Patterico's Pontifications

4/28/2020

In Coronavirus Vaccine Development News

Filed under: General — Dana @ 1:15 pm

[guest post by Dana]

The New York Times reports:

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Montana last month inoculated six rhesus macaque monkeys with single doses of the Oxford vaccine. The animals were then exposed to heavy quantities of the virus that is causing the pandemic — exposure that had consistently sickened other monkeys in the lab. But more than 28 days later all six were healthy, said Vincent Munster, the researcher who conducted the test.

“The rhesus macaque is pretty much the closest thing we have to humans,” Dr. Munster said, noting that scientists were still analyzing the result. He said he expected to share it with other scientists next week and then submit it to a peer-reviewed journal.

Immunity in monkeys is no guarantee that a vaccine will provide the same degree of protection for humans. A Chinese company that recently started a clinical trial with 144 participants, SinoVac, has also said that its vaccine was effective in rhesus macaques. But with dozens of efforts now underway to find a vaccine, the monkey results are the latest indication that Oxford’s accelerated venture is emerging as a bellwether.

–Dana

Comments (94)

94 Responses to “In Coronavirus Vaccine Development News”

The institute’s effort against the coronavirus uses a technology that centers on altering the genetic code of a familiar virus. A classic vaccine uses a weakened version of a virus to trigger an immune response. But in the technology that the institute is using, a different virus is modified first to neutralize its effects and then to make it mimic the one scientists seek to stop — in this case, the virus that causes Covid-19. Injected into the body, the harmless impostor can induce the immune system to fight and kill the targeted virus, providing protection.

Read the whole thing.
Dana (0feb77) — 4/28/2020 @ 1:18 pm
An Oxford guy was on one of the cable news channels a week or two ago, and their work looks promising. He was saying they might have a vaccine ready by September.
Paul Montagu (b3f51b) — 4/28/2020 @ 1:26 pm
Yes, Paul Montagu, the report indeed says that, but it also notes that in order to be able do that they would first need an emergency approval from regulators.
Dana (0feb77) — 4/28/2020 @ 1:30 pm
Dana, I want to thank you for all the posts you have written. Your work is much appreciated. Thank you!
felipe (023cc9) — 4/28/2020 @ 1:31 pm
Thank you, felipe. I appreciate that.
Dana (0feb77) — 4/28/2020 @ 1:42 pm
An Oxford guy was on one of the cable news channels a week or two ago, and their work looks promising. He was saying they might have a vaccine ready by September.

I hope this is true, of course, but the cynic in me recalls that Israeli scientists were also claiming 60 days ago that they were 90 days away from having a vaccine ready, but I don’t think there has been any updates since so I’m guessing they were being overly-optimistic. But I hope I’m wrong and the Israeli scientists soon announce that their vaccine is ready.

I agree with felipe that Dana has done marvelous work in staying atop of the pandemic developments and giving us lots of great posts for discussion.
JVW (54fd0b) — 4/28/2020 @ 3:07 pm
Are there any three-time losers who want out of prison ever? How many lives would be saved by a vaccine 6 months earlier? Maybe the Chinese can help here.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/28/2020 @ 3:08 pm
> How many lives would be saved by a vaccine 6 months earlier?

There are two problems with this.

[a] since we have to assume that we’re aiming to have 60-70% of the country and likely 50% of the world get this vaccine, we have to be REALLY careful about side effects that take forever to develop. That is, imagine this vaccine kills the virus, stops the infection, and then six months later causes encephelitis in 5% of the people who use it. That would literally be worse than the disease.

[b] we do not have the production capacity in place to produce 192 million doses (let alone 3.5 billion doses) of a novel vaccine in six months. We can build that capacity, and we can repurpose existing capacity producing other vaccines (although note, and this is a real problem, if we do that, this is going to cause shortages of other vaccines next year), but those actions take time.
aphrael (7962af) — 4/28/2020 @ 3:39 pm
While I doubt that Zimbabwe can produce their own vaccine, certainly the Europeans, Chinese, etc can, if only under license. We do not have to (and should not try to) produce the world’s vaccine. It will also be a political problem if we are exporting it while Americans are still waiting. Even under a different president.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/28/2020 @ 3:49 pm
Maybe the Chinese can help here.

Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/28/2020 @ 3:08 pm

Very insightful. Unfortunate though.
Dustin (e5f6c3) — 4/28/2020 @ 3:55 pm
One thing that is clear from all this: advanced degrees in medical research and computational biology should be funded heavily by the government, just as STEM degrees were after Sputnik.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/28/2020 @ 4:00 pm
Very insightful. Unfortunate though.

