Liberty

https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2020/7/1/apple-is-pulling-away-from-the-competition

Thread on Chinese numbers:

Aerosols risk: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6498/1422.full

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/coronavirus-update-pence-vows-to-keep-opening-up-america.html "Pence vows to ‘keep opening up America’ as U.S. sets new record for coronavirus cases" "“But we’re going to keep up America again and have more days just like today,” Pence said." Mike Pence is basically this meme:

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-exemplar-south-korea

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/30/goldman-sachs-says-a-national-mask-mandate-could-slash-infections-and-save-economy-from-a-5percent-hit.html

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1278404320279490560?s=20

Wow! It is so shocking to see someone with integrity these days. Can you imagine the pressure this guy is under to keep his mouth shut? He DOES NOT GIVE A FUCK! People like Fauci are stuck in such a dilemma (almost everybody competent in this administration was in the same position... Tillerson, Mattis, Kelly.. )... They all think "well, I can do more good on the inside than if I'm fired", so they kind of try to walk on eggs and navigate some balance between pleasing Trump and actually doing their jobs. Which isn't what you want in a crisis where people are losing their lives. You want to let your top guy actually do his job and enable him to be effective, rather than sideline him and contradict him all the time, not allow him to use all the tools, and use him as a prop in some reality show where you have to have all the spotlight on yourself and tell him what he can and can't say and whether he can do interviews or testify to congress... Count the days until Trump blames all this on Fauci... *sigh* Meanwhile, common sense looks like this:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/30/fauci-says-us-coronavirus-outbreak-is-going-to-be-very-disturbing-could-top-100000-cases-a-day.html

Have a good break, enjoy the summer (but stay safe).

https://peterattiamd.com/stanleyperlman/

Harris acquisition: https://www.harriscomputer.com/en/news/?data-ipsquote-timestamp=1592452800&article=harris-expands-its-utilities-portfolio-with-the-acquisition-of-silverblaze "LinkedIn shows 18 employees" h/t @pearnick

It is true that 30,000 cases today is not the same as 30,000 cases in April. But, the "just doing more testing" is wrong and is essentially a cover-up. Ontario is testing at roughly the same per-capita rate as Florida. And as I posted up-thread, there is actually an inverse correlation between testing in Ontario and cases. I agree that we aren't at a "gloom and doom" phase. But Texas needed to cancel elective hospital procedures because they reopened bars. This seems like a poor use of your "Rt budget". Yeah, the "they're just doing more testing" thing is just a simple one-liner cover for people who don't want to think about it and who haven't looked at the numbers. I'm seeing that in Florida it can take a couple weeks to get a test result in many places, so some stats are also behind where reality on the ground is. There's many many variables. I think there's a good chance that severity has gone down because of higher vitamin D during the summer, plus lower viral load exposure because most places have been shut down and social distanced and there's more masks, which means that even if you get it now, it's probably not as bad as in early March when those who got it were packed in public transit full of people coughing and with a fever but who didn't think much of it, not washing their hands much, etc... The fall/winter with be a test of the vitamin D hypothesis. In any case, places like Italy and France and Spain are showing new cases in the sub-1000 range after having pretty bad outbreaks, so we know exactly how to control it. The US just needs to do it, but it can't, because the president has politicized a virus and masks, and his enablers don't have enough of a spine to stand up to him and say it's bonkers and he should let the grown ups deal with the pandemic.

Hasn't something similar been said near the end of every quarter since IPO? I have no idea, it could all crash down soon, but these questions are not new.

Tomas Pueyo: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-how-to-reopen-travel-safely-f5951dfe06f0 "Coronavirus: How to Reopen Travel Safely"

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/white-house-ordered-nih-to-cancel-coronavirus-research-funding-fauci-says/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/health/coronavirus-lung-treatment-funding.html

Sins of omission never get as much press as sins of commission... As far as I know, Tesla's safety ratings are related to the car crash ratings, not to autopilot. If we put everyone in a pick-up truck tomorrow, I'm 100% sure that car crash fatality will also be lower then it is today. In terms of car crash avoidance, I don't believe that Tesla's systems are any better than the ones used by its competitors. Or do you guys have any data that suggests otherwise? I can only repeat that in terms of autonomous driving, the competition in the space is miles ahead on Tesla. edit: you don't have to believe me, you can listen to Josh Wolfe on this one: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-25-josh-wolfe/id1491394342?i=1000474266825 Josh Wolfe is great, we follow each other on Twitter and I’ve only had good conversations with him, but he's been talking about shorting Tesla for about 4-5 years and is investing into a self-driving startup that competes, so maybe not unbiased. As for the rest, yes, I think their cars are generally safer than most others (esp at that volume) because of their safety profile as a whole, which includes passive and active. EVs have better crumple zones because there's not a big heavy engine sitting between you and most impacts, a lower centers of gravity, more instant reaction to traction control and active safety/avoidance measures, more sensors (cameras, ultrasonics, radars), have higher mass per size class (because of the battery), etc. I also would bet that Tesla has better software engineers than traditional car makers -- it's harder to attract top AI/ML talent to GM than to Tesla...

Sins of omission never get as much press as sins of commission...

Can't speak for car industry but the above statement about new drug approval and its impact is not accurate. The point of clinical trial is to show superiority over existing standard of care. STandard of care in overwhelming circumstances is the best option / treatment course available at the time. So the new kid (drug) has to show better outcome in a statistically significant way (better safety & equivalent effectiveness to treat the disease or better in both). This by definition means that if the new drug is not superior then its approval and eventual use will lead to more deaths than standard of care. Last time I checked there is no such process to "approve" the next car. And I am not arguing that there should be such a process for the car industry, just pointing out that comparison to healthcare industry is not appropriate. We're not talking about the same thing. There's a lot of drugs that will never be created because, for example, regulatory bodies will decide that "aging is not a disease" or that a new use for an existing molecule requires years and millions of dollars worth of paperwork and it's not worth it for a disease that isn't common or in a country where people are poor. The standard doesn't seem to be very flexible and to look at the balance of risks and benefits, it's more about avoiding risks at all costs because there's a lot of career risk in there for regulators, and this leads to people not getting medications that they may otherwise get in a more rational system. Same for psychedelics like psilocybin, known for decades to be safe and to potentially have life-altering benefits to people with PTSD, depression, addiction, but we're now just getting around to loosening restrictions.. How many people could've been helped over the past 50 years if this hadn't been banned by people who wanted to win some political points and cover their asses because they saw no upside to their own careers in taking a chance on it? Incentive aren't aligned between the people making a lot of these decisions and the sick people who may benefit. Not all the time, but a lot of the time.

Update to the chart: So if the fall does bring a second wave because of factors like lower humidity/UV/vitamin D/etc, it's mathematically going to be much worse to have that wave from a high base than from a low base. This is a bad setup...

I don't mean to minimize problems with autopilot, and do think Tesla has been aggressive with it. But it's always a lot easier to see what actually happened than what didn't, and I get the feeling that Teslas are generally some of the safest cars on the road (extremely high crash ratings, lots of active measures to avoid accidents), and that in general, it's a big net positive for safety to drive a Tesla rather than almost any alternative (especially since a lot of Tesla drivers didn't drive luxury vehicles before, so didn't have all the safety gear of that segment). It's kind of like how you don't see the impacts when the FDA doesn't approve a drug or an area of research vs what you see if a bad drug gets approved and there's problems with it. Yet a death is a death.. This skews incentives and can lead to overall worse outcomes than with a more even-handed and rational look at the pros and cons.