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I agree, with a caveat. There's overeating in terms of food volume (bigger portions, eating past fullness, however you'd like to look at it), and there's "eating the same volume as you did before, except much of the food is more calorically dense."
As I commented on the Hyperpalatable Food Hypothesis post, you can actually compare recipes from then and now to see what's going on:
My Betty Crocker cookbook from 1969 (where I get most of my dessert recipes) has a brownie recipe that calls for 2 cups sugar, 4 oz chocolate, 2/3 cup butter; it's meant to bake in a 13x9 pan and yield 32 brownies.
The brownie recipe on Betty Crocker's website (that is, "today's brownie recipe") calls for 1 3/4 cups sugar, 5 oz chocolate, 2/3 cup butter, but is meant to bake in a 9x9 pan and yield 16 brownies.
At 201 grams of sugar per cup, you get 22 grams of sugar per brownie in today's recipe vs. 12.5 grams of sugar per brownie in the 1969 recipe.
Today's brownie recipe yields brownies that are 5 square inches and the 1969 recipe yields brownies that are 3.65 square inches, but even if you cut today's brownies to the size of yesterday's brownies you'd still get 16 grams of sugar per brownie.
oh oh oh oh I get it, I was reading the current story onto the story you were actually telling
thank you!
Why is selling an investment at the market's highest value point in history irrational? Because it might be at an even higher value point in history later, and by selling you practically ensure that it'll take longer to reach the next peak?
(This is a legitimate question, btw -- not a bait.)
Also would like clarification here: "have it go back to the previous price level without us needing to collectively find a replacement quantity of cash to put back in the bucket."
You don't need a replacement quantity of cash, but you do need a (replacement?) quantity of eager buyers. Value does in fact need to be replaced.
Otherwise, neither Facebook nor GameStop's stocks will ever go back to the previous price level (and we can be nitpicky and say well, if it's part of a larger broad-market fund and everyone's buying the fund but you still need an everyone to buy).
Would it be appropriate to rephrase my original post as follows?
(I'm sticking with the phrase "redeeming" instead of "selling" because that's how Vanguard describes it [making it sound like a good thing rather than a bad thing].)
(I also know that "market volatility" can describe both up and down, but it's only ever used to describe down; the point of this initial writing exercise was to describe what was literally happening when the news sites say "we've got a volatile market right now.")
***
For “market volatility,” read people are redeeming their investments at a decreasing cash value, making the total potential cash value of the investment go down.
For “market growth,” read people are purchasing at an increasing cash value, making the total potential cash value of the investment go up.
For continued market growth, you need more people who want to buy at an increasing cash value and fewer people who want to sell at a decreasing cash value.
My investment protects you.
Your investment protects me.
After all, “panicked investors” can also be read as people redeeming value from the market — and if too many people decide to sell their stocks before we get a chance to request buyers, then you and I won’t get as much cash value from our investments as we were hoping to.
At least, not until more people decide that our investments are worth purchasing.
That's an excellent point -- I knew that every buyer required a seller, and that there are (rare) situations in which you could try to sell your investments only to have the brokerage firm say "sorry, no buyers available right now."
But even though there's the same amount of cash going to/from buyer/seller in all unique transactions, future transactions either decline or increase in value based on whether more people are trying to buy or sell (as you noted).
So if you want your future transactions to increase in value, you want more people to want to buy than to want to sell.
This is not precisely the same thing as what I originally wrote, which means it is good to clarify my thoughts in this way.
It's both a CYA and a joke. Anyone who says anything about the stock market online begins with the statement that "this should not be constituted as investment advice," e.g. here and here (two examples pulled from top of google search).
There is assumedly a legal reason that this disclaimer came into practice, e.g. if I wrote something and you did it and you lost money you might sue me, so I am obliged to tell you that A) I am not giving you advice and B) you should not take it!
agreed agreed agreed
but hey guess what the market rebounded today so yay for that?
That paragraph was meant to be less intuitive and more "wait if you really follow this line of thought it takes you to some nonsensical arenas..."
But we don't get to say "I'd like to exchange a fractional share of Microsoft for a widget." You can only exchange a fractional share of Microsoft for A) cash or B) shares in something else, and you can only do so if someone else is willing to make the trade. There are situations in which you could have an asset you want to sell and nobody wants to buy it, which is also true for other assets like houses (and, if you own a business, whatever your business produces [and, if you are a worker with specific skills, the value those skills could bring to an employer]).
