I assume the answer is no, but it never hurts to ask: have you encountered any information about the relative that effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna boosters, specifically regarding protection agains infection? Thanks!
There is unlikely to be a substantial difference. On priors Moderna might be slightly more effective at cost of slightly bigger short term side effects.
While I don't disagree with the more general point about environmentalism, I was a bit suspicious of the higher numbers on that carrier bag chart (what, 20,000? Really?) and so I looked up the source.
Sure enough, there is something rather fishy. To calculate these figures, the researchers evaluated all kinds of bag on many metrics, ranging from carbon emissions to human toxicity (there are about 20 all told). But they then obtained a "combined" score for each bag, by taking the *maximum* ratio over the basic disposable plastic bag! That's blatantly unfair. Cotton bags aren't really 7000 times worse than plastic bags overall; they're just 7000 times worse on whichever measure they perform worst at.
If you're only concerned, say, about climate change, the actual figure for a cotton bag is only 50 times, which is quite reasonable (I do in fact use cotton bags for shopping, mostly for aesthetic reasons and I've certainly used them more than 50 times).
Disappointing. OurWorldInData has been very good on other fronts, and I would have expected this kind of thing to usually be caught by the replies from where I found it. I will update accordingly.
(I do still expect that the conclusion is directionally correct)
No argument with the overall theme of signalling vs. actual benefit, but LCA is based on a stack of assumptions that really limit its real world usefulness. Taking a snap shot of a supply chain / production system and then basing your decisions off of it always being like that is... Not Great. Take solar panels for example. The main argument I hear about them (grounded in an LCA) is that it takes so much fossil fuel energy to produce them. Well, I wonder what kind of product we would need in order to produce energy without fossil fuels....
They're also trying to combine a diverse set of impacts into a single metric which is obviously fraught, but it's also limited to downsides that we know about and have measured. Organisms are highly complex systems, evolved to metabolize and interact with a specific context of materials. What are the odds that introducing a new material to them is beneficial/neutral/harmful. Make a random change to a well functioning machine if you're curious. So then you can abstract our principles that let you operate in reasoned ways before detailed toxicity analyses are completed. Like: let's try to minimize the amount of foreign material we introduce into ecosystems.
I guess it just rubbed me the wrong way how certain the quoted individual was in their conclusions when the cited source was so limited. A real conversation about the tradeoffs between cotton vs. paper vs. plastic bags would be about which materials we least want to propagate out into the world and how we think we can continue developing more sustainable production / supply chains for each in the future. Paper made from bamboo! Compostable plastics! Cotton grown with renewables! Lots of interesting opportunities for investment once you break out of LCA induced temporal myopia.
I had not, and I won't be covering it unless it gets talked about more.
It is not reasonable to count all adverse effects from vaccination - even if they are all 'real' in some sense - and compare them to only risk of hospitalizations. They exclude risk of further infections, they exclude all forms of long covid, etc etc. That's what they say they do in the introduction and abstract.
OK I'm placing a call, on proving sports betting is net good. Sure maybe some of you smart people can take advantage of us dumb f...s. But how is that net good? And what's the 51% in NYS? What's the 'take' by the betting places? Is it 'the house' takes 5% and NYS takes 5% or in NY the house gets 2.5% and NYS gets 2.5%? Do I get better odds from draft kings in Las Vegas? I must admit I hate the way sports betting has taken over AM sports talk radio.
51% of net profits. I don't listen to sports talk radio - the closest thing I watch is College Gameday, where I think there is about the right amount of gambling talk and it helps find the interesting games/situations/disagreements. It provides enriching context.
The core argument for sports betting being good is that
(1) many people enjoy the experience of having money on the game
(2) it gives you much better 'bang-for-your-buck' than rival gambling options
(3) it enhances people's understanding of sports context, which people enjoy and value
(4) it is a skill game, so it encourages development of lots of skills, many are useful
A full argument would of course be a post. And I agree it can go too far, and turn net negative if allowed to become too dominant.
