A massive waive of cases continues to hit China, as one would expect given last week. There is also a new variant, XBB.1.5, that is spreading rapidly starting in New York, so it’s time once again for our favorite game show, ‘how much trouble will this new variant cause?’
> Be aware that these efforts continue, and that by the logic underlying Public Health left unchecked, ordinary life and its joys would cease to be. In some places, this seems to be succeeding, such as in some dance events.
KN95s ninety percent effective and N95s ca 100 percent? Has Wachter ever worn these masks? This is completely unbelievable. What is his basis for saying this?
I’m begging, please don’t do this: “Zika vaccine for **assigned females at birth**.” This is a red-flag of anti-scientific nonsense, and it’s so painful to see it here.
> We dropped down to the 1hr a week default for many reasons, including cost and therapist availability, not because it works better.
Granted, measuring stuff like this is always a bit tricky - adherence rates, style fit etc all play a major role. But while I'm not super familiar with the evidence, my own knowledge (non-clinician but well educated in psychology) plus my skimming of the literature suggests that by many measures, CBT does work better than psychoanalytical approaches.
Now, it's not too hard to find studies arguing that psychoanalysis or related approaches work better, but in my view they tend to have pretty serious flaws in how they're conducted, so I place less weight on them.
Of course, the comment does not argue that CBT or whatever is less effective than PA, just that that wasn't the motivation. And that may well be the case - that's a whole other skill set to determine, although my intuition is that things like that are never for one single reason, and the multiple reasons tend to bleed into each other. If CBT works faster (for example), that makes it cheaper, which makes it more accessible, which means we would skew that way even if end outcomes are comparable.
Regarding the last part, whenever I think about aging and causes of death I usually lump intentional deaths of all kinds into their own category because they're a matter of humans being too capable at executing their intent (pun not intended) instead of not capable enough. This category in general is focused on far too much, perhaps as part of an overarching cultural narrative that the way to solve problems is to stop something instead of start something (and innovate in medical care, etc).
I'd say the most important deaths to consider as a society in the present time are those causes which increase exponentially with age, because there are so damn many of them and the root cause of a slowly decaying body steals lots of quality away during life as well (while accidental and intentional deaths tend to be rather sudden).
The sesame thing rhymes with ongoing worldwide egg shortage, which I have the pleasure of re-explaining to people daily while working in grocery...
*People don't actually want to pay the market-clearing price to get what they want (certified sesameless goods, eggs)
*A company that raised prices to offer such goods anyway would likely be accused of "profiteering" or "price gouging"
*The real culprit is systemic design choices far above the paygrade of even large companies to meaningfully affect; sesameless goods means no mass mechanized production or economies of scale, adequate eggs during avian flu pandemic means no factory farming. Loops back to "people won't pay enough to change it".
*The optimal amount of sesame or bird flu is not zero.
Although it raises an important question, why isn't more attention/funding paid to treating allergies or preventing people from getting them in the first place? More and more common ingredients showing up in the Majorly Harms Substantial Numbers Of People category sure seems like heading for a future with significantly diminished food choices, population, or both. Seems bad!
> Be aware that these efforts continue, and that by the logic underlying Public Health left unchecked, ordinary life and its joys would cease to be. In some places, this seems to be succeeding, such as in some dance events.
Also many MTG events.
> by the time they exist their flights
Typo, "exists" should be "exit".
KN95s ninety percent effective and N95s ca 100 percent? Has Wachter ever worn these masks? This is completely unbelievable. What is his basis for saying this?
I’m begging, please don’t do this: “Zika vaccine for **assigned females at birth**.” This is a red-flag of anti-scientific nonsense, and it’s so painful to see it here.
Correction: the Zika trial takes place in Baltimore, not DC.
> We dropped down to the 1hr a week default for many reasons, including cost and therapist availability, not because it works better.
Granted, measuring stuff like this is always a bit tricky - adherence rates, style fit etc all play a major role. But while I'm not super familiar with the evidence, my own knowledge (non-clinician but well educated in psychology) plus my skimming of the literature suggests that by many measures, CBT does work better than psychoanalytical approaches.
https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.2013.12121511
https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.2013.12081125
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005796715000686
Now, it's not too hard to find studies arguing that psychoanalysis or related approaches work better, but in my view they tend to have pretty serious flaws in how they're conducted, so I place less weight on them.
Of course, the comment does not argue that CBT or whatever is less effective than PA, just that that wasn't the motivation. And that may well be the case - that's a whole other skill set to determine, although my intuition is that things like that are never for one single reason, and the multiple reasons tend to bleed into each other. If CBT works faster (for example), that makes it cheaper, which makes it more accessible, which means we would skew that way even if end outcomes are comparable.
Regarding the last part, whenever I think about aging and causes of death I usually lump intentional deaths of all kinds into their own category because they're a matter of humans being too capable at executing their intent (pun not intended) instead of not capable enough. This category in general is focused on far too much, perhaps as part of an overarching cultural narrative that the way to solve problems is to stop something instead of start something (and innovate in medical care, etc).
I'd say the most important deaths to consider as a society in the present time are those causes which increase exponentially with age, because there are so damn many of them and the root cause of a slowly decaying body steals lots of quality away during life as well (while accidental and intentional deaths tend to be rather sudden).
The sesame thing rhymes with ongoing worldwide egg shortage, which I have the pleasure of re-explaining to people daily while working in grocery...
*People don't actually want to pay the market-clearing price to get what they want (certified sesameless goods, eggs)
*A company that raised prices to offer such goods anyway would likely be accused of "profiteering" or "price gouging"
*The real culprit is systemic design choices far above the paygrade of even large companies to meaningfully affect; sesameless goods means no mass mechanized production or economies of scale, adequate eggs during avian flu pandemic means no factory farming. Loops back to "people won't pay enough to change it".
*The optimal amount of sesame or bird flu is not zero.
Although it raises an important question, why isn't more attention/funding paid to treating allergies or preventing people from getting them in the first place? More and more common ingredients showing up in the Majorly Harms Substantial Numbers Of People category sure seems like heading for a future with significantly diminished food choices, population, or both. Seems bad!
In case we need something to gawk at in your next covid update: https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-activism/the-case-for-wearing-masks-forever
(I had not heard of "the people's CDC" before this article, and I hope that continues.)