I had my amoral hat on.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/28/2020 @ 4:00 pm
One thing that is clear from all this: advanced degrees in medical research and computational biology should be funded heavily by the government, just as STEM degrees were after Sputnik.

Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/28/2020 @ 4:00 pm

Nursing degrees, med degrees, as far as I’m concerned we should just subsidize them as part of healthcare reform. Go ahead and charge double for Philosophy degrees.
Dustin (e5f6c3) — 4/28/2020 @ 4:03 pm
> It will also be a political problem if we are exporting it while Americans are still waiting. Even under a different president.

yes, but a lot of the capacity we normally rely on is actually not sited within the US. A US company whose physical production plant is outside the country can’t supply the US first without raising the ire of the foreign country, and the multinational conglomerates have to answer to other governments as much as they have to answer to us.
aphrael (7962af) — 4/28/2020 @ 4:04 pm
Go ahead and charge double for Philosophy degrees.

No, but no loans. At one time, the only loans for college were for STEM and languages, both useful in the Cold War. THen in the 60s, LBJ made loans available for anything, and the student debt monster was born.

We should again limit federally-sponsored loans to course of study that benefit the nation. STEM, medicine, computational biology (I qualify this from experience), and various medical and drug research paths.

Private institutions can promote the humanities, and many people take them as minors anyway.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/28/2020 @ 4:17 pm
yes, but a lot of the capacity we normally rely on is actually not sited within the US

There will be less of that going forward, particularly if Uncle Sugar is paying.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/28/2020 @ 4:19 pm
Kevin, what’s computational biology?
Kishnevi (31ec7b) — 4/28/2020 @ 4:30 pm
https://www.bing.com/search?form=MOZCON&pc=MOZI&q=computational+biology
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/28/2020 @ 4:35 pm
Waiting for the ‘Man From Stratford’ folks to weigh in on this…..
_
harkin (8f4a6f) — 4/28/2020 @ 4:37 pm
“ Then in the 60s, LBJ made loans available for anything, and the student debt monster was born.“

A degree in Feminism Through Dance Expression degree would be just as marketable as one in Electronic Engineering except for the oppressive white patriarchy
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harkin (8f4a6f) — 4/28/2020 @ 4:38 pm
LBJ sucked even more than I thought.

We should again limit federally-sponsored loans to course of study that benefit the nation. STEM, medicine, computational biology (I qualify this from experience), and various medical and drug research paths.

Definitely. But the masses are demanding free school for everyone, with no control on costs that I can see.

Private institutions can promote the humanities

It’s not that I don’t think we need folks to master these fields. It’s that the people who will really contribute to these fields are actually quite rare. We’ve been neglecting this issue for an awfully long time.
Dustin (e5f6c3) — 4/28/2020 @ 4:39 pm
Waiting for the ‘Man From Stratford’ folks to weigh in on this….

Most of what I know about Shakespeare I learned in high school, even though I had two terms of Shakespeare in college. (I was a BritLit major.) Macbeth in 9th grade, Othello in 10th, Hamlet in 11th, The Tempest in 12th grade, the Sonnets mixed in with other stuff along the way.It’s the other Elizabethans and Jacobeans that I learned about in college.
Kishnevi (31ec7b) — 4/28/2020 @ 4:48 pm
8. aphrael (7962af) — 4/28/2020 @ 3:39 pm

[b] we do not have the production capacity in place to produce 192 million doses

A company in India is going ahead with production on spec. ($40 million doses for now)

https://www.businessinsider.com/india-serum-institute-millions-oxford-university-vaccine-before-approval-2020-4

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/04/28/world/europe/28reuters-health-coronavirus-india-vaccine.html

I don’t know why they are pushing a vaccine almost exclusively, instead of the antibodies
Sammy Finkelman (af3697) — 4/28/2020 @ 4:55 pm
Student loan debt really took off in the 1990s when grants stopped being close for many.
Sammy Finkelman (af3697) — 4/28/2020 @ 4:57 pm
22 – K

I envy those classes. My Shakespeare schooling was limited to Great Books in high school (The Scottish Play) and Henry IV 1& 2 in college English Lit.

I just happened to have purchased a copy of The Riverside Shakespeare (all 1900 pages) last fall and it’s been a joy to wade through.
_
harkin (8f4a6f) — 4/28/2020 @ 5:00 pm
If you want a real challenge, try Spenser’s Faerie Queene. If you want a lesser challenge, Spenser’s other stuff, and Sidney.

