In my debate last night with Tomas Pueyo, after I emphasized the high costs of lockdowns he said lockdowns are over. From now on we’ll let people go out, as long as they (M) wear masks and keep 6 feet apart when not at home. Which let me to wonder: just how much cheaper is M than lockdowns?
You can still do a cost-benefit analysis. The benefits of virtue signalling via mask wearing are reputational, though - and they do not have much to do with the chances of dying from a viral infection.
The YouTube link in the second word of the post body brings me to a YouTube page that says "Video unavailable. This video is private." Is there a way to see the debate video? Or audio or transcript?
Re % infected by common coronavirus. They cause 15% of common colds. CDC says: "Most people get infected with one or more of these viruses at some point in their lives."
SARS and MERS were eliminated. However, we know of four other human coronaviruses which are endemic diseases. Currently, most projections are of a fifth endemic human coronavirus - although a technical solution resulting in eradication, such as an effective vaccine, is also a possibility.
You yourself often dismiss the results of your polls because people pay no cost for giving inaccurate answers. The benefit you've gotten from them has been doing large numbers of polls and seeing how differences in prompts can result in differences in responses, and here you've found a very wide variation. Taking a number from one of those polls leaves you with the disadvantages of twitter polling (including North Dakota/Lizardman constants) and without the advantages of being able to compare differences between polls. And this isn't a case like determining the morality of something where there isn't an objective answer and instead just opinions, this is a question of economic cost which revealed preference data should actually be able to answer. I'm not an economist and I don't know exactly what kinds of data are available, but it seems obvious to me that prior epidemics which resulted in mass-masking (and I suppose masks worn because of pollution in certain cities, although that would be less comparable since they'd only be worn outside) should have produced data which an economist would look at if they actually wanted to understand the problem.
Another point. I understand using the non-pandemic scenario estimates to get at social cost, in order to avoid accounting for actual risk reduction. I think there’s a relevant factor (F) something like ‘righteous indignation’.
I would consider my cost of wearing a seatbelt in a parked car to be higher than in a moving car, for the sheer stupidity of it.
So, for me anyway, I’m looking at the range between poll 2 & 4, still probably closer to 4.
I should have worded my previous statement differently, my apologies. I do not actually believe that, was just trying to suggest that it should be accounted for. It was off topic regardless, Robin feel free to delete these if you like?
You can still do a cost-benefit analysis. The benefits of virtue signalling via mask wearing are reputational, though - and they do not have much to do with the chances of dying from a viral infection.
Care to offer a wager on how high a median % we'd get for that, re a particular poll above changed to socks?
I'd like to know the results of similar polls on wearing socks.
The YouTube link in the second word of the post body brings me to a YouTube page that says "Video unavailable. This video is private." Is there a way to see the debate video? Or audio or transcript?
Re % infected by common coronavirus. They cause 15% of common colds. CDC says: "Most people get infected with one or more of these viruses at some point in their lives."
What percentages of the population have been infected by those other coronas?
I had come across a claim that the previous outbreak of SARS resulted in some immunity to this new virus, but unfortunately I don't have a link handy.
SARS and MERS were eliminated. However, we know of four other human coronaviruses which are endemic diseases. Currently, most projections are of a fifth endemic human coronavirus - although a technical solution resulting in eradication, such as an effective vaccine, is also a possibility.
I haven't calculated them explicitly, but given the size of the polls they'd be plenty small enough not to change the relative order of these results.
What would confidence intervals look like here?
I don't dismiss poll data out of hand, but other stronger evidence can overrule it.
You yourself often dismiss the results of your polls because people pay no cost for giving inaccurate answers. The benefit you've gotten from them has been doing large numbers of polls and seeing how differences in prompts can result in differences in responses, and here you've found a very wide variation. Taking a number from one of those polls leaves you with the disadvantages of twitter polling (including North Dakota/Lizardman constants) and without the advantages of being able to compare differences between polls. And this isn't a case like determining the morality of something where there isn't an objective answer and instead just opinions, this is a question of economic cost which revealed preference data should actually be able to answer. I'm not an economist and I don't know exactly what kinds of data are available, but it seems obvious to me that prior epidemics which resulted in mass-masking (and I suppose masks worn because of pollution in certain cities, although that would be less comparable since they'd only be worn outside) should have produced data which an economist would look at if they actually wanted to understand the problem.
Yeah, Ok.
Another point. I understand using the non-pandemic scenario estimates to get at social cost, in order to avoid accounting for actual risk reduction. I think there’s a relevant factor (F) something like ‘righteous indignation’.
I would consider my cost of wearing a seatbelt in a parked car to be higher than in a moving car, for the sheer stupidity of it.
So, for me anyway, I’m looking at the range between poll 2 & 4, still probably closer to 4.
You haven't explained WHY this data is worthless, in your view.
I should have worded my previous statement differently, my apologies. I do not actually believe that, was just trying to suggest that it should be accounted for. It was off topic regardless, Robin feel free to delete these if you like?
That's plausible, but to persuade skeptics that it is indeed true, it helps to have these sort of cost-benefit calculations.
But that is smaller than the cost that includes conformity, the 20% figure. Doesn't lower the 8% figure.