Harley-ml/lesswrong huggingface dataset:
# Ineffective Response to COVID-19 and Risk Compensation

_**UPDATE: This post was written and reflects an earlier set of my beliefs. I have updated significantly in a number of ways since it was posted, based on both external events and research, and no longer endorse it.**_

Epistemic status: _I have a mental model that I think separates my view of response activities from that of the majority of what I see on Lesswrong and associated places. If it is incorrect, I'd be happy to update, but I think this is an area I have considered more than most other posters. I want to write a short post explaining this to allow others to update, and seeing if someone has an argument that changes my mind._

Put simply, my claim is that bringing attention to likely ineffective personal methods for reducing risk is not net neutral with a large upside if they work, it is instead likely to be on net fairly harmful, albeit with a large upside if they work.

Argument
--------

First, we have incredibly effective and vastly underutilized ways to prevent spread of COVID-19, namely handwashing and not touching your face. Given that, if I propose an intervention like making homemade masks from fabric which reduced handwashing compliance by 1% (perhaps due to distracting people or making them think handwashing is less critical,) it would need to be astonishingly effective to be net positive. And most such approaches being discussed are, as far as I can tell, nowhere near that level of effectiveness.

Second, most readers of Lesswrong and effective altruism blogs and facebook groups aren't hardcore rationalists, and even hardcore rationalists aren't immune to Akrasia. On top of that, people like Scott Alexander have huge readerships and [sometimes link people to Lesswrong](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/02/coronavirus-links-speculation-open-thread/). Many people reading posts here aren't washing their hands enough as it is, and aren't going to rationally evaluate the relative effectiveness of handwashing versus other interventions.

Third, evidence exists that risk-compensation is a meaningful issue. Actions that make people feel safer usually lead to less attention paid to more annoying / more intrusive measures. (There is evidence, such as Vrolix's paper*, that risk compensation reduces the size of the positive impact, but does not make interventions net negative. This is conditioned on the impact being significant and positive, however, and seems not to apply to speculative interventions like those being proposed.

This is not an argument that we should not look into better options for response. It's an argument that we should be more careful in vetting them before encouraging people to do them just in case they work.

*) Vrolix, Klara (2006). ["Behavioural Adaptation, Risk Compensation, Risk Homeostasis and Moral Hazard in Traffic Safety"](https://doclib.uhasselt.be/dspace/bitstream/1942/4002/1/behavioraladaptation.pdf) )
# How's the case for wearing googles for COVID-19 protection when in public transportation?

I'm in a high risk group and there's a higher likelihood of dying if I get infected then for the average person. I will reduce the amount of public transportation travel but being totally isolated won't be good for my health either.

I have a decent supply of surgical masks. How much percentage of the infection risk is do to having exposed eyes? Does it make sense to protect them with swimming googles?
# Open & Welcome Thread - March 2020

If it’s worth saying, but not worth its own post, here's a place to put it. (You can also make a [shortform post](http://www.lesslong.com/))

And, if you are new to LessWrong, here's the place to introduce yourself. Personal stories, anecdotes, or just general comments on how you found us and what you hope to get from the site and community are welcome.

If you want to explore the community more, I recommend [reading the Library,](https://www.lesswrong.com/library) [checking recent Curated posts](https://www.lesswrong.com/?view=curated), [seeing if there are any meetups in your area](https://www.lesswrong.com/community), and checking out the [Getting Started](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2rWKkWuPrgTMpLRbp/lesswrong-faq-1#Getting_Started) section of the [LessWrong FAQ](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2rWKkWuPrgTMpLRbp/lesswrong-faq-1).

The Open Thread sequence is [here](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/yai5mppkuCHPQmzpN).
# March Coronavirus Open Thread

This thread was created on 3/8/2020, or approximately one million years ago in virus time. It’s getting pretty bloated now, and a lot of things that were high value at the time have been eclipsed by events, making karma not a very useful sorting tool. So I’m declaring this thread finished, and asking everyone to move over to the [April Coronavirus Open Thread](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qapqE86xrjQkD8eZ2/april-coronavirus-open-thread).

Interested in what happened in this thread? Here’s the timeless or not-yet-eclipsed highlights:

*   Scott Alexander [comes up with](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ACyGvQchWzGjGkKgS/coronavirus-open-thread?commentId=EdREE9F4q6uqcsvA6) Hammer and Dance 6 days before Tomas Pueyo
*   Spiracular on why SARS-Cov-2 is [unlikely](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ACyGvQchWzGjGkKgS/coronavirus-open-thread?commentId=JF9K87MRYGBMekpBw) to be lab-created.
*   [Two](https://github.com/midas-network/COVID-19/tree/master/parameter_estimates/2019_novel_coronavirus) [documents](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QdoCEXmZqj_4ptywXOKFe8I8rS6ijveqvdYXWT1quQI/edit#) collating estimates of basic epidemiological parameters, in response to [this thread](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ACyGvQchWzGjGkKgS/coronavirus-open-thread?commentId=37MRQmvJRcRbua2dS)
*   [Discussion](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ACyGvQchWzGjGkKgS/coronavirus-open-thread?commentId=QS4jzrzWZuMNAmor9) on whether the tuberculosis vaccine provides protection against COVID-19.
*   [Suggestive evidence](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ACyGvQchWzGjGkKgS/coronavirus-open-thread?commentId=TSP5KNPxnSZRM8Sai) that COVID-19 removes sense of taste and smell.
*   [Could](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ACyGvQchWzGjGkKgS/coronavirus-open-thread?commentId=DJKvarDrYGYo9gWz5) copper tape be net harmful?
# How can we extrapolate the true prevalence of a disease, given available information?

