Month: November 2020
Sunny Days Protect Against Flu
Vitamin D supplementation is cheap. Walking in sunlight is even cheaper. I’ve been doing more of both since the beginnings of the pandemic. Slusky and Zekhauser add to the evidence:
Sunlight, likely operating through the well-established channel of producing vitamin D, has the potential to play a significant role in reducing flu incidence. A recent meta-analysis of 25 randomized controlled trials of vitamin D supplementation (Martineau et al. 2017) demonstrated significant benefits of such supplements for reducing the likelihood that an individual will contract an acute upper respiratory infection. The current study considers sunlight as an alternate, natural path through which humans can and do secure vitamin D. This study’s findings complement and reinforce the Martineau et al. findings.
Our major result is that incremental sunlight in the late summer and early fall has the potential to reduce the incidence of influenza. Sunlight had a dramatic effect in 2009, when sunlight was well below average at the national level, and the flu came early. Our result is potentially relevant not just to the current COVID-19 pandemic, but also to a future outlier H1N1 pandemic. The threat is there; some H1N1 viruses already exist in animals (Sun et al. 2020). One must be cautious, though, with generalizations, given the unique economic circumstances (e.g., a 25-year high unemployment rate) in the fall of 2009.
A remaining question is whether sunlight matters more broadly for flu, or whether it is unique to H1N1. While we lack a counterfactual of an early flu from a different strain, we do have two pieces of evidence to suggest that the effect is broader than just H1N1. First, as described throughout the paper, the Martineau et al. study about the relationship between Vitamin D and upper respiratory infections are not specific to H1N1. Second, with granular, county level data, we do see strongly statistically significant negative effects of fall sunlight on influenza for years other than 2009 (see Columns (2) and (3) of Panel of Table 7). Therefore, apart from its methodological contributions, this study reinforces the long-held assertion that vitamin D protects against acute upper respiratory infections. One can secure vitamin D through supplements, or through a walk outdoors, particularly on a day when the sun shines brightly. When most walk, herd protection provides benefit to all.
The Scots are giving out free vitamin D to people stuck indoors. My view is that Vitamin D supplementation is worthwhile but where and when possible the sunlight approach is better as the effect may work through mechanisms beyond vitamin D.
Coincidentally neuroscience says this is one of the happiest songs ever.
Hat tip: The sunny Kevin Lewis.
Best classical music recordings of 2020
As you might expect, this has been a pretty spectacular year for listening to classical music on disc, too good you might say. Here is what I enjoyed the most:
Beethoven Complete Piano works, by Martino Tirimo. I probably know the performance canon for Beethoven piano sonatas better than any other area of classical music, and this is one of my two or three favorite sets of all time. They are fresh, direct, and to the point, and remind me of the earlier Yves Nat set, though with better sound and the mistakes edited out. Here is one review: “It’s decades since a pianist has managed to convey such an overwhelming sense that we’re listening to pure Beethoven. And there are 20 hours of it — surely the greatest recorded achievement of this anniversary year.” The pianist is a 78-year-old Cypriot who is barely known even to most of the concert-going public.
Beethoven Bagatelles, by Tanguy de Williencourt. This is Beethoven at his most arbitrary and willful and whimsical, all good things. I have many recordings of these pieces, but these are perhaps my favorite. Why again is it that French pianists are so good with Beethoven?
Beethoven, Complete works for Piano Trio, van Baerle Trio. Again, the best recording of these works I have heard, and there is stiff competition.
Masaaki Suzuki put out more Bach organ music, and conducted an incredible version of Beethoven’s 9th symphony. His genius remains under-discussed, as he is also a world-class harpsichord and keyboard player, and has produced the definitive recording of Bach’s entire cycle of cantatas. Why is there no biography of him? He is one of the greatest creators and performers in the entire world in any area. If you are wondering, his parents were Japanese Protestants and he is a Calvinist.
Chopin CD of the year would be by Jean-Paul Gasparian.
Morton Feldman piano box set, played by Philip Thomas. Five CDs if you go that route, this is what I listened to most this year. It is also very good played at low volume, a useful feature in crowded pandemic homes.
I listened to a good deal of Szymanowski, who has finally started to make sense to me. In prep for my CWT with Alex Ross, I relistened to a great deal of Wagner. What rose in my eyes was the von Karajan Die Meistersinger and the Clemens Krauss Ring cycle.
As for contemporary classical music, I enjoyed:
Hans Abrahamsen, String Quartets.
Philippe Manoury, Temps Mode d’Emploi.
Caroline Shaw, Orange, Attaca Quartet.
