(2022-08-18) ZviM Covid 8/18/22 CDC Admits Mistakes

Zvi Mowshowitz: Covid-19 8/18/22: CDC Admits Mistakes

Executive Summary
CDC finally fully gives up on six foot social distancing and other measures.
CDC admits some failure, promises reforms that seem potentially promising.
New study finds potential biological markers for Long Covid.

The Numbers

Physical World Modeling

Almost no children under 5 are getting vaccinated, even weaker ‘than experts feared.’ Doses are being discarded due to lack of demand. This should not be a fear so much as a revealed preference.

This raises the question of why we insisted in so many crazy precautions for these same young children for so long, in ways that I strongly believe did serious damage to their development and well-being. They were never at risk and everyone knew this well enough not to bother doing much about it when finally given the opportunity.

The Long Long Covid Saga

look at this (paper):

It has been two years, and finally someone is lining up biological markers with patient reported outcomes

heavily correlated with case severity

the theory is that Long Covid is the result of a screwed up immune response, as has been commonly theorized

My chances of something real happening some of the time has gone up

It is still small sample size and I’d still like to see it replicate before I draw too many other conclusions

In other long Covid news, from Nature, still no treatments for Long Covid. It turns out if something is amorphous and of unclear amount of physical reality, and presents as a grab bag of lots of different problems, it’s hard to figure out what to try doing about it.

Masks On, Masks Off

CDC more or less says pandemic over, move along, nothing to see here.

It also continues to recommend that people wear face masks indoors in about half the country. I am confused why one would continue recommending that.

most moves will be seen by the public as damaging to their trust, since even when it is the right move it highlights older incorrect moves.

Incentive compatibility is crucial. A little bit of ‘buy you are still making the situation worse even if you’re doing it less’ still is necessary at times.

School-based advice improved markedly.

It is vital that we are able to take yes for an answer from people who have previously answered no. What changed? Their minds changed. The social and political situations changed. The path of the pandemic changed. People came to their senses. We need to ensure they are happy with their decision to do this.

CDC also seems to have ditched the six foot rule in favor of reasonableness

Next Time, CDC – Next Time

CDC also quietly acknowledged that their response to Covid-19 ‘did not meet expectations,’ and there will perhaps be an attempt to do better next time.

The whole post is a clear case of the very good news of an admission of bad news.

I agree that these are positive, badly needed changes. Despite that, at least for now, no, we are totally doing the same crazy stuff over and over again

In Other News

Latest call for investigation into alternate possible origins for Covid-19. I strongly agree at this point that we do not know the origins of Covid-19 and that this is due in large part to a failure to investigate. And that we continue to do exactly the types of work that could damn well create another similar pandemic in the future, with many things in the same reference class being far, far worse if they were to happen.

In the absence of better information, we must treat such research as if there is a decent chance it created Covid-19.

Will MacAskill has been hyping germicidal UV on his book tour and it is known to physically work. We don’t know if it is a good long term plan given potential long term effects because we haven’t bothered to figure it out, but getting sick also has long term effects, so this is definitely understudied.

Monkeypox

*Math time. 12 deaths in 35,000 cases is a case fatality rate of 0.03%. Given the state of testing, the IFR is going to come in quite a bit lower than the CFR. The situation in France where testing was adequate is the exception, not the rule.

While this still is not nothing, this once again emphasizes that as an individual you are not in that much danger statistically speaking. Yes, we may have many doublings ahead of us, but this has so far killed about one person in a billion.*

Once again, if you are not in the MSM category, major behavioral modifications simply do not make any sense, and any stress or worry is misplaced.

We are not using the vaccine distribution system we got for Covid-19 for the monkeypox vaccine, and the whole thing is quite the giant mess. Also it seems no one has any idea how to ‘take a fifth of a dose out of a vial’ as this is beyond our powers of measurement.

China

The continued obsession with surfaces and other not-especially-relevant secondary vectors of infection indicates an unwillingness to learn or to optimize actual Covid-19 prevention over looking like you’re doing Super Hardcore Covid Prevention. Testing fish and blaming this on ‘trade with foreign boats’ is a distinctly lower threshold of sanity.

Not Covid

PredictIt is being shut down. I was going to write a full post on this but Scott Alexander and Chris from Karlstack covered all of it and there isn’t much more to say.

Paper claims that often used random number generators that look fine are sufficiently biased that they mess up chemical Monte Carlo simulations. Proposed solution is to test a source of randomness by simulating well-understood results via Monty Carlo simulation to see if you get the right answer. Which I love because that answer seems like it has to not be The Way but I suppose it would work.

DC childcare workers required by law to have college degrees, presumably so that when liberal arts majors end up working in daycare they can tell themselves they are not overqualified? I will accept DC merely doing this to itself rather than imposing such a requirement on the rest of us.

Good News, Everyone

The FDA will now allow hearing aids to be sold over the counter. The FDA announcement on this is good, but it would be much better if they realized the result generalizes.

This only took five years after a bill requiring the FDA to do this, and over one year after Biden signed an executive order for them to do it. They might even be available as early as mid-October.

Permitting reform is in the works

If we want to expand wind farm production, we don’t have to spend money, all we have to do is make it legal to build them.

A reminder that you can and should do various stuff without worrying too much about whether it is the best possible stuff to do, and that comparative advantage is a thing.

Some of you should do one thing, some of you should do the other. The world would be a better place if this type of public advice from people like Sam Altman and Paul Graham was followed more often, and those that did follow it were more rewarded and funded than my model says they are, including by those same people.