As to your last point, there's a non-trivial reason why some people suggest stockpiling a year's worth of food...
One note that I wanted to add as we begin the discussion: in the hour it took me to write this post yesterday afternoon, Facebook stock had the largest one-day value drop in the market's history.
This is what appears to have happened:
- Facebook announced that it was losing users
- Bots (it's bots, right?) interpreted this news as "Facebook is going to lose value, better sell my shares while they are still high value"
- Bots (right?) sold shares (to whom?)
- Share value declined
All of the money-making value was redeemed before people like you and me even had a chance to trade. Right?
I agree with you on ALL OF THIS. Make your evaluation as similar to what you're actually aiming for as possible, make sure you don't neglect any sections of music and/or allow previously learned material to degrade, spread effort over time aka spaced repetition.
BTW, in our house we're building a "piano performance ladder" (house concert, smaller venue, bigger venue, duets with other musicians, etc.). My mom used to teach this kind of thing to kids -- play for parents first, then grandparents, then church or nursing home, etc. It holds up for adults too...
What I'm seeing in the comments, btw, is something I've been curious about testing next -- whether the ideal scenario is something like "identify single problem, solve single problem, repeat solution five times perfectly consecutively (if you can't do that, you haven't solved the problem yet)" and then move on to the next problem.
At the end of your practice session you can test your work by playing all of the measures you've solved in current or previous sessions (the whole piece, if possible, or just the parts you've been able to address so far). If you win that attempt, STOP. If not, add failed measures to the next session's problem-work-set...
But the probability of success increases as you accumulate previous successes, right?
And there's a difference between "play 5 times perfectly" and "play 5 times perfectly consecutively." Much more randomness (and potential regression to the mean) if you are allowed to have imperfect runs between your perfect ones.
Yep, that sounds like a reasonable strategy. Repeat the parts to perfect the whole...
I will say that L clarified this morning that "repetition begins when something is learned," which is to say that once you know something, the next step is to repeat what you know.
More on all of this as I continue to collect data...
All good all good, initial results here...
The flip-a-coin experiment is a very good idea. Are you predicting that the result will look something like this:
- Win, flip coin, heads
- Win
- Stop
- Win (first try next session), flip coin, follow heads/tails instructions
vs.
- Win, flip coin, tails
- Stop
- Fail (first try next session)
That's worth testing, and I can start tomorrow.
Will be interesting to see if it devolves to this:
- Win, flip coin, heads
- Fail
- Fail
- Fail
- [...]
- Win, flip coin, follow heads/tails instructions
Or resolves to this:
- Win, flip coins, tails
- Stop
- Win (first try next session)
Spaced repetition (stopping after win and coming back next session) is a thing, more info here including a downloable white paper with a bibliography of resources.
That said, the standard practice (pun intended) is also a thing.
As L told me last night, "just because you've found something that works better than what you were doing before doesn't mean you've found the best thing yet..."
BTW I could learn something even more useful than "stop after win" with another month of metrics; maybe "immediately redefine more sophisticated win condition and work towards that" is the real key. But the data I've got now suggests that just repeating something you've already practiced to a defined win condition is counterproductive.
If you define your win condition and achieve it, your next step is to define a new win condition and achieve it as well. That means you could go from "play passage all notes accurate from memory" to "play passage all notes accurate from memory without curling 5th finger."
I'm going to write a post on Tuesday about reps reps reps vs. mindful repetition, and why a rep where you pay attention to why you're failing is just as valuable as a win.
I think the real question is whether the traditional approach to shooting a 3-pointer works. Do people who shoot shoot shoot shoot land more 3-pointers than people who prep, define, shoot, evaluate, prep with new information, etc.? And do the best players do all of that so quickly (and so integratedly) that it looks like rep rep rep?
That's how I've done it, too. Once you know what pitch your favorite song starts on, for example, or what key it's in, learning pitches becomes much easier.
This assumes that you can recall music from memory in its original key, of course. If you can't, your first step might involve strengthening that kind of recall.
Thank you! Have you read Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning? That's where I stole all of the ideas that I didn't steal from Chessable...
I think the question of whether there is a Faustian effect is the wrong one to ask, and it may in fact be a substitution for the real question (as Kahneman would say).
Your actual question is "should I get the Pfizer booster in the first half of February?"
I would answer that question (and in fact have answered it for myself) by asking questions like "what do I observe happening to people I know personally who already got boosted?" and "what do I observe happening to people I know personally who did not get boosted?"
