Coronavirus

[wachtwoord]

My last input on this topic:

 

Last time I ventured into the politics section, I found Parsad's contribution no less provocative than Gregmal's. In fact it made me close the section again as I didn't consider engaging productive considering the tone. I get it must be difficult if you're the admin and also want to take part, but please remain impartial in your judgement at least.

 

Anyway: I disagree with the ruling here but its your board of course.

[RichardGibbons]

Last time I ventured into the politics section

 

That's the key line of your post.

 

Sanjeev isn't a policeman ticketing the stripper inside RICK's for public nudity. He's ticketing the streaker who repeatedly runs across the field at the high school football game, and saying, "Hey, if you put on some clothes, you're welcome to return to watch the game."

 

[Parsad]

My last input on this topic:

 

Last time I ventured into the politics section, I found Parsad's contribution no less provocative than Gregmal's. In fact it made me close the section again as I didn't consider engaging productive considering the tone. I get it must be difficult if you're the admin and also want to take part, but please remain impartial in your judgement at least.

 

Anyway: I disagree with the ruling here but its your board of course.

 

Hi wachtwoord...Greg's post that got him in trouble was not in the Politics section, but this Coronavirus thread.  If it had happened in the Politics section, which was closed a few days ago, he would not have gotten in trouble.  It's as simple as that.  So me being impartial is not an issue. 

 

If someone else did the same thing, they would be gone too.  Greg has gotten a couple of warnings about posting political or inflammatory comments outside of the Politics section...this was not simply a first offense, but it consumes my time moderating the board.  If people cannot follow the rules, there are warnings and then a consequence.  Cheers!

[StubbleJumper]

My last input on this topic:

 

Last time I ventured into the politics section, I found Parsad's contribution no less provocative than Gregmal's. In fact it made me close the section again as I didn't consider engaging productive considering the tone. I get it must be difficult if you're the admin and also want to take part, but please remain impartial in your judgement at least.

 

Anyway: I disagree with the ruling here but its your board of course.

 

Hi wachtwoord...Greg's post that got him in trouble was not in the Politics section, but this Coronavirus thread.  If it had happened in the Politics section, which was closed a few days ago, he would not have gotten in trouble.  It's as simple as that.  So me being impartial is not an issue. 

 

If someone else did the same thing, they would be gone too.  Greg has gotten a couple of warnings about posting political or inflammatory comments outside of the Politics section...this was not simply a first offense, but it consumes my time moderating the board.  If people cannot follow the rules, there are warnings and then a consequence.  Cheers!

 

 

IMO, you were pretty patient.  The one that pissed me off was the religious references to BAM last spring.  Garbage.

 

 

SJ

[Cigarbutt]

...

I think the vaccine should be given first to older people.  Above 85 then above 75 age wise. The reason is it is shown to reduce symptoms and most vulnerable to symptoms of Covid are older people.

The vaccine has not been shown to stop transmission...

Unfortunately the transmission hypothesis can only be clarified after the fact.

i'm looking for data now about how vaccines are working (will work) in the real world compared to reported results from before and to confirm (or infirm) what i anecdotally see around me. Israel is at the leading edge of this specific natural experiment. Numbers are relatively small and trends are only forming (also there are many factors including a recent 'lockdown 3.0' (if you believe in those)) but the trend in severe cases vs new cases at large seems to agree with logical conclusions that could be inferred from accumulated knowledge. The trend down in severe cases appears significant and seems to be happening before the trend down in new cases which would also go along the age distribution of the vaccines and the greater effectiveness of vaccines for host disease suppression vs transmission.

If interested, see the following, especially figure 4 with associated text:

https://resources.oxfordeconomics.com/hubfs/OE-Downloads/00000105.pdf

If the above suspicion is correct, Israel (and the lagging countries in vaccine rollouts) will report results falling off a cliff, variants notwithstanding.

[Viking]

How are people thinking about the three virus mutations?

1.) South Africa

2.) UK

3.) Brazil

 

It appears all vaccine’s currently approved are less effective (lower efficacy) with the mutant strains.

 

I am looking very big picture and trying to understand if these new strains are a big deal or a big nothing burger or something in between? Will re-opening of the economy possibly be stalled a quarter or two? With so many total cases all over the globe are even more strains now likely?

