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AI tools have been built to catch Covid, but none of them helped

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Re: AI tools have been built to catch Covid, but none of them helped

#91
post #2

> “The models are so similar—they almost all use the same techniques with minor tweaks, the same inputs—and they all make the same mistakes,” says Wynants. “If all these people making new models instead tested models that were already available, maybe we’d have something that could really help in the clinic by now.” Sounds about right.

This is similar to people wanting to volunteer after disasters, but get mad when they're told they'd be more in the way than helpful.

It's selfishness and narcissism masquerading as philanthropy. Instead of doing an actual useful task, they want credit for the exciting/pioneering front line work.

It was the same thing with the ventilator shortage. How many people publicly declared they were "inventing" a new, easy to make ventilator? Design was never the problem, manufacturing was. But few were interested in manufacturing extant (and already FDA approved) designs.

Re: AI tools have been built to catch Covid, but none of them helped

#92
post #88
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>to educate the ignorant populace ok, lets educate. And before educating others lets educate ourselves. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/30/cdc-study-shows-74percent-of... "About three-fourths of people infected in a Massachusetts Covid-19 outbreak were fully vaccinated, according to new data published Friday by the CDC. The new data, published in the U.S. agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, also found that f…

I guess you are trolling. And is really sad that such an one-sided argument as yours even exists. First, you are missing that this is a Delta out-break. Delta has been found to be able to evade the vaccines more than other variants. This is something new and something we didn't know just 2-3 months ago. Next, without stating how many percent of the population where vaccinated in MA what does three-fourths imply? Gove…

>I guess you are trolling.

of course. Posting CDC data and WH quotes. While somehow nobody mentioned trolling wrt. GGP calling opponents "stupid" and "anti-intellectuals" without any data to back his position. Not surprising. Just a typical for these days debate with the "intellectuals".

>This is something new and something we didn't know just 2-3 months ago.

You are repeating the politicians' talking point what i was talking about . The very high chances that the "improved" 2.0 version would come were obvious pretty much from the start for anybody who paid even slightest attention to the precedents. Yet politicians have as always been playing ideologically charged short game all along right into populace ignorance while completely disregarding the long game.

Re: AI tools have been built to catch Covid, but none of them helped

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point was if he rushed it. The companies delayed their announcement and strengthened the trials so the current Trumpista favorite argument would in theory lose steam.

>The companies delayed their announcement and strengthened the trials so the current Trumpista favorite argument would in theory lose steam. They [Pfizer] delayed the announcement to three days after the elections. I'm sure those three days were critical in testing and making the vaccine safe for the consumer./s It was an obvious political move to deny back-then US president Trump a public success as a consequence fr…

I live in New Orleans where unvaccinated cases are exploding and people in surrounding areas specifically cite Democrats as a reason not to take the vaccine. I’ll stand by my words. And I’m not fan of Pfizer trying to make vaccine policy by press release but didn’t one of the companies turn down Warp Speed money to avoid this perception?

Re: AI tools have been built to catch Covid, but none of them helped

#94
post #92
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you are trolling. And is really sad that such an one-sided argument as yours even exists. First, you are missing that this is a Delta out-break. Delta has been found to be able to evade the vaccines more than other variants. This is something new and something we didn't know just 2-3 months ago. Next, without stating how many percent of the population where vaccinated in MA what does three-fourths imply? Gove…

>I guess you are trolling. of course. Posting CDC data and WH quotes. While somehow nobody mentioned trolling wrt. GGP calling opponents "stupid" and "anti-intellectuals" without any data to back his position. Not surprising. Just a typical for these days debate with the "intellectuals". >This is something new and something we didn't know just 2-3 months ago. You are repeating the politicians' talking point what i wa…

>>I guess you are trolling.

> of course. Posting CDC data and WH quotes.

And ignoring almost everything that was replied to you.

> The very high chances that the "better" version would come were obvious pretty much from the start

I haven't heard that this would be obvious. Could you share what you consider that long game to be?

Re: AI tools have been built to catch Covid, but none of them helped

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with a background in CS (but not AI/ML) and working in bioinformatics: People with a background in methods like solving problems that are easy to solve with the methods they know. Those are rarely the problems people in biology/medicine want to solve. Some common pitfalls include: * Asking the right questions. * Framing the questions correctly. * Finding computational problems that capture the essence of t…

> first attempts will probably fail First hundreds of attempts? In your experience, is that a reasonable number?