Note: a similar question got more attention [here](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DJpnfuJz58G82kpNW/model-estimating-the-number-of-infected-persons-in-the-bay) so maybe check that out.

The motivation here is COVID-19, but I think there are useful general models in the area.

I've made a lot of risk assessment models over the last week, most of which depend on knowing the true infection rate of a population. That's difficult to pin down at the best of times, but especially in the case of COVID-19. In the country I'm most familiar with, the US, there simply aren't enough tests performed to provide good prevalence information. This post is for models extrapolating the true prevalence of a disease from information you have on hand.

This is an exploration thread, so don't worry about it not being rigorous or defensible enough. I'll be posting my own as an example in the answers section.
# Why hasn't the technology of Knowledge Representation (i.e., semantic networks, concept graphs, ontology engineering) been applied to create tools to help human thinkers?

I've been studying the field of [knowledge representation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_representation_and_reasoning) (KR) and everything I've come across is focused on building knowledge systems for machine processing. I wonder why nobody seems to have applied these ideas to make digital KR systems for human beings to use as tool for active inquiry or personal knowledge management. Reading this stuff, I get the sense that it mostly about encoding a lot of boring facts rather than helping us with the edge of discovery.

Two off-the-cuff hypotheses:

1\. Lack of economic incentives to develop high-quality general user facing software for KR. These tools are too hard to use effectively in their current state to have any kind of widespread adoption outside of profit-driven business interests.

2\. Inability of existing KR systems to ergonomically conform to human patterns of learning and reasoning. If so, this might be due to a lack of sufficient understanding how to transition between informal natural language based reasoning and formalized reasoning, or it may simply be that the chosen formalisms are not the best ones for empowering human thought.

On the other hand, I might be dead wrong. Maybe there has been some brilliant use of this stuff for human discovery that I am unaware of. If so, I would love to know about it.
# Sleepwalking Toward Armageddon

The beginning of my Extinction series. The Death, Truth, and Extinction series will when completed become the core to what I'm calling The Eschatologist's Handbook. I'm skipping around a bit and writing all three series at the same time as I go through the materials so that I make sure I write them well.
# What is the typical course of COVID-19? What are the variants?

I've heard a lot about the death rate, hospitalization rate, doubling time, etc, but I don't feel like I know \*what happens\* when you catch SARS-CoV-2. My questions include, but are not limited to:

*   How long from infection to symptoms?
*   How do symptoms progress?
*   What percent of people never get symptoms?
*   When do you start being contagious?
*   When do you stop?

I will edit this top-level post with answers as they are filled it.
# Anthropic effects imply that we are more likely to live in the universe with interstellar panspermia

The sketch of the argument which favours panspermia.

1\. There are around [10 billion potentially habitable planets](https://www.businessinsider.com/10-billion-earth-like-planets-in-milky-way-galaxy-2019-8) in our galaxy.

2\. [Interstellar panspermia](https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/348/1/46/1415892) of small organisms will inseminate all of them with life in a few billion years.

3\. Abiogenesis could be the main filter. [Recent estimate](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58060-0) of the minimum length of self-replicating RNA is around 100 bases. Totani thinks that only one of 10^100 Suns will generate correct RNA and start RNA-world. Thus only one of 10^80 of universes has life. Thus it looks like Rare Earth is true and we are alone.

4\. However, there are many different universes in the multiverse and some of them may allow panspermia.

5\. The density of planets with life in a pasnpermia-universe is 10 billion times more than such density in a non-panspermia universe as each life will colonise the whole galaxy.

6\. We don't know the relation of non-panspermia to panspermia-universes. If it is less than 10 billion, we are more likely to be in panspermia-universe based on anthropic considerations, because each of them will have 10 billions times more attempts to create a civilization of a planet with life.

7\. If we are in the panspermia universe, it means that the Great filter from the Fermi paradox is likely ahead, as major abiogenesis filter doesn't prevent many planets in our galaxy from having life. Rare Earth hypothesis is false locally.

8\. It means that either there are a lot of aliens nearby or almost all civilizations self destruct. (Or there are some other earlier great filters like a higher level of asteroid impacts etc.) Not good from x-risks view point.
# COVID-19 article translations site aims to bridge the knowledge gap

As anyone who spans two cultures know, it's often frustrating to see how wrong the media can get news in one or the other of their domains.

