So, we just watched Oppenheimer today. I’d been resisting it, because despite[1] all the hype, I didn’t really see the point; I didn’t really see why I specifically needed to watch it[2]. However, S really wanted to watch it together, and it was now out on home video[3] so we sat down for a nice holiday Tuesday matinee[4].
First off, it was fantastic, really well done. If you haven’t seen it yet, please pause this read, do so, and then come back here.
[Spoilers beyond this point]
It’s interesting that I feel I have to talk about spoilers here, for a historical/biographical movie. But I do need to. Anytime there’s a biopic, there are choices about what is shown on-screen, and how each of those things are sequenced and portrayed. The flashback structure and eventual reveal at the end was really good for building and releasing the dramatic tension (the music was fantastic for this…especially the completely silent atomic bomb explosion, which was fantastically effective, along with dramatically representing some of the delay between seeing and hearing such an event caused by the difference between the speed of sound and light).
I’d always conceptualized the Manhattan Project through the eyes of Feynman, from his essay ‘Los Alamos from Below'[5]. I think it wasn’t until today that I really understood that he really meant it that way. I had always seen Oppenheimer as the leader/front man who had to exist so that the project could happen, but also as a quasi-mythical distant figure. I’d also conceptualized the ethical dilemmas about actually building a nuclear device as being shared and agonized over by each and every one of the scientists and engineers (and everyone) at Los Alamos.
The Oppenheimer story, being a biopic largely of one person, centralized a lot of that in one person (Oppenheimer). Interestingly, the movie tried really really hard (and I think succeeded) at leaving Oppenheimer a complex character, with multiple possible interpretations of many of the very real decisions he made along the way.
Cillian Murphy was fantastic, it seemed to me having some of the ‘dazed at the enormity of what we’re doing’ present at all points of the movie, which is appropriate for flashbacks, or perhaps for someone who had his head in the clouds of physics his entire life[6].
Having not seen much about the movie (aside from a clip or two, and hearing about how Cillian Murphy prepared for the role[7]), I wasn’t expecting what type of movie it was, or how pivotal a role Robert Downey Jr.’s character was to play (or that he was to be the villain). He had mentioned in an interview that Nolan had asked him to play against type[8] compared to many of his recent characters.
Florence Pugh was fantastic, although it’s hard to top her iconic performance as Yelena Belova. Matt Damon was an excellent potty-mouthed general, and Emily Blunt and the rest of the supporting cast were great.
I thought it was a really nice touch having Einstein and Bohr both mention that they were from the previous generation, and that this problem was not theirs, but fully belonged to Oppenheimer. S mentioned in particular that it was interesting to see a different, older/more bitter side of Einstein, rather than the ‘genius’.
I also appreciated for the nods to Copenhagen (the play), where Bohr mentions that he got significant information from Heisenberg, and a disturbing scene where Oppenheimer meets Heisenberg, and then immediately turns away and leaves, presumably because he (a Jewish boy from New York) senses that Heisenberg would be willing to work on a Bomb for Hitler[9].
There was also just enough of a Feynman cameo, with two shots of him playing the bongos. With his charisma and fame, anything more might have upstaged the rest of the movie.
Great movie. See it if you haven’t. Let me know what you think!
[1] Or perhaps because of it. I’m often somewhat contrarian about things like that.
[2] Interestingly, I perceived that I needed to see Barbie more than Oppenheimer, but that’s a story for another time.
[3] How anachronistic is the phrase ‘home video’ now?
[4] I find many/most movies emotionally draining/exhausting, and they often require significant processing time afterwards (and this was no exception), and it’s really nice to still have some sun out after the movie is over, which somehow helps with this.
It had been a long time. He found himself wanting to say ‘It’s been a minute’ like the kids used to say. ‘Kids’. Huh. Those ‘kids’ had been grown up for years, decades, even, and the vernacular had long moved on to far stranger things…
…but that was beside the point. If he started thinking about that, he’d be back in Vienna again, and he didn’t have time for that right now.
Rollick paused for a moment. No footfalls. Either that meant no one was following, or they were even more careful than he was, something else he didn’t care to think about right now.
