Do these activists strike you as the type of people who waited in line all day to volunteer for a trial vaccine study? Photo by Ellen Schmidt of Las Vegas Review-Journal
Preliminary COVID-19 vaccine trials have yielded incredible initial results. We are being told that the vaccines are 90%+ effective so far in these trials.
The effectiveness of the common flu vaccine is much lower.
Unless I’ve missed something, while these results are scientifically possible, we are not hearing too much in terms of possible bias in the studies.
The roughly 50% of the American population that is hesitant or unwilling to receive the COVID-19 vaccine most likely shares a giant overlap with the portion of the population that is generally against any and all precautionary measures.
That segment of the population will almost certainly expose themselves to higher levels of COVID-19 doses/loads, more often.
“…in 2006, a large outbreak [of mumps] occurred among highly vaccinated populations in the United States, and similar outbreaks have been reported worldwide. The outbreak described in this report occurred among U.S. Orthodox Jewish communities during 2009 and 2010… Transmission was focused within Jewish schools for boys, where students spend many hours daily in intense, face-to-face interaction… Conclusions: The epidemiologic features of this outbreak suggest that intense exposures, particularly among boys in schools, facilitated transmission and overcame vaccine-induced protection in these patients.“
That is to say, when those dogmatic individuals are likely excluded, voluntarily, from the COVID-19 vaccine studies, is the COVID-19 virus really getting a fair chance?
Is this really a fair fight?
Or, are these preliminary results nothing more than a demonstration of a good vaccine matched up against a tamed, muzzled COVID-19 virus with the kid-gloves on? (Imagine the typical vaccine study volunteer. Can you really visualize this volunteer casually attending “super-spreader” events? Or, more likely, would you visualize him washing his hands, social distancing, and generally being paranoid and reducing possible infective doses all day long?)
Or perhaps said differently, might the flu vaccine be 98% effective if it were only administered to people who washed their hands all day long, wore a mask while in public, engaged in social distancing, and just generally engaged in preventative measures that reduced the frequency and volume of infective doses/loads? And yet, as it pertains to the common flu, people never lived their lives that way.
A double-blind study means that, initially, both the subjects and the researchers do not know which subjects received the placebo and which received the test vaccine.
For a real-world test, yielding real-world expected results, would we not need an (highly unethical) “ultra-blind” test, where subjects not only don’t know whether they received a vaccine or a placebo, but additionally, they also don’t know that they’re even in the study and that they’ve been given something?
or… Useless Information: How And When Anti-Vaxxers Are Right
COVID-19 has made a huge impact on the world and the United States, and so-called “Anti-Vaxxers” have been an integral part of the story.
As far as I can tell, Anti-Vaxxers could only be correct in two scenarios:
1.) A world dystopian enough that the government would supply toxic vaccines – either through malice, ignorance, or incompetence. I think it’s premature to adopt that worldview currently, so I don’t subscribe to it, but I don’t discount the possibility that it could be correct in some possible dystopian future.
2.) If various Eastern religions tell us that each individual has their own truth, then game theory is the mathematical accounting of that idea. A unique scenario is actually arising in about 6 months or so, where, if an individual happened to view life as an amoral, zero-sum application of game theory, then for a brief moment in time, non-Anti-Vaxxers would have an incentive to secretly promote Anti-Vaxxer philosophy so as to increase the likelihood that they and their loved ones would receive a vaccine and could then get on with their lives (at least to some extent as compared to the present).
It’s strangely whimsical and hard boiled at the same time, but mathematically it seems to be correct.
First, it would probably have to be done secretly. Otherwise there could be a stigmatic cost to the particular individual, and that could outweigh the benefits.
Second, people are very polarized on this, and their minds are fairly made up, but in general I suspect people who believe in vaccines believe in them in an almost irreversible manner. Thus, only the “marginal Anti-Vaxxer” would probably be in play. The idea would be that some Anti-Vaxxers might be suffering from FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) due to constant COVID-19 headlines, and the idea would be to undo all of that. Furthermore, a marginal Anti-Vaxxer can get a vaccine, and then lie to everyone and claim they never received one – this may be tempting.
Third, this is all predicated on the idea that vaccines will be limited at first. Most people believe that will be the case.
Fourth, it goes without saying that there is a social cost to millions of people not getting vaccinated, and then risking death or taking up hospital resources. That cost then trickles down to the individual, so after the individual (and their loved ones) are vaccinated, they no longer have any incentive to spread propaganda.
(For the purposes of this analysis, “loved ones” would include anyone in the individual’s life who the individual has a significant personal stake in remaining healthy.)
