The effect could be different in Vietnam because of cultural differences, strictness of regulation or somethings else. Same as vaccine program compliance.

The central point is about adequacy of governmental decisions, not about compliance to them.

There are plenty of regulations about hospital food or child nutrition in the US that follow the dietary guidance. I have not looked into it but it would not surprise me if they regulate macro calorie intake for military (not that it matters for the central point of discussion).

I would not underestimate the importance of US dietary guidelines.

For example, dietary guidelines are followed by schools, hospitals and military. They are also taught in medical schools and used by doctors to advise their patients. Additionally, lots of countries semi-blindly follow whatever guidelines US comes up with (see the parallel with covid treatments & measures?)

My gut feeling is that those guidelines directly contributed to a vast number of deaths / lost QALYs. 

even though J&J is not mRNA-based

The core point is that even J&J is not a traditional vaccine. It's also genetic (DNA-based) with a classic non-LNP delivery mechanism using an adenovirus. From what I understand, it penetrates a different subset of cells (using ACE receptors, afaik) that get killed by the immune system in the same way as with mRNA-vaccines.

Strongly upvoted as well, and I agree with Vanilla_cabs - I don't think it helps classifying everybody concerned about covid vaccines as anti-vaxers. Maybe we need a better term.

Here is an analysis taking into account recovered people with natural immunity in the US:

https://youtu.be/vJy8jdunpFw?t=520

Personally, I'm wondering if antibody dependent enhancement could explain some weird patterns we are starting seeing now in highly-vaccinated places.

Similarly to Hacker Newsletter there is a weekly digest of Lesswrong posts on Rational Newsletter.

Interesting, thanks! My thinking is that:

1. Methylation increases with age and predicts biological age
2. Methylation affects protein synthesis in a semi-random way

Those points mean that epigenetics at least partially causes all hallmarks dependent on protein synthesis (loss of proteostasis, intercellular communication, etc). Meaning that epigenetics is at least partially upstream of at least a few hallmarks.

Not sure what being correct about information theory of aging would exactly mean or what other evidence to expect. Intuitively it feels that our efforts should focus upstream and that there are more low hanging fruits in epigenetics than in most of the other hallmarks.

Very curious to hear a bit more about why you are skeptical about epigenetics and information theory of aging as the primary cause. But I completely agree that it's not the only cause!

"Being sufficient to slow aging" is a pretty low bar, I have virtually no doubt that reprogramming will slow aging (it already has been done experimentally with mice).

Thanks for an amazing post, Jack!

I think it's worth mentioning that damage accumulation as the root cause is not the consensus view anymore.

To quote Josh Mitteldorf, there are three views:

1. (from the “programmed” school) Aging is programmed via epigenetics. The body downregulates repair mechanisms as we get older, while upregulating apoptosis and inflammation to such an extent that they are causes of significant damage.
2. (from the “damage” school) The body accumulates damage as we get older. The body tries to rescue itself from the damage by upregulating repair and renewal pathways in response to the damage.
3. (also from the “damage” school) Part of the damage the body suffers is dysregulation of methylation. Methylation changes with age are stochastic. Methylation becomes more random with age.

My belief is that (1), (2), and (3) are all occurring, but that (1) predominates over (2). The “damage” school of aging would contend that (1) is excluded, and there are only (2) and (3).

There has been a lot of progress with (1) in the last years which makes me more optimistic in short longevity timelines.

I am using https://scite.ai/ with a plugin for browsers, but I would love a similar service with user-generated flags.