 

Governments seem to be quite concerned with new travel restrictions being imposed to try and slow the new strains.

 

Please post any informative articles you come across. I am not concerned... but my spidey senses are tingling. 

————————-

Novavax vaccine protects against coronavirus in variant hot spots but proved less effective against strain in South Africa

- https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/01/28/covid-vaccine-variant-south-africa/

 

- In a United Kingdom trial, where the B.1.1.7 variant has become dominant, the vaccine was 89 percent effective, and about half the infections were with the variant.

- In a smaller and less definitive South African trial, where nearly all the participants who got sick were infected with the variant first identified in that nation, the vaccine was 49 percent effective. But the company underscored that when looking only at people not infected with HIV, the efficacy was 60 percent.

[wachtwoord]

My last input on this topic:

 

Last time I ventured into the politics section, I found Parsad's contribution no less provocative than Gregmal's. In fact it made me close the section again as I didn't consider engaging productive considering the tone. I get it must be difficult if you're the admin and also want to take part, but please remain impartial in your judgement at least.

 

Anyway: I disagree with the ruling here but its your board of course.

 

Hi wachtwoord...Greg's post that got him in trouble was not in the Politics section, but this Coronavirus thread.  If it had happened in the Politics section, which was closed a few days ago, he would not have gotten in trouble.  It's as simple as that.  So me being impartial is not an issue. 

 

If someone else did the same thing, they would be gone too.  Greg has gotten a couple of warnings about posting political or inflammatory comments outside of the Politics section...this was not simply a first offense, but it consumes my time moderating the board.  If people cannot follow the rules, there are warnings and then a consequence.  Cheers!

 

Thanks for the clarification.

That it was outside the politics section is an important factor.

For one, I've never seen you be "provocative" (for lack of a better word) outside of the politics section.

 

I don't envy your role to keep social cohesion in an era in which people's ethics/values seem to differ significantly.

Perhaps (probably) the differences were always there but never before so visible.

[Liberty]

New J&N vaccine seems less effective at preventing infection than the mRNA vaccines, but still seems quite effective at preventing severe forms of the disease:

 

"Not a single person who got the JNJ vaccine, and had illness after four weeks, ended up in the hospital."

 

Another nice weapon in the arsenal.

[Cigarbutt]

How are people thinking about the three virus mutations?

1.) South Africa 2.) UK 3.) Brazil

It appears all vaccine’s currently approved are less effective (lower efficacy) with the mutant strains.

I am looking very big picture and trying to understand if these new strains are a big deal or a big nothing burger or something in between? Will re-opening of the economy possibly be stalled a quarter or two? With so many total cases all over the globe are even more strains now likely?

Governments seem to be quite concerned with new travel restrictions being imposed to try and slow the new strains.

Please post any informative articles you come across. I am not concerned... but my spidey senses are tingling. 

————————-

Novavax vaccine protects against coronavirus in variant hot spots but proved less effective against strain in South Africa

- https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/01/28/covid-vaccine-variant-south-africa/

- In a United Kingdom trial, where the B.1.1.7 variant has become dominant, the vaccine was 89 percent effective, and about half the infections were with the variant.

- In a smaller and less definitive South African trial, where nearly all the participants who got sick were infected with the variant first identified in that nation, the vaccine was 49 percent effective. But the company underscored that when looking only at people not infected with HIV, the efficacy was 60 percent.

This post takes the perspective to answer the following question: Is some kind of portfolio insurance required here? My humble answer is no or only some kind of cheap insurance, if you can find it. Destroy the following at your convenience.

Virus mutations happen and 'we' still don't get the significance (in terms of models etc).

You can start with a simple Galton-type model which would give some kind of normal distribution and then the odds would be relatively easy to figure out but 'life' is not so simple.

For viral mutations, you need some kind of adapted model that looks like this (simplified):

So, if you're into how insurance reserves are estimated, you need some kind of standard model with stochastic adjustments. In short, to deal with this, maybe an excess of loss coverage could be considered. Because of what i include below (the situation is dynamic and needs to be followed), at this point, based in part of what follows, i would say portfolio insurance is not necessary (for this specific aspect) or one could look for cheap excess of loss possibilities with high attachment points.