If you subdivide the people you know personally category into "people I know personally who do not live in my immediate community" and "people I know personally who live in my immediate community," it also becomes a useful way to distinguish the COVID prevalence/risk in your community from the COVID prevalence/risk in other cities and countries.
Then you can use that information to ask yourself "what do I believe will happen to me if I get boosted?" and "what do I believe will happen to me if I do not get boosted?"
You can also ask "what do I believe will happen to me if I do not get boosted with this particular formulation, and choose instead to wait for a newer model?"
If you consider yourself to be at a lower risk for serious COVID complications but have loved ones within your immediate circle who are at higher risk, you should also ask "what do I observe happening to people I know in terms of spreading COVID to others?" and "what do I observe happening to people in my high-risk loved one's demographic who catch Omicron?"
Those are answerable questions, as opposed to evaluating a potential Faustian Hypothesis against an ever-growing series of secondhand, confounding data.
You can compare both ingredient lists and serving sizes if you look at cookbooks from the 1950s-1960s and recipe sites today. My Betty Crocker cookbook from 1969 (where I get most of my dessert recipes) has a brownie recipe that calls for 2 cups sugar, 4 oz chocolate, 2/3 cup butter; it's meant to bake in a 13x9 pan and yield 32 brownies.
The brownie recipe on Betty Crocker's website (that is, "today's brownie recipe") calls for 1 3/4 cups sugar, 5 oz chocolate, 2/3 cup butter, but is meant to bake in a 9x9 pan and yield 16 brownies.
hmmmmmmmm...
The obvious question is "what were you eating in 2014 and how was it different," and the answer is "I was still doing most of my own cooking because I wanted to save money, but I was terrible at it (one of the reasons I switched to Huel was because I didn't have the skills to make food taste good) and most of my meals would have been embarrassing to serve to anybody else."
Then, when I felt badly about not having anything good to eat in the house, I would order takeout or walk to the local Walgreens and buy candy and cookies. (Huel effectively stopped that habit, fwiw.)
Do we naturally eat more when there is something missing in our foodstuff, whether it's flavor or nutrient or the experience of sharing a meal with people we care about?
the one thing I do avoid is HFCS, that stuff is not allowed in the house ;)
but I will make some kind of fancy-pants dessert once a month or so, I have an old-fashioned pound cake recipe that is just delightful, we are also good at making pie (crust from scratch)
I eat honey every day, probably a tablespoon's worth on my morning oatmeal.
We don't avoid sugar but we don't go out of our way to add it. None of the food we ate today had sugar in it, for example.
Breakfast: steel-cut oats, fruit, nuts, honey, butter, egg, milk, coffee
Lunch: Rice, homemade mango slaw, homemade guacamole, smoked sausage (we didn't make that, but it has no sugar, no HFCS, no nitrates/nitrites, no MSG), grapes, cheese
Dinner: Rice, homemade naan, homemade dal, vegetables cooked in butter and various Indian-influenced spices, red wine
Dessert: 100% dark chocolate square (Ghirardelli), segmented orange
Oh, very true. The point of my narrative was to make an argument against "bland food being the solution," while acknowledging that hyperpalatable food could still be part of the problem.
When I ate bland food nearly exclusively, I was focusing on metrics that allowed me first to lose and then to maintain weight, even though those metrics were high effort (not overwhelmingly high effort, but still), encouraged binge-restrict cycles (if I eat 3600 cals today and 1400 cals tomorrow, I'll still be on target) and added anxiety to food-related cultural rituals that could not be measured and tracked.
When I focused on maintaining equilibrium during meals (mindful eating, as the kids say) instead of following preset rules, my body also lost and maintained weight without the associated stress.
Plus I got to eat tasty foods.
also any discussion of CICO is incomplete without Vi Hart's video of how food companies juke the numbers:
This is what I thought when I read the SMTM papers too. "People are eating more calories but that's not why they weigh more" okay hmmmm...
Not that I think CICO is the only factor, and that's important! The leptin resistance and the insulin resistance hypotheses both make sense, for example.
Here's another compounding factor (pun intended):
We know that it takes more energy to sustain greater mass, which is part of why people get really excited about CICO ("if I just consume less energy, my body will naturally resolve to a smaller mass") and then disappointed when it doesn't work out quite as planned ("wait my body is naturally resolving to tired?").
And yes, when my body weight was 22% more than current, I was hungrier. Full-stop.
