Buying insurance of various kinds.
I try to do the same, personally I find it challenging. Another aspect that can throw a wrench in things is that even bets with negative expected value can sometimes be good to take because their payoffs are anticorrelated with other multiplicative bets that you take. Hence if you take the negative EV bet, the Kelly bet size for the combination of the two becomes bigger than it would be with just the other bets alone and the growth rate increases too.
Got some replies to the thread but later deleted it for privacy reasons. Basically the choice I'm faced with is whether I should downlevel from SDE II at my current company to become SDE I at a different company. [I was unexpectedly promoted to SDE II at my current company recently.] The poll I put up recommended differently than the comments. Here is a summary:
New Company Pros:
Pays slightly more after taxes and location based expenses, ~10% more. Eventually pays significantly more at equal number of additional years in each company based on online compensation data at levels.fyi. However do read "staying" pros #1 for caveat.
Harder to get into
More company perks/benefits (it's a big tech company that starts with a G)
Staying at current company pros:
Work-life balance does appear to be better here based on conversation with new company's hiring manager
I have a good track record here and was promoted much faster than is normal (promoted at 1.5 YOE vs 2.5 YOE normally).
Good relationship with manager also.
I should add also that my current plan is to negotiate with the new company for higher compensation since currently the deals seem relatively equal to me
Something I think deserves more attention is the anecdotes suggesting that people infected early on in the pandemic were much more likely to go on to develop long covid than those infected later in the pandemic. I occasionally see this mentioned in the various covid survivor groups on the internet.
To test, I made a poll in the covidlonghaulers subreddit. 55/137=~40% people stated that they were infected in the first wave of infections (before July 2020), even though a look on archive.org suggests that only about 5%* of the subscribers subscribed before this time.
*The earliest they archived a snapshot was actually in August 2020, at which point there had already been quite a few more infections than there were just before July. Some people may have also unsubscribed so I'm not sure what the actual proportion is. I think 5% is a fair-ish estimate since it would also take some time after you get covid and then long covid for you to start looking online for support communities and run into the subreddit. A brief look through the subscriber count over time does suggest that the subreddit has surges of subscribers after surges of infections, so I do think that the temporal link is at least somewhat reliably there and people join the subreddit at a relatively stationary amount of time after getting long covid (i.e. no large surge in popularity of the subreddit unprompted by lack of actual new long covid cases).
Thanks for taking the time to answer. When you say purified protein, what's the standard for "pure enough"? I see some listings that say things like ">95% by SDS-PAGE".
Interesting, do you happen to have the original blog post on hand? It is possible to get other adjuvants as far as I know and I do also believe that on Stocker's blog he posted a link to a particular vendor as well.
(And as a matter of fact it seems you are the one who answered my question on LW with the post in which he recommended that vendor): Vorschlag für die LEGALE Herstellung eines (banalen) Peptid-Impfstoffes durch einen Arzt | Prof. Dr. Winfried Stöcker (winfried-stoecker.de)
I see, thanks for doing this. I have been really interested in self-vaccination since the original RADVAC whitepaper came out, but I never really pulled the trigger on any method due to a lack of expertise in the area and (expected) expressions of concern from some people close to me.
A few more Q's:
It does seem like doing the purification step may require or at least benefit from some level of lab experience, which I unfortunately don't have. How important do you think the purification step is for the safety of the final product (as taken IM)? If it really shouldn't be skipped, I may be better off with RADVAC.
I notice that a lot of RBD are sold with "(His-Tag)" at the back. Based on some cursory reading, it seems that this is for the purposes of making purification easier. But does this tag have to be removed to be used in a vaccine? Some comments on ResearchGate suggest the answer is no but I'm really not sure.
Secondly since it does seem like people who have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, a vaccine, or even SARS-CoV-1 mount a stronger response when later given another vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, do you think that it might be possible that dosing the DIY one again (but say, with an Omicron RBD) after getting the commercial vaccines could demonstrate the efficacy of the DIY one if the titer from a commercial antibody test increases after injecting it?
Your approach seems very similar to Stocker's who did run a small "trial" in Germany before the authorities weren't happy with what he did. Based on your location I'm guessing you probably already heard about this. He actually posted the data for himself on his personal blog and you can find it all here, for those who aren't aware:
The best vaccine against Covid-19 | Prof. Dr. Winfried Stöcker (winfried-stoecker.de)
Immunization against Covid 19 | Prof. Dr. Winfried Stöcker (winfried-stoecker.de)
Stocker happened to dose himself four times about 2 weeks apart, though he was able to see a positive response after a 2nd dose, unlike in your attempt. It also seems like you used a very similar adjuvant.
I am assuming you took your dose intramuscularly, is that correct?
Thanks for the helpful tips! I did end up negotiating with the new company over a couple rounds, and they ended up raising the compensation by about 10%, after which I accepted their offer. The labor market is very tight right now across the industry and in fact across the entire economy, so I had a feeling they would be willing to move up even with no competing offer in hand. Usually, the sentiment on teamblind is that G doesn't like to negotiate offers without a competing one present.