Share this page!

Philippe Lemoine Profile picture
Twitter logo
4 Jan, 3 tweets, 1 min read
An underappreciated fact is that policy problems are not only about devising the right technical scheme. You also have to solve political, implementation, etc. problems and even good plans in theory are often worthless in practice because they have no chance of overcoming those.
This explains 50% of why the plans very intelligent people keep proposing to end the pandemic have failed. The other 50% is because even from a purely technical point of view those plans are usually dumb as shit. But the point holds more generally and isn't limited to COVID-19.
I believe the technical term for this situation is the overdetermination of being fucked: there are more than one reason why you are fucked, each one of them independently sufficient to make you fucked. Attempts to unfuck yourself will likely make you even more fucked.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Philippe Lemoine

Philippe Lemoine Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @phl43

Philippe Lemoine Profile picture
5 Jan
Je rappelle que, contrairement à ce que prétend cet imbécile, 1) *personne* n'oblige le gouvernement à décider la moindre mesure de restriction et 2) le passe vaccinal n'empêchera *en rien* une éventuelle surcharge des unités de réanimation.
Il ne faut jamais cesser de rappeler le premier point : la décision de mettre en place des restrictions est un choix politique et le gouvernement pourrait tout à fait choisir de ne pas le faire, comme les autorités l'ont fait dans d'autres pays, donc qu'il l'assume son choix !
Quant au second, même si on fait des hypothèses délirantes sur l'effet du passe vaccinal sur la vaccination, compte tenu du délai entre vaccination et protection, la vague actuelle aura déjà commencé à redescendre depuis longtemps au moment où ça produira des effets...
Read 5 tweets
Philippe Lemoine Profile picture
4 Jan
People say that we should update vaccines so they will make antibodies that are better adapted to Omicron, but I wonder if there isn't a case that we should deliberately *not* do that. Here is the argument, which may be completely wrong. 1/n
It's now pretty clear that Omicron is intrinsically milder than previous strains, so since SARS-CoV-2 is not going anywhere, it's better if Omicron replaces all the other strains and fully takes over everywhere eventually. 2/n
If this happens, there is a better chance that all variants in the future will descend from Omicron, and therefore a better chance they'll be similarly mild. This would put us in a more desirable endemic equilibrium other things being equal. 3/n
Read 10 tweets
Philippe Lemoine Profile picture
4 Jan
Even if Delta had a R0 of ~6, and the estimate of Omicron's transmission advantage in that study were correct, you could *not* infer that it has a R0 of ~18 because this advantage is likely due mostly or perhaps even entirely to Omicron's better ability to evade prior immunity!
This inference is based on a confusion between a *transmission* advantage and a *transmissibility* advantage, but as I explained before those are distinct concepts and it's important to distinguish them, otherwise you end up making this kind of mistake. cspicenter.org/blog/waronscie…
Moreover, as I explained in this article, we don't really have very good reasons to think that Delta has a R0 of 6, precisely because it's very difficult to estimate a variant's *transmissibility* advantage from its *transmission* advantage in a particular context.
Read 5 tweets
Philippe Lemoine Profile picture
2 Jan
Les gens qui nous gouvernent n'ont pas la moindre idée de ce qu'ils feront dans 15 jours, encore moins dans un an, mais il y a tout un tas de gens qui s'imaginent que tout cela fait partie d'un plan mûrement réfléchi dont on se demande bien d'ailleurs quel pourrait être le but...
Il fait de l'ironie parce que ça lui semble insensé, mais c'est pourtant très exactement ce qui s'est passé 🤷‍♂️
C'est absolument sidérant que les gens trouvent ce scénario absurde, mais que par contre ils trouvent l'idée que ce qui se passe est le fruit d'un complot visant à "contrôler les populations" (peu importe que ça ne veuille à peu près rien dire) pour servir "Big Pharma", qui
Read 6 tweets
Philippe Lemoine Profile picture
30 Dec 21
Amazingly, not only is this wrong, but it's literally the opposite of the correct inference 🤦‍♂️
If antibodies from vaccination or prior infection can't neutralize Omicron well, but vaccinated and previously infected people are still protected against severe disease, then it should obviously *increase* your credence that T-cells play a role in protecting against disease...
Of course, it also shows that T-cells won't prevent you from testing positive or even having symptoms, but nobody expected them to do that 🤷‍♂️It's amazing the nonsense "zero COVID" folks will peddle to support this policy even when they should know better.
Read 10 tweets
Philippe Lemoine Profile picture
28 Dec 21
Audience capture is one hell of a drug.
The most amazing part is that he probably believes that nonsense at this point. It’s the same as with virtue signaling and more generally any case where someone says something because it’s in their interest: it actually produces genuine belief pretty quickly.
It’s very difficult psychologically to spend your life going around saying things you know to be false, so pretty soon you start believing your own nonsense. This is also why politicians are not nearly as cynical as people generally assume.
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @phl43 has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @phl43!

Read all threads by @phl43

:(