Emerging from the alley, he started to be able to almost feel the beat coming from Collatz. Even the most advanced dampers couldn’t damp the ground displacement of a truly heavy bass. He put in his earpieces and joined the line, tapping them twice to change modes to ‘club’.
Quick survey of the line. No one he recognized, but they could be using a face skifter. He never used them because they were far too detectable by automated systems. He preferred to use his hat and his trained ability to shift his facial muscles. Front of the line. Standard pat-down and scan. Bouncers were no-nonsense, your standard retired linebacker-types. No piece today, not on a mission like this. Just causes more problems than it solves, especially in a crowded club.
Waved through, the door opens. The first wave of the beat is felt more than heard. Down the corridor, no coat check today, with the temperature being ‘ambient’. He enters the club proper, and is assaulted by the sound for a split second before his earpieces kick in. ‘Ah, modern technology.’
He glances at the booth. Good, she’s not spinning right now, so there should be just enough time.
Working his way through the crowd, he moves just enough to the music to look not too much out of place, but not so much that he stands out. He risks a longing glance towards one of the more open areas of the dance floor, but that might be a little too visible today.
He can’t help but look at the endlessly changing light mathematical light display that gives the club its name. With difficulty, he manages to draw his attention away.
Passing the bar, he heads back to the head (natch). No one in the hall, good.
A few days ago, I posted about some chilling COVID statistics[1], and said that each time you get COVID, you and your children ‘roll the dice’ (referring to the relatively high probability of death and/or organ damage/disability).
A friend of mine commented that this was ‘loaded language and emotional rhetoric’, and it came ‘across as an attempt at manipulation or a genuine reflection of fear felt by the author’.
Setting aside the obvious ‘loaded dice’ pun[2], I’d like to interrogate the meaning of ‘rolling the dice’ (and also the use of such rhetorical flourishes in a Health and Safety context).
Colloquially, I’ve always thought of it in the second sense given by Miriam-Webster: “It’s a roll of the dice whether we succeed or fail.”, meaning that we are not in control of the outcome, and you should be prepared for the high chance of negative outcome.
Of course, ‘high chance’ is defined differently by different people, and in different situations, people having different risk thresholds than each other, and at different times. For example, a 1 in 10 chance of the bottom of your sock becoming wet[4] is very different than a 1 in 10 chance of being hit by a car.
For the sake of argument, let’s compare the above usage of ‘rolling the dice’ with the most popular[5] dice betting[5a] game ‘Craps‘. In Craps, the two most well known[6] sets of odds are ‘Pass’, or ‘will you win this set of rolls’, and winning on the first roll.
Winning on the first roll in Craps requires rolling either a ‘7’ or an ’11′[8], for a total probability of 8/36, or about 22%. Many might think that rolling a 7 is the way to win in Craps (it’s also one way to lose, if your first roll was 4,5,6,8,9,10). Rolling a 7 has a probability of 6/36, or about 17%.
One could also argue that ‘a roll of the dice’ is rolling one six-sided die[9], but that just gives us the 1 in 6 or ~17% chance above again. Higher (or lower) order polyhedral dice[10] (or larger numbers of dice) can give us arbitrarily different odds, but let’s stop here.
Today, Statscan reported on the prevalence and ‘Experiences of Canadians with long-term symptoms following COVID-19’.
“As seen in Chart 2, Canadians reporting two known or suspected COVID-19 infections (25.4%) were 1.7 times more likely to report prolonged symptoms than those reporting only one known or suspected infection (14.6%), and those with 3 or more infections (37.9%) 2.6 times more likely. ” https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article/00015-eng.htm
This shows that about 14.6% reported long-term symptoms after one infection (about 1 in 7), then of the remaining 85.4%, about one in 8 developed long-term symptoms after a second infection, then of the remaining 74.6%, about one in 6 developed long-term symptoms.[11]
Each of these is pretty close to ‘a roll of the dice’, as we defined above.
