1,864 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2020
    1. Horwitz argued a fairly radical point, which I think never received wide enough recognition due to the subject matter and his extremely difficult (dense and dry) style.  He said, “I seek to show that one of the crucial choices made during the antebellum period was to promote economic growth primarily through the legal, not the tax, system, a choice which had major consequences for the distribution of wealth and power in American society”

      I'll have to add this book to my to read stack.

    1. Opportunity bargains, however, are not an inexhaustible resource. The crucial question, says the Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti, is whether the opportunity in these places derives from “rival goods”—institutions, such as schools, with limited capacity—or “non-rival goods,” such as local culture, which are harder to deplete. When new people move in, what happens to opportunity? And even if an influx of families doesn’t disrupt the opportunity magic, people aren’t always eager to pick up and leave their homes. Moving breaks ties with family, friends, schools, churches, and other organizations. “The real conundrum is how to address the larger structural realities of inequality,” says the Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson, “and not just try to move people around

      It's all about the value of links!

    1. A scientific review of the science behind lockdown concludes the policy was a MISTAKE & will have caused MORE deaths from Covid-19

      Take Away: The new scientific paper confirms earlier modeling work and should not be interpreted as a detailed prediction for future deaths due to the ongoing pandemic.

      The Claim: "A scientific review of the science behind lockdown concludes the policy was a MISTAKE & will have caused MORE deaths from Covid-19"

      The Evidence: The scientific process involves replication and confirmation of experiments and studies. A new paper replicates and expands on an early modeling study of the COVID-19 pandemic in England (1). Their findings support the earlier results. However, there are limitations to the replication paper, which does not accurately reflect the current state of the pandemic response and does not make detailed predictions for a second wave of infections and deaths.

      A recent expert response to the paper further explains (2):

      "It needs to be stressed that all the simulations assume that interventions are only in place for 3 months (18th April – 18th July) and then completely relaxed. This gives rise to a strange set of scenarios where a second wave is allowed to progress in an uncontrolled manner."

      “It is this that leads to the counter-intuitive headline finding “that school closures would result in more overall covid-19 deaths than no school closures” – actually what the authors find is that a short period of intense lock-down (including the closure of schools) leads to a large second wave if it is allowed to run with no controls. To be fair the authors do highlight this in the paper, but it is not in the reported press release." -Prof Matt Keeling, Professor of Populations and Disease, University of Warwick

      Sources:

      (1) https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m3588

      (2) https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-reanalysis-of-model-used-for-imperial-report-9-and-impact-of-school-closures/

    1. The model predicted that school closures and isolation of younger people would increase the total number of deaths, albeit postponed to a second and subsequent waves. The findings of this study suggest that prompt interventions were shown to be highly effective at reducing peak demand for intensive care unit (ICU) beds but also prolong the epidemic, in some cases resulting in more deaths long term. This happens because covid-19 related mortality is highly skewed towards older age groups. In the absence of an effective vaccination programme, none of the proposed mitigation strategies in the UK would reduce the predicted total number of deaths below 200 000.

      Take away: This model excludes the possibility of vaccination. As many vaccines are in stage three clinical trials, the conclusion that more people will die from closing schools, etc. will most likely not be realized.

      The claim: School closures and isolation of younger people will increase total number of deaths from second and subsequent waves of COVID-19 when restrictions are lifted.

      The evidence: This model predicts more deaths from the combination of place closures such as schools, case isolations, household quarantine, and social distancing of over 70s than for the combination of case isolation, household quarantine, and social distancing for over 70s. The majority of the deaths for the combination of place closures, case isolations, household quarantine, and social distancing of over 70s occur once the restrictions are lifted. This model excludes the possibility of a vaccine reducing the size of the second wave.

      At least ten companies have a COVID-19 vaccine in the final stage (Phase III) of clinical trials (1). Therefore a model which excludes vaccination will most likely not be accurate to reality once a vaccine is widely administered.