There are many 'studies' out there and they are not all saying the same thing. The mutations on the surface spike proteins are key. Opinion: this virus (genetics aspect and mutation potential) is likely running behind compared to the invested human capital to fight it (and its evolving variants). Also, if ever the virus tries to reach escape immunity, there is a large herd of nerds looking for a fight. The following is one of the best (and recent) outputs on the topic. It's small and early but it basically shows that the variants have the potential to make present vaccines less effective but, for two of the three variants, the antibody levels were reduced by a factor of 1.42 to 1.46 (simplified). Look at page 13, suppl. figure 4 if interested.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.27.427998v1.full.pdf

There appears to remain some margin of safety.

...

I don't envy your role to keep social cohesion in an era in which people's ethics/values seem to differ significantly.

Perhaps (probably) the differences were always there but never before so visible.

This is a fascinating topic which is quite unrelated to investments but has relevance for the functioning of a discussion board.

My hunch (supported by work done by others) is that:

-online discussion boards tend to attract people with high degrees of self-esteem (that could be warranted (or not)), even bordering of the Narcissistic side...

-anonymity provided by the platforms favors a drift in the level of agreeableness...

-this board likely attracts people with an unusual level of attachment to money, with the potential to leave less space for other good things in life...

i have to go; my wife tells me to detach from the screen and invites me for a cross-country ski ride.

[ERICOPOLY]

My wife's employer (healthcare) has been vaccinating their employees, and is now mulling over the idea of vaccinating the family members of those employees as well. 

 

This makes sense because the family members are also at elevated risk, and if the family gets covid it's likely that the healthcare worker will miss work.

 

[Viking]

Israel is one model the world will be able to learn from (cigarbutt thanks for the idea). There is some value in having one country serve as a test lab of sorts for lessons other countries can fast adapt to make their effort more successful. Lots to be encouraged about. The idea of giving people who have been vaccinated passports and allowing them to go to restaurant or movie theatres kind of blew me away... that is not that far away.

————————-

Israel moves to head of vaccine queue, offering Pfizer access to country’s health-care database

- https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israel-pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine-privacy/2021/01/27/b9773c80-5f4d-11eb-a177-7765f29a9524_story.html

 

...Israel, which some European officials have noted paid a premium for its doses and gets its supply from a Pfizer factory in Belgium, says it remains on track to expand vaccine eligibility in the coming weeks to everyone age 30 and up.

 

Israel’s Pfizer contract was made public in early January but with the specifics of cost and data sharing redacted. According information obtained by the Israeli media, Israel paid about $50 per vaccine, roughly double the cost to European Union countries buying as a bloc.

 

... Pfizer has privately committed to shipping about 10 million doses to Israel by the end of March, according to Israeli media accounts, a tiny portion of the 1.2 billion doses the company has pledged to countries across the world in 2021.

 

... Edelstein said Israel is considered a good test case because of its meticulously digitized, decades-spanning trove of data, gathered from a mandatory universal health-care system involving four not-for-profit HMOs.

 

As a country of 9 million with a relatively small elderly population, Israel has inoculated most older residents and begun vaccinating the wider public. The government is preparing “green passports” for those who have received both doses, which would exempt them from quarantine and eventually grant them access to public places like theaters and restaurants.

 

.... Health-care administrators announced Monday that the vaccine may be even more effective than the 95 percent level found during trials.

 

Maccabi, one of Israel’s four HMOs, reported preliminary findings that just 0.015 percent of people became infected with the coronavirus in the week after receiving their second shot. Among the positive cases, none exhibited severe symptoms.

 

... But Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science found that a single dose of Pfizer’s vaccine was significantly less effective than had been indicated by the company’s clinical study.

[wachtwoord]

You are liking this? :/

 

I'll leave the topic now or this will turn into politics but I find it highly disturbing intelligent people here find this "encouraging".

 

The world is a sad place today and it has nothing to do with any Corona virus and everything with people and their nature.

[username]

Viking, I advise you'd check the recent, and not so recent past of Edelstein before taking his words as anything honest.

As for encouraging results for other countries, maybe an addition of tax payers from Israel settling there after finally it eventually opens the borders.

