Sailer writes over at Takimag, because he is too controversial for most outlets, but he does tend to be data driven. He claims that he mostly gets in trouble for just noticing stuff you aren't supposed to notice, particularly on the issues of race, gender, IQ, education, crime, China, and how-people-contradict-what-they-said-just-last-year. Y'know, unimportant topics.
He weighs in on the vaccines, what has happened so far on CoVid, and what we can expect to happen over the next few months.
As Tyler Cowen has pointed out, it’s very hard to fight coronavirus to a draw. It’s probably beyond our skill set. Instead, at any point in time, the place where you live is either winning over it or losing to it.
That is the nature of exponential equations, which often look quiescent and harmless. and then completely out of control. Sailer is very good on how big the virus is, and how big it isn't. Very clear data and graphs.
The update from the Veterans Home up here is 35 dead, BTW. The study showing that much of Covid has been driven by people working at more than one nursing home was a facepalm for me. I had not seen it coming, but it made immediate sense. That is the way that industry works, with many staff hired only part-time so that they do not have to be provided with benefits, so they work at multiple locations. This is also true of consultants that are not needed for 40 hours a week, such as physical therapists, respiratory therapists, or maintenance people. Those often have 10-20 hours a week at a few places. I know some of them, but I never connected the dots. I may have gotten far enough to feel sorry for them because they had to expose themselves to risk so much just to make a living, but I didn't swing that the other way.
While you are at Taki's, BTW (which you should go over to once a month anyway) enjoy Ann Coulter getting upset at just about everyone in Georgia: the Republicans wondering whether they should vote, the election officials who assured the NYT that everything was fine because they had procedures in place (and, had they followed those procedures it might have been), and the elected Republicans who are more irritated with Trump than their own state. Coulter is absolutely no fan of Trump, but she knows how to keep her eye on the prize. Right now she sounds like she's going to get on a midnight train and start smacking folks around.
Yeah, it's a good spot for that song, isn't it?
This should be the right URL for the top one: https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/search?q=Tyler+Cowen
ReplyDeleteI think you mentioned before, and I've heard other people say it in passing, that the fundamental assumption in decision making has and continues to be off the mark. The focus is on 'necessary' when it should be on 'safe', and the corollary of 'how can we make this function safe enough in relation to how necessary it is?'
ReplyDeleteMy nephew works for Best Buy and mentioned last spring that one of the first things they did in constructing a pandemic operating plan was forbid floating schedules. I believe they did it to simplify contact tracing but it has obvious benefits in limiting the amount of contact between crews on different shifts.
Another good example. Yes, we see things differently when we think about managing risk rather than eliminating it. Our minds just go to different places.
ReplyDeleteThere is lso Jorge Luis Borges "The Garden of Forking Paths."
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Forking_Paths