OK fair enough. Betting increases people's enjoyment. I work in a bar/restaurant, people enjoy betting on the random numbers generated by NYS. It seems dumb to me, but people do enjoy it, so it's a net good? IDK. It would be 'better' to me if they bet against each other so a zero sum game... rather than giving money to NYS.
I'm not sure about 3.) I guess if you have some money on the game you are paying more attention... this seems a little cyclic. You wouldn't observe as much without the money...
4.) This seems like the niche area that appeals to you and a few others. Which is fine. I only care about 'my teams' (Buffalo). And care little about other teams except as they relate to the chances of my team making the big dance. I will sometimes bet against my team. The reason being that if they do lose I at least get a small amount of joy. (~$20) from the loss. (And there is always the next game.) I do hope you will do another sports post in the next few months. I've got a meta sports/happiness question that I'd like to raise with you and your readers.
>My decision means I will officially not be ‘up to date’ on my booster. Neither will be (for a time) Dr. Fauci, despite his willingness to get a third booster.
Just out of curiosity, given that we had similar discussion here last year and you are now not up to date on your vaccines: do you think private businesses should have the right to
a) query your "up to date" status, (b) deny you access based on it or (c) fire you based on it?
I don't want to troll, but I'm curious to hear if your thinking has changed. The discussion I'm thinking of had reasoning like: some epsilon more risk of spreading covid => a a long chain of covid cases that could have been prevented had you been "up to date" => businesses should reasonably be allowed to ban the unvaccinated.
Yes. And both customers and employees have the right to punish the business for that, which would doubtless dominate any reasonable cost-benefit analysis.
Everyone's talking price. Obviously if someone is dangerously mentally ill you wouldn't ignore it. I presume any intrusive tests would backfire pretty aggressively.
I assume the answer is no, but it never hurts to ask: have you encountered any information about the relative that effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna boosters, specifically regarding protection agains infection? Thanks!
There is unlikely to be a substantial difference. On priors Moderna might be slightly more effective at cost of slightly bigger short term side effects.
"Unfortunately, I got a rebound infection."
I think this para got missed in the block-quotes?
While I don't disagree with the more general point about environmentalism, I was a bit suspicious of the higher numbers on that carrier bag chart (what, 20,000? Really?) and so I looked up the source.
Sure enough, there is something rather fishy. To calculate these figures, the researchers evaluated all kinds of bag on many metrics, ranging from carbon emissions to human toxicity (there are about 20 all told). But they then obtained a "combined" score for each bag, by taking the *maximum* ratio over the basic disposable plastic bag! That's blatantly unfair. Cotton bags aren't really 7000 times worse than plastic bags overall; they're just 7000 times worse on whichever measure they perform worst at.
If you're only concerned, say, about climate change, the actual figure for a cotton bag is only 50 times, which is quite reasonable (I do in fact use cotton bags for shopping, mostly for aesthetic reasons and I've certainly used them more than 50 times).
Disappointing. OurWorldInData has been very good on other fronts, and I would have expected this kind of thing to usually be caught by the replies from where I found it. I will update accordingly.
(I do still expect that the conclusion is directionally correct)
No argument with the overall theme of signalling vs. actual benefit, but LCA is based on a stack of assumptions that really limit its real world usefulness. Taking a snap shot of a supply chain / production system and then basing your decisions off of it always being like that is... Not Great. Take solar panels for example. The main argument I hear about them (grounded in an LCA) is that it takes so much fossil fuel energy to produce them. Well, I wonder what kind of product we would need in order to produce energy without fossil fuels....
They're also trying to combine a diverse set of impacts into a single metric which is obviously fraught, but it's also limited to downsides that we know about and have measured. Organisms are highly complex systems, evolved to metabolize and interact with a specific context of materials. What are the odds that introducing a new material to them is beneficial/neutral/harmful. Make a random change to a well functioning machine if you're curious. So then you can abstract our principles that let you operate in reasoned ways before detailed toxicity analyses are completed. Like: let's try to minimize the amount of foreign material we introduce into ecosystems.