When faced with the elevated stakes of COVID-19 and the consequences of mismanagement imposed upon her family in China, my good friend and colleague took on the challenge of addressing the knowledge gap, setting up [covid19readings.com](http://covid19readings.com).

The site, and its team of volunteer translators, is dedicated to surfacing quality journalism and first-person accounts of the virus, both to correct skewed perceptions in the English-speaking world and to help humanity at large weather the storm.

I hope it can be of value, at the very least, to the discussion here.
# How useful are masks during an epidemic?

This was a pretty contentious part of the [debate on the CDC's recommendations](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h4vWsBBjASgiQ2pn6/credibility-of-the-cdc-on-sars-cov-2) and has come up elsewhere as well: how effective are masks at preventing infection when worn by an uninfected individual? How about preventing spread when worn by an infected individual? Are there things you can do that make it more or less useful?

This is a thread for evidence to answer those questions and related ones. Obviously the more rigorous the better, but case studies like [this one about one dude on a bus](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3074351/coronavirus-can-travel-twice-far-official-safe-distance-and-stay) would be useful had they not been retracted (thanks to [gwillen](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7K8fSFTnpfN4EBuZ8/how-useful-are-masks-during-an-epidemic?commentId=WvfaHjqfD2RhigmQN) for pointing this out).
# What is the best way to disinfect a (rental) car?

I'm currently planning to rent a car and drive to another state.

I would like to disinfect that car as thoroughly as possible before spending 15 hours inside of it. Google gives me [lots](https://www.autoloansolutions.ca/blog/4-tips-to-kill-germs-in-your-car/) [of](https://www.safespaceco.com/how-to-disinfect-and-deodorize-your-car/) [suggestions](https://thenewswheel.com/how-to-make-the-used-car-you-just-bought-less-germ-infested/) for how to get rid of germs in a used car, but I'm hoping that I can get advice with better epistemic backing.

Does anyone have suggestions?

Thank you,

Eli
# What are some articles that updated your beliefs a lot on an important topic?

The content doesn't need to be hosted on LessWrong.

It does need to have changed your beliefs personally. If it changed other people's beliefs, please put this as a comment instead.

Also, the article should be more than simply updating you away from your priors. For example, I'm not interested in things like "learning about a new cause you weren't aware of" but rather in things like "changing your mind about the importance of a cause".

I'm also interested in knowing whether the article was the first time you had come across this point, or it just argued that point better than the previous ones. 

Information in other format than articles also work: audio, video, pictures, graph, data table, etc.

This is related to a project idea of [tracking belief updates](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/W26r3NcBExjtAPjjM/what-are-ea-project-ideas-you-have#dRc5L52Lqdm6Tustj) with the goals 1) tracking which information is the most valuable so that more people consume it, and 2) seeing how beliefs evolve (which might be evidence in itself about which beliefs are true; although, I think most, including myself, wouldn't think this was the strongest form of evidence).
# Please Press "Record"

Over the years, I've made very heavy use of open courseware/MOOCs. I'd estimate that I've covered about as much material in online lectures as I did in-person during a four year degree.

However, since college I've been frustrated by the general lack of online material for non-101 courses. Sites like coursera, edx, etc seem to have realized that the vast majority of users have basically no relevant background, so they optimize for users with no relevant background - they produce a very repetitive stream of 101-level courses. More advanced material is harder to come by online, even though it's abundant in university course catalogs.

But I hear that many colleges are moving courses online in response to coronavirus. So, a request for any professors out there: press "record" during lectures. You're on video already, you can sort out the details and decide whether to actually put up the recordings later, but for now just push the record button.
# Why isn't increasing ventilation of public spaces part of the best practice response to the Coronovirus?

It's my impression that there's some spread via aerosol in public spaces like buses and trains. By increasing ventilation in those spaces by opening more windows I find it plausible that we could reduce that transmission.

Why aren't health orgs pushing for increasing ventilation of public spaces?
# Over $1,000,000 in prizes for COVID-19 work from Emergent Ventures

Tyler Cowen's fund Emergent Ventures is offering:

*   $500k, second prize $200k, for Best effort to find a good treatment rapidly
*   $100k for Best blog or social media tracking/analysis of the virus
*   $100k for Best innovation in social distancing
*   $100k for Most important innovation or improvement for India
*   $50k for Best investigative journalism on coronavirus
*   $50k for Best (justified) coronavirus policy writing

Announcement: [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/03/1-million-plus-in-emergent-ventures-prizes-for-coronavirus-work.html](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/03/1-million-plus-in-emergent-ventures-prizes-for-coronavirus-work.html)

Side note: In the post, Tyler explains why prizes are better than grants in this situation: “The case for prizes is stronger when you don’t know who is likely to make the breakthrough, you value the final output more than the process, there is an urgency to solutions (talent development is too slow), success is relatively easy to define, and efforts and investments are likely to be undercompensated.”
# What is a School?

