Favorites December 29th 2021

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It just seems like this policy exists on a wildly different point on the risk-aversion spectrum from the rest of current CDC guidance, e.g. how they recommend that even vaccinated children wear masks in school all day.

The CDC made a big change in guidance for folks who test positive for COVID. Some blamed it on airline lobbying, but the new directive is even more permissve than they were asking for.

Wojtek Kopczuk @wwwojtekk

Why don't we have enough rapid tests? Because they have to be compared against PCR to be approved. How useful is PCR to judge infectiousness? 👇

ABC News @ABC

LATEST: The newly updated CDC guidelines don't require testing at the end of isolation because PCR tests can stay positive for up to 12 weeks, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky tells @GMA. https://t.co/p6HUxeD4Go https://t.co/TmVaF0eRcG

This response to criticism of the new guidance is pretty self defeating, rapid antigen tests are better if we're trying to figure out if someone is infectious, but very few are getting approved. If there's some question of whether that's true, maybe we should have studied it earlier? There is some good news though:

Jen Psaki @PressSec

today 2 new at home tests were approved to hit the market which will expand access to millions & an addl $137 million investment was announced to help expand production on a key ingredients for making at home tests to support making an additional 1 billion tests a year.

This is good news, although it would have been better a year ago.

Neil Coyle @coyleneil

China has reneged on the Hong Kong bilateral treaty. The authoritarian mainland Government is now dismantling free speech, judicial system and any vestige of democracy. It isn’t just Xinjiang suffering under this vicious, nationalist expansionist regime. https://t.co/EwDYAfEdWc

Reuters @Reuters

Hong Kong national security police raided the office of Stand News and arrested six people, including senior staff, for suspected 'seditious publications' offenses. Stand News is the most prominent remaining pro-democracy publication in Hong Kong https://t.co/ErNPbO9E2E https://t.co/rEM8AHvxGX

Almost unsurprising at this point. Someone needs to be offering blanket asylum to Hong Kong citizens

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

We are fortunate that omicron seems to be substantially less deadly than delta, but I wish policymakers would consider that we’ve done ~nothing to prevent the emergence of more new pathogens and the next one might be worse.

slowboring.comOmicron is a reminder of how little we’re doing on pandemic preventionOur science is impressive — our investments in logistics and manufacturing capacity much less so

We shoudl be making prizes for successful pan-coronavirus vaccines, and bulk purchase guarantees. We should be looking for ways to speed up the slowest parts of getting vaccines in arms the first time around to speed things next time.

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It means that it's worth studying public opinion in a systematic way, e.g. by developing expertise in polling and behavioral data, rather than just guessing or making inferences based on what people in your social circle think.

Soledad O'Brien @soledadobrien

What does this even mean, dude who attended the London School of Economics? Is that elite? Is attending college elite? Are you the voice of the common man now? Someone, help me out here, please. https://t.co/6lryVLbsgk

heh

Aaron 🥑🚈🚰🏀 @aceckhouse

effective treatment for long COVID would be huge for my lingering concerns

Stephen Smith @smithsj

Evidence of clotting has been found in 100% of long COVID patients’ blood, and 100% of patients treated with a blood thinner protocol saw improvement in symptoms. These are unheard of numbers for post-viral treatments…very exciting! https://t.co/eBV9OTpbN6

Long COVID is currently my biggest concern, especially any possibility of it occurring in children, who still can't be vaccinated.

John Scalzi @scalzi

I've posted a brief review of "Don't Look Up" over on Whatever. It will probably surprise none of you that it was mostly right up my alley. whatever.scalzi.com/2021/12/28/bri…

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

I have never seen such a mismatch between the authors’ stated intent and the plain meaning of the text. https://t.co/gLOxMSibG4

Matthew Zeitlin @MattZeitlin

my other don't look up thought is that people who just watch it because it's on netflix and don't read articles will think it's 100% supposed to be about covid

There was a some debate about the new film Don't Look Up, regarding whether it's an allegory for Climate Change or COVID. The writer/director absolutely insists that it's about Climate Change, but artist's intent isn't the end-all and be-all of art.

We can still have festive decorations till New Year’s, right?