      Source:

      1 https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines

  2. Sep 2020
    1. Hennessy, E. A., Acabchuk, R., Arnold, P. A., Dunn, A. G., Foo, Y. Z., Johnson, B. T., Geange, S. R., Haddaway, N. R., Nakagawa, S., Mapanga, W., Mengersen, K., Page, M. J., Sánchez-Tójar, A., Welch, V., & McGuinness, L. A. (2020). Ensuring Prevention Science Research is Synthesis-Ready for Immediate and Lasting Scientific Impact [Preprint]. MetaArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31222/osf.io/ptg9j

    1. ReconfigBehSci on Twitter: “having spent a few days looking at ‘debate’ about COVID policy on lay twitter (not the conspiracy stuff, just the ‘we should all be Sweden’ discussions), the single most jarring (and worrying) thing I noticed is that posters seem completely undeterred by self contradiction 1/3” / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved September 23, 2020, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1308340430170456064

    1. There are two possible approaches to build widespread SARS-CoV-2 immunity: (1) a mass vaccination campaign, which requires the development of an effective and safe vaccine, or (2) natural immunization of global populations with the virus over time. However, the consequences of the latter are serious and far-reaching—a large fraction of the human population would need to become infected with the virus, and millions would succumb to it.

      Take away: Mass infection without vaccination to achieve herd immunity will result in millions of deaths based on the observed death rate and may not result in herd immunity due to virus mutation. Historically, vaccination results in less deaths than the disease.

      The claim: Herd immunity from widespread disease instead of vaccination will lead to many people dying.

      The evidence: Approximately 50-67% of a given population is estimated to need to be infected for herd immunity to COVID-19 to exist which will result in millions of deaths. This is supported by additional publications (1, 2). This number assumes that the virus will not mutate to the point where re-infection is possible. If mutation occurs, COVID could become established in the general population similar to influenza or the common cold (3). A third publication estimates a needed infected percentage of 29-74% (4). These publications support the statement that millions will die if herd immunity is achieved via infection without vaccination. Historically, vaccination results in fewer deaths/disease on a population level than the disease for which the vaccine is designed to prevent (5-7).

      Sources:

      1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7314002/

      2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7262166/pdf/JMV-9999-na.pdf

      3 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7164482/

      4 https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/A1480DAE803D4CD4A3E9F79B82309584/S1935789320001913a.pdf/covid19_reflections.pdf

      5 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28708957/

      6 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29668817/

      7 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12531323/

    1. Jesse Keenan, an urban-planning and climate-change specialist then at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, who advises the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission on market hazards from climate change. Keenan, who is now an associate professor of real estate at Tulane University’s School of Architecture, had been in the news last year for projecting where people might move to — suggesting that Duluth, Minnesota, for instance, should brace for a coming real estate boom as climate migrants move north.

      Why can't we project additional places like this and begin investing in infrastructure and growth in those places?

    2. That’s what happened in Florida. Hurricane Andrew reduced parts of cities to landfill and cost insurers nearly $16 billion in payouts. Many insurance companies, recognizing the likelihood that it would happen again, declined to renew policies and left the state. So the Florida Legislature created a state-run company to insure properties itself, preventing both an exodus and an economic collapse by essentially pretending that the climate vulnerabilities didn’t exist.

      This is an interesting and telling example.

    1. Take away: People are infectious for only part of the time they test positive. The tests for COVID-19 were granted emergency status by the FDA so some debate concerning the most ideal number of cycles is to be expected. It is worth noting that the FDA has the disclaimer "Negative results do not preclude 2019-nCoV infection and should not be used as the sole basis for treatment or other patient management decisions. Negative results must be combined with clinical observations, patient history, and epidemiological information (2)."

      The claim: Up to 90 percent of people diagnosed with coronavirus may not be carrying enough of it to infect anyone else

      The evidence: Per Walsh et al. (1), SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19) is most likely infectious if the number of PCR cycles is <24 and the symptom onset to test is <8 days. RT-PCR detects the RNA, not the infectious virus. Therefore, setting the cycle threshold at 37-40 cycles will most likely result in detecting some samples with virus which is not infectious. As the PCR tests were granted emergency use by the FDA (samples include 2-9), it is not surprising that some debate exists currently about where the cycle threshold should be. Thresholds need to be set and validated for dozens of PCR tests currently in use. If identifying only infectious individuals is the goal, a lower cycle number may be justified. If detection of as many cases as possible to get closer to the most accurate death rate is the goal, setting the cycle threshold at 37-40 makes sense. A lower threshold will result in fewer COVID-19 positive samples being identified. It is worth noting that the emergency use approval granted by the FDA includes the disclaimer that a negative test does not guarantee that a person is not infected with COVID-19. RNA degrades easily. If samples are not kept cold or properly processed, the virus can degrade and result in a false negative result.

