All of Mvolz's Comments + Replies

Prince Vogelfrei: People say smug shit like this while not doing the tiniest bit of research on homeschooling outcomes which beat public schooling in every standardized test category. California makes everyone do tests, we have the data. But what does the truth matter when superiority is to be had.

 

California does not, in fact, require that home schoolers take a standard exam and we do not, in fact, have this data. 

There are two states that require testing exclusively (other states have alternative options to an exam) and those are Oregon and Sou... (read more)

I think you grossly underestimate how hungry scientists are to prove each other wrong. This is part of how you build status to begin with. Yes, there are collaborative relationships, but there are also a great many adversarial relationships. There is no top-down hierarchy, so silencing dissent in this manner is unavailable.

I do think some degree of self-censorship occurs, absolutely. Are there biases, sure. But I find the claim that any given person is so influential in epidemiology that there is a conspiracy of silence lasting quite this long rather absurd.

Are you aware of any meaningful contributions they have made to overall "progress", aka advancing the general capabilities of humanity?

Not sure if this meets the bill, but off the top of my head I thought of the HIV sequence database which has been around since 1988.

https://discover.lanl.gov/news/1219-hiv-databases/

According to this 2009 paper, seahorses aren't actually an exception, and the males are indeed the more choosy one, at least in this one experiment. (They're an "exception" to Bateman's principle in the sense they have the smaller gamete, but this is explained away by their greater parental investment.)

In general, yes, parental investment can "outweigh" gamete size in some situations, and typically this ends up happening in cases where investment in offspring isn't as strongly physiologically sex-linked as it is in most mammals which allows different strat... (read more)

2CronoDAS
I've read that male humans are capable of lactation but it takes very weird circumstances (possibly involving drugs) to make it actually happen.

I accidentally published this draft before finishing it and was surprised to see comments on it! I've decided to leave it as is, conclusion-less, as an exercise for the reader :).

"Airconditioningitis" sounds about as epistemically sound as "fan death," which is to say, not at all. 

There are indeed odd cultural beliefs about the use of fans and air conditioning in Korea, but these are urban legends. 

1Alex Vermillion
Same argument works against "Airheateritis", which I can say from experience causes more bloody noses (dryness) and headaches for the first few days (burning material in unused ductwork). I mention this alternate case because it's something which people more commonly note, but I can testify to some AC issues as well.

FYI but ABC Mouse is a Scientology run company and was recently fined by the FTC for $10 million for illegal billing practices. Personally I did not like it from an educational perspective either; there are lots of other better educational websites and apps out there.

1Rubix
I'm very surprised to learn this, thank you for posting! My kid only uses Khan Academy Kids for educational tablet time; do you have other recommendations?

Could the spreadsheet be updated too? That still has the old location.

In the UK school absences for an unexcused reason (i.e. a vacation during the school year) are fined, so it is more rigid system than in the U.S.

Primary schools have been re-opened here for subset of students last week, and it is not mandatory.

I'd be surprised if you're correct on this, even on average, for the U.S., given that there are so many regional differences from state to state there.

Update with some more info:

https://www.compoundchem.com/2020/03/04/hand-sanitisers/ has some general information about hand sanitisers and includes info about BZK - they caution that it works less quickly than alcohol based ones, so perhaps that's useful to take into account.

Also, it may interest some people that BZK is the active ingredient in Lysol spray (US) and Dettol spray (UK). (Do not use them as hand sanitiser as they have other ingredients and are not formulated for hands!)

Pubic hair moderately protects only against those STDs which infect skin cells and are transmitted by skin-to-skin contact: herpes, HPV, molluscum contagiosum.

Respiratory viruses do not infect skin cells and people aren't rubbing their faces together, so there's no plausible method of action here.

Can you provide a citation for the breakdown of deaths by age? There was at least one confirmed death of a 2 year old in China a month ago. It's certainly negligible, but not 0.

[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply
4gwillen
Although the original comment is now marked unendorsed, I also want to note that the breakdown of deaths by age has been circulating for a long time, and is presumably not especially up-to-date based on current global figures (it's based entirely on China, as far as I know.) It would be good if someone could find more recent numbers.
2jmh
I seem to be missing the statement that the 2 yo died. The link seems to be about a study of a group of patients, of which two were children, 2 an 15 years of age. Near the send the like states: " As of February 4, 2020, all the patients recovered, but 12 were still being quarantined in the hospital." Am I missing something of did you intend to provide a different link?

That factor is called the secondary attack rate; I've seen values ranging from as low as 10% in one study (which has garnered a lot of scepticism) and in some larger studies, ~ 40%.

Preventing transmission in a shared space is very difficult. I can't give specific estimates as to how much any of the measures you mentioned would reduce that likelihood, unfortunately.

Answer by Mvolz*70

Thinking about it with a toy model:

Assume you on average contact 25 people a day when you go out, and each of your housemates each also contacts 25 people a day. Also assume if they become ill, you're 100% likely to get it from them. (These are not necessarily realistic assumptions, so please don't infer anything from these particular numbers!)

This means that if you go out, you're effectively contacting 100 people a day (75 of these by proxy.) If you stay home you're reducing your total number of effective contacts from 100 to 75, so a 25% reduction. This

... (read more)
2Eli Tyre
My plan would be to not leave my room, except to take out the trash and to go to the bathroom. And I would shift to any early schedule. So I shouldn't have much contact with my housemates, and would be doing my best not to touch the items they touch (and maybe disinfecting doorknobs / bathroom stuff before I touch them, if that's practical). So the factor that I'm most interested in is the one you assumed was 100%: if one of my housemates contracts the disease, how likely am I to catch it, and how much can I reduce the probability?
Answer by Mvolz80

The virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, is phylogenetically most closely related to SARS-CoV, the virus that causes SARS- this is why taxonomists named it SARS-CoV-2.

However, you shouldn't and can't expect SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 to have a more similar course because of this, as compared to MERS-CoV- and in fact thus far they've behaved differently. For instance, the death rate for COVID-19 is considerably lower than for SARS. Paradoxically, this may be responsible for its greater spread, because people who are less severely ill or asymptomatic are muc

... (read more)
Answer by Mvolz*70

A brief Google suggests BZK is effective against SARS-Cov-2 on surfaces. There is no research on it on hands that I found specifically for coronaviruses. Hands are generally more difficult to disinfect.

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/coronavirus-SARS-CoV-2-guidance-environmental-cleaning-non-healthcare-facilities.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15923059 (About SARS-CoV, but similar enough virology that it probably applies)

I'd be most skeptical of the claim it is effective for 24 hours on hands, so if you did get it, I would

... (read more)
2Mvolz
Update with some more info: https://www.compoundchem.com/2020/03/04/hand-sanitisers/ has some general information about hand sanitisers and includes info about BZK - they caution that it works less quickly than alcohol based ones, so perhaps that's useful to take into account. Also, it may interest some people that BZK is the active ingredient in Lysol spray (US) and Dettol spray (UK). (Do not use them as hand sanitiser as they have other ingredients and are not formulated for hands!)