Perhaps more disturbing is that more than half of those who reported long-term symptoms reported no improvement in those symptoms over time:
“Almost half of Canadians who reported that they continue to experience long-term symptoms also reported no improvement over time” “Many Canadians with long-term symptoms experience a protracted symptom duration. As of June 2023, 58.2% of infected Canadians who ever reported long-term symptoms continue to experience them. Among Canadian adults who continued to experience long-term symptoms, 79.3% had been experiencing symptoms for 6 months or more, including 42.2% with symptoms for one year or more (Figure 1).” https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article/00015-eng.htm
Also, more than 1 in 5 of those with persistent symptoms (600,000 Canadians) missed days of work or school, missing an average of 24 days each.
Having shown that this is a reasonable use of the phrase ‘roll of the dice’, I also wanted to address the idea of using emotional appeals in public education about health and safety.
A number of years I had the privilege of attending safety training run by Minerva Canada, where a talk was being given by a representative from a car manufacturing company that you’ve heard of. He was talking about their ‘getting to zero’ workplace accidents project, and he mentioned that at some point, after you’ve tried asking people nicely enough times, you have to get the ‘300 lb gorilla to go tell the guy to wear his @#$%ing safety harness’.
That was my sixth and this will be my seventh post talking about the dangers of COVID. At some point, using stronger (but still accurate) language to educate people about the dangers they and their children face due to action or inaction becomes necessary if we actually want to solve the problem.
[1] “tl;dr: About 1 in 8 deaths in 2022 in Canada were caused by COVID-19. Organ damage caused by COVID seems to be persistent. Each time you get COVID, you and your children roll the dice again as to whether you die or get Long COVID. Get boosted, mask (with an N95 respirator) when you’re indoors with others. Get COVID as few times as you can, and if you get it, rest up longer than you think you need to. Push for better (HEPA) air filtering and ventilation (more air interchanges per hour).” link to post
[5a] I mention the ‘most popular dice betting game’ partially because most people will have a passing familiarity, I know some of the odds, and those odds are easy to explain. Compare with the games on the ‘top 10 all-time best-seller list‘: Monopoly (3), Clue (5) (uses one six-sided die for movement, but the deduction and knowing your opponents is far more important for gameplay), and Backgammon (8)
[6] I admit, most well known to me, based on learning about Craps during a probability module in high school. There are a large number of ‘standard’ betting options in Craps, but I suspect most people will not have heard of most of them.
[11] Here, I’m assuming that each time a person catches COVID, they either progress into Long COVID, or stay ‘long-term unaffected’. This allows modeling of each subsequent infection independently. With the numbers above, 1st infection has a ~14.6% chance of leading to Long Covid (1 in 6.85), of the remaining 85.4 people, 25.4-14.6=10.8 of them or 10.8/85.4 = 12.6% or 1 in 7.9, then of the remaining 74.6 people, 37.9-25.4=12.5 of them or 12.5/74.6 = 16.8% or one in 5.97. Note that the last number includes those with more than three infections, so one would expect the number for 3 infections to be less than that. Also note that biology is often not linear, and a linear model such as this one may be simplistic, and should only be used for illustrative purposes, no matter how well it fits the curve.
tl;dr: About 1 in 8 deaths in 2022 in Canada were caused by COVID-19. Organ damage caused by COVID seems to be persistent. Each time you get COVID, you and your children roll the dice again as to whether you die or get Long COVID. Get boosted, mask (with an N95 respirator) when you’re indoors with others. Get COVID as few times as you can, and if you get it, rest up longer than you think you need to. Push for better (HEPA) air filtering and ventilation (more air interchanges per hour).
It’s been three and a half years since COVID-19 burst into the world consciousness, and ten months since I last wrote about it.
With cases dramatically increasing in North America , and numerous people being ‘surprised that COVID-19 is still a thing‘[1] the time seemed right for an updated review of what we know.
Ontario COVID-19 Wastewater Signal, showing the current (November 2023) peak as the highest in the past 13 months.
The SARS-Cov-2 virus affects numerous parts of the body, by attaching its ‘spike protein’ to the ACE2 receptor found in the lungs, heart and cardiovascular system, gastro-intestinal system, and kidneys, causing issues and organ damage in all of those areas.
