You (finally!) no longer need to hand anyone a negative test in order to travel internationally. You also most definitely do not have to hand it to the FDA for their work solving the bottlenecks they created. Paxlovid remains something that you will probably not by default get, but you can get it if you are sufficiently pushy. Public health has the opinion that if you are low risk, a large (51%?) reduction in your relative risk isn’t even worth continuing a study, so that tells you how much you should care about otherwise reducing your risk.
Italian guy here. Quick reasonable cause for direct correlation between ride distance and mask check: it also correlates with the check of the tickets. For long distance trains you’ll always have you ticket checked a few minutes after boarding. For short distance trains, it will get checked maybe ~50% of the times. For local transportation, maybe ~5% of the times.
A note on Canada dropping the vaxx requirements: Although you are allowed to cross the border if un-vaxxed, you still need to quarantine for 2 weeks in a hotel upon entry to CAN. So unless you can afford a two week vacation entirely out of pocket you are still pretty much banned. Further, the requirement is only suspended, so it might pop back up. John Carter wrote on the matter here: https://barsoom.substack.com/p/still-not-true-or-strong-or-free?s=r
I wouldn't discount the 'public disaster' idea so quickly, nuclear energy was pretty effectively stifled following a few high-profile incidents. If you can't get GPUs burned, maybe you can subject people with lots of GPUs to so much "safety review" they give up on doing things. Not that China would care.
As far as I can tell, there are good reasons to believe it’s an expected value positive treatment based on deaths, at least for people who aren’t young, but might not meet the high risk threshold.
Does this support the contention that vaccination may leave vaccinated people even more vulnerable to infection and reinfection over time?? And what does it mean that that overall immunity may benefit from parts of the coronavirus that are “exposed only during infection.” ?
One (minor) annoyance of my own: the fucking 'mask required' signs will probably NEVER come down.
And, maybe that's fair enough. I _think_, were I to have such a sign, I'd have torn it down once masks weren't required. Maybe most people, e.g. small business owners, just don't want to have to think about it all, e.g. in case they end up having to put the sign back up again later?
Maybe we won't 'really' be 'really done' until small business start taking down those signs.
Is there a 'template' for 'doing the thing' instead of 'talking about the thing'?
One aspect of 'doing the thing' that seems ... tricky to discuss is 'how do we do the thing if we're not allowed to do the thing'? Like ... can we just 'do it anyways'?
Re: I declare defense production act! Hilariously (but in a fake laugh, real pain way) this is how I described its' recent use to a friend... When a presidential determination was made to use the DPA for (*checks notes*) building insulation?!?!
Apparently, it is fairly easy to defeat an official COVID test. So, if the testing regime returns I wouldn't worry too much about having to incur additional costs due to a positive test.
Italian guy here. Quick reasonable cause for direct correlation between ride distance and mask check: it also correlates with the check of the tickets. For long distance trains you’ll always have you ticket checked a few minutes after boarding. For short distance trains, it will get checked maybe ~50% of the times. For local transportation, maybe ~5% of the times.
My primary doctor “wasn’t prescribing paxlovid” for some “reason”. So I called the nyc h&h COVID hotline and got it delivered to me later that night.
Holiday alert - next Monday is Juneteenth, which might cause reporting issues
A note on Canada dropping the vaxx requirements: Although you are allowed to cross the border if un-vaxxed, you still need to quarantine for 2 weeks in a hotel upon entry to CAN. So unless you can afford a two week vacation entirely out of pocket you are still pretty much banned. Further, the requirement is only suspended, so it might pop back up. John Carter wrote on the matter here: https://barsoom.substack.com/p/still-not-true-or-strong-or-free?s=r
I wouldn't discount the 'public disaster' idea so quickly, nuclear energy was pretty effectively stifled following a few high-profile incidents. If you can't get GPUs burned, maybe you can subject people with lots of GPUs to so much "safety review" they give up on doing things. Not that China would care.
(Also, the covid comparison seems nonsense?)
I ran some quick numbers from paxolivids recent press release https://twitter.com/cauchyfriend/status/1536939327581655040?s=21&t=aIit5_35rc4kqDIQ4BLh6g
As far as I can tell, there are good reasons to believe it’s an expected value positive treatment based on deaths, at least for people who aren’t young, but might not meet the high risk threshold.
So glad about the testing requirement, about time!
Zvi, can you look at this paper in Nature? https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq1841
Does this support the contention that vaccination may leave vaccinated people even more vulnerable to infection and reinfection over time?? And what does it mean that that overall immunity may benefit from parts of the coronavirus that are “exposed only during infection.” ?
> Requiring a huge amount of work to be done that doesn’t need to be done, and then doing it, is a cost.
I have been trying to convince colleagues of this for years with little success.
One (minor) annoyance of my own: the fucking 'mask required' signs will probably NEVER come down.
And, maybe that's fair enough. I _think_, were I to have such a sign, I'd have torn it down once masks weren't required. Maybe most people, e.g. small business owners, just don't want to have to think about it all, e.g. in case they end up having to put the sign back up again later?
Maybe we won't 'really' be 'really done' until small business start taking down those signs.
Totally expecting the dril tweet in here
Is there a 'template' for 'doing the thing' instead of 'talking about the thing'?
One aspect of 'doing the thing' that seems ... tricky to discuss is 'how do we do the thing if we're not allowed to do the thing'? Like ... can we just 'do it anyways'?
Aaargh – seems like an infohazard; we're fucked.
>Could it, perhaps, send a strong price signal not to expand production capacity
We need a cabinet-level position to watch out for and mitigate perverse incentives, for any and all government intervention.
Re: I declare defense production act! Hilariously (but in a fake laugh, real pain way) this is how I described its' recent use to a friend... When a presidential determination was made to use the DPA for (*checks notes*) building insulation?!?!
https://www.energy.gov/articles/president-biden-invokes-defense-production-act-accelerate-domestic-manufacturing-clean
Apparently, it is fairly easy to defeat an official COVID test. So, if the testing regime returns I wouldn't worry too much about having to incur additional costs due to a positive test.