My high school courses were targeted at the AP tests. So, among other things, we did the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales and the Miller’s Tale in the original Middle English. And two Faulkner novels. Light in August and As I Lay Dying. I don’t remember which was in 11th grade and which in 12th.
Kishnevi (31ec7b) — 4/28/2020 @ 5:10 pm
Private institutions can promote the humanities, and many people take them as minors anyway.

So teaching children English and History in elementary school doesn’t “benefit the nation”?
Dave (1bb933) — 4/28/2020 @ 5:22 pm
I am pretty sure Kevin was referring to college level studies. But I got a fairly good grounding in the humanities when I was in high school. And via Shakespeare we looked at the role of women in premodern society, racism, even gender roles. Those women who dressed up as men in some of Shakespeare’s comedies were really boy actors dressed up as women dressed up as men.
Kishnevi (31ec7b) — 4/28/2020 @ 5:30 pm
I am pretty sure Kevin was referring to college level studies.

Yes, of course, but elementary and high school teachers get their training in those “college level studies”.
Dave (1bb933) — 4/28/2020 @ 5:52 pm
Those women who dressed up as men in some of Shakespeare’s comedies were really boy actors dressed up as women dressed up as men.

And here I thought Monty Python came up with that idea… 🙂
Dave (1bb933) — 4/28/2020 @ 6:04 pm
“ The Mesa City Police Department’s homicide division is investigating the death of Gary Lenius, the Arizona man whose wife served him soda mixed with fish tank cleaner in what she claimed was a bid to fend off the coronavirus. A detective handling the case confirmed the investigation to the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday after requesting a recording of the Free Beacon’s interviews with Lenius’s wife, Wanda.”

https://freebeacon.com/coronavirus/police-investigating-death-of-arizona-man-from-chloroquine-phosphate/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
_

Stephen L. Miller
@redsteeze
·
It was fun when blue checks all tweeted “nOt ThE oNiOn”
__
harkin (8f4a6f) — 4/28/2020 @ 6:28 pm
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/mar/22/shakespeare-in-lockdown-did-he-write-king-lear-in-plague-quarantine

Yet, is it actually true, the bit about Shakespeare? Well, maybe. Certainly it’s fair to say that, like all Elizabethans, the playwright’s career was affected by the bubonic plague in ways that are all but impossible to conceive now, even in the midst of Covid-19.

As an infant, he was lucky to survive the disease: Stratford-upon-Avon was ravaged by a huge outbreak in the summer of 1564, a few months after he was born, and up to a quarter of the town’s population died. Growing up, Shakespeare would have heard endless stories about this apocalyptic event and kneeled in church in solemn remembrance of townsfolk who were lost. His father, John, was closely involved in relief efforts and attended a meeting to help Stratford’s poorest. It was held outdoors because of the risk.

When Shakespeare became a professional actor, then a playwright and shareholder in a London company, plague presented both a professional and existential threat. Elizabethan doctors had no inkling that the disease was transmitted by rat fleas, and the moment an outbreak flared up – often during the spring or summer months, peak seasons for theatres – the authorities scrabbled to ban mass gatherings. …Between 1603 and 1613, when Shakespeare’s powers as a writer were at their height, the Globe and other London playhouses were shut for an astonishing total of 78 months – more than 60% of the time.
Sammy Finkelman (af3697) — 4/28/2020 @ 6:30 pm
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/04/06/shakespeare-plague-coronavirus

A year or so before Shakespeare wrote “Romeo and Juliet,” a powerful plague struck London in 1593.

Theatres closed for 14 months and 10,000 Londoners died, says Columbia University professor and author James Shapiro. In “Romeo and Juliet,” Shakespeare uses the plague as source material.

The play features a scene where Friar John is sent to deliver the message to Romeo about Juliet’s faux death. But the Friar is suspected of being in an infected house and quarantined — making him unable to deliver the message to Romeo…
Sammy Finkelman (af3697) — 4/28/2020 @ 6:33 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDglEj3WoNM&feature=emb_title
Jake (4c234f) — 4/28/2020 @ 6:48 pm
16, maybe so, and quite likely that’s good, but that’s not going to be in place in the next year.
aphrael (7962af) — 4/28/2020 @ 6:49 pm
sammy, at 8:

(a) production on spec is a good thing and similar to what’s been done for certain crises in the past (there was widespread production of the first polio vaccine before it was confirmed safe) but 40 million is the wrong scale by two orders of magnitude.

