An update on a pre-registered result about the coronavirus • Hacker News Board

Re: An update on a pre-registered result about the coronavirus

#81

Post by vkou » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

aikinai wrote: post #48

jldugger wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because you could end up losing your visa and get sued by the Olympic Committee if you say 'Shinzo Abe is suppressing covid-19 research because of the Olympics.' Maybe even jail time.

That's not how Japanese immigration or prosecution work. What law or immigration requirement would he be breaking? Also, tons of people have been saying that for months, both native and foreign.

He may be afraid of non-official censure. He may be afraid of his employer getting publically crapped on for the bad behaviour of it's employee. (In this case, the bad behaviour is causing waves.)

Re: An update on a pre-registered result about the coronavirus

#82

Post by tptacek » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

aikinai wrote: post #73

philwelch wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly suspect your mental model of “a first world democracy with strong freedom of speech protections” is based on your experience living in a Western country, quite possibly as a citizen of that country. I wouldn’t presume to understand how that differs from the experience of living in Japan as an American. Patrick should have earned enough good faith in this community for us to trust his ability to navigate th…

Or he just likes to act like he's important. No one in positions of power cares what he has to say about pandemic modeling and they certainly aren't going to persecute him for it.

If there is uncontrolled spread in Japan, and the NYT article prompted the Japanese government to acknowledge it and begin locking the country down, and the Working Group motivated the NYT article in any significant way, he doesn't have to "act" like he's important.

Re: An update on a pre-registered result about the coronavirus

#83

Post by tptacek » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

aikinai wrote: post #40

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps that's on purpose. Perhaps he wants to avoid being sued, or similar things. Patrick has a ton of credibility and I would give him the benefit of the doubt here.

> Patrick has a ton of credibility Did? I think he just lost all of it with this arrogant stunt. Especially since he himself said, Either: 1) I am materially wrong about the most consequential thing I've had to have a view on in 15 years. You should probably degrade your estimate of my ability to think through complex problems. 2) We need a data point to counter "Nobody could possibly have seen this coming." He didn'…

You're all over the thread with comments like these. If you were responding to Patrick directly on HN, you'd be quickly and rightly flagged for writing this way. That Patrick wrote this in a blog post and not in HN comments has insulated you from that effect, but it shouldn't, and I would guess won't for long.

Patrick isn't infallible and may be wrong in a multitude of ways in this post (I haven't lived my whole adult life in Japan and wouldn't know). You should take your best shot at his arguments. But you need to do it civilly.

Re: An update on a pre-registered result about the coronavirus

#84

Post by jeffreyrogers » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:55 PM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #78

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #54

This seems a bit over-the-top. Sure, maybe Japan isn't testing and is just treating pneumonia cases as pneumonia cases instead of the cornavirus cases they actually are, but if that is allowing society to function mostly normally and isn't changing death rates all that much I don't see the harm. Arguably that is a better response than shutting down your economy and creating massive debt problems that will need to be…

The death rate from COVID-19 is a constant: about ~1% of all cases, so far as is currently known. If the R0 of the virus is about 2 (which from evidence is about the case for uncontained spread, possibly higher) then half of your entire case load is discovered in the last increment. That period is (roughly) 14 days from infection to the onset of symptoms. We cannot build a hospital, nor train doctors and nurses, in 1…

Okay, but this appears to not be happening in Japan. Why not? If your answer is, it's going to happen, then why hasn't it happened already if things are truly as dire as the original essay is saying?

Edit: It also appears to not be happening in Sweden. I think a lot of the modeling of this is flawed.

Re: An update on a pre-registered result about the coronavirus

#85

Post by tptacek » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #76

nico_h wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the hash is a marker to force yourself to come to terms with your idea. You make it public and then act on it. The author has a visa to stay in Japan, a country with strict rules on the disruption of public order. Spreading unfounded speculation on a pandemic might rule afoul of such rules.

But...posting a hash doesn't force you to do anything. All it does is help you be cryptographically-verifiably smug after the fact.