[Cigarbutt]

Vaccines are not perfect and it can argued that deployment could have been faster. The following is helpful food for thought if interested in retrospective analysis, although the tone is self-congratulatory, to some extent. Looking back, one has to consider also how survivorship bias can cloud the analysis. What's shaping up to be very powerful tools was not that clear, earlier on. Also, it's interesting to note that the first human participants were paid 1100 USD on the way to the promised land. When in skool, there were a few acquaintances who made a surprisingly fair amount of money for participation in trials but i never came close to consider the adventure worthwhile, given the potential downside risks (maybe related to excessive risk aversion or lack of courage?).

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2021/01/26/moderna-covid-vaccine-science-fast/6555783002/

As username mentions at the bottom of his window: There's no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit (or as long as somebody else does it).

My wife's employer (healthcare) has been vaccinating their employees, and is now mulling over the idea of vaccinating the family members of those employees as well. 

This makes sense because the family members are also at elevated risk, and if the family gets covid it's likely that the healthcare worker will miss work.

Comparing my area to California, i would say this is a relatively good problem (how to distribute 'excess' vaccines)  to have, if you can manage it.

In California (% of population):

-number of doses per population: 7.8%

-'direct' contact healthcare workers and nursing facility residents: 5.5%

-aged 65+ (expected to be covered around June according to priority rules at this point): 14.9%

At this point, the demand will work around the definitions of 'direct', indirect and 'essential' and will have to navigate between rules and practicality. How does one self-assess one's essentialness?

[Spekulatius]

MA actually has done this and listed smoking as a comorbidity condition allowing to get the vaccine faster.

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/covid-19-vaccine-distribution-timeline-phase-overview#phase-2-

 

I am guess that I am going to tell my doctor that I started smoking because I got too stressed out about COVID-19 and not getting the vaccine.

[Liberty]

Good read on vitamin D and COVID19:

 

https://peterattiamd.com/does-vitamin-d-deficiency-raise-covid-19-risk/

[Cigarbutt]

Good read on vitamin D and COVID19:

https://peterattiamd.com/does-vitamin-d-deficiency-raise-covid-19-risk/

This was interesting and IMO fairly balanced.

 

Respectfully submitted (i get it that it’s a sensitive issue for some).

 

Disclosure: This is an interesting (and potentially promising) area which i’ve actively followed for a long time. Also, i sometimes recommend (and prescribe) vitamin D (and related).

 

The underlying goal of this post is to underline the (very obvious) potential flaws in the process. Personal decisions are left to individual’s discretion. And, given the article below discussing the difficulty in allocating insufficient resources to outsized needs and because of aspects of the process that played out during Covid where the allocation process proved to be flawed, how can the process be improved and what’s the best way to attract human and physical scarce capital to promising but uncertain ideas?

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/health/medical/how-the-search-for-covid-19-treatments-faltered-while-vaccines-sped-ahead/ar-BB1denyb?ocid=msedgntp

 

In the last year, I’ve had many interactions with various people in the medical (and alternative) field and, strangely, whenever I spoke to people who had some kind of intimate interest in a specific area (both practical care and research), they typically spontaneously believed that their respective areas of interest had some kind of importance for Covid (belief unrelated to the scientific plausibility). Kind of strange. Still, an open mind is necessary. There’s this guy who (contrary to consensus expectations) ‘believed’ in colchicine and 14M and a few months of hard work later, he may be on his way to something material.

 

When looking at almost the entire spectrum of vitamins, nutrients and various other compounds, there are various levels of individual schools of thought with basic science explanations, scores of correlation studies and associated recommendation intent to correct specific ‘deficiencies’ Doesn’t that point to the real possibility that these deficiencies are simply markers of something else? Sir William Osler’s legacy had a huge impact on my learning and he described this ‘rule’, the Osler’s rule (not only for neurology) that, in the large majority of cases, it’s better to have one explanation for a phenomenon (clinical manifestation etc) than to have a multitude of explanations for multiple sub-segments of that phenomenon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Osler

 

In the last few years, there has been literally an explosion (not helped by the Covid episode) of studies improperly using statistical techniques and underestimating the huge difficulty in bridging the statistical to clinical significance. Going from correlation to causation is a very painful (and lengthy) exercise.