Longitudinal studies have shown that this organ damage is persistent, with 80-100% of damage present at 6 months still being present at 12 months[2a].
SARS-Cov-2 is also known to have effects on the brain, causing loss of taste/smell and vertigo.[3] Last time, I also reported the UK ‘Brain Bank’ study[3a] which showed ‘detected damage to areas of the brain associated with taste and smell, along with measurable cognitive impact, even when COVID cases which required hospitalization were excluded’, suggesting that even ‘mild’ COVID cases cause brain damage.
In 2022, StatsCan[4] shows that there were about 43 thousand ‘excess deaths’ in Canada (compared to 2019 and earlier), with 18 thousand people specifically confirmed to have died from COVID.
Given the inaccuracies and delays in reporting deaths[5], and the steadiness of the death rate before 2020 (compare the ‘All:’ line in the table above for 2018/2019 with the much greater variability in 2020/2021/2022), it is generally accepted that ‘Excess Deaths’ is the correct way to measure deaths caused by COVID-19.
With that being said, the numbers paint a sobering picture. While 43,378/38 million (0.11%) may not seem like a large number, 43,378/334,081 is 12.98%. That means that for each person that died in Canada in 2022, there was about a 1 in 8 chance that their death was caused by COVID-19.
Also note that there is a substantial uptick in cardiac (Heart & Stroke) related deaths, especially in 2022. COVID is known to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, and the ~3,000 excess Heart & Stroke-related deaths in 2022 in Canada help us understand the magnitude of the issue.
Last time, I shared a study[2b] done with data from Veteran’s Administration patients from the U.S., showing that COVID reinfection is just as dangerous (equal chance of death) or more dangerous (increased chance of hospitalization).
While this clearly showed additive effects from second COVID infections, this was a very specific (and not very healthy) cohort.
Since then, there was a study in the UK which looked specifically at the incidence of Long COVID after first and second infections. Among those >=16yo, ‘Activity-limiting’ Long COVID was reported by 2.8% after first infection, with an additional 1.6% after second infection, showing that the effects are either additive, or somewhat random with each infection. Those <16yo had an incidence of 0.6% after first infection, with an additional 0.4% after second infection.
The above show that second (and subsequent) infections are still dangerous, still causing life-changing illness, including in children.
Even if children may not show the effects as often, they are still affected, and subsequent infections can and do still cause Long COVID in children.
So, given the current high COVID rates (see the Ontario graph above), what actions should you take to protect yourself?
Wear a good mask:
The chart below is from a study performed pre-Omicron, but the general message holds. A cloth or surgical or KN95 (earloop) mask is better than nothing, but not really very helpful unless everyone is wearing one. Specifically, the times below should be revised downward, probably significantly, but even the author has not done so because they don’t know how far to revise them.
COVID Masking Quality Table
If you want to actually protect yourself, you need an N-95 or better (ideally fit tested). My favourite is this one from 3M, as the headloop bands are a mixture of cloth and elastic, and are thus less likely to break.
Check (and improve) the ventilation:
A CO2 monitor such as the Aranet can very quickly tell you how well-ventilated your area is. Anything around 500ppm means that the air in your space is ‘like outside’.
Thanks for reading this far. Working together, we can get through this, but it might get worse before it gets better, until we as a society decide that we actually want to solve this. Stay safe out there.