      Source: 1 https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa638/5842165

      2 https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download

      3 https://www.fda.gov/media/138150/download

      4 https://www.fda.gov/media/137120/download

      5 https://www.fda.gov/media/136231/download

      6 https://www.fda.gov/media/136472/download

      7 https://www.fda.gov/media/139279/download

      8 https://www.fda.gov/media/136314/download

      9 https://www.fda.gov/media/140776/download

  3. Aug 2020
    1. Lozano, R., Fullman, N., Mumford, J. E., Knight, M., Barthelemy, C. M., Abbafati, C., Abbastabar, H., Abd-Allah, F., Abdollahi, M., Abedi, A., Abolhassani, H., Abosetugn, A. E., Abreu, L. G., Abrigo, M. R. M., Haimed, A. K. A., Abushouk, A. I., Adabi, M., Adebayo, O. M., Adekanmbi, V., … Murray, C. J. L. (2020). Measuring universal health coverage based on an index of effective coverage of health services in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. The Lancet, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30750-9

    1. Ray, E. L., Wattanachit, N., Niemi, J., Kanji, A. H., House, K., Cramer, E. Y., Bracher, J., Zheng, A., Yamana, T. K., Xiong, X., Woody, S., Wang, Y., Wang, L., Walraven, R. L., Tomar, V., Sherratt, K., Sheldon, D., Reiner, R. C., Prakash, B. A., … Consortium, C.-19 F. H. (2020). Ensemble Forecasts of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the U.S. MedRxiv, 2020.08.19.20177493. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.19.20177493

    1. Malani, A., Soman, S., Asher, S., Novosad, P., Imbert, C., Tandel, V., Agarwal, A., Alomar, A., Sarker, A., Shah, D., Shen, D., Gruber, J., Sachdeva, S., Kaiser, D., & Bettencourt, L. M. A. (2020). Adaptive Control of COVID-19 Outbreaks in India: Local, Gradual, and Trigger-based Exit Paths from Lockdown (Working Paper No. 27532; Working Paper Series). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w27532

    1. Though important, social distancing could be reduced to one metre instead of 2m

      Take away: As with most things in nature, there are always exceptions – transmission occurring at greater distances than 3 ft and evidence of aerosolization have been reported.

      Discussion: In scientific terms, this virus is still very new so the data supporting an optimal physical distance to prevent transmission remains scarce. In the absence of data, public health agencies have used what they understand about this virus and similar viruses to infer a “best” answer. Public health agencies try to simplify the recommendation to a single answer, but the reality is much more complex.

      According to reports the WHO bases their recommendation for 1 meter (~3 ft) distancing off of an understanding that SARS-CoV-2 behaves like similar respiratory viruses that are primarily transmitted via larger droplets (as opposed to smaller aerosols). Assuming most spread is via droplets, the WHO reportedly follows the results of a 1934 study indicating most respiratory droplets fall to the ground within 3 feet.

      However, as with most things in nature, there are always exceptions – transmission occurring at greater distances than 3 ft and evidence of aerosolization have been reported.

      The evidence basis for the CDCs guidance for 6 feet of separation is less clear, but probably reflects lower risk tolerance, or greater weight to evidence of aerosolization or wider droplet spread.

      Even with further study, there may never be a clear answer for optimal physical distancing. This is because, (1) the area of high risk for transmission is probably dependent on the specific conditions of the interaction (e.g. loud talking, windy environment), and (2) the “optimal” distance is based on risk tolerance. There is no single distance between individuals where risk of transmission drops off precipitously to zero.

      All evidence indicates that greater distances are safer but, for example, consider how restrictive a physical distancing recommendation of >50 ft would be. In the end, because we can’t control how far others stand away from us, we ask governments to consider these tradeoffs and deliver a “best” answer to guide their citizenry.