 

Another area that is being stretched is the issue of cross-overs. Very rarely, a pill or a product found to be helpful for a specific problem is found to be useful for another problem but that’s quite rare, especially if the problems have no coherent or rational link. It is strange that adherents to a specific pill or product will tend to come to a similar conclusion whatever the underlying problem including life extension.

 

The latest thing i’ve come across is the significance of the gut microbial flora on Covid. Again, there are various scientific reports about how the gut flora can be linked to ‘immunity’ and various studies showing correlations between specific types of gut flora and Covid risk (including severity) and the recommendation automatically becomes to ‘treat’ the ‘deficiency’ by altering the gut flora, without underlining the real conceptual challenge with Covid, a virus gaining access to the body through the respiratory tracts and without taking into account that the gut flora may simply be a marker of something else. You are what you eat and i would say that the strength of conclusions should be based on the quality of the inputs and analysis.

 

I get the relative attractiveness of relatively ‘cheap’ and ‘safe’ options but a remarkable aspect related to decreasing hospital mortality early on during the Covid episode was not mainly in relation to the introduction of helpful remedies (although there was some of that) but more in relation to the abandonment of safe and cheap options that did not work and that took precious resources away from what did, once controlling for another major factor, the level of community spread around hospitals, with higher levels of spread inversely correlated to Covid inpatient outcomes. Yes, just correlation with a range of potential explanations, most of them disappointing.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2774572

 

Resource (capital) allocation can be a pain to discuss but it’s such a fundamental issue.

 

[StubbleJumper]

^ So, Cigarbutt, having said that, are you yourself taking supplementary vitamin D this winter, and if so, how many IU per day do you take?  Did you change your dose of vitamin D supplements in response to the emergence of covid, or are you taking the same amount now as in winter 2019?  At what point in the spring do you expect that you will be able to absorb adequate quantities from natural exposure to the sun (mid-April, or perhaps later) or do you take vitamin D supplements 365 days per year?

 

I understand that we kind of need to twist ourselves into a bit of a pretzel to arrive at some sort of logic of taking vitamin D for prophylaxis, but any concrete evidence of causation will almost certainly be too late to be practically useful.  So, personally, I am still stuck with Pascal's Wager.

 

 

JS

[Cigarbutt]

^ So, Cigarbutt, having said that, are you yourself taking supplementary vitamin D this winter, and if so, how many IU per day do you take?  Did you change your dose of vitamin D supplements in response to the emergence of covid, or are you taking the same amount now as in winter 2019?  At what point in the spring do you expect that you will be able to absorb adequate quantities from natural exposure to the sun (mid-April, or perhaps later) or do you take vitamin D supplements 365 days per year?

I understand that we kind of need to twist ourselves into a bit of a pretzel to arrive at some sort of logic of taking vitamin D for prophylaxis, but any concrete evidence of causation will almost certainly be too late to be practically useful.  So, personally, I am still stuck with Pascal's Wager.

JS

To be clear: as individuals, we have to each come up with some kind of odds (based on incomplete info and uncertainty, for various life decisions) and bet on those odds and i totally respect that others reach different conclusions, for themselves.

i assume personal disclosure of age, health etc is not necessary or relevant here but i did not take supplementary vitamin D before Covid and have not, so far, changed this conclusion with Covid but remain open to be convinced (change my assessment of odds), seasonally or otherwise.

You may think that this posture is a result of unnecessary obstinacy and you may be right but there's this (likely true) anecdote about Mr. Buffett who was offered to make an asymmetric bet for a specific shot while golfing.

https://www.investment-in-stocks.com/stupid-in-small/

Please don't take the 'stupid' qualifier personally or in direct relation to this question. :)

BTW, when one of my daughters reached 18, she asked the following question: when you vote (oups forbidden word now), do you vote for yourself or for the greater good? and i was not able to give her a satisfactory answer (although i tried to give her tools to reach her own answer). What i mean by that is that the answer given to such a question (vitamin D supplementation) may require a different threshold if you decide as an individual (should i take it myself?) versus if (let's say) you've been given responsibility to (let's say) allocate scarce funds for studies or distribution at the population level (we have delegated many collective decisions to others in democracies). i've always tried to align these non-binary questions. It's not always easy.