[2a] Multi-organ impairment and long COVID: a 1-year prospective, longitudinal cohort study
Andrea Dennis, Daniel J Cuthbertson, Dan Wootton, Michael Crooks, Mark Gabbay, Nicole Eichert, Sofia Mouchti, Michele Pansini, Adriana Roca-Fernandez, Helena Thomaides-Brears, Matt Kelly, Matthew Robson, Lyth Hishmeh, Emily Attree, Melissa Heightman, Rajarshi Banerjee, and Amitava Banerjee
Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Volume 116, Issue 3
https://doi.org/10.1177/01410768231154703
[3a] SARS-CoV-2 is associated with changes in brain structure in UK Biobank, Gwenaëlle Douaud, Soojin Lee, Fidel Alfaro-Almagro, Christoph Arthofer, Chaoyue Wang, Paul McCarthy, Frederik Lange, Jesper L. R. Andersson, Ludovica Griffanti, Eugene Duff, Saad Jbabdi, Bernd Taschler, Peter Keating, Anderson M. Winkler, Rory Collins, Paul M. Matthews, Naomi Allen, Karla L. Miller, Thomas E. Nichols & Stephen M. Smith, Nature volume 604, pages 697–707 (07 March 2022)
However much improvement there has been in economic theories over the past century or two, there is still no real consensus on the causes of and solutions for such basic economic issues as high inflation.[1]
So, why is this? A number of ideas come to mind, of varying levels of spiciness:
1) Economics lacks predictive power, and can only rationalize cause and effect after the fact
3) Basic underlying assumptions are wrong (Humans are not rational actors, there is substantial information asymmetry, etc…)
4) Some combination of payola and regulatory capture (the current consensus on drivers of inflation does not take into account changes in corporate profit rates. Also note that the economics ‘Nobel Prize’ is not a true Nobel prize, and has been disowned by multiple members of the Nobel family[2].)
5) Different economic theories are required for different situations (read ‘Micro’ & ‘Macro’)
6) Economic theory is actually game theory, and as soon as something is figured out, humans compensate for that and change the rules (any large institution that you are trading with will adjust their prices (or other rules) if you figure out how to retain a larger percentage of the profit from a transaction, so as to maintain their margins)[3]
7) Much of human behaviour (and economic behaviour) is based on human sentiment, and measuring and reporting on it affects it (try watching how swings in price fluctuate vs. accepted measures of value for stocks as ‘market sentiment’ changes; cf. ‘Mr. Market‘)
8) Economic predictions are subject to ‘groupthink‘[4], as there are immediate consequences of being outside the mainstream, but few consequences for wrong predictions.
So, which of the above are the main issues with Economics? Some of them? All of them? More importantly, what do we do about it?
Well, we can start by only believing theories that have been confirmed through the scientific method, i.e. Prediction, followed by successfully predicted result. Perhaps we can be more aware of sentiment or groupthink, and try to pay attention to the underlying.
(Just remember the famous quote attributed to Keynes: “Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent.”
Other ideas on what are the main causes? Other recommendations on how to deal with them? Let me know in the comments below!
[0] There is one Theory of Gravity (modulo quantum), and one Theory of Evolution, and each of them have massive predictive power. Why not Economics?
[2] “Nobel accuses the awarding institution of misusing his family’s name, and states that no member of the Nobel family has ever had the intention of establishing a prize in economics.[39] He explained that “Nobel despised people who cared more about profits than society’s well-being”, saying that “There is nothing to indicate that he would have wanted such a prize”, and that the association with the Nobel prizes is “a PR coup by economists to improve their reputation”.[38] ”
Economics
[3] This is based on my experiences in Forex. I imagine other markets would be similar, but the less regulated the market, and the greater the power asymmetry, the worse this issue would be.
[3] “His analysis revealed that economists had failed to predict 148 of the past 150 recessions. Part of the problem, he said, was that there wasn’t much of a reputational gain to be had by predicting a recession others had missed. If you disagreed with the consensus, you would be met with skepticism. The downside of getting it wrong was more personally damaging than the upside of getting it right.”
Climate change has potential to do significant economic harm, and poses worrying tail risks. It is a global externality—one country’s emissions affect all countries by adding to the stock of heat-warming gases in the earth’s atmosphere from which warming arises.
The process of climate change is set to have a significant economic impact on many countries, with a large number of lower income countries being particularly at risk. Macroeconomic policies in these countries will need to be calibrated to accommodate more frequent weather shocks, including by building policy space to respond to shocks. Infrastructure will need to be upgraded to enhance economic resilience.
Elsewhere, climate change can entail significant risks to macrofinancial stability. Nonfinancial corporate sectors face risks from climate damages and stranded assets—such as coal reserves that become uneconomic with carbon pricing—and the disruption could affect corporate balance sheet quality.”