(b) they aren’t promoting vaccines exclusively. work is being done on monoclonal antibodies, too. but the company in this report doesn’t do that kind of work, and the press is more interested in vaccines because it’s easier for non-experts to understand and because ideally we want to not have to treat this at all.
aphrael (7962af) — 4/28/2020 @ 6:51 pm
I have enjoyed many of the comments made made by the usual suspect today. Yours, aphrael, are among them. Thank you for your thoughts.
felipe (023cc9) — 4/28/2020 @ 6:57 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDglEj3WoNM&feature=emb_title

Jake (4c234f) — 4/28/2020 @ 6:48 pm

Scam, each time you post, it’s still a scam.
“They’ve used methods that are ludicrous to get results that are completely implausible,” Bergstrom said.

Still, the early media coverage of the doctors’ announcement went viral (digitally, that is) over the weekend. The press conference video garnered more than 5 million views before YouTube removed it on Monday for violating community guidelines.

But already, the Bakersfield doctors — who tout their support of President Donald Trump and refuse to wear masks in public — have become heroes on social platforms and conservative media outlets, with some commenters calling them “brave.” Others who support continuing to shelter in place described the doctors as self-promoters whose chain of urgent care centers would benefit from reopening. Non-COVID medical visits have plummeted during the pandemic, they note, endangering the practices of many doctors.

“As struggling business owners, their economic frustration is understandable. But it can’t be mistaken for science. People trust doctors,” Michigan emergency room doctor Rob Davidson wrote on Twitter. “When they tell Fox viewers to ignore recommendations from real experts, many will believe them…The impact of rejecting science-proven recommendations in exchange for these erroneous ideas would overwhelm health systems and cost lives. While re-opening the economy might be good for their Urgent Care Centers (sic), it would kill medical personnel on the actual front lines.”

And…

The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM) jointly and emphatically condemn the recent opinions released by Dr. Daniel Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi. These reckless and untested musings do not speak for medical societies and are inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19. As owners of local urgent care clinics, it appears these two individuals are releasing biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the public’s health.

COVID-19 misinformation is widespread and dangerous. Members of ACEP and AAEM are first-hand witnesses to the human toll that COVID-19 is taking on our communities. ACEP and AAEM strongly advise against using any statements of Drs. Erickson and Massihi as a basis for policy and decision making.
Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827) — 4/28/2020 @ 7:04 pm
36. On closer examination, it’s 20 to 40 million doses a month by September, 2021 and it eon’t be fully available till 2922.
Sammy Finkelman (af3697) — 4/28/2020 @ 7:05 pm
Speaking of plagues and quarantines, in 1665 the plague hit London and forced all the universities to close. A 22-year old Cambridge student, Isaac Newton, went to shelter with his mother in the countryside.

In the year that followed, Newton invented calculus, developed the three laws of mechanics that are named after him, figured out the law of universal gravitation and made a number of advances in optics.
Dave (1bb933) — 4/28/2020 @ 7:40 pm
Mediaite
@Mediaite

Public Trust in Trump on Coronavirus Craters in New Poll; 98% of Americans Reject Injecting Disinfectant Into Covid-19 Patients
__ _

David Rising
@dlrising
·
Well at least 98% of Americans are smarter than the media that suggested that was an actual thing.
__ _
harkin (8f4a6f) — 4/28/2020 @ 8:02 pm
Well at least 98% of Americans are smarter than the media that suggested that was an actual thing.

But it is an actual thing.

People do actually take small amounts of bleach instead of vaccination.

https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2018/10/18/inenglish/1539853160_873502.html

Note this story is from a couple years ago. Some erratic people, primarily people who reject vaccinations, talk about ingesting cleaners or even giving them to their own kids, to avoid the autism vaccine risk (that is BS, just to be clear).

By far the most prominent person to ever suggest a link between vaccines and autism:

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn’t feel good and changes – AUTISM. Many such cases!
7:35 AM · Mar 28, 2014·Twitter for Android

There will be people who buy it and have thought this for a while. I think Trump really believes in some of these miracle cures and radical theories.

As insane as it seems. If Joe Biden told everyone that eating AA batteries cures corona virus, someone would believe it.
Dustin (e5f6c3) — 4/28/2020 @ 8:20 pm
Well at least 98% of Americans are smarter than the media that suggested that was an actual thing.

Trump publicly mused that it might be a real thing that real doctors should check into.

