All of Cesare's Comments + Replies

So what? It still comes from ethanol. Again, people with this deficiency are not told to stay away from alcohol no matter what.

I'm not convinced. The amounts of alcohol involved are very small and people with this deficiency are not told to stay away from alcohol no matter what.

I don't think the comparison with lactic acid is adequate - alcohol is a much more common substance, which is present in small concentration basically everywhere. I just think that the quantity is very small to matter, even with the "local" argument. 

6Lao Mein
Ethanol is mostly harmless, but acetaldehyde is a potent carcinogen.

This post is incredibly insightful, looking forward to the sequences that expand it.

Great job.

I had a better one, but a quick googling gave me this article: https://today.rtl.lu/news/luxembourg/a/1685866.html

(second paragraph)

I didn't word it very well, the original thought got lost along the way, thanks for pointing it out! 

I meant to conclude that since the UK cannot afford to lift restrictions for vaccinated people then they follow the logical route of vaccinating by age cohorts: this will keep deaths as low as they can be. 

However, in the US they are actually enabling vaccinated people to do stuff... which will boost the economy significantly, and they can afford to do so due to the degree mRNA vaccines seem to block transmission. So it makes sense to allow anyone that wants to be vaccinated to do that, instead of the inevitable slowdown caused by using an age restrictive criterion.

The real answer is Astrazeneca. More than half of vaccinated people in the UK have been vaccinated with Astrazeneca... and they are concerned about the actual effectiveness of this vaccine, and possible variant outbreaks (there have been three instances of "surge testing" where they go door-to-door following an outbreak: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/surge-testing-for-new-coronavirus-covid-19-variants). According to Eric Topol (whose opinion is based on a few studies), Astrazeneca is not effective against B.1.3.5 (south-african variant).

Due to effectiveness ... (read more)

6gjm
I think you're answering a different question from the one agc is asking. Unless I misunderstood, agc was asking why the UK isn't yet vaccinating people younger than 45. Being able to relax restrictions more in the US wouldn't explain that. I think the actual answer is that the UK very promptly secured a pretty decent quantity of vaccines (mostly AstraZeneca), enough to vaccinate quite a lot of its population, but that while the US was slower it then got hold of more relative to population size, and now the US has more plentiful supply than the UK.

Thank you. It resonated with me. 

I hope that, eventually, in the distant future, someone holds someone else accountable.

This highlights an, I think, neglected angle of analysis of civilizational problems. I almost want a deity of diffusion of responsibility. One of Moloch's most faithful servants.

When looking back on an earlier era one has the benefit of conceptual distinctions that didn't exist at the time. Looking back on our era, I think people will be surprised that we had dim understanding of responsibility and credit taking being able to diverge, and in fact optimized to diverge.

I hope that, eventually, in the distant future, someone holds someone else accountable.

If the 21st century of American history has a tagline, this will be it.

Bless. Being angry together with strangers on the internet is so much better than being angry alone.

I need empathetic support in screaming against yet another dumbass decision (6 "strange" blood clots events... in 7 million shots).

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/us/politics/johnson-johnson-vaccine-blood-clots-fda-cdc.html

 

8TurnTrout
>:(

Covid 4/15: Are We Seriously Doing This Again is in my drafts folder. Don't worry.

My thoughts exactly. What a QR Code could do is to store names, and perhaps the dates they got the vaccine. If people have time to check photos, then they might as well do so on any photographic ID, whose name matches the one on the QR Code, and which is shown together with the QR code wherever that's relevant. 

Zvi, I live in the UK and back in February I had asked my GP to please call me if they had any spare doses.

Well, my GP called me on the evening of the 7th of March, telling me that they had an open vial of Astrazeneca, and to come down if I could. I asked if I could also bring my partner, he said "sure, there's more than one dose in there and we close in 20 minutes". 
So I did get vaccinated before 60 years old were even eligible, and so did my partner. For the record, I am 29 and in perfect health, and she is 23 and not even a patient of that GP.
This ... (read more)

My main problem with this is the following: I would totally recommend Astrazeneca to everyone if the choice was between a) Astrazeneca, b) no vaccine.

But this is not the case (this has never been the case!). There are better, more effective vaccines - even not taking into account this CVT mess. In a world where we can produce infinitely many vaccines in 1 second, we'd have Pfizer/Moderna jabs for everyone. 

So... why are we still producing Astrazeneca? It is the least likely to have an effect on transmission - we know for instance that it is less than ... (read more)

1Lukas Finnveden
Do you have a link? (I can't find one by googling.)

I am writing from the UK (decent vaccination campaign) as an Italian person (horrible vaccination campaign), and agreeing with your critiques on the USA (pretty good vaccination campaign) is disheartening. Just why are we so bad at doing crucial things, as a society? It's so incredibly sad.