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

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

#101

Post by aikinai » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #87

aikinai wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure happy to share. I guess most people would be surprised, but Japan has very straightforward and easy immigration if you meet the right conditions, of which Patrick is a shoe-in. He probably already has permanent residency, but if not, he could either be on a work visa or a spousal visa. None of those are going to get rejected because he did some amateur pandemic modeling.

Assuming someone at immigration would take the time to look into his background (not just his paperwork), find out that he wrote a Covid-19 white paper with higher projections than the government at the time and then blacklist him for it is such a mischaracterization of Japanese process, I don't know where to start. It's not like there's a source I can reference, but I also have a lot of knowledge of Japanese immigration through knowing plenty of foreigners on different visas in Japan and have never heard of anyone getting rejected if they meet the conditions.

I can share one interesting anecdotal counter-example to show how easygoing Japanese immigration is. Someone I knew was on a fraudulent work visa "working" for a friend. He was actually creating a startup. By the time immigration found out, he had the necessary scale to sponsor his own work visa, so he wrote an apology letter and then switched to his own work visa even though the foundation of the company was built on a fraudulent visa.

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

#102

Post by pilom » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #50

panarky wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One might argue that a "true count of infections" is not falsifiable -- people aren't getting tested, causes of deaths aren't properly attributed, officials are juking the stats. A more falsifiable claim is "a breakdown of provision of care in Nagoya, Osaka, and Tokyo, before the end of April". If patients are in parking lots or bodies are in refrigerated trucks and mass graves, that evidence is harder to hide. There…

Refusing to test, secret testing locations, over two hours on hold on the COVID hotline. Things aren’t looking great. https://www.facebook.com/groups/524159784940511/permalink/52... > 4/17 Friday: At noon my friend wakes up and asks if I can call her ward's 保健所 and make a PCR test appointment for her. I call them at 12:30. > It took 2 HOURS to set up a PCR test. > As I expected, the staff was INCREDIBLY resistant to…

This seems like exactly the measures I would institute if I just plain didn't have enough tests to test everyone who wants one (i.e. almost all humans). The secrecy sounds perfectly normal if the goal is to not be swarmed by masses of people who likely just need to stay home.

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

#103

Post by aikinai » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #98

aikinai wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all over the thread with comments like these since the whole charade is ridiculous and is only getting undue attention here since Patrick is popular on Hacker News and very few commenters have familiarity with Japan, either as a whole or especially regarding the pandemic response. I've never met Patrick personally but also had a lot of respect for him from past writings; that's probably why I was so disappointed…

Not only does this article not say that "nobody saw this coming", but it in fact says the exact opposite thing.

Sorry I don't know how to quote so maybe my comment was confusing between what I wrote and what Patrick wrote. Here's his Tweet claiming that and explicitly staking his reputation on this:

https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1241553311024603140?s=20

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

#104

Post by aikinai » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 6:03 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #82

aikinai wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does the post claim that the NYT article was based on his work? The timing doesn't make sense unless he was working with the journalist before she published and I didn't see that claim.

I would also say he's over-exaggerating the impact of the NYT article, but I don't have any more proof than he does. I've been following Japanese news and didn't really see any splash based on something in the western press. There were plenty of pessimistic predictions and calls for stricter measures inside Japan long before that article or the white paper.

Saying that the white paper led to the NYT article which led to Japan's lockdown is incredibly western/English-centric and ignorant of the actual forces at play inside the country in their native language, press, public opinion, and organizations.

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

#105

Post by aguyfromnb » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 6:05 PM UTC

aikinai wrote: post #57

lalaland1125 wrote: post #45

This article frankly sounds like the rambling of a crazy person with all of the attempts of secrecy and defensiveness. > A distant secondary consideration, but a real one, was that choosing to publish could bring down heavy sanctions, through predictable pathways. Why is the author afraid of "sanctions" in a first world democracy with strong freedom of speech protections? A much more interesting and useful article wo…

> Why is the author afraid of "sanctions" in a first world democracy with strong freedom of speech protections? A much more interesting and useful article would be an examination of the authors exact fears and why he feels afraid of publishing publically in Japan. I completely agree. Where is all this weird expectation of political persecution in Japan coming from? Both from Patrick and a lot of comments in this thre…

Patio11 seems like a good dude, and I have a couple of his consulting articles bookmarked that I reference regularly.