So apparently 98% of Americans are smarter than Trump, and the stable genius has an IQ of 69.
https://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx
Kishnevi (65c56e) — 4/28/2020 @ 8:30 pm
The graph in this link says a lot about how Bizarro TrumpWorld has corrupted the GOP/conservative moral compass. The party that didn’t think twice about pulling the lever in the 20th century for a sexual scumbag had a change of heart, and the party that objected to that sexual scumbag in the prior century embraced a sexual scumbag in 2016. My how this party has changed in the last coupla decades, a party that laughed at Pat Buchanan’s nationalism/isolationism in 2000 made it mainstream just 16 years later.
Paul Montagu (b3f51b) — 4/28/2020 @ 8:54 pm
Oops, wrong thread. Mea culpa.
Paul Montagu (b3f51b) — 4/28/2020 @ 8:54 pm
Klink,

They are doctors and disagree with your layman’s opinion. But like everything else you disagree with it results in name calling and insults.
NJRob (115919) — 4/28/2020 @ 9:15 pm
Jack Kevorkian.
nk (1d9030) — 4/28/2020 @ 9:34 pm
Klink,

They are doctors and disagree with your layman’s opinion. But like everything else you disagree with it results in name calling and insults.

Scammers and quacksalvers, they are now not just being denounced by the emergency medical association, they are now being investigated to determine if their license should be suspended or revoked. But sure, you can practice what you preach, show your work.
Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827) — 4/28/2020 @ 10:13 pm
Rank incompetence:

FDA pushed through scores of inaccurate antibody tests without agency review

The Food and Drug Administration is dealing with a flood of inaccurate coronavirus antibody tests after it allowed more than 120 manufacturers and labs to bring the tests to market without an agency review.

The tests, which look for antibodies that indicate whether a person has been exposed to the virus, have been eyed as a tool to help reopen the country by identifying people who may have immunity. Antibody data could also help determine the true extent of the U.S. outbreak by finding cases that were never formally diagnosed.

Normally, the FDA does its own quality check before allowing tests on the market. Agency leaders have said they tried to create more flexibility for makers of antibody tests to help inform discussions about when people can safely return to work and school, and to identify survivors whose antibody-rich blood could help treat the sick.

But many of the tests available now aren’t accurate enough for such purposes. Some are giving too many false positive results, which could mislead people into thinking they have already been infected.
Dave (1bb933) — 4/29/2020 @ 4:21 am
show your work.

Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827) — 4/28/2020 @ 10:13 pm

What about yours? You might be persuasive if you showed your own work. You might even build a little credibility.
felipe (023cc9) — 4/29/2020 @ 4:46 am
Dave (1bb933) — 4/29/2020 @ 4:21 am

I would not object if each test, so approved, featured the prominent warming: “This product was approved without agency review.”
felipe (023cc9) — 4/29/2020 @ 4:49 am
But the problem, Felipe, is that we see reports of the results from these crazy tests and crazy conclusions being drawn from them.
Dave (1bb933) — 4/29/2020 @ 5:05 am
What about yours? You might be persuasive if you showed your own work. You might even build a little credibility.

I have no idea what you’re blathering about here. Klink constantly provides links and references to his posts.

Now YOU on the other hand have no credibility on any issue outside of religion.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/29/2020 @ 5:29 am
They’re going to immunize meatpacking plants from lawsuits so that they can order their workers back on the line without fear of accountability, no matter how real and foreseeable the risk of mass infection is. Workers who are afraid can always refuse the order, of course — but there’s a catch: “Iowa Workforce Development said Monday that failing to return to work out of fear of catching the virus will be considered a voluntary quit, which disqualifies workers from receiving unemployment benefits.” Employees have lost their leverage because of Trump’s invocation of the DPA. Without that, they at least had a chance that local officials would close the plant down.

They can always strike, but this is a baaaaaad economy in which to risk one’s job. Instead I assume this battle will continue to be fought in the media. If the Waterloo plant does fall victim to a Smithfield-type catastrophe, with hundreds of workers getting sick after they’re called back on the job, it’ll be a PR disaster for Tyson. And maybe for the president, although Americans love meat enough — and are frightened enough by the whispers about a broken food supply — that they’ll probably forgive him anything in the name of keeping the hamburger conveyor belt moving.

This could be a catastrophically bad move by Duh Donald. Not his first…
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/29/2020 @ 5:59 am
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6152848018001/

Sub-president Jared Kushner issues all clear; testing wonderful…back to work!
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/29/2020 @ 6:09 am
Kishnevi writes that he had “Macbeth in 9th grade, Othello in 10th, Hamlet in 11th, The Tempest in 12th grade”.

