Just another open-thread comment about something I read.
At his blog “Marginal Revolution,” Tyler Cowen asks why China has done such a flip-flop on Covid (https://tinyurl.com/2jzzzhsj). Lots of comments follow his post.
It looks as if as many as 4 substations were vandalized in the Tacoma area on Christmas: The recent attacks are currently under investigation. Pierce County sheriff’s deputies said they are reluctant to declare the incidents a result of domestic terrorism since they do not currently have any suspects. However, that did not stop the media from baselessly pointing fingers at the “extreme right wing,” likely due in part to a terrorism advisory bulletin posted by the Department of Homeland Security last month.
My recollection is that Cowan and Tabarrok in 2020 were obsessive about testing and playing with the notion of massive contact-tracing schemes. Since professors are exceedingly resistant to acknowledging they’re wrong, they have to do some work on the hamster wheel given that Xi land couldn’t make their own Zero Covid scheme work. (I stopped reading Marginal Revolution after they arbitrarily banned me).
Art Deco on December 26, 2022 at 1:58 pm said:
“My recollection is that Cowan and Tabarrok in 2020 were obsessive about testing and playing with the notion of massive contact-tracing schemes.”
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Art Deco:
My memory is much the same as yours, but I’ve learned not to trust it much, so I did this search at “Marginal Revolution”: covid “contact tracing.” The result was only sixteen posts, and some are clearly irrelevant. Anyway, I wouldn’t say that Cowen and Tabarrok were advocates of massive contact tracing. I’m not sure whether it’s fair to say that they “played around” with the idea. Maybe so. I’d agree that they weren’t sufficiently skeptical about the value of massive contact tracing. Neither were they sufficiently aware of the inevitable, unintended(?) consequences for privacy and freedom. They haven’t publicly acknowledged this mistake, if they even view it as one.
Although I’ve always strongly opposed massive contact tracing, I’ve also strongly supported a program of carefully designed random sample tests. Not doing this was one of the earliest failures of the CDC. I think that this kind of testing could have provided valuable data for treatment decisions. Instead of a well-designed program of random sample tests, we were stuck with a chaotic program of testing by convenience. Convenience testing provided us with very little coherent or useful data. I wouldn’t say that my attention to testing issues was obsessive, and I don’t blame Cowen and Tabarrok for frequently writing about it.
Finally, I’m disappointed to hear that you were banned from commenting at “Marginal Revolution,” but I think you’ve let your frustration get the better of you when you imply that Cowen and Tabarrok advocated a policy comparable to China’s zero-covid scheme.
This comment is already too long, so I’ll stop. Apologies for the soapbox.
After the so-called “Zero Covid” experiment, China now reports that 37 million people are being infected each day. What ever happened to the Golden Mean? Why not move smoothly along a curve? Even after three years’ time, it seems they did little to prep their hospitals. What are some hypotheses for this sudden leap from one corner of the distribution to the other?
David Zweig, Twitter Files 10, THE TWITTER FILES: HOW TWITTER RIGGED THE COVID DEBATE: https://mobile.twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607378386338340867
Just another open-thread comment about something I read.
At his blog “Marginal Revolution,” Tyler Cowen asks why China has done such a flip-flop on Covid (https://tinyurl.com/2jzzzhsj). Lots of comments follow his post.
More questions than answers, but worth a look.
War on energy.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/tacoma-power-says-2-substations-attacked-christmas-day/
Chases Eagles–
It looks as if as many as 4 substations were vandalized in the Tacoma area on Christmas: The recent attacks are currently under investigation. Pierce County sheriff’s deputies said they are reluctant to declare the incidents a result of domestic terrorism since they do not currently have any suspects. However, that did not stop the media from baselessly pointing fingers at the “extreme right wing,” likely due in part to a terrorism advisory bulletin posted by the Department of Homeland Security last month.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/vandals-attack-4-power-substations-on-christmas-17000-without-electricity
More questions than answers, but worth a look.
My recollection is that Cowan and Tabarrok in 2020 were obsessive about testing and playing with the notion of massive contact-tracing schemes. Since professors are exceedingly resistant to acknowledging they’re wrong, they have to do some work on the hamster wheel given that Xi land couldn’t make their own Zero Covid scheme work. (I stopped reading Marginal Revolution after they arbitrarily banned me).
Art Deco on December 26, 2022 at 1:58 pm said:
“My recollection is that Cowan and Tabarrok in 2020 were obsessive about testing and playing with the notion of massive contact-tracing schemes.”
______________________________________________________________
Art Deco:
My memory is much the same as yours, but I’ve learned not to trust it much, so I did this search at “Marginal Revolution”: covid “contact tracing.” The result was only sixteen posts, and some are clearly irrelevant. Anyway, I wouldn’t say that Cowen and Tabarrok were advocates of massive contact tracing. I’m not sure whether it’s fair to say that they “played around” with the idea. Maybe so. I’d agree that they weren’t sufficiently skeptical about the value of massive contact tracing. Neither were they sufficiently aware of the inevitable, unintended(?) consequences for privacy and freedom. They haven’t publicly acknowledged this mistake, if they even view it as one.
Although I’ve always strongly opposed massive contact tracing, I’ve also strongly supported a program of carefully designed random sample tests. Not doing this was one of the earliest failures of the CDC. I think that this kind of testing could have provided valuable data for treatment decisions. Instead of a well-designed program of random sample tests, we were stuck with a chaotic program of testing by convenience. Convenience testing provided us with very little coherent or useful data. I wouldn’t say that my attention to testing issues was obsessive, and I don’t blame Cowen and Tabarrok for frequently writing about it.
Finally, I’m disappointed to hear that you were banned from commenting at “Marginal Revolution,” but I think you’ve let your frustration get the better of you when you imply that Cowen and Tabarrok advocated a policy comparable to China’s zero-covid scheme.
This comment is already too long, so I’ll stop. Apologies for the soapbox.
After the so-called “Zero Covid” experiment, China now reports that 37 million people are being infected each day. What ever happened to the Golden Mean? Why not move smoothly along a curve? Even after three years’ time, it seems they did little to prep their hospitals. What are some hypotheses for this sudden leap from one corner of the distribution to the other?
–Tyler Cowen, “Why did China do such a flip-flop on Covid?”
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/12/why-did-china-do-such-a-flip-flop-on-covid.html
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Cowen lists four scenarios to his question and misses the obvious answer entirely.
I’m persuaded by Peter Zeihan that the Chinese protests were super-spreader events which made it impossible to contain Covid with Zero Covid measures.
Furthermore, there is some evidence that Omicron was already spreading in China before the protests.
So the Chinese authorities bowed to the inevitable.
Omicron is highly transmissible though how much so compared to, say, measles turns out to be a rather technical discussion:
https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-r0-measles-covid-variants-infectiousness-423007125020
I’ve run into Tyler Cowen’s name before, but haven’t drilled down. I gather he’s a libertarian of some sort.