12 Comments
Comment removed
Jan 4, 2022
Comment removed
Expand full comment

"Read this one guy to get EDUCATED" is never, ever persuasive.

Did you know that?

Read me and get educated about it, I guess?

Expand full comment

Based on this Sleazy E’s comment history on ACT, I don’t think engaging them will be productive.

Expand full comment

I'm in Colorado, and looking at these numbers: https://covid19.colorado.gov/data . About halfway down the page there are stats about "variants of concern." They seem to show that there's virtually no Omicron in CO. Can that possibly be true?

Expand full comment

I'd presume that the "Beta" is Omicron there. It's same as everywhere else.

Expand full comment

While a delta hospital patient had difficulty in breathing, what are the problems of a omicron hospital patient?

Expand full comment

What is your take on Mantic Markets? No real money yet, but they got an AXC grant, and have an operational website that when I was playing around worked well enough for me with their play money.

They already have gone and made questions for many of your predictions, and I made $95 mantic bucks trusting your confidence level over the "market".

Expand full comment

They've invited me to participate, and I'm considering it when I have time. Obviously first best is to use Polymarket or another real-money playground.

Expand full comment

Hold on, what are these TSA scanners (and how do I opt out)!? I may have heard them mentioned in some ACX or adjacent FDA piece.

Expand full comment

So could we just move to no testing and stay home if you have symptoms for everything in society beyond hospitals and elder care facilities? They are threatening to go virtual for school where I am. I don't get the point. We were just all home for the holidays and everyone go Omicron. Wouldn't wearing a mask for 6 hours in school be better than your exposure while living life at home which means going to friends houses? Even if it isn't the costs just can't be worth it for a population that doesn't get sick.

Expand full comment

Thoughts on that coming tomorrow, but yeah, I don't much see the point either, except it's impossible to do otherwise.

Expand full comment

Impossible because of politic pressure? Agreed. I sympathize with the neurotic who see constant videos about threats to their children on social media but being in a liberal suburb the fears of long covid and unvaccinated 4 year olds are just over the top.

Expand full comment

I started wondering whether it's even a positive to try avoiding omicron right now. And I mean ignoring the obvious costs like having to hunker down.

Seems not implausible we might never get omicron-specific booster. If new variant which might get more severe riffs off omicron, being omicron infected would give some additional protection.

If the model of a steady state is like common cold coronaviri where everyone gets infected a few times over with a range of strains as a kid thus getting a pretty robust immunity, then "skipping a strain" especially one this mild sounds counterproductive.

By now I mean in this wave, waiting few weeks for hospital capacity reasons might of course be prudent.

So, would be curious to hear about: 1) chances of omicron specific booster in 2022 2) current status and timelines of pan-coronavirus vaccines 3) any data on impact of cross-variant exposure on protection (ie, how is say beta which I thought had some of the key omicron non-delta mutations so how did beta-exposed fare for omicron.. doubt we have enough data, but wonder if all those people working with sequencing data and tracking covid evolutionary tree are saying anything relevant at all; maybe simpler even, what's the status on say past immunity vs vaccine vs combo against omicron and/or delta)

Expand full comment