Fifth, there’s no question that the impact of the individual’s propaganda effort is small, so it’s assumed that the individual has nothing better to do. Given the unemployment numbers, and what many people are reported to be doing currently, it could be argued that that’s the case. (That I would ever write a blog post this useless, and that you would read it, could also be supportive of that idea.) Each individual will vary, and if there were something more enriching that the individual were likely to do, then the model doesn’t hold for that individual.
Sixth, would it make sense to go full-blown Anti-Vaxxer during the entire crisis? Not necessarily. The problem is that it’s not known when a vaccine will become available! Thus, if it keeps getting delayed, the cost of doing this could become exorbitant. However, this is sort of an open question with an amorphous shape, since the individual may not be spending his time on something more useful anyway.
Thus, the chart would look something like this:
To be completely honest – and this is likely the only real value in the above analysis – I think people acting on the above whimsical idea could be a fairly interesting concept for some sort of comedy some day, although not necessarily specific to COVID-19. COVID-19 carries too much negative baggage due to the tragedy and trauma it’s already caused.
So would I partake in something like this? Nope, not at all. First, it’s just too reprehensible. (Moral concerns are generally incompatible with the tenets of game theory; only people who truly don’t care can succeed in such a model). But second, if I were being completely honest, another reason is that these mathematical benefits are too small to see. The larger and more pronounced the benefits – for example, the certainty between life and death – the more likely the individual will be tempted, if not compelled, to act.
So what is real art? Well, the question itself is misleading. To explain, we’ll drive down a meandering path, hopefully passing a few controversial sights along the way.
When I was younger it seemed like I had a lot of free time. And I spent a considerable amount of it watching different films. Believe me when I say I’ve seen a few. You might even call me a cinephile. I’ve seen performances that are great, performances that are a level beyond great, and yes, I have seen the best performance of all time. Have you? Chances are you might not have.
Still from the 1993 film Kalifornia. Photo: Gramercy Pictures / Getty Images
The film was Kalifornia. Not easily categorized, it’s an all but forgotten 1993 masterwork by Dominic Sena. Brad Pitt delivered an untouchable performance in the role of Early Grayce, a psychotic redneck who is only occasionally connected to reality. The character is extremely authentic and anything but one-dimensional. In particular, Grayce gives us hints that point to an enigmatic depth. You also forget it’s Brad Pitt. Extremely difficult to pull off. Maybe almost impossible. The artistic merit here is way off the chart! If it were measured by an odometer, it would have rolled over several times.
1993 Nominations and Winner for Best Actor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Actor
That year, Tom Hanks took home the Oscar for his role in Philadelphia. Now, I saw Philadelphia. Tom Hanks did a great job in his role – no doubt about it. But comparing his performance in 1993 to the one Brad Pitt gave would be like comparing the vocal strengths of John Travolta and Pavarotti.
OK, if I’m right, how could this be? After all, the official name of those golden statuettes they give out is: The Academy Award of Merit! Well, let’s take a very quick detour and consider the viewpoints of just two dissenting actors. George C. Scott, a winner of one Academy Award, refused to even take part in the Oscars. One reason given was the political nature of the event. And perhaps Mickey Rourke said it best in an interview once when he described the film-making business in general: “It’s all politics.”
Back to Kalifornia, we have a movie which was rated NC-17 in its original cut. Philadelphia on the other hand is a PG-13 film that we can imagine might one day be shown on national holidays. Entertainment aside, Kalifornia is a movie with virtually no redeeming value. In fact, you could probably make the case that society would have been better off without it! Philadelphia aspires to do big things. It demands to have a conversation about how people should be treated. In the end, it’s more or less a perfect fit for Hollywood’s portfolio of “important movies”. This portfolio is an important part of Hollywood’s image and branding.
Now, if we stipulate for a moment that in reality Hollywood is actually governed by politics, is it really surprising that in 1993 Tom Hanks got the award, and Brad Pitt and Kalifornia received nothing – no wins, no nominations, nothing at all from the Academy? (That year, Kalifornia received a handful of awards at minor film festivals, some of which I had never heard of.)
You actually don’t even need to see either film to predict what the results will be like. Look at the fonts. Look at the taglines. Which do you think was nominated for all the awards? Which do you figure Hollywood values more?
Maybe what I’ve said is true and maybe it isn’t, but actually the idea is what counts. We’re kind of getting an oblique glimpse of a very serious conflict. There is a tension between two competing forces: purity of art and politics behind art. And this idea can be generalized slightly. If we say that politicizing art is to add constraints to it, then we can view all art as having a certain amount of constraints. Of course, this is nothing new. For ages, professional artists have been commissioned to work on art that patrons desire. It pays the bills, and has yielded priceless art. The question of whether constraints degrade art is not a simple yes-or-no question.