CF

[StubbleJumper]

^ So, Cigarbutt, having said that, are you yourself taking supplementary vitamin D this winter, and if so, how many IU per day do you take?  Did you change your dose of vitamin D supplements in response to the emergence of covid, or are you taking the same amount now as in winter 2019?  At what point in the spring do you expect that you will be able to absorb adequate quantities from natural exposure to the sun (mid-April, or perhaps later) or do you take vitamin D supplements 365 days per year?

I understand that we kind of need to twist ourselves into a bit of a pretzel to arrive at some sort of logic of taking vitamin D for prophylaxis, but any concrete evidence of causation will almost certainly be too late to be practically useful.  So, personally, I am still stuck with Pascal's Wager.

JS

To be clear: as individuals, we have to each come up with some kind of odds (based on incomplete info and uncertainty, for various life decisions) and bet on those odds and i totally respect that others reach different conclusions, for themselves.

i assume personal disclosure of age, health etc is not necessary or relevant here but i did not take supplementary vitamin D before Covid and have not, so far, changed this conclusion with Covid but remain open to be convinced (change my assessment of odds), seasonally or otherwise.

You may think that this posture is a result of unnecessary obstinacy and you may be right but there's this (likely true) anecdote about Mr. Buffett who was offered to make an asymmetric bet for a specific shot while golfing.

https://www.investment-in-stocks.com/stupid-in-small/

Please don't take the 'stupid' qualifier personally or in direct relation to this question. :)

BTW, when one of my daughters reached 18, she asked the following question: when you vote (oups forbidden word now), do you vote for yourself or for the greater good? and i was not able to give her a satisfactory answer (although i tried to give her tools to reach her own answer). What i mean by that is that the answer given to such a question (vitamin D supplementation) may require a different threshold if you decide as an individual (should i take it myself?) versus if (let's say) you've been given responsibility to (let's say) allocate scarce funds for studies or distribution at the population level (we have delegated many collective decisions to others in democracies). i've always tried to align these non-binary questions. It's not always easy.

CF

 

 

The Buffett anecdote is perfect.  The odds at 1000-to-1 on the hole-in-one were inadequate for the old man to take the bet (I wouldn't take those odds with my golf game either).  This gets to the basic point that Buffett has always made, which is that price is what you pay and value is what you get (the price of the bet was probability of failure x $20, the expected value of a win was probability of success x $20k). 

 

This tells me exactly how strongly you feel about the difference between causation and correlation when it comes to vitamin D and covid.  The price that you pay for 6 months of "vitamin D coverage" is a little less than $10 and your benefit is the decremental probability that you die/have an ICU stay/have a hospital visit/have a miserable set of covid symptoms at home multiplied by your qualitative valuation of those conditions (eg, maybe you view avoidance of your own death to be worth $250k, maybe you view avoidance of the misery of an ICU stay to be worth $50k, maybe avoiding a hospital stay is worth $5k to you, and maybe avoiding a couple of weeks of miserable symptoms could be worth $1k to you).  In the context of the potential value of avoiding the range of bad outcomes (or at least decrementing the outcome within that range), your decision to not take $10 of vitamin D tells me that you assess the decremental probability of those outcomes in the presence of vitamin D at approximately zero.  When somebody who has studiously read the literature makes the assessment that the likely impact of vitamin D is so low, it does offer an opportunity for the rest of us to reflect.

 

Thanks for sharing.

 

 

SJ

[Investor20]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7662136/

Estimation of US Children’s Educational Attainment and Years of Life Lost Associated With Primary School Closures During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic

 

This decision analytical model found that missed instruction during 2020 could be associated with an estimated 5.53 million years of life lost.

......................................

They were only looking at first lockdown of three months (March to May) and only Children loss of life due to lockdown.

This is a peer reviewed article in JAMA and hence scientific paper.

[Cigarbutt]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7662136/

Estimation of US Children’s Educational Attainment and Years of Life Lost Associated With Primary School Closures During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic

This decision analytical model found that missed instruction during 2020 could be associated with an estimated 5.53 million years of life lost.

......................................

They were only looking at first lockdown of three months (March to May) and only Children loss of life due to lockdown.

This is a peer reviewed article in JAMA and hence scientific paper.

Hi Investor20,

Here's finally a topic we may agree on (partially at least). :)

Opinion: the price of 'closing' schools is high and has been likely underappreciated, especially for the younger cohorts. Over time, this conclusion has grown stronger (with more evidence).