What? In my itty bitty school, they offered building trades one, two, three and four. With a bout of home economics thrown in for us boys too.

It took a while to catch up in college. If I ever did.
noel (4d3313) — 4/29/2020 @ 6:40 am
Of course we had English class too. I guess.
noel (4d3313) — 4/29/2020 @ 6:42 am
felipe, most medical research is done by practicing physicians. The only difference is their workplace. University hospitals instead of private clinics, which those university hospitals are often affiliated with the local VA or county hospital. Definitely not ivory towers. They know how to think both vertically and horizontally. (Guess which is which. Oh, alright, I’ll tell you. Edward Jenner thought horizontally; the “practicing physician” who bled George Washington to death thought vertically.)

In fact, academic degrees in the health sciences are a recent and not very common thing. In Europe, for example, a microbiologist is still an MD. Christine Blasey Ford (remember her?) had to take her degree in Psychology, even though she works in Neuroscience, because Neuroscience did not give Ph.D.s when she went to school, only MDs.
nk (1d9030) — 4/29/2020 @ 6:54 am
In my years of living in and tending to recently rehabbed apartments, I sure as heck could of used multiple copies of the old Norton Anthology of English Literature.
urbanleftbehind (343506) — 4/29/2020 @ 7:04 am
They are doctors and disagree with your layman’s opinion.

Lots of doctors disagree on this topic. All of mine seem to have slightly different opinions. What do you think, NJRob, based on your observations? Is this no different than the normal flu?
DRJ (15874d) — 4/29/2020 @ 7:18 am
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/29/2020 @ 5:29 am

Anyone can provide a link – this in itself is not work. The work is in the argument the link is supposed to support.

Now YOU on the other hand have no credibility on any issue outside of religion.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/29/2020 @ 5:29 am

Really? Prove it. Show your work. The fact that you give me no credibility is hardly persuasive.
felipe (023cc9) — 4/29/2020 @ 7:24 am
nk (1d9030) — 4/29/2020 @ 6:54 am
Yes, I agree with your points.
felipe (023cc9) — 4/29/2020 @ 7:26 am
Your typical physician tends to be pretty smart. Your dentist is likely smarter, and your veterinarian smarter still. Just how admissions to professional schools work.

But LOTS of physicians are crazy as a peach orchard boar. They believe all kinds of loopy nonsense.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/29/2020 @ 7:29 am
DRJ,
Counting complicated things is hard. Cause of death can be complicated so coming up with an accurate count isn’t going to be straightforward. I think medical professionals are going to provide their honest assessment on the cause of death. Not to say they won’t make mistakes, but I don’t think there’s a conspiracy to over or under count CV19 death. But because political advantage can be gained based on the results there’s plenty of motivation for people try to twist the available data to fit a narrative.

One way to cut through the noise is to look at total fatalities and compare that to historical averages. This would indicate an under-counting of CV19 deaths. I’m not convinced that’s happening yet, but I don’t think it’s possible to look at this data and conclude that CV19 isn’t highly fatal.

in Istanbul, the city recorded about 2,100 more deaths than expected from March 9 through April 12 — roughly double the number of coronavirus deaths the government reported for the entire country in that period.

The increase in deaths in mid-March suggests that many people who died had been infected in February, weeks before Turkey officially acknowledged its first case.

I will say that the inclusion of cities and countries in the same comparison is probably wrong to do because of the differences in average population density.
Time123 (36651d) — 4/29/2020 @ 7:32 am
DRJ (15874d) — 4/29/2020 @ 7:18 am

I agree that there is a difference of opinions among Drs on any issue. As long as these differences have a basis in science, and ethics, they should be tolerated if not respected, but those that are based on political and personal considerations, should be shunned and not tolrated.
felipe (023cc9) — 4/29/2020 @ 7:33 am
Is this no different than the normal flu?

What I understood them to say is that their extrapolation of their data suggests that the death rates are similar, not the diseases. If the death rate of car accident victims was similar to Covid victims, and they used that analogy, maybe the point they were making wouldn’t be lost in an emotional counter argument.

What I haven’t seen is either the political activist group Cal Matters or the emergency doctors’ group do a rundown of the numbers that were presented and debunk them in a fact filled brief. I see digital arm waiving instead.

Patterico’s has always been a site that prided itself on facts over emotion. I think the truth, in a point/counterpoint discussion, will be found on these pages as the regulars here endeavor to get to the true numbers.
BuDuh (40e985) — 4/29/2020 @ 7:33 am
Really? Prove it. Show your work. The fact that you give me no credibility is hardly persuasive.