But here's where the numbers get interesting. We know that many hyperpalatable foods have been hyperengineered to hit ever-increasing bliss points (go read Salt, Sugar, Fat), which means that an Oreo Double Stuf gives you 70 calories per cookie vs the original Oreo's 50 calories per cookie.
So it compounds -- you're hungrier because you have more mass to maintain, and the food you're eating has more calories but you don't realize it first because the size of the food is the same as it's always been and second because the food has been engineered to not feel rich/heavy/filling (so you'll eat more of it, go read Salt, Sugar, Fat again).
Then mass increases, then hunger increases, and if you eat 4 Oreo Double Stufs instead of 3 you're getting 280 cals instead of 210 whereas if you'd eaten 4 Original Oreos instead of 3 you'd have only gotten 200 cals instead of 150.
Cycle cycle cycle.
It's also helpful to put less food on your plate to begin with, as a tool to recalibrate how much is "enough" for you. It is always possible to take food off your plate and put it back into a Tupperware and then into the refrigerator, but the easy, default choice is to convince yourself to clean your plate -- especially when the alternative is putting a spoonful of whatever into either a shared leftovers container (which could be an issue depending on the hygiene standards of the people you're living with) or in a separate bin to be consumed on the day you're hungry for a partially-eaten bit of pork loin with a smear of mashed potatoes still attached to one end (which will never look quite as appetizing as properly-plated leftovers or a fresh meal).
Starting with less food to begin with makes the default habit (clean plate) more likely to result in a win condition.
I can actually speak to a variation of this theory, since I used Huel (a nutritionally complete powder) as my primary food source for, like, two years.
I can also speak to the "losing weight and keeping it off for 5+ years" thing, because in 2014 I hit my all-time weight high of 138 lbs (at 5'3", this is the point at which the scale tips to overweight). I started calorie counting with a food scale and lost 15 lbs in a little over a year, which tracks with what the research claims will happen if you try to lose weight at a consistent small caloric deficit.
The end of this weight loss adventure coincided with the beginning of my Huel journey, and I continued weighing my food, weighing the ingredients that went into foods and dividing by the number of portions that I cut foods into, doing the guesswork that comes with eating meals that you cannot weigh, tracking all of the related numbers, and so on.
It worked, in the sense that I had the willpower to do it, and it wasn't particularly time-consuming. But it didn't work half so well as what happened next.
In the second half of 2020, I moved in with the great love of my life and he was all "what are you doing eating Huel when the world is full of delicious food?" He is a very capable home cook, and I quickly learned how to be a capable home cook, and between the two of us we ate meat and cheese and homemade bread and potatoes and vegetables cooked in butter and all of the things that people who are weighing their food and trying to get the maximum food volume for the fewest number of calories try to avoid.
It's worth noting that we ate very little processed food. Obviously steel-cut oats are processed; Brie is processed; wine, if you want to think about it that way, is processed. But when we wanted cookies, we made our own. When we wanted naan, we made our own. When we wanted hamburgers, we made our own.
This could mean that we ate very little "highly palatable food," although the food we eat seems to be extremely palatable.
The point of this story is that I assumed I would gain weight on this diet.
I lost ten pounds in a year, without tracking calories or increasing my exercise or anything like that.
This took me from "healthy weight for my height" to "slim end of healthy weight for my height," and for what it's worth being slimmer has demonstrated benefits. Aggressive, sustained piano practice is easier, for example, when you're lighter. So is biking.
But that'll take me off-topic, so let's get to the actual thing of the thing:
WHAT DO I THINK HAPPENED HERE?
- French Paradox. We were eating high-quality, home-cooked foods in small portions -- and including a variety of foods at every meal. Three bites of a casserole next to three bites of baguette next to three bites of a salad next to three bites of dessert and so on. We spend roughly 30 minutes every night on food cooking and prep, so this kind of food is not overwhelmingly time-consuming. It does take planning ahead, in terms of grocery shopping and what not.
- I was optimizing for equilibrium, not calories. After I got interested in the French Paradox thing I read French Women Don't Get Fat, which still remains the most sensible thing I've ever read about "how to eat" (and I have read all of the Michael Pollan books). Basically, Mireille Guiliano says "eat so that you feel the same way all of the time." Excessive hunger is just as distracting as bloated fullness. A meal that causes your body to change shape in a visual or palpable sense isn't great; neither is trying to force your body into a particular shape by withholding food. Intoxication and abstemiousness are two incorrect solutions to the same problem.
- Eating good food is the side dish to the main course of my life. I am very sure that I put on extra weight in 2014 because I was lonely, understimulated, and didn't have anything else to do. If food is your primary source of dopamine, etc. etc. etc.