I guess it just rubbed me the wrong way how certain the quoted individual was in their conclusions when the cited source was so limited. A real conversation about the tradeoffs between cotton vs. paper vs. plastic bags would be about which materials we least want to propagate out into the world and how we think we can continue developing more sustainable production / supply chains for each in the future. Paper made from bamboo! Compostable plastics! Cotton grown with renewables! Lots of interesting opportunities for investment once you break out of LCA induced temporal myopia.
There's a followup here, more details and more dimensions: https://twitter.com/_HannahRitchie/status/1569619498138836994
"Prediction from last week (HOLIDAY): 420k deaths (-20%) and 2,550 deaths (-20%)."
"420k deaths" should be "420k cases"?
You ask what odds you could get on Covid rebounds. Perhaps this Manifold market would be of interest? https://manifold.markets/JonathanNankivell/will-i-have-a-nonpaxlovid-covid-reb
re: boosters, have you seen this preprint?
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4206070
I had not, and I won't be covering it unless it gets talked about more.
It is not reasonable to count all adverse effects from vaccination - even if they are all 'real' in some sense - and compare them to only risk of hospitalizations. They exclude risk of further infections, they exclude all forms of long covid, etc etc. That's what they say they do in the introduction and abstract.
Not that a booster mandate isn't dumb.
OK I'm placing a call, on proving sports betting is net good. Sure maybe some of you smart people can take advantage of us dumb f...s. But how is that net good? And what's the 51% in NYS? What's the 'take' by the betting places? Is it 'the house' takes 5% and NYS takes 5% or in NY the house gets 2.5% and NYS gets 2.5%? Do I get better odds from draft kings in Las Vegas? I must admit I hate the way sports betting has taken over AM sports talk radio.
51% of net profits. I don't listen to sports talk radio - the closest thing I watch is College Gameday, where I think there is about the right amount of gambling talk and it helps find the interesting games/situations/disagreements. It provides enriching context.
The core argument for sports betting being good is that
(1) many people enjoy the experience of having money on the game
(2) it gives you much better 'bang-for-your-buck' than rival gambling options
(3) it enhances people's understanding of sports context, which people enjoy and value
(4) it is a skill game, so it encourages development of lots of skills, many are useful
A full argument would of course be a post. And I agree it can go too far, and turn net negative if allowed to become too dominant.
OK fair enough. Betting increases people's enjoyment. I work in a bar/restaurant, people enjoy betting on the random numbers generated by NYS. It seems dumb to me, but people do enjoy it, so it's a net good? IDK. It would be 'better' to me if they bet against each other so a zero sum game... rather than giving money to NYS.
I'm not sure about 3.) I guess if you have some money on the game you are paying more attention... this seems a little cyclic. You wouldn't observe as much without the money...
4.) This seems like the niche area that appeals to you and a few others. Which is fine. I only care about 'my teams' (Buffalo). And care little about other teams except as they relate to the chances of my team making the big dance. I will sometimes bet against my team. The reason being that if they do lose I at least get a small amount of joy. (~$20) from the loss. (And there is always the next game.) I do hope you will do another sports post in the next few months. I've got a meta sports/happiness question that I'd like to raise with you and your readers.
>My decision means I will officially not be ‘up to date’ on my booster. Neither will be (for a time) Dr. Fauci, despite his willingness to get a third booster.
Just out of curiosity, given that we had similar discussion here last year and you are now not up to date on your vaccines: do you think private businesses should have the right to
a) query your "up to date" status, (b) deny you access based on it or (c) fire you based on it?
I don't want to troll, but I'm curious to hear if your thinking has changed. The discussion I'm thinking of had reasoning like: some epsilon more risk of spreading covid => a a long chain of covid cases that could have been prevented had you been "up to date" => businesses should reasonably be allowed to ban the unvaccinated.
Yes. And both customers and employees have the right to punish the business for that, which would doubtless dominate any reasonable cost-benefit analysis.
Thanks for the response. Do you feel the same way for other health-related risks that may or may not affect others (e.g. mental illness)?
Everyone's talking price. Obviously if someone is dangerously mentally ill you wouldn't ignore it. I presume any intrusive tests would backfire pretty aggressively.
What're the main costs of getting the new booster in your mind?