Poor felipe. Logic is HARD, huh? I have no need or purpose in persuading you of your lack of credibility. You have convinced me. See?
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/29/2020 @ 7:36 am
But LOTS of physicians are crazy as a peach orchard boar. They believe all kinds of loopy nonsense.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/29/2020 @ 7:29 am

I don’t disagree. I, myself, had a past PCP that finally exceeded my tolerance for craziness.
felipe (023cc9) — 4/29/2020 @ 7:36 am
A common Greek expression, both a wish and advice, is: (May you keep) far from doctors and lawyers.
nk (1d9030) — 4/29/2020 @ 7:44 am
Poor felipe. Logic is HARD, huh? I have no need or purpose in persuading you of your lack of credibility. You have convinced me. See?
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/29/2020 @ 7:36 am

Yes, logic is hard for you, as is reasoning. It is already well understood that you are not interested in, and make no purpose of persuading anyone. Thank you for acknowledging my persuasiveness. Your lack of general credibility is well established.

This community, in which I enjoy happy membership, is quite tolerant of a spectrum of behavior, as exemplified by our host. Please don’t mistake it for open license.
felipe (023cc9) — 4/29/2020 @ 7:45 am
A quick off-topic before I return to the shadows. I can’t imagine Ragspierre has been a boost to traffic here at Patterico’s. But maybe he has, and times have changed that much. When I see his handle in the recent comment section on the sidebar, I generally skip looking at any of the topics until later; sometimes it is days or weeks. After the comment rules were set in place I would have never expected the latitude Ragspierre enjoys.

Take care all.
BuDuh (40e985) — 4/29/2020 @ 7:49 am
This ain’t coronavirus news, but it’s news.

Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan will seek the Libertarian Party’s nomination for president, ending months of speculation that the former Republican would run as an alternative to President Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
“Americans are ready for practical approaches based in humility and trust of the people,” Amash (I-Mich.) tweeted Tuesday evening. Two weeks earlier, he had tweeted that he was looking “closely” at a run, after denouncing a comment Trump made about presidential authority.

Those who are protest-voting this year have a place to go and the opportunity to vote for a real conservative.
Paul Montagu (b3f51b) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:00 am
Take care, BuDuh, thanks for stepping into the light. I used to have Ragspierre in my filter, but Dana’s goodness persuaded me to reconsider. It is unfortunate that the profitability of reading those comments has proven rare. I’ll likely re-enroll him as I will miss nothing.
felipe (023cc9) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:01 am
Please don’t mistake it for open license.

I never have. You thought it worth your while to launch a very personal attack on me from out of the blue the other day, without a single provocation on my part.

I find you a gross hypocrite.

It is already well understood that you are not interested in, and make no purpose of persuading anyone.

Well, I have to take that as a lie. I post stuff commonly that you’ve learned from (if you are capable of learning), just as I learn stuff from other posters here. I don’t post lengthy tombs, for several reasons, but what I do post where I make factual assertions is correct and you are free to corroborate or disprove it.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:03 am
@ Dustin, #15:

Go ahead and charge double for Philosophy degrees.

The people who are currently in charge of many university humanities departments have subverted the purpose of the humanities by using them, not to address their original purposes (i.e., the study of man), but to promote race/gender/alphabet/multi-culti agendas.

Your proposal would discourage people from pursuing those programs…which is good. It would also, however, discourage people from pursuing the actual humanities at places that still teach them…which is bad.

A pox on both your houses.

@ Dustin again, #21:

It’s not that I don’t think we need folks to master these fields. It’s that the people who will really contribute to these fields are actually quite rare.

Whereas the people who “really contribute” to other fields are a dime a dozen?

If by “contribute” you mean “come up with some groundbreaking scholarship or work,” then it’s true, there aren’t very many people who “contribute” to the humanities. But then again, that’s been true for thousands of years, in every field of endeavor. The list of writers and thinkers who produced work inarguably worthy of the Western humanities canon is very short…some few dozen names in 2600 years. But have there been significantly more next-level geniuses in any other field? Are there thousands — are there even hundreds — of chemists, physicists, biologists, or physicians whose work every man in the street should know and revere? Or do we find ourselves coming back to a few dozen names in those fields as well? (Many of which, I hasten to point out, are part of the Western Canon themselves. Euclid and Newton are as worthy of study in a true humanities program as Aristotle and Shakespeare.)

