” endless diatribes.
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Politicians don’t admit defeat very easily. These claims are either fact based legitimate reporting, others are far fetched, it depends on your point of view I guess.
OK_Max,
We have just endured four years of totally baseless claims that Trump was not a legitimate President. It should not be surprising that Trump is playing the same game but with stronger evIdence. If Republicans retain control of the Senate, then you can expect a slow rate of approval of Biden appointments, just like the Democrats did to Trump. The press, conveniently forgetting recent history, will blow a gasket or three.