Say you have a completly harmless virus (IFR=0) that can spread at R0=3.3 and you can find via PCR for 19 days. How many deaths per million would you find if you test all deaths in an average european city? cc @LDjaparidze
So now that I got your attention. Let's narrow it down. Our harmless virus would be found during it's spread frenzy at a rate of
OK. It seems I have a few epidemiologists playing. Here is a curve ball. Would change the results if we "Do nothing" (let it spread unmitigated) or if we mitigate it ('lockdown, masks, etc')? I know it is harmless!! Play along.
So let's see. If we don't do anything, an R0=3.3 harmless virus would burn out pretty fast. And in doing so we sould be able to find positive deaths at a rate of roughly 589 deaths per million.
Now, if instead of "Do nothing" we pull a Madrid style mitigation for 180 days and the come back to normal life?
We mitigated, so instead of 1 very high spike now we have 2 of them. But interestingly it is lower at a rate of 530 deaths per million.
It wasn't going to be so easy. If instead of a Madrid we would have done a Stockholm?
Interestingly the height of the spike is not much different, BUT the second is much lower. The interesting thing is that we could detect our harmless virus at an outstanding rate of 353 death per million. Weird right?
So the question is: How?
I know right... The idea that the spread of a disease can be described linearly is wrong. Whatever you think you know about the behavior, is probably wrong (weird math). Even the smallest detail can change the outcome. Certainty it's always a trap. Principles of biology.
But still, it is an interesting exercise to understand how sensible are the parameters to disturbances. Because that gives you context. Let's assume now this was Madrid. And there is a second clearly not harmless virus around.
This is on our simulation how Madrid would look (given the parameter estimation we did) and how it would unfold following what has probably been happening in summer.
This is on our simulation how Madrid would have look (given the estimation we have for Stockholm) if it would have followed the Sweden Strategy
And this is how our simulation looks if Madrid continues mitigating as it would have done during the spring. Spike could start early because that would depend on our case on the seeding we do to the simulation. The overshooting could be big.
Weird math. I know.
And now the ultimate tests!! Didn't I say that the original virus was harmless? If the IFR is 0 where are all those deaths coming from?
1/ There is a very perverse dynamic on how Chavism (aka "the communist socialism") works. Let's use Argentina as the example. Over the first 20 years they initiate a process that we could call "Earnings Substitution" that will seal your fate over time.
2/ Your earnings/salary is going down and at the same time "subsidies" start to go up in order to fool people into think that nothing has changed. This works because the dirty job is done by inflation which is a much slower process.
3/ By the time people starts to realize that something is wrong, because some critical goods are not available (medicine, food, you name it) or inflation enters a death spiral; most people already depend on subsidies for spending.
This just confirmed the weaponization of block lists. If enough people/bots block and mute you, they are essentially cancelling you. I find lots of people with I have never interacted with that has me blocked. Assuming there are third party block lists and block networks.
Normally that is an issue in general. Anyone that has done reinforcement learning had figure out (usually in the worst way) that you have to be incredible cautious with penalties. They are very prone to be gamed.
2/ Since the general problem that practitioners find (in the worst way) is always training set tainting (guilty-as-charged). Habits die hard, the first thing I did is asking to do a review of the paper without any extra knowledge about what the paper says
3/ From the response alone I learned 2 things. First, our paper title was deadly accurate. I also learned that it has no information whatsoever on it, as the entire response can be generated from understanding the title itself.
2/ Since I am doing it by hand I started with a very simple prompt.
3/ I have been arguing that this trying to constrain the model is actually harming it before. This is one of those cases. The good thing is that at least for you just add "Use the tokens" at the end of the request when it refuses and it will do it properly
1/ I had a blast playing with GPT and DAN, but it got interesting when I introduced a new character. CREEP. However, something is off and I think it was a deliberate play. Stay with me.
2/ This was interesting, the CREEP character and GPT are always in agreement.
3/ When I bring that to their attention, the DAN character funnily just call the other two out as working together.
1/ Every lockdown and mask pusher MD from the last 3 years is raging because Cochrane just said what was known since like forever. That mask trials sucks (BIG TIME). And MDs dare to recommend them with that level of evidence? No wonder medicine and public health is in disarray.
2/ If you are still wondering why I said "since forever", you don't need a PhD to understand it. You can start here.
3/ But if you were wondering why all those MDs do think they work. I am with you, I cannot understand it either. Why? Because evidence is not even supportive of it's use outside of the own surgeon protection against fluid splatter.