jacob_cannell's Shortform

Am I one of the few people here who has looked at the covid-19 data and reached the conclusion that it's probably only about as severe/fatal as seasonal influenza?

I have a longer blog post outlining the case here.

TLDR: CFR!=IFR, influenza CFR is similar to covid-19 CFR, and we know from influenza data that typically IFR << CFR due to enormous selection sampling bias from mostly testing only those with more severe disease. We can correct for that by comparing the covid-19 confirmed case age structure to the population age structure using uniform or age-dependent attack rate. The resulting IFR is similar to influenza, which is also the best fit for the Diamond Princess data (where selection bias is mostly avoided so CFR~IFR).

Selection bias can help explain why the CFR is higher in Italy, and probably why it's so much lower in Germany (I'm looking for age structure data on covid-19 cases from Germany, I'm predicting it will be flatter than US or Italy data). South Korea is also another interesting case (which I found some data for but haven't put into the blog post yet) - we can clearly reject a typical attack rate age structure there, which was surprising at first but then made sense given that the outbreak in SK started in a large tight-knit cult with a young median age and they tested everyone in the cult.

Anyway if anyone here has already encountered these thoughts and still believes covid-19 IFR is much higher than influenza IFR I'm curious what the best arguments/evidence are.

Just noting some comment links for future reference:

The sequences are tragically flawed - based on some overconfident assumptions about the brain [LW(p) · GW(p)] and AI which turned out to be incorrect.

CEV is probably against suicide [LW · GW], and so is human empowerment.

Evolution succeeded at alignment [LW(p) · GW(p)]: humans are massively successful by IGF (inclusive genetic fitness) metrics, and some do actually optimize mentally for IGF.

Velocity uncertainty of an electron

(A test of latex of sorts)

The uncertainty principle bounds the combined product of std deviations of position and momentum:

${\sigma }_x{\sigma }_p>=\frac{\hslash }{2}$

The momentum uncertainty is :

${\sigma }_p>=\frac{\hslash }{2{\sigma }_x}$

As $p=m_{e}v$, the velocity uncertainty (std deviation) is thus:

${\sigma }_v>=\frac{\hslash }{2{\sigma }_x{m}_e}$

For a 1eV electron with ${\sigma }_x\approx 1nm$ (the electron is confined to a ~1nm cavity on order of de broglie wavelength), then:

${\sigma }_v>=\frac{6.5\ast {10}^{-16}eV\ast s}{2\ast 1nm\ast 0.5MeV/c^2}$

${\sigma }_v>=\frac{6.5\ast {10}^{-16}eV\ast s}{2\ast {10}^{-9}m\ast 0.5\ast {10}^{6}eV/c^2}$

${\sigma }_v>=\frac{6.5\ast {10}^{-16}eV\ast s}{{10}^{-3}m\ast eV/c^2}$

${\sigma }_v>=\frac{6.5\ast {10}^{-16}eV\ast s}{{10}^{-3}m\ast eV/(3\ast {10}^{8}m/s{)}^2}$

${\sigma }_v>=\frac{6.5\ast {10}^{-16}eV\ast s}{{10}^{-3}m\ast eV/(9\ast {10}^{16}{m}^2/s^2)}$

${\sigma }_v>=\frac{6.5\ast {10}^{-16}eV\ast s}{1.11\ast {10}^{-20}eV\ast s^2/m}$

${\sigma }_v>=5.85\ast {10}^{4}m/s$

Meanwhile the mean or expectation of the 1eV electron's kinetic velocity is $5.9\ast {10}^{5}m/s$ ....

So the angular std dev and or linear velocity std dev on is on order ~ 10%?