Previously: [The Case Against Education](https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2018/04/15/the-case-against-education/)

You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

In a belated triumph of sanity, schools around the world are closing their doors in the wake of the Coronavirus outbreak.

The debates about schools closing make it clear how schools provide value.

Here in New York City, and in many other places, we are refusing to close to schools until (two weeks after the) last minute because schools _provide free meals to poor children._

The other stated reason is because if children are not in school, their parents would be unable to work, and some of their parents are healthcare workers or cannot afford any missed paychecks.

(In the case of universities, we also have places like Harvard that took away students’ housing and thus left them with no place to live.)

These are good, real concerns. We need solutions to these problems.

But we also now know what real problems are being solved.

We have school because our society believes that one cannot leave children unsupervised or terrible things would happen, for very broad values of children. We also have school because we don’t have another way to ensure that children get to eat. And in some narrow cases, we have a very partial fix for a housing crisis.

Clearly, regardless of what the best solutions are, one could [goal factor](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Cu5C5KhkoXhrPMLFN/goal-factoring) for these problems much better than ‘mandatory schooling.’

The concern that I have heard _literally zero people _mention is that closing the schools will prevent children from learning.

I do realize that no one is grappling with how long this is likely to last, and that in the long term they would raise this concern.

But still, I find all of  this enlightening. And refreshing.
# How dangerous is it to test a vaccine without animal trials?

I saw the idea a few times ([including on LW](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/94QQkc5he9Qzq2tWC/more-dakka-for-coronavirus-we-need-immediate-human-trials-of)), and support it, to do/allow human trials for CoronaVirus vaccine without animal trials.

My question is - how dangerous is it for a person to volunteer to test a vaccine (both with and without animal trials)?

How dangerous is it compared to getting the virus itself?

How should someone decide whether to volunteer?
# Possible worst outcomes of the coronavirus epidemic

There are several possible ways how current pandemic may turn into a [civilizational](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228903654_Catastrophe_social_collapse_and_human_extinction) [collapse](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228903654_Catastrophe_social_collapse_and_human_extinction) (which [may be](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wGqSqWLTwDrytxeER/update-on-civilizational-collapse-research) the [first step](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016328709001062) of an extinction event, depending on the possibility of recovery). I will list below several putative ideas of how the pandemic could turn into a global collapse. Each of them, I guess, has lower than 1 per cent probability:   

*   _Inevitable reinfection_. The virus has an ability to mutate inside the body causing deadlier reinfection later with the “personal strain"; If true, most infected will die in a few months. This is how [feline peritonitis coronavirus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feline_coronavirus) kills. 
*   _New strain_. The virus will mutate globally in a new strain, which will be deadlier, or more affect children, or better evade quarantine and sanitation.
*   _New waves_. The virus is mutating so quickly that the vaccine is not possible, and each year will be new waves of reinfections, with mortality of a few per cent each.
*   _Famine_. The virus could be contained, but only via global lockdown. The economy as we know it will collapse and eventually famine and other forms of shortages ensure. Alternatively, the virus is not that deadly, but social collapse will happen anyway as a combination of border controls, riots, civil wars.
*   _Infertility_. The virus causes long-term health effects for most survivors, like infertility, reduced lung capacity and brain damage. This gradually reduces human potential and civilisational productivity.
*   _Nuclear war_. [China blames the US in the virus creation](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016328709001062), or vice versa, and retaliates by a new virus or using other means of warfare which ends in a nuclear war.
# The Danes wish to know more about the coronavirus

Denmark has the 4th highest per capita number of \[confirmed\] infections worldwide after Italy, Norway, South Korea. This is from a friend I originally made through LW Copenhagen:  
  
"Thanks for the excellent coverage on MR.

I lead a small team of tech workers in Copenhagen, who are donating our time and money towards building a covid-19 self-reporting tool for those citizens not (yet) in contact with health care services.

As countries shift from containment to “flatten the curve” strategies, authorities lose track of the number of non-critical cases, and to which degree people adhere to social distancing dictums. This makes it hard to predict the number if ICU beds needed a few days into the future. We’re aiming to solve this by asking all Danes for daily status updates.

Denmark is a good testing ground, but we’ll open source everything, and are building with developing countries in mind. We’re aiming to launch Monday — currently working on a green light from local health authorities.

We’re determining which data to collect. **We’d love it if you’d help by asking your audience: “W*****hat daily self reported measures would you most like to see from the complete population Denmark?” ***(or some variation thereof).

There is of course a tradeoff between data fidelity and engagement.

What we’re considering:

*   Symptoms
    *   Binary
    *   Type
    *   Severity
*   Whereabouts
    *   Degree of social distancing
    *   Hygienic measures
*   Moral
    *   How concerned are you
    *   Do you know anyone who’s been sick”

Are there comparable efforts to do this elsewhere?"
# Recommendations for a resource on very basic epidemiology? 

Does anyone have a recommended textbook, video course, etc?

I'm doing my best to make sense of what's happening with COVID-19, mostly by making simple exponential models under simplified assumptions. But it seems like I could be doing better than that, if I knew just _slightly_ more of the basics.