Anyway, what I am saying is
DON'T EAT BLAND MEALS FOR SCIENCE
IT WILL MAKE YOU SAD
WHICH WILL MAKE ME SAD
IT WILL ALSO CAUSE YOU TO AGONIZE OVER CALORIES, BINGE-RESTRICT, AND SUBJECT YOURSELF TO EXTRA MISERABILITY EVEN IF YOU MAKE IT WORK BY GETTING THE MATH RIGHT (oooh I ate 3600 cals yesterday so today I'll only eat 1400, never mind how either of these eating experiences make me feel physically/mentally/emotionally).
~also read French Women Don't Get Fat even if you are neither French nor a woman~
The most important thing I discovered in regards to my current partnership is that the relationship is the thing that exists between the partners. The relationship is the choices that are made by both people.
In every previous situation, the relationship was dysfunctional because there was an unwillingness to acknowledge "what I want it to be," "what the other person wants it to be," and "what actually exists between us".
(Think 500 Days of Summer, when Tom says "you can't say we're not a couple, we do all of the things couples do" and Summer says "I can say we're not a couple because I only want something casual," and what actually exists between them centers on the illusion of emotional intimacy, the practicality of exclusive sex, and the decision that "hoping the other person will change their minds about what they want" is better than "putting in the effort to find someone new" and/or "accepting the pain and effort that comes with ending a relationship that is not giving me what I want.")
Everything changed the day I realized that an action could only be considered "of the relationship" if it were willingly entered into by all parties in the relationship. This applies to families and friendships as well as romantic relationships/adult partnerships.
I can expand on this if you want...
Specific, replicable actions that lead to predictable, desired results > specific, replicable actions that lead to unpredictable, desired results
(with the understanding that you may need to grind unpredictability for a while until you get what you need to consistently achieve predictability)
(example being "building freelance career" vs. "maintaining freelance career")
(actions that lead to undesired results aren't even on the table for consideration, of course)
I'm sure I'm not the person to say whether anything resolved (and also that is not what I am referring to in this case).
See, that's what I thought -- any hashtag I tweet or editorial letter I write is going to be way less effective than the movement leader telling a journalist that "Stark Doobin" (no, seriously, that's how he announced it) was going to be the person who could push the plan into completion.
That makes me wonder whether any of the volunteer tasks are useful at all (share a tweet, share a meme, make a blog post, etc.), or whether they exist primarily to keep volunteers engaged. Which is in itself useful, keep the biggest fans on board so they don't get distracted by other shinies, but still.
Got it. So the proposed solution on the table is:
- Create vaccine that effectively brings R0 under 1 (reducing spread being the key factor here)
- Immunize population
- Isolate immunized population
If 1 and 2, then we don't need 3, right?
If 2 and 3 but not 1, then we have something that resembles our current situation, with a lot of people arguing contentiously (rather than productively) over whether 3 is necessary (or helpful) and whether 2 is even necessary (or helpful) given that 1 is absent.
The other question that could provoke argument/contention is "whether the COVID vaccines could have brought R0 under 1 if they were implemented more efficiently." This brings us back to the question of how to evaluate COVID data, because I can see the two movies on the same screen being something like "we could have ended this a year early if you had just taken the vaccines" and "we knew the vaccines weren't going to solve the problem a year before you did."
We need different words to describe what the polio and measles shots do vs. what the flu and COVID shots do. One of these tools effectively stops [disease/death] and the other may reduce [symptoms/severity/transmission].
That is the only way to let the statement that "vaccines stop the virus dead in its tracks" remain true.
I'm trying to remember if there was an outbreak in a vaccine-mandated zone with Delta. We know that vaccinated people could both contract and spread Delta, and that it can transmit within a "fully-immunized household" (Bloomberg, October '21).
Searching "college campuses Delta outbreak" doesn't get me any stories like Cornell's, at least not on the first page of Google; there are stories of Delta spreading through a relatively isolated facility (nursing homes, prisons, etc.) with caveats that not everyone in that facility is vaccinated.
The lack of news articles describing "Delta outbreak in fully-vaccinated space" may also reflect the time rollout of the vaccine; maybe there weren't as many "fully-vaccinated" companies, campuses, cruises, etc. when Delta was around.
The larger point is that if vaccines (for COVID or any future pandemic) worked as sterilizing vaccines, you wouldn't need vaccine-only zones -- right?