But "Silicon Valley" are the worst offenders when it comes to believing that smart people can be experts in everything with a bit of research. Covid19 has brought this to the forefront of public view (see Keith Rabois, Elon Musk)

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

#106

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 6:09 PM UTC

SkyMarshal wrote: post #79

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #6

I usually like patio11's writing style, but this is super verbose even by his standards and oddly evasive/defensive to boot. There's a number of important messages here, but they make up perhaps 10% of the content, and I still don't really fully understand the rationale behind the cloak and dagger "hash of report" business.

> I still don't really fully understand the rationale behind the cloak and dagger "hash of report" business. I didn’t read every word of it but got the sense there were political and/or Japanese cultural sensitivities why he didn’t initially feel comfortable with a full public, attributed release.

I think you're being a bit too accommodating. McKenzie does have a flair for the dramatic; he did the same thing with Tether where there really was no reason he couldn't just say what he thought when he thought it.

At the same time, yeah, it seems very plausible that a white guy in Japan announcing the Japanese pandemic response is run by fools would face blowback for it.

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

#107

Post by garmaine » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 6:11 PM UTC

twic wrote: post #94

grosales wrote: post #21

This is just my 2 cents but according to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries Japan has only done 923 tests for 1M of their population. That's much lower than any developed nation. One thing the article claims is the spread of the virus by asymptomatic infected people. Given this low level of testing - it's hard to gauge the true level of infection in the country - although the continuous decrease on…

We often conflate asymptomatic and presymptomatic people: my understanding is that asymptomatic people aren't very infectious, but presymptomatic people are. I can't find a solid citation for this, though. The mechanistic basis for that is simply viral load: asymptomatic people have some virus, but not enough to ever make them really ill, whereas presymptomatic people have loads of virus, but it hasn't made them real…

With this disease it appears asymptomatic people are equally infectious.

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

#108

Post by aikinai » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 6:18 PM UTC

aikinai wrote: post #97

tptacek wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 adul…

I'm all over the thread with comments like these since the whole charade is ridiculous and is only getting undue attention here since Patrick is popular on Hacker News and very few commenters have familiarity with Japan, either as a whole or especially regarding the pandemic response. I've never met Patrick personally but also had a lot of respect for him from past writings; that's probably why I was so disappointed…

To mention one more thing, I think what really frustrates me about this and incited me to comment a lot here is that to make his effort seem like a big deal, Patrick is presenting everyone else in Japan as fools and building up this white savior narrative.

His post implies that the Japanese experts and officials are both so inept that they couldn't keep up with his overnight-expert pandemic modeling and so malicious that they would persecute him for doing a better job. That's completely untrue, but with his reputation on Hacker News, it looks like a lot of people here are taking those characterizations at face value. As someone who knows Japan and respects the community here, that's a very upsetting development.

Unfortunately this thread blew up in the middle of the night in Japan. I happen to be awake, but it's so late I might be the only person in Japan in this thread before it dies.

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

#109

Post by pnathan » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

dahdum wrote: post #46

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #6

I usually like patio11's writing style, but this is super verbose even by his standards and oddly evasive/defensive to boot. There's a number of important messages here, but they make up perhaps 10% of the content, and I still don't really fully understand the rationale behind the cloak and dagger "hash of report" business.

I thought the same, like he's walking on eggshells? Maybe it's his assocation with Stripe or due to someone else in the working group? The memo doesn't read as particularly controversial nor did it recommend much concrete action. I left Japan in early March, by personal anecdote masks seemed pretty ubiquitious (and all public facing employees were wearing them), hotels were screening guest temperatures, warning signs…

That is his m.o. when critiquing Japan.

If you read between the lines to what he is really saying, I would think you would revise your opinion substantially.

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

#110

Post by ceejayoz » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 6:34 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.

> 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.

That's silly.

They didn't know it was a virus. They certainly knew it was communicable. Contact tracing is entirely possible; we were doing that in the 1800s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outb...