No, it demonstrates that you're not backtesting whatever your model was to fit the current reality.

Re: An update on a pre-registered result about the coronavirus

#86

Post by XorNot » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #77

XorNot wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We took the measures that mitigated a disaster, therefore the disaster was never going to happen" is an idiotic opinion. A virus that spreads from close proximity with infected people, and you're arguing that shoving people back in close proximity is not going to contribute to spreading it? Why? On what basis will this not happen, despite this being exactly what happened? Spain took about 1 month to go from "hm this…

Sorry, what's the accidental experiment here? The article doesn't suggest any cities in 1918 were doing testing or contact tracing - they couldn't have been, because they didn't even know that the flu was a virus at the time. And I'm not seeing anything about a general closure of non-essential businesses either. I certainly wouldn't dispute that closing schools and banning public gatherings were good moves.

Quarantine measures were widely implemented in major cities during the 1918 pandemic, but at different times in response to different catastrophes and with a very different result in deaths per capita.

See the bottom graph. Deaths/week vs when closures were implemented. Another more wordy source: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/history-of-how-st-louis-v...

> Around the same time, the city of St. Louis was closing schools, libraries, courthouses, churches, playgrounds as well as limiting the number of people on streetcars and staggering work shifts to minimise contact.

St Louis did relatively well - but they released quarantine measures early and got an unnecessary double peak (see the first source, which shows exactly pretty clearly exactly when they did it, and then quickly reimplemented it).

The lessons of history here really could not be clearer.

Re: An update on a pre-registered result about the coronavirus

#87

Post by tptacek » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

aikinai wrote: post #48

jldugger wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because you could end up losing your visa and get sued by the Olympic Committee if you say 'Shinzo Abe is suppressing covid-19 research because of the Olympics.' Maybe even jail time.

That's not how Japanese immigration or prosecution work. What law or immigration requirement would he be breaking? Also, tons of people have been saying that for months, both native and foreign.

If you have direct knowledge of how Japanese official process works in practice, could you relate it along with this observation? Because a thing not in much doubt on HN is that Patrick does have some significant experience with it.

Re: An update on a pre-registered result about the coronavirus

#88

Post by nico_h » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #76

nico_h wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the hash is a marker to force yourself to come to terms with your idea. You make it public and then act on it. The author has a visa to stay in Japan, a country with strict rules on the disruption of public order. Spreading unfounded speculation on a pandemic might rule afoul of such rules.

But...posting a hash doesn't force you to do anything. All it does is help you be cryptographically-verifiably smug after the fact.

But if you didn't act on it then you're just a shmuck that knew something and didn't help their neighbors, if you did act, you can justifiably _be_ smug because you did something about it.

Posting it and acting on it build a "track record" that is harder to dismiss.

Re: An update on a pre-registered result about the coronavirus

#89

Post by BerislavLopac » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

> There are few conspiracies in the world. There are many systems with complicated decision-making processes, internal data flows, and incentive structures for actors within them.

The second sentence here is absolutely correct, but it directly contradicts the first one. Because a "conspiracy" is nothing more than having a group of those actors, with aligned incentives, coordinating to work together while hiding that coordination with other actors whose incentives are in opposition.

Re: An update on a pre-registered result about the coronavirus

#90

Post by XorNot » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #84

XorNot wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The death rate from COVID-19 is a constant: about ~1% of all cases, so far as is currently known. If the R0 of the virus is about 2 (which from evidence is about the case for uncontained spread, possibly higher) then half of your entire case load is discovered in the last increment. That period is (roughly) 14 days from infection to the onset of symptoms. We cannot build a hospital, nor train doctors and nurses, in 1…

Okay, but this appears to not be happening in Japan. Why not? If your answer is, it's going to happen, then why hasn't it happened already if things are truly as dire as the original essay is saying? Edit: It also appears to not be happening in Sweden. I think a lot of the modeling of this is flawed.

I'll be a lot more interested when it hasn't happened 2 weeks from now.