This year I also rediscovered Robert Ashley’s opera Atalanta (Acts of God), and Raymond Lewenthal’s Alkan CD, one of my favorite recordings of all time, a kind of proto-rock and roll.
As for concert life, I did manage to see Trifonov play “Art of the Fugue” at the Kennedy Center before the whole season shut down, and in January the Danish Quartet playing Beethoven in NYC.
*Queen’s Gambit* (no real spoilers in this post)
I’ve now seen a few episodes, and I have a few comments on the chess:
1. No player, including Magnus Carlsen, can become that good that quickly, without a lot of learning and losing along the way.
2. They show the players moving too fast, though for dramatic reasons this is easy enough to understand.
3. The Sicilian was indeed very popular in 1963, but not quite that popular.
4. It captures the feel of earlier U.S. chess tournaments very well, noting that my own participation came later but things didn’t change much.
5. At the time the Rossolimo was in fact an unusual response to the Sicilian, though it is not now. The show got this right (the protagonist claims she was very surprised by 3.Bb5) — don’t be fooled by the subsequent evolution of the game.
Dramatically, I would say it is “decent and watchable,” and the clothes and hotel scenes are good. The characterization of the mother does not feel entirely consistent. There is an underlying autism theme, mostly handled well, though mainstream reviewers seem to be thrown off the scent by the woman’s charm and good looks. I will let you know if I have further observations.
Saturday assorted links
1. Interview with Charles Koch.
2. mRNA vaccines and nanotech. And vaccine depends on strong vial (WSJ). A very good short piece on the importance of materials science and innovation.
3. Magnus interview.
4. “This decision analytical model found that missed instruction during 2020 could be associated with an estimated 5.53 million years of life lost.” An appreciation of the Lucas critique is badly lacking here (different regime, can’t just re-use the old education/life expectancy gradients!…least of all from meta-studies), but still this is the kind of calculation we should be attempting and publicizing more. Except we need to get it right. This piece is in JAMA Network Open, and the authors are from very good schools, the lead author is highly prestigious and a major editor, but the work would not pass muster from even moderately critical referees in a second-tier economics journal. That said, I do suspect the costs of school closings are very high.
What will the transitional vaccine path look like?
In several regards segregation will rise, as I explain in my latest Bloomberg column:
The first issue will be how Americans respond over the course of the next few months. Simple logic suggests that when a good vaccine is pending, you should play it much safer. Instead of putting off that vacation indefinitely, just wait until you’re vaccinated, possibly as soon as next summer. In theory that should be an easier adjustment to make, as indicated by what economists call “intertemporal substitution”: waiting for a short time is easier and less costly than waiting for a long time.
Many people will behave in such a rational fashion. But many will instead take more risk. As the prospect of a post-Covid America becomes more vivid, the temptations of going out and socializing now will become more powerful. Once people start thinking about the imminent prospect of partying and fine dining, they might find it harder to resist the idea of just going ahead with it now, despite the higher risk. The giddiness occasioned by a vaccine might have some counterintuitive and negative effects.
Of course, some truly rational and forward-looking people will realize that some of their friends and contacts will behave in this less responsible manner. The more rational among us thus will take greater care to avoid those whom they do not trust, as well as those who have front-line service jobs and thus cannot avoid contact with these less responsible individuals. The rationalists will cocoon themselves more, most of all from strangers and known irrationalists.
Another possibility is that norms of social scorn will weaken, and confusion will reign for a while. Currently, if you shop without a mask or hog the middle of the jogging path in the park, you will be asked to leave or given dirty looks. These are healthy social reactions that help to keep the virus under control.
Will that remain the case once 10% or 20% of the population has been vaccinated?
There is much more at the link.
Is AI centralizing research influence?
Increasingly, modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) research has become more computationally intensive. However, a growing concern is that due to unequal access to computing power, only certain firms and elite universities have advantages in modern AI research. Using a novel dataset of 171394 papers from 57 prestigious computer science conferences, we document that firms, in particular, large technology firms and elite universities have increased participation in major AI conferences since deep learning’s unanticipated rise in 2012. The effect is concentrated among elite universities, which are ranked 1-50 in the QS World University Rankings. Further, we find two strategies through which firms increased their presence in AI research: first, they have increased firm-only publications; and second, firms are collaborating primarily with elite universities. Consequently, this increased presence of firms and elite universities in AI research has crowded out mid-tier (QS ranked 201-300) and lower-tier (QS ranked 301-500) universities. To provide causal evidence that deep learning’s unanticipated rise resulted in this divergence, we leverage the generalized synthetic control method, a data-driven counterfactual estimator. Using machine learning based text analysis methods, we provide additional evidence that the divergence between these two groups – large firms and non-elite universities – is driven by access to computing power or compute, which we term as the “compute divide”. This compute divide between large firms and non-elite universities increases concerns around bias and fairness within AI technology, and presents an obstacle towards “democratizing” AI. These results suggest that a lack of access to specialized equipment such as compute can de-democratize knowledge production.
