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All of Chris Harmer's Comments + Replies

Why did the UK switch to a 12 week dosing schedule for COVID-19 vaccines?
Chris Harmer*10

Do you have any additional information here? Do you know which it was?

 

Based on what Cummings said, I believe the team survived his departure.

As ChristianKl suggested, I wish I'd made notes when listening to it. I've since thankfully found a transcript of the evidence. My beliefs about the team he assembled are based largely on:

  • A recruitment drive (02 January 2020) on his blog, which looks like the work of someone who took Inadequate Equilibria seriously:

"‘This is possibly the single largest design flaw contributing to the bad Nash equilibrium in whic... (read more)

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Why did the UK switch to a 12 week dosing schedule for COVID-19 vaccines?
Chris Harmer*30

Ah, thank you. I was unaware.

 

I've been thinking about the Cummings testimony for a while, considering whether to draw attention to it. I've been (unwisely) seeing all recent UK Gov. activity through that lens.

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6ChristianKl
There are already posts pointing to it on LessWrong. Listing to a 7 hour testimony is however a lot of effort. Having a post that summarizes the most important parts would be valuable.
Why did the UK switch to a 12 week dosing schedule for COVID-19 vaccines?
Chris Harmer90

The UK Government apparently has a small team of PhDs tasked with translating complicated papers and other data for the leadership. This team was assembled by rationalist-adjacent Dominic Cummings, who has since left (essentially the Prime Minister stopped listening to him).

If UK Government policy appears sensible and forward thinking, this team is likely the source. I fear with the removal of their patron they may not last long.

 

For those curious about what happens when a LessWrong reader gets close to power:

Some people have mentioned Dominic Cumming... (read more)

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Eli Tyre100

I should note, Cummings does appear to be playing politics in parts of his testimony. He is scathing in his comments on some people (Matt Hancock, Health Secretary), and describes others in glowing terms (Rishi Sunak, Chancellor).

Yeah. I want to emphasize this to everyone in the Less Wrong sphere who is causally aware of Cummings. He is interested in a lot of the same kinds of things that we are, but he doesn't hold to exactly the same epistemic mores. There are lots of videos of him on youtube in which he is obviously trying to win arguments / score point... (read more)

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2Eli Tyre
The way this is phrased, you make it sound like Cummings put such a team together, but it is still there, after his departure, at least for the time being. I had assumed that when Cummings was ousted everyone that he was working with went with him, and therefore, whatever team of people he assembled was also out of the job.  Do you have any additional information here? Do you know which it was?
jimv170

I think that this is far more parsimoniously explained by the existing mechanisms working as intended. This decision was made by the JVCI, which was established (according to Wikipedia) in 1963, and having existed for some time before that as a polio advisory board. So there's a well-established group of experts who have been looking at immunisation schedules for all sorts of diseases for decades.

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