This week I did a "deep dive" into the currently available COVID-19.medical research.

My conclusions::

1) hydroxychloroquine is somewhat effective as an early-stage prophylactic

2) inhaling interferon reduces the odds of patients needing intensive care

3) the steroid dexamethasone lessens late-stage infections

4) vitamin D (actually it is more of a hormone than a vitamin) is generally beneficial

5) no vaccine has been found for any of the corona viruses

Most of the deaths happened to patients with multiple co-morbidity problems, such as obesity, diabetes, or hypertension. Over 3/4 of all USA deaths occurred in nursing homes. School-aged kids rarely die, probably due to their low level of ACE-2 cells which develop later. The virus uses fat cells to help itself reproduce so obese people have higher mortality rates. Surprisingly, smokers have a lower death rate, maybe due to lower obesity, or maybe due to a stronger lung repair system, or maybe due to the anti-inflammatory effect of nicotine.

The best strategy is simply to avoid crowded rooms. Immunocompromised people can get infected at lower levels of aerosolized virus than healthy people, so risky people should stay away from other people. The lockdowns had a negative effect by forcing people closer.

The government attempt to "flatten the curve" was a giant failure. Many hospitals had to layoff medical workers. Then the bureaucrats insisted that lockdowns were needed to stop transmissions. Again it was a mistake. Now these nitwits are requiring masks.

Masks can slow exhalations so that the viral plume doesn't travel as far, but masks are ineffective at blocking infections. No medical study has shown that masks lower disease. Surgeons wear masks to prevent the spread of bacteria, which are 100 times larger than viruses.

Masks are good at containing droplets. Someone who is coughing or sneezing should wear a mask. Since the earliest days, the WHO has maintained that the chief mode of transmission occurs via respiratory droplets blasted into the air by infected patients when they sneeze, cough or talk. However, the scientific evidence is that the virus spreads via aerosols, not droplets. Aerosolized

viruses are too small to be stopped by masks. So there isn't proof that masks prevent transmission.

Of course, government officials dispense simplistic (and wrong) advice. Historians will write about the quackery and false promises that worsened the disease. Japan was condemned for not following the hysteria, but just announced the end of its state of emergency without imposing any lockdowns.

Likewise Sweden was condemned when it rejected lockdowns. Now they have no new deaths and did not wreck their economy. The epidemiologic evidence is confusing. For example, why has Iran been hit much harder than war-torn Iraq? Africa has a very young population so it has low deaths.

A positive trend is that some parts of the US may already have reached herd immunity. According to some early T-cell tests reveals that many people might now be immune. Death totals have been dropping for 12 weeks.

 

Europe will be funding long-term studies on social forecasting.

How good are experts at predicting the future?
Answer: Horrible.

Beginning in the 1980s, Tetlock examined 27,451 forecasts by 284 academics, pundits and other prognosticators. The study was complex, but the conclusion can be summarized simply: the experts bombed. Not only were they worse than statistical models, they could barely eke out a tie with the proverbial dart-throwing chimps.

NY Times

Will dictators beat democracies?

Will the future be a world of dictatorships? Will central-planning beat free markets?

It looked like this area of questioning was resolved when the Soviet Union collapsed. But
this paper finds that democracies have less than half of the growth variance of non-democracies.

In the long run, the countries with the highest growth will accumulate wealth.

How do social fads/trends/memes form?

The initial cause is likely from multiple sources. Once formed, they are sustained and expand like a disease. Outbreaks occur periodically and grow in semi-predictable patterns.

The following shows the re-occurrence of crop circles:

Talkin' 'bout a revolution

Why don't social revolutions occur?

There are revolutions against governments, against religions, and against taxes. But there aren't revolutions against social rules.

The answer seems to be that social rules are flexible or forgettable so they aren't rigid enough or permanent enough to require a revolution. Individuals can avoid social rules. Change to social patterns occurs a person at a time and does not require a massive synchronized change for eveyone.

Cliometrics and cliodynamics

This blog has mused about historical and social trends. In particular, how can those trends be understood or predicted.

Two academic fields have emerged -- cliometrics and cliodynamics. These fields attempt to measure and model human historical phenomena and processes.

Both fields start with economic history but now look to widen their study.