Furthermore, I keep hearing people use epidemiological words (like RO (R0?)), that I understand in a basic way, but I don't have an intuition for. I would like to have clear explanations so that I can make up exercises for myself , and have a sense of how the variables relate to each other.
# How likely is it that US states or cities will prevent travel across their borders?

In contrast to quarantining people who are known to be infected, I want to know how likely it is that, (for instance) California doesn't allow people to enter and/or to leave, across her state borders.

Is there any precedent in US history for something like that?

(I would be glad to hear about historical cases or legal considerations, even if you don't have a final view of the issue.)
# When are the most important times to wash your hands?

I set a five minute timer to brainstorm some, but I bet that there are many that I've missed, and furthermore, it would be helpful to know which ones are most important / impactful.

*   I'm about to eat food
*   After I go to the bathroom
*   After I touch a package
*   After I sneeze or blow my nose
*   When I feel an urge to touch my face
*   When I stand up from using my computer
*   I touch the ground.
*   When I touch a shared whiteboard marker.
# How would you take math notes to make the most of them?

I've been heavily influenced by reading about the zettelkasten method (and its siblings); it seems to, theoretically, solve many problems that I (a bioinformatics student) encounter on a daily basis.

However, I'm struggling with implementing said method in practice. While in biology I think the it will be easily applicable, in math I have some trouble with both splitting the information into chunks (zettels, if you wish) _and_ then with linking those chunks together in a meaningful and useful way.

As an illustrative example, let's pick analysis, with the common _theorem-proof-definition-proposition-proof_ structure (think Baby Rudin). How would you split the information, and how would you link it together?

Another problem I'm having concerns note-taking in general; especially in math I often feel I'm just copying the textbook, and that there's no added value in my notes. What information should go in my notes, as opposed to just staying in the textbook?
# Should we heat our houses to ~78F to reduce coronavirus risk?

People have noticed that the coronavirus outbreaks are most common in cities in a specific temperature range (5-11C, 41-52F), and now there's a paper (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3550308) giving more detail.  We normally keep our house at ~62-68F this time of year, and I'm trying to figure out if it would be better to raise it to ~78F.  The downside of heating the house is pretty low, since we mostly keep it low for cost, but it's possible that warmer temperatures are actually better for spread?

(Another worrying aspect is that it looks like Boston will soon be entering the 41-52F range, and we already have a lot of spread.)
# Reasons why coronavirus mortality of young adults may be underestimated.

TL;DR Our estimation of young adult mortality could be biased because of longer survival time before death in ICU and triage.

The data from Asia is that the mortality of young adults between 20-39 is like 0.2 per cent. This sometimes contradicts claims from the ground in Italy, [like](https://www.ilcapoluogo.it/2020/03/14/coronavirus-abruzzo-medici-sfiniti-in-trincea/?fbclid=IwAR2fl_Z_HtEH-ce1Gwo6CkSFnuzIqU21DZdyY-4FIohbPJNMTAKsAXdQBr4.):

_"There are many young people in intensive care, so we dispelled a 'myth', for which Coronavirus is a disease that affects only the elderly: stay at home, who can, don't go out, maybe just so we could come out! There will be a happy ending only if we respect the rules. So stay at home, respect the safety distances ” _

However, Italy still almost didn’t report deaths of people below 50. The main question is: could it be taken as evidence of the low young adult's mortality in the situation after the medicine collapse?

The lack of reports of the death of young adults could have 3 possible explanations which need additional verification:

1) _Better survival on the ventilator_. Young adults survive better if they put on the ventilator. I don’t know how many young adults are currently on the ventilator. However, if there will be a shortage of ventilators, the mortality of young adults will jump.

2) _Better triage_. Young adults are getting better triage. Because young adults seem to survive better on ventilators and also are a more valuable part of society, they are given ventilators, and older people are turned off if there is a shortage of ventilators. It was reported that in Italy they had to turn off 40 years old people to save 30 years old ones (I lost the link, but will add when will find). 

3) _A longer time before death_. Some young adults could survive for a much longer time on the ventilator and will die anyway. Maybe they can survive 6-8 weeks on the ventilator but will die eventually. In that case, we are just not starting to see these deaths, as the jump of infections started around mid-January, or around 8 weeks ago. In China, there are still 3000 people in serious condition, and as the peak of infections was at the beginning of February, most of them were diagnosed more than a month ago. 