Let’s take another small detour. Consider the old question: Do humans have free will? The question implies a yes-or-no answer, but I believe, at it’s very core, the answer must be stated in shades of gray, so to speak. (We’re specifically ignoring the more ambitious form of the question seeking to know if all decisions can be predicted ahead of time. For our purposes here, we’re assuming that decisions are in general not predictable.) If we truly had free will, we would not need to drink water or eat food. But these are constraints that are placed on us and must be respected. If we don’t respect them, we will cease to exist in this world. (It should be noted that a tremendous amount of blood has been shed over satisfying these two basic constraints.) So it’s hard to say we have free will. However, I’d be pretty comfortable saying we have free will with a variable number of constraints placed on it. And the key point is this: the fewer constraints a person has placed on him, the more free his will is. Said differently, in life, and in all of its various aspects, a minimized set of constraints is a jewel of great price.
A multitude of mathematical constraints at work: Voronoi partition of a 3D solid. http://www.wias-berlin.de/research/rts/Delaunay/
Back to artistic integrity, I would suggest that the fewer constraints an artist has placed on his work, the more likely it is his work will have greater artistic quality.
Don’t believe me? Have you ever seen an uninspired, mediocre sequel to a good movie? Chances are, this was the result of the following constraint: a group of financiers’ desire to rake in a bonanza of cash without any underlying artistic product. Ever seen awkward product placements in movies that distracted you from your previous suspension of disbelief? Very similar constraint. How about wartime propaganda? It’s typically effective, but rarely as enjoyable as art under just a few less constraints; most of the time, it’s pedestrian. With the skills they have, and working under the given constraints, an artist can do an excellent job in producing anything, including propaganda, but the work itself will probably lack the artistic quality we’d expect from the same or similar artist under fewer constraints.
A big box of Cheerios in Days of Our Lives.
We’ve reached our destination. To summarize, the question of real art is a misleading one. There are really infinite grades of artistic quality. All things being equal, when there are fewer constraints on the artist, the art will probably be better.
And in Hollywood, politics is a heavy constraint.
Some sightseeing on the road in Dominic Sena’s Kalifornia.
The importance of ensuring clarity in written work isn’t all that controversial. The general reason is simple: the total amount of time everyone spends reading something is typically much greater than the amount of time it took one person or one team to write it.
The controversy alluded to is in the bucking of several bad habits that have very large followings. These bad habits fly in the face of clarity, and unfortunately they don’t receive the appropriate level of scrutiny.
The first bad habit is a bizarre programming style where curly braces are placed on lines occupied by other text. This is a holdover from antiquity when screen monitors were tiny and every pixel was highly coveted. In that age, you could have made a case for sacrificing clarity in order to have a few more rows of code on the screen at once. These days it is inexcusable, and when you have to read this stuff, sometimes it can seem almost unforgivable. With the prevalence of huge monitors, multiple-monitor setups, and futuristic code editing tools, why would you make your code harder to read in order to save a few pixels? Screen space is cheap.
The main difference between the left and the right example above is symmetry. Things that are symmetrical are easier to read. They’re easier on the eyes. Also, on the right, things are more structured and orderly in that the curly braces are on their own lines and so you don’t have to read around them as if they’re clutter. And so, all of that is simply to say, the style on the right is objectively better. Now, if you don’t program and don’t know whether to believe me, try reading the next two fragments and decide for yourself which is better.
I’m not aware of any other engineering discipline which creates documents or artifacts that regularly sacrifice clarity in this manner.
Two other questionable habits involve constructs in the English language: the Oxford comma, and sentence spacing. In both cases, the method that promotes the most clarity ought to be chosen, but yet many people opt for the alternative. I claim we ought to put two spaces between sentences,and we ought to use that final comma when listing things (except in rare cases where it actually introduces ambiguity).
I really believe the Oxford comma speaks for itself.
And if there’s any doubt about leaving two spaces between sentences, just consider how many spaces we put between paragraphs, and then think about the reason behind that. If an author merely wanted to express a change in something, such as a new speaker, this could theoretically be done without jumping to a brand new line. For example, a hyphen prefixing the next sentence could indicate this change, and that would be much more economical in terms of space. Of course, we all know which method is used to indicate a new paragraph, and I believe the reason it’s been around for so long is because readers perceive change more easily with the help of additional white space. This type of visual aid is as applicable to sentences as it is to paragraphs.
Although the two English language examples sacrifice much less clarity than the programming example, all three are valid subjects for inspection. In general, why not adopt the approach which promotes the most clarity, especially if the cost is negligible? The cost of not doing so for any one piece of work is nominal, but in the aggregate, the cost is much larger.