We have existing examples of vaccine-only zones; here's how they're going so far:
Cornell University Shuts Down Campus Due to COVID Outbreak, Despite Vaccine Mandate—Here's How That Can Happen (Health.com, Dec '21, this story was reported in many major outlets)
48 test positive for Covid on world's biggest cruise ship (CNN, Dec '21,"95% on board were fully vaccinated. Of the people who've since tested positive, 98% were fully vaccinated. The total number of cases amounted to 0.78% of the on board population.")
Points worth noting:
- cases /= serious illness
- cases /= death
- unclear: whether outbreaks originated from an unvaccinated person or a vaccinated person
- more clear: vaccinated people can spread the virus to each other
- CONTENTIOUS GROUND: whether vaccinated people who contract the virus help speed/spread mutations and variants
- neither Cornell nor Royal Caribbean could promise a fully vaccine-exclusive area (the linked article notes that the unvaccinated on board the Royal Caribbean ship were children younger than 12, fwiw), but this is about as exclusive as one can reasonably get
- someone's going to say "what about a walled city," but that is literally (figuratively) what a cruise ship is [edit: ports of call could change this equation, curious whether the outbreak originated on or off ship]
Agreed (which is why I noted that county data could be more valuable than aggregated CDC data, and that nuance has the potential to be lost with every aggregation), and I spent a good 30 minutes after writing this comment asking myself if there is a better term than "primary source," which I probably used incorrectly above.
That said, it's fair to note that I didn't actually answer the question asked, because I don't know how to determine the reliability of any given number (or any given source providing any given number). How are other people doing this?
Hooooo boy.
Here is how I have been evaluating data, curious to know if other people are making judgments based on similar inputs:
- Primary source material (CDC data tracker) is better than secondary source interpretation (CNN COVID newsfeed).
- Small-scale primary source material, such as state or county data, is better than large-scale aggregate primary source material.
- Secondary source interpretation can be more, not less valuable when created by a single person (as opposed to a news site) (even if that individual does not have a medical background), as an individual is more likely to look for useful information that can help them decide whether or not to take a specific action and share useful detail that explains how they came to that conclusion.
- Assume something is lost/miscalculated/false-priored with every aggregation.
- Assume all primary source material and all interpretations thereof are compromised for some reason (biases, incentives, etc.). Ignore actual numbers. Watch for trends.
I've also been doing a fair amount of on-the-ground evaluation, e.g.:
- Do I know people who currently have COVID?
- Are people around me (strangers in grocery stores, etc.) visibly ill?
- Do I know people who have had post-vaccine health issues?
- How does my experience correlate with the experience the data says I should be having?
There's at least some possibility that it's less of a Pfizer bias than it is an "unnecessary medical intervention" bias (my family of origin made sure we all got our 1980s-recommended vaccines, but they also said "taking Tylenol for a headache doesn't solve the underlying problem, drink a glass of water instead"). You may believe that Paxlovid could be helpful in some situations but you'd rather not take it unless you absolutely have to.
That said, we've also been exposed to two years of "this will work!" followed by does not work, does not work as promised, or reliable sources come to different conclusions about efficacy, and at this point it really doesn't matter if you think the vaccines are full of nanobots or if you think they lead to an increased risk of myocarditis because the actual fact on the ground is that the vaccines may reduce [spread, severity] but they do not work in the way that we were initially told they would work.
Therefore, the claim that Paxlovid "will work" is automatically suspect, whether or not it should be.
the person must have been very crucial
Having spent the past week (technically, the past month) being the House Hero in all matters related to holiday prep, well — I mean, I can't say this is the case in the commenter's situation, but in my household the amount of holiday planning knowledge (where the special dishes were located, where the special recipes were located, which family members have which dietary restrictions and preferences, etc.) that I was carrying, organizing, and delegating was in fact crucial.
I am confused about why it's better to get Omicron later rather than sooner. I understand that avoiding overloaded hospitals is a good idea, but the reports from people who have Omicron (understanding that first-hand reports are created by people well enough to report and/or by bad actors) suggest that getting Omicron right now is equivalent to a nasty cold.
Even the data suggests that getting Omicron right now is much less likely to lead to hospitalization, regardless of whether you feel chipper enough to tweet about it.
So... why do you assume that catching Omicron in March instead of right now will lead to better outcomes on the individual and/or public health level? Omicron might not be the dominant variant in March, after all, and getting immunity now could be a smart move. The equation changes if you have comorbidities, of course, so I may only be speaking for my own long-term health goals here.