The main question here is the age of people in ICU, not age of deaths, as younger people may live longer in ICU. Some data points: Half of the Dutch patients in ICU are [below 50](https://myprivacy.dpgmedia.net/?siteKey=V9f6VUvlHxq9wKIN&callbackUrl=https%3a%2f%2fwww.ad.nl%2fprivacy-gate%2faccept%3fredirectUri%3d%252fdossier-coronavirus%252f40-a-50-nederlandse-coronapatienten-op-intensive-cares-meer-dan-de-helft-is-onder-de-vijftig%257ea058aad2%252f%253freferrer%253dhttps%253a%252f%252ft.co%252fFFkYTRXzox%253famp%253d1%2526fbclid%253dIwAR2B_58hHk31S5ZMyV3U3iHiYRbygfljekw6rFEeMgdFyJosK5u51L7FmZs), and 16 years boy is in a [coma](https://www.ad.nl/dossier-coronavirus/familie-bidt-voor-16-jarige-bredanaar-sehraz-die-door-corona-op-intensive-care-ligt~a0dc5413/?fbclid=IwAR0MuxWvq07r1BXJM86FahYKDpfQl2hPXac6A64nd30EzFuWpPbFYST6-0U).
# Forecasting an 80% chance of an effective anti COVID-19 drug (probably Remdesivir)

  

I'm gathering info on anti-COVID-19 drug efforts. [Here is what I've compiled so far.](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hwGgjxQhT5_7_lg7IRYYqvCGKUP_Q3IE2Ua8lVzPyrI/edit?usp=sharing) I've combined the number of trials in various phases with big data on expected success rates for drugs in those phases to forecast an 80% probability that at least one drug currently in phase 1-3 testing will be approved. Because trial efforts are unusual, I've used the following categories in my model:

0: pre-trial (not factored into probability of success)

1: new drug in early testing

2: approved drug being tested against COVID-19

3: official phase 3 trial

This is just the product of a morning's research, so if anybody finds better information, I'd appreciate it if you'd link a source so I can include it.

Remdesivir is the drug we'll know about soonest - one expert is quoted as saying in a couple months, so around May 2020. Other analysts say they're optimistic that production can be scaled up quickly. It treats the pneumonia of severe cases, so it might cut down on mortality. Other treatments are also being tested.

The CDC projects that "In the coming months, most of the U.S. population will be exposed to this virus." If the virus grows exponentially, the relative timing of a Remdesivir rollout and a COVID-19 explosion could matter hugely in terms of mortality.

Remdesivir has been administered via compassionate use permission already for at least 15 patients who weren't part of the trial (which is recruiting volunteers now). So although we won't know its effectiveness for a while, if it _is_ effective, it can potentially begin saving lives immediately via compassionate use permission.
# How Do You Convince Your Parents To Prep? To Quarantine?

A number of my friends are having difficulty conveying the seriousness of COVID-19 to their parents, or getting them to take action instead of panic. What have you found useful in convincing your parents to prep and stay home, and for bonus points, convincing their gatherings to close up?

I'm actually not a great case for answering this- my dad was born 30% prepper. But I think I could have saved a statistical life had I convinced him to convince his church to close a week earlier. And he might have been able to do that sooner had he known the technical solutions available to hold virtual church. So in addition to rousing essays and threats, please consider what tools would make parents' quarantined lives better.
# Could you save lives in your community by buying oxygen concentrators from Alibaba?

Alibaba (and Amazon) sell lots of "portable oxygen concentrators" in bulk for $200 - $300 a piece, e.g [this one](https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Amazon-portable-oxygen-concentrator-with-battery_60773158783.html?spm=a2700.themePage.5238101000611.2.6de25d28C7PcLm). These seem to differ from medical-grade oxygen concentrators (which you need a prescription to buy) in that they deliver less oxygen at less purity, i.e. medical-grade oxygen concentrators can provide >5L/min of oxygen at > 85% purity, whereas one of these goes from 1L/min at 92% to 5L/min at 30%.

Here's a case for why buying one or more could be life-saving, which I would love LessWrong's opinion on. I think any of these points could be quite wrong.

*   [Some sources I've consulted](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OXH1st_kBhISQibm6AwYXtw_7uNpoUNsb-3TdSz9QK8/edit?disco=AAAAJNDgiCo) suggest that something like ~7% of infected patients must go to the hospital, are put on low-flow (<5L/min) ventilation, and then recover.

*   The source above suggests that this could be a life-or-death difference.
*   Seems plausible that one Alibaba oxygen concentrator would be enough for some patients.
*   In a pinch, seems like you could put several of these together with some tubing to make a 5L / min concentrator at high purity.

*   Ventilators are much more limiting than oxygen, but if hospitals become absurdly overwhelmed, it seems plausible that even oxygen access will be limiting.
*   These are produced in China, which has (for now) enough health-care capacity to deal with its patients, so you may not be taking away medical supplies from people who use them otherwise. I worry that they will be used by more legitimate institutions in the future, but maybe they can just be donated to those institutions if that seems to be the case. Alibaba also lists these as "Hot New March 2020" products, suggesting they might be increasing supply to meet demand.

Even if this is a good idea, I'm not sure if it's cost-effective over other life-saving interventions, but it seems plausible that you could convince someone who wouldn't otherwise give money to buy them (e.g., they could buy one if they were particularly concerned for a family member and then donate it as necessary).
# Why such low detected rates of COVID-19 in children?

In China [0.9%](http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9a9b-fea8db1a8f51) of COVID-19 cases were in people <10. In the Chinese population 11.9% of people are <10.