That is a new paper by Nur Ahmed and Muntasir Wahed.
Friday assorted links
1. Home field advantage has gone away in the NFL. And thread on reading fast.
2. Atlantic profile of Peter Turchin.
3. “No son of mine will marry a consequentialist!” A lesson in human pettiness.
4. Ticketmaster exploring verifying fans’ vaccine status before issuing concert passes. And the Golden State Warriors will try to reopen at 50% capacity plus tests for everyone. And people taking the placebo will get the Pfizer vaccine (but when?).
5. Hall and Kudlyak on the inexorable recovery of employment.
6. “Settlers and Norms,” job market paper by Joanne Haddad.
Matt Yglesias to Substack
I’ve been wanting for some time to reclaim what I had in my blog days as an independent voice, and a great opportunity has arisen for me to do that on Substack where today I’m launching a new site that you can find and read all about here:https://t.co/hwxPOtHsHm
— Matthew Yglesias 🍦 (@mattyglesias) November 13, 2020
How do the NIH and NSF work?
A surprising number of individuals responded to my post last week soliciting books about the NIH and NSF. Thank you to those who did and please do still feel free to reach out on this matter.
It became apparent that a highly complementary effort would be a Substack/blog/podcast/similar about the inner workings of the NIH / NSF, and indeed other institutions relevant to the modern-day administration and practice of science. Think SCOTUSblog or Macro Musings, but focused on the NIH/NSF/etc.
So, if you would like to start such a blog/podcast/newsletter, please email me, and that plan will be considered for financial support.
Judge Richard Neely, RIP
Judge Richard Neely, former head of the WV Supreme Court, held a special place in my heart. I never met the man but early on in my career, Eric Helland and I wrote a paper on elected judges and tort awards (PDF):
We argue that partisan elected judges have an incentive to redistribute wealth from out‐of‐state defendants (nonvoters) to in‐state plaintiffs (voters). We first test the hypothesis by using cross‐state data. We find a significant partisan effect after controlling for differences in injuries, state incomes, poverty levels, selection effects, and other factors. One difference that appears difficult to control for is that each state has its own tort law. In cases involving citizens of different states, federal judges decide disputes by using state law. Using these diversity‐of‐citizenship cases, we conclude that differences in awards are caused by differences in electoral systems, not by differences in state law.
While researching the paper I found this quote from Neely and when I read it I knew we were going to be published in a good journal:
As long as I am allowed to redistribute wealth from out-of-state companies to injured in-state plaintiffs, I shall continue to do so. Not only is my sleep enhanced when I give someone’s else money away, but so is my job security, because the in-state plaintiffs, their families, and their friends will reelect me. (Neely 1988, p. 4).
That is what you call anecdotal gold.
To be clear, when Neely was looking for a law clerk he advertised:
“America’s laziest and dumbest judge” seeks “a bright person to keep (the judge) from looking stupid,” and gave preference to University of Virginia law students “who studied interesting but useless subjects at snobby schools.”
Neely spoke brutally honestly to break conventions and reveal underlying truths. Thank you Judge Neely for your candor as it surely helped me in my career.
Free Britney Spears
Jamie Spears was authorized by the California Superior Court to control his daughter’s finances, health care, and aspects of her daily routine. The conservatorship was initially temporary. Twelve years later, it’s still in place. The court documents and hearings—there have been many over the years—have been mostly sealed to the public, so little is known about the actual nature and conditions of the agreement.
Britney’s father can control virtually all of the terms of her life, and Britney is vociferously opposed to having him as her “conservator.” I know very little about the mental condition of Britney Spears, but I would think the case for enslaving her — as we have done — should face a very high bar indeed. She hardly seems totally unable to function:
She released four albums, went on as many world tours and, for her successful Piece of Me residency in Las Vegas, played 248 shows in the span of four years, grossing $500,000 per show.
Guess who controls the money and the terms of employment? The Straussian element shows up on Instagram:
What appears to the uninitiated as a random assortment of selfies, inspirational quotes, and dance videos is, according to supporters of the so-called #FreeBritney movement, a desperate plea for help. First, there was the color of her shirt, which appeared to match commenters’ calls for her to wear yellow (or red, or blue, or white, or anything) if she were in trouble. Then there were the roses, “a symbol of secrecy and silence,” as one user pointed out. In one video, Spears walks back and forth nine times, obviously Morse code for SOS. And then of course there were her eyelashes.