What field do you come from where people succeed so often at cutting-edge research?

Re: AI tools have been built to catch Covid, but none of them helped

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been telling people that the way to get people to take the vaccine would be to give Trump credit for operation lightspeed (which I think he deserves but that's irrelevant) and start referring to the vaccine as Trump's Vaccine. I'm okay with handing Trump a win if it can help save lives and end this pandemic.

The vast majority of anti-vaxxers I know are more on the Green side. The Trump supporters got the vaccine as soon as they could.

I'm in California and I have the same experience as you but the data nationally shows otherwise.

Re: AI tools have been built to catch Covid, but none of them helped

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> first attempts will probably fail First hundreds of attempts? In your experience, is that a reasonable number?

The first attempts made by any particular person are likely to fail. And when many people approach similar problems from similar perspectives, they are likely to make similar mistakes. Give them a few years, and someone will probably figure out what the mistakes were and how to avoid them.

Right- thousands of people making the same predictable learning curve mistakes isn't thousands of man-hours of new research. It's thousands of (wo)men all duplicating the same few hours of research, which isn't likely to result in any breakthrough.

If 10 people hike to Mt Everest's base camp, it's not the equivalent of one person climbing ~10 times further to the peak.

Re: AI tools have been built to catch Covid, but none of them helped

#98
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>to educate the ignorant populace ok, lets educate. And before educating others lets educate ourselves. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/30/cdc-study-shows-74percent-of... "About three-fourths of people infected in a Massachusetts Covid-19 outbreak were fully vaccinated, according to new data published Friday by the CDC. The new data, published in the U.S. agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, also found that f…

What's neglected in that article is that essentially the whole town is vaccinated: https://www.masslive.com/capecod/2021/07/how-provincetown-ac... Despite virtually everyone in the town being vaccinated, 25% of the cases in the outbreak were in the remaining handful of unvaccinated people! As more areas reach close to 100% vaccination, we will start to see weird quirks of statistics like this more often, but if your…

Unless I'm reading your source wrong it seems to make the opposite point. Your source says that Provincetown has a 114% vaccination rate because the number of people who have used a Provincetown address to get vaccinated is greater than the number last counted in the census - 2k. However, currently, Provincetown, a summer vacation spot, has a population of 60k people.

Even if all of Provincetown residents were vaccinated that would not imply that anywhere near the majority of the people currently in Provincetown were vaccinated. I'm not sure how we can usefully estimate the vaccination rate of the people who have been in Provincetown recently. Google says the vaccination rate for Massachusetts is about 72%. That seems really worrying to me because if that vaccination rate describes the people in Provincetown then the infection rate implies that the vaccine is offering no real protection - i.e. 75% of population vaccinated and 75% of infected were vaccinated.

Re: AI tools have been built to catch Covid, but none of them helped

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a false choice. There's also: - Technology not suitable or adequate for this use case. I mean, we've been to the "AI over-promises and under-delivers" rodeo before.

You think a 100% failure rate on the hottest topic in the world right now is likely?

Oh yeah. Just as AI has not made the stock market predictable. There is (maybe) progress in pockets but not in general. Systems that change strongly and react to forecasts are really difficult to handle (and also stuff happens, eg new variants).

Also on the wet side, there is very little progress on something like general antiviral drugs.

Some stuff is just really hard.

Re: AI tools have been built to catch Covid, but none of them helped

#100
post #64

Should have built AI tools to educate the ignorant populace and encourage them to get a vaccine. I know there have to be tons of adboys and girls out there whose only job is to persuade people to do something that could have knocked this out of the park. I see we are still at about 50% vaccination and Walmart is begging people to come get a free vaccine. I’m sorry my tone is negative but this is really getting me fru…

> The stupid is winning. Calling someone stupid just because they do not share your blind trust in a bunch of people is kind of malicious.

Blind trust in professional liars (politicians) and criminals (didn't Pfizer and J&J get the two biggest criminal fines ever assessed?).

Here's an interesting read from 2010 about how they were having former execs put in power in Canada. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2875889/

But I guess I'm the stupid one.

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