In Italy its [0.5%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Italy) and 8.4%.

In South Korea it's [1%](https://www.cdc.go.kr/board/board.es?mid=a30402000000&bid=0030) and 8.4%.

10-19 year olds are also very underrepresented although less severely so.

This seems odd.

I've seen suggestions that this is down to younger people not being symptomatic and hence being less likely to be tested.

Contra this, these countries have implemented ALOT of tests (China: unknown but apparently can do >1.5M/week, S. Korea: 275k, Italy: 125k). I can imagine children being tested less, but this much less? If there are 97 negative tests in 100 positive tests (as in South Korea), I'm struggling to believe that there are hundreds of children out there who are asymptomatic COVID-19 carriers whom the testing agencies are just missing.

On [Diamond Princess](https://www.niid.go.jp/niid/en/2019-ncov-e/9417-covid-dp-fe-02.html), with 100% testing, 33% of <20s who contracted Coronavirus were symptomatic, albeit with a small sample (2/6, in under 10s it was 0/1) which isn't hugely far off the average of 49%. 20-29 year olds had a larger sample and symptomatics were 89%. It would be strange to see such a dramatic change and I am no less confused than before.

So, what gives?
# Positive Feedback -> Optimization?

When I imagine the beginnings of life on earth, I imagine a handful of molecules which just-so-happen to catalyze reactions which produce more of those same molecules. The more of molecule X there is, the more molecule X is produced. The chemical kinetic equations contain a positive feedback loop (aka instability).

There might also be other molecules which catalyze their own production. If Y catalyzes its own production more efficiently than X, then we eventually expect to see more Y than X. Still at the level of chemical kinetics, we’d say that the equations contain multiple positive feedback loops, and the feedback loop for Y has a faster doubling time than that for X.

We haven’t used the word “fitness” here at all. We’re quite literally talking about eigenvalues of a matrix (i.e. the Jacobian of the kinetic equations of the chemical system) - those are what determine the relevant doubling times, at least close to ambient steady-state concentrations. As we move away from ambient concentrations, the math will get a bit more complicated, but the qualitative idea remains: we’re talking about positive feedback loops, without any _explicit_ mention of fitness or optimization.

But it sure seems like there should be a higher level of abstraction, at which the positive feedback loops for X and Y are competing, Y eventually wins out due to higher fitness, and there’s some meaningful sense in which the system is optimizing for fitness.

More generally, **whenever there’s a dynamical system containing multiple instabilities (i.e. positive feedback loops), it seems like there should be a canonical way to interpret that system as multiple competing subsystems, under selection, optimizing for some kind of fitness function**. I’d like a way to take a dynamical system containing positive feedback loops, and say both (a) what the competing subsystems are, and (b) what fitness function it’s implicitly maximizing.

Something like this would likely be useful in a number of areas:

*   Alignment: notice implicit optimization by looking for dynamic instabilities (e.g. [instabilities in imperfect search](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/X7S3u5E4KktLp7gHz/tessellating-hills-a-toy-model-for-demons-in-imperfect)).
*   Agent foundations: formulate “agents” as self-reinforcing feedback loops in dynamical systems. Tying effective self-reinforcement to world-models would probably be a key piece (e.g. [along these lines](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JBFHzfPkXHB2XfDGj/evolution-of-modularity)).
*   Biology: generalize evolutionary theory
*   Economics: ground economic theory in selection effects (e.g. [along these lines](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PrCmeuBPC4XLDQz8C/unconscious-economics)) rather than ideal agents, allowing it to apply much more broadly.
# Kevin Simler: Outbreak

Kevin Simler released another blogpost, this time on disease spread modeling. Excerpt: 

> [Harry Stevens](https://twitter.com/Harry_Stevens) at The Washington Post recently published a *very* elegant simulation of how a disease like COVID-19 spreads. If you haven't already, I highly recommend [checking it out](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/).
> 
> Today I want to follow up with something I've been working on: **playable simulations** of a disease outbreak. "Playable" means you'll get to tweak parameters (like transmission and mortality rates) and watch how the epidemic unfolds.
> 
> By the end of this article, I hope you'll have a better understanding — perhaps better *intuition* — for what it takes to contain this thing. But first!...
> 
> **AN IMPORTANT WARNING**:
> 
> **This is** ***not*** **an attempt to model COVID-19.**
> 
> What follows is a *simplified* model of a disease process. The goal is to learn how epidemics unfold *in general*.
> 
> WARNING #2: I'm not an epidemiologist! I defer to infectious disease experts (and so should you). I have almost certainly made mistakes in this article, but I'll correct them as quickly as I can. If you see any problems, please [get in touch](https://meltingasphalt.com/contact/).
> 
> Alright?
> 
> Let's do this.
# King and Princess

Sometimes Lily tells me that she is a princess and wants me to be the king. We'll sit together, me on the throne and her at my side, and we'll hear cases from our people. An imaginary petitioner describes the situation to me, and I relay it to Lily. We consult about the situation, consider the circumstances, and issue a judgement.