Here is the full article from Vanity Fair. Don’t forget this:
“Conservatorships are very hard to get out of—much, much harder to get out of than to get into, and that’s something many people don’t realize, even people who are seeking conservatorships,” said Zoe Brennan-Krohn, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Disability Rights Project.
Britney’s life matters, free Britney Spears.
Emergent Ventures winners, eleventh cohort
Andrew Dembe of Uganda, working on the “last mile” problem for health care delivery.
Maxwell Dostart-Meers of Harvard, to study Singapore and state capacity, as a Progress Studies fellow.
Markus Strasser of Linz, Austria, now living in London, to pursue a next-generation scientific search and discovery web interface that can answer complex quantitative questions, built on extracted relations from scientific text, such as graph of causations, effects, biomarkers, quantities, etc.
Marc Sidwell of the United Kingdom, to write a book on common sense.
Yuen Yuen Ang, political scientist at the University of Michigan, from Singapore, to write a new book on disruption.
Matthew Clancy, Iowa State University, Progress Studies fellow. To build out his newsletter on recent research on innovation.
Samarth Athreya, Ontario: “I’m a 17 year old who is incredibly passionate about the advent of biomaterials and its potential to push humanity forward in a variety of industries. I’ve been speaking about my vision and some of my research on the progress of material science and nanotechnology specifically at various events like C2 Montreal, SXSW, and Elevate Tech Festival!”
Applied Divinity Studies, this anonymously written blog has won an award for his or her writing and blogging. We are paying in bitcoin.
Jordan Mafumbo, a Ugandan autodidact and civil engineer studying Heidegger and the foundations of liberalism. He also has won an award for blogging.
Sweden Covid-19 update
Do not judge Sweden until the autumn. That was the message from its state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell in May and through the summer as he argued that Sweden’s initial high death toll from Covid-19 would be followed in the second wave by “a high level of immunity and the number of cases will probably be quite low”.
Now the autumn is here, and hospitalisations from Covid-19 are currently rising faster in Sweden than in any other country in Europe, while in Stockholm — the centre for both the first and second waves in the country — one in every five tests is positive, suggesting the virus is even more widespread than official figures suggest.
Even Sweden’s public health agency admits its earlier prediction that the country’s Nordic neighbours such as Finland and Norway would suffer more in the autumn appears wrong. Sweden is currently faring worse than Denmark, Finland and Norway on cases, hospitalisations and deaths relative to the size of their population.
…The number of patients hospitalised with Covid-19 is doubling in Sweden every eight days currently, the fastest rate for any European country for which data is available. Its cases per capita have sextupled in the past month to more than 300 new daily infections per million people, close to the UK and way ahead of its Nordic neighbours.
Here is more from Richard Milne at the FT. To be clear, it seems that many of the Swedish deaths are due to a “dry tinder” effect, so in relative terms they are not doing as much worse than you might think. Other parts of Europe may well catch up to them, at least on a “tinder-adjusted” basis. But if you are just asking which predictions of which model are being vindicated here, it is that the herd immunity obtained through a partial neutralization of super-spreaders is temporary rather than permanent.
Source here. And Swedish deaths seem to be 40% of the U.S. equivalent.
To be clear, I did not predict this (or its opposite), but rather for many months I have been saying we need more data from Sweden to draw a conclusion. Now we have more data.
Thursday assorted links
1. “Adjusted seroprevalence across Karnataka was 46.7% (95% CI: 43.3-50.0), including 44.1% (95% CI: 40.0-48.2) in rural and 53.8% (95% CI: 48.4-59.2) in urban areas.” And speculative results on whether Indians have strong Covid immunity. And Kenya was at about five percent seroprevalence as of May-June.
2. The Neo Rauch dispute over right-wing art (NYT).
3. I have been neglecting to cover synthetic nanobodies, merely out of sloth, but in fact they hold great potential, both against Covid-19 and more generally. And have we discovered protection against HIV acquisition in women? It seems so. What an incredible year for biomedicine.
4. A review of Where is My Flying Car?
5. My Salem Center (UT Austin) talk and podcast on the ethics of current vaccine choices.
6. How Azerbaijan won. Drones! And Bruno on the decline of Russian power in the region.
UAE China fact of the day
Rochelle Crossley has been working as a flight attendant in the UAE and received a COVID-19 vaccination after thousands of injections were rolled out to frontline workers.
“The fear of getting the virus outweighed the fear of having the vaccination,” Ms Crossley told 9News.
I am glad to see somebody computing expected value. By the way, that is Sinopharm, not Sinovac. And:
More than 30,000 people in the UAE have received injections as part of phase three trials.
Here is the article, via Air Genius Gary Leff.