Having said that, the study you mention has VERY serious methodological limitations.

-----

When you spot a serious investment opportunity (i've almost forgotten how this feels like), isn't it useful (and fundamental) to viciously try to kill the thesis from all angles before embracing the occasion with a significant commitment (mental and financial)?

i'm asking because, for the main author of the study, it must have been very difficult to adopt this disconfirming attitude when he initiated and performed the study..

There's hope however. On his Twitter thread, one of the authors of the study had this video:

-----

It feels like i've done my share of tilting at windmills lately and i wonder if the overall investment climate has anything to do with it?

[Investor20]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7662136/

Estimation of US Children’s Educational Attainment and Years of Life Lost Associated With Primary School Closures During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic

This decision analytical model found that missed instruction during 2020 could be associated with an estimated 5.53 million years of life lost.

......................................

They were only looking at first lockdown of three months (March to May) and only Children loss of life due to lockdown.

This is a peer reviewed article in JAMA and hence scientific paper.

Hi Investor20,

Here's finally a topic we may agree on (partially at least). :)

Opinion: the price of 'closing' schools is high and has been likely underappreciated, especially for the younger cohorts. Over time, this conclusion has grown stronger (with more evidence).

Having said that, the study you mention has VERY serious methodological limitations.

-----

When you spot a serious investment opportunity (i've almost forgotten how this feels like), isn't it useful (and fundamental) to viciously try to kill the thesis from all angles before embracing the occasion with a significant commitment (mental and financial)?

i'm asking because, for the main author of the study, it must have been very difficult to adopt this disconfirming attitude when he initiated and performed the study..

There's hope however. On his Twitter thread, one of the authors of the study had this video:

-----

It feels like i've done my share of tilting at windmills lately and i wonder if the overall investment climate has anything to do with it?

 

"isn't it useful (and fundamental) to viciously try to kill the thesis from all angles before embracing the occasion with a significant commitment"

 

Depends on what hypothesis you are talking about.  Are you talking about the hypothesis that besides economics there is no health harm of lockdowns hypothesis?  Because there are real issues in this hypothesis.

 

https://fortune.com/2020/10/26/covid-19-hunger-food-insecurity-coronavirus/

 

I think we need a real standard for discussion.  Because when HCQ observational studies were presented, there is a demand for "Gold standard" randomized studies.  When over 18 Randomized studies were presented for Ivermectin....I dont know the demand exactly... but "more" is demanded and that many of them are not peer reviewed publications.

 

When I present a peer reviewed JAMA research publication ( a top level medical journal), it  has "serious" problems.

 

So lets get to a standard of evidence and I would be happy to present my arguments with that standard of evidence. 

 

But I cannot with changing standards of evidence.

[spartansaver]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7662136/

Estimation of US Children’s Educational Attainment and Years of Life Lost Associated With Primary School Closures During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic

This decision analytical model found that missed instruction during 2020 could be associated with an estimated 5.53 million years of life lost.

......................................

They were only looking at first lockdown of three months (March to May) and only Children loss of life due to lockdown.

This is a peer reviewed article in JAMA and hence scientific paper.

Hi Investor20,

Here's finally a topic we may agree on (partially at least). :)

Opinion: the price of 'closing' schools is high and has been likely underappreciated, especially for the younger cohorts. Over time, this conclusion has grown stronger (with more evidence).

Having said that, the study you mention has VERY serious methodological limitations.

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When you spot a serious investment opportunity (i've almost forgotten how this feels like), isn't it useful (and fundamental) to viciously try to kill the thesis from all angles before embracing the occasion with a significant commitment (mental and financial)?

i'm asking because, for the main author of the study, it must have been very difficult to adopt this disconfirming attitude when he initiated and performed the study..

There's hope however. On his Twitter thread, one of the authors of the study had this video:

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It feels like i've done my share of tilting at windmills lately and i wonder if the overall investment climate has anything to do with it?

 

Killing a thesis? I'm not having any trouble finding tons of opportunity at relative discounts. Why would anyone want to kill that thesis?

[Jurgis]

Unfortunately this thread's topic thesis is killing relatives without any discounts.  :(