For example, at the the most recent session a restaurant owner came to us unable to make rent because of the shutdown. We decided that they only owed part of the money, and that they could wait to pay it until they were open again.

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/lily-princess.jpg)](https://www.jefftk.com/lily-princess-big.jpg)  
*Lily playing a different princess game, with [orb and sceptre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_(2013_film)).*

It's not an especially accurate depiction of royalty, or a system of government I want to encourage, but it's fun talking through people's situations and figuring out what seems fair.
# A game designed to beat AI?

It's no surprise LW is dominated by COVID questions right now. My guess is that many of us are holding their ground at home and have more spare time than usual. So here is a question for you: if you are to design a 1v1-type board game and your purpose is to confuse the AIs, to make it as difficult for them as possible, to level the playground between humans & machines, or at least to prolong the period when human players have an upper hand over AIs; then what designs would you use, what elements would you introduce into the game?

Of course, the 2nd most important goal is to make an interesting game, one that fascinate people and keep them playing whenever they have free time - during pandemics, for example.
# Good News: the Containment Measures are Working

After weeks and months of rather drastic measures we can see the glimpse of how the lockdowns are making a difference. Here are the snapshots from [worldometer](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/):

**New cases dropping**
----------------------

![](https://i.gyazo.com/e4e9c66b62fe0560a58a5c7171cc68e1.png)

  

![](https://i.gyazo.com/e570f3a5637972c1f42d1bab37a320fb.png)

**New cases leveling off**
--------------------------

![](https://i.gyazo.com/e210f1d9485966fd831ffae0edf7c5a1.png)

**New Cases switching from exponential to linear**
--------------------------------------------------

Japan: no Worldometer breakdown, data from Wikipedia

![](https://i.gyazo.com/d0f6d3a2cb051b817b10416d665bd431.png)

**Inconclusive, but apparently sub-exponential**
------------------------------------------------

![](https://i.gyazo.com/feee5d469b66b49649fac24c0cdd93d2.png)

  

![](https://i.gyazo.com/b7cc81656bade035429415500bda9a7f.png)

What does it mean for the future? That it takes about a week of a severe lockdown to switch from the exponential growth to linear, about two weeks to switch to leveling off, and three to four weeks to start seeing a meaningful decline. If this pattern holds, then the dire projections of millions dying would not come to pass. The overall toll is likely to be around 100,000 in 2020 if most countries adopt the China/Korea/Italy/Spain-level measures. Moreover, the worst of the pandemic, or at least of this first wave, will be over in 2-3 months, as long as the containment measures are in place, and the countries and jurisdictions that are proactive enough will not have to resort to the worst of the ICU triage any time soon.

This was the good news. The bad news is that this is not sustainable in the medium to long term, given the impact of the measures on the economy, mobility and lifestyle. But maybe the effort to flatten the curve is not in vain. The question is, what's next? Who knows? A viable vaccine is at least a year away, the ICU bed count ramp up may help, some of the social distancing measures such as deliveries, takeouts, telecommuting may prove sustainable enough, but that doesn't seem like nearly enough in the long term.
# Did any US politician react appropriately to COVID-19 early on?

Did any US politician call for quarantining, ventilator production, ICU capacity expansion, PPE stockpiling, or anything of that level of seriousness between January 1 and March 1? I'd like to know (a) so that I can take any such politician more seriously and (b) to better calibrate my sense of the adequacy of the US political system (since I live in the US).
# Zeynep Tufekci on Why Telling People They Don't Need Masks Backfired

In _The New York Times_ op-ed section [(archive link)](https://archive.is/iNBGr), information science professor [Zeynep Tufekci](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeynep_Tufekci) argues that health authorities damaged their own credibility by misleadingly claiming that masks aren't useful for healthy people rather than being forthright about the need to conserve masks for doctors and nurses in the face of a shortage. (Elizabeth van Nostrand and Jim Babcock made [a similar argument on this website the week before last](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h4vWsBBjASgiQ2pn6/credibility-of-the-cdc-on-sars-cov-2#Discouraged_Use_of_Masks).)
# How can we estimate how many people are C19 infected in an area?


My favorite dashboard is [Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus): it has time series and maps and lets me choose which countries to graph. But it’s only showing confirmed cases, and doesn’t show any unit smaller than a country. Plus on the day I’m writing this, the US was missing yesterday’s day. [Plague Plus](https://plagueplus.com/) is trying to do true prevalence estimates, but I don’t like their methodology, in part because it’s the same for every country.

Can I do better than this? Is something out there that shows city level data, with time series? If I must use confirmed cases, how can I translate those numbers into true prevalence estimates, given region-specific conditions?
# Where can we donate time and money to avert coronavirus deaths?

There are a lot of people who desperately want to give away their time, money, and expertise for other people’s lives right now. Where should they go? What projects already exist that need their resources, and specifically what do they need? What successful projects can be copied (e.g. hyperlocal lobbying efforts)? What projects should exist but don’t yet?