mathdev

It's quite incredible. This chemical appears to have a safety profile comparable with the coronavirus itself, and yet the stock market appears to anticipate a possibility that people will get injected with it en masse.

You cannot really trust a source as biased as NYT on anything about Trump.

I imagine the process is quite involved for tax optimization reasons.

> the only son of Leila (née Stahl) and Congressman Howard Buffett.

> In high school, he invested in a business owned by his father and bought a 40-acre farm worked by a tenant farmer.

> Buffett’s net worth dropped earlier this week when he donated $2.9 billion in Berkshire Hathaway (BRKa.N) stock to charity

Such a generous man and an entrepreneur. We need more like him.

> Either in-person classes are safe, and the rules can go back to pre-pandemic, or they aren't, and forcing students and professors to attend them is dangerous and cruel.

Actually, in-person classes are completely safe and this is a gentle nudge from the federal administration to make the universities reconsider their (completely political) decision to not resume normal classes this Fall.

Expansion of space doesn’t preclude the universe being infinite.

A fact check would be fine if it led to objective analyses of some sort, or even Wikipedia. But when I clicked it, it displayed some highly partisan sources, including a CNN article with its usual "Trump bad" vitriol. Maybe it was an algorithm's fault, but it didn't work at all.

A big artificial biosphere to launch out of the solar system and live there away from all the human nonsense.

It's just too contagious and countries are opening up that still have quite a large number of infections. Seems like a very tricky balancing act to keep R under 1.

https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1258931279317405696 and there are more tweets on that if you scroll the feed.

Interesting predictions. However, they do not fit the facts on the ground, at least here in Poland, which is some weeks ahead of the US with respect to the development of the epidemic.

(I'm relieved that) people have gotten sick and tired of the restrictions, about 50% (and growing every day) are not wearing the masks inside anymore, or bother with the distancing, despite official requirements. All restaurants and bars are opening up on Monday, my favourite one described the prior atmosphere as a "psychosis of fear".

It's interesting what happens when the second wave of infections occurs, which is becoming more and more likely. It's hard to imagine the population will be as fearful and obedient as the first time, should the government try to impose another lockdown.

If, as Nassim Taleb believes, the lockdown was bottom-up, demanded by the people rather than imposed by the government, a repeat seems unlikely. Perhaps that's why the stock market is surging?

No. First, having multiple conditions doesn’t qualitatively change the result.

Second, the figure shown by default is not adjusted for comorbidities and the adjustment is clearly marked as experimental.

You are all just crazy with the panic and that’s it.

I am reluctant to accept the American/Western mentality in these things, but I have added some disclaimers. Thanks.

Yeah, it only takes into account whether one has preconditions or not, at the moment. The plan was to produce more detailed calculations, but it is difficult.

Fixed to only include the base URL.

1) No. I don't imagine there are any reliable statistics available on that, and how could you estimate your dose?

2) Yes, this was taken into account by the study, data from which the algorithm uses.

That's a neat idea, though not sure if I will have the time.

I don't log or store anything, except for what is logged by Google Analytics.

> If they were to end up dying of COVID-19 because they are induced to take more risks, do you think you will have exposed yourself to any legal liability?

If that were the case, publishing any actuarial tables should lead to legal liability (and it definitely doesn't, at least where I am from).

See the modals that display after clicking the question marks for details.

There does not seem to be enough reliable data for the higher age brackets. That should happen if you have no pre-existing conditions - then the adjustment decreases the probabilities.

I made this tool after seeing much confusion, even on HN, about the risks for an individual posed by COVID-19. On the results page, click the question marks for detailed sources and methodology. I will appreciate constructive feedback.

I think it's mostly to avoid the bad press of having to do triage at hospitals, long-term consequences be damned.

The opposite. It mutates more slowly than the flu.

That's false. Death is the natural and inevitable outcome of life. The people who would die of COVID are nearly exclusively people who would die relatively soon anyway. For an average 85 years old person, the risk of dying due to COVID if no mitigation is attempted is 6.3% [1], less than the risk of dying of other causes during the next year (9.6%) [2].

A 20 years old is more likely to be struck by lightning than to be killed by COVID.

The life expectancy saved by the lockdown is just so small. I find it extremely hard to believe that the lockdown will cause less loss of life than the new virus would have.

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S1473-3099%2820...

[2] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html#fn1

"If you leave the house, I'll call the cops and tell them you're breaking quarantine, and then you'll go to jail and I'll be the only person who can get you out."

Funny how those are almost the exact words that parents of my girlfriend used in an attempt to make her stay. She was terrified of spending an extended period of time at home with her father who normally works abroad and visits only for holidays.

No country does enough testing to make empirical death rates informative.

> So if we assume half the ship caught it, that could cut the numbers in half again.

Actually by a factor of four if we assume that the virus managed to reach everyone it was going to reach on the cruise ship and doesn't spread better on land.

And if only those 712 caught it, that reduces your number by a factor of five. So we are already down from 4.9% to between 0.5% and 0.625-1.25%.

Right, we should listen to specialists, unless they contradict the mass panic.. It really is hopeless.

The number comes from the column named "symptomatic cases requiring hospitalisation"

The 510k deaths figure assumes 80% get infected (upper bound given by models and no mitigation whatsoever) and 1% mortality. The actual mortality is almost certainly significantly lower - the Oxford's CBM estimates 0.2% [1], so twice as bad as flu.

Let's even assume incorrectly that all COVID deaths are on top of the 600k normal deaths. So in 2020 85% more people die of natural causes than normally. Almost exclusively very old and already ill people. It's just not a big deal and it's crazy that people think it is.

Now let's say that the death rate is 0.2% as the Oxford institute estimates, 20% of COVID casualties would have died anyway, and that isolating the at-risk people further reduces the casualties by half. We end up with 40,000 extra deaths, 7% more deaths than normally. A non-event.

If you think that the death toll of the lockdowns will be lower than that, then I hope you are right. I expect not.

[1] https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-...