Or could it be possible that another way to “contribute” to a field is by preserving its legacy, transmitting its knowledge and its principles to the next generation, and perhaps making some small scholarly advance on a minor matter first opened by a far greater thinker? If your answer to that question is “yes,” then you’ll have to come up with some other grounds for treating the humanities differently. If your answer is “no,” then you’ll have to defend your implied proposition that there are many more real contributors in the sciences than in the humanities.
Demosthenes (7fae81) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:03 am
Question for Patterico, Dana, JVW other Mods, is the bolded part in line with the commenting guidelines? Seems like a straight up insult.

Really? Prove it. Show your work. The fact that you give me no credibility is hardly persuasive.

Poor felipe. Logic is HARD, huh? I have no need or purpose in persuading you of your lack of credibility. You have convinced me. See?

Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/29/2020 @ 7:36 am
Time123 (36651d) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:11 am
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:03 am

Oh brother, more childish taunts. You have such a thin skin, perhaps you should go in search of a more salubrious surrounding? No? Then get used to being judged on the content of your character.
felipe (023cc9) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:13 am
Time123 (36651d) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:11 am

This is a worthy question, especially because I am subject to it as well. There is a difference between “trading barbs” and trading insults.
felipe (023cc9) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:18 am
Then get used to being judged on the content of your character.

Cool. You, too!
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:22 am
It dawned on me last night. With the schools closed, some of the commenters miss the back and forth with their fellow seventh-graders.
nk (1d9030) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:23 am
There’s also a difference between an “insult” and an observation.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:23 am
nk (1d9030) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:23 am

Heh.

A joke at your own expense costs you nothing, but a joke at someone else’s expense costs even less! – some smarty pants
felipe (023cc9) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:28 am
Cool. You, too!
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:22 am

Thank you.
felipe (023cc9) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:30 am
Great response Demosthenes,

Are there thousands — are there even hundreds — of chemists, physicists, biologists, or physicians whose work every man in the street should know and revere?

Probably! We just don’t have the capacity to realize it. They definitely contribute tremendously to my daily enjoyment of life.

Even an engineer designing vents for a specific kind of oil rig is contributing to society, as lame as that may seem. A biochemist working on a certain kind of protein folding is contributing to society. Most poets publishing something just to say they did. It’s not that I have a problem with poems, but Robert Frost most are not.

In fact, the next great philosopher could very well be the physicist. The next great poet could very well be the engineer. Your Newton example is great.

My solution is a little simpler. If you have a high school diploma in the USA you probably should know some Shakespeare. If you have a bachelor’s degree you probably should know some ethics and some western civ. Intellectuals should have access to all kinds of subjects (Which they do these days). Do we need PHD programs in English? Maybe at Rice or Harvard, not at the University of Houston. Those fields might actually be enhanced if they weren’t polluted with dumbasses, which I believe they are.

you’ll have to defend your implied proposition that there are many more real contributors in the sciences than in the humanities.

Well let’s think about the great contributions to ethics and art versus the great contributions to science and medicine. Just list a few of the things we really care about in those fields. Isn’t it the case that real impacts in humanities seem much more rare? Life changing improvements in science seem much more frequent?

My point about subsidizing what society really needs more of is not intended to imply I don’t value the humanities. Everyone needs to be well rounded and I would say we need to teach much more history in particular.
Dustin (e5f6c3) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:33 am
Demosthenes (7fae81) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:03 am

I agree with Dustin. Let me also say that my distraction with Ragspierre would have deprived me of the pleasure of your response, had it had not been for Dustin’s Comment whose name always draws my attention. Thanks, Dustin.

Well, that’s it. I’m putting Ragspierre back into my filter. It isn’t worth missing such good comments.
felipe (023cc9) — 4/29/2020 @ 8:41 am
49. Dave (1bb933) — 4/29/2020 @ 4:21 am quoting POLITICO

Agency leaders have said they tried to create more flexibility for makers of antibody tests to help inform discussions about when people can safely return to work and school, and to identify survivors whose antibody-rich blood could help treat the sick.

But many of the tests available now aren’t accurate enough for such purposes.

So what?

Everybody knows that. In the meantime, the tests will gradually improve. Competition will get rid of the bad ones.
Sammy Finkelman (af3697) — 4/29/2020 @ 9:11 am
@ Dustin, #84:

Probably! We just don’t have the capacity to realize it.

Fair enough. But then, I could say the same thing about philosophers, poets, playwrights, authors, filmmakers, and historians. We only have a finite amount of time, after all, and therefore never time enough to notice all the people who have made a difference. If you want to shift ground from talking about the rare people whose work defines their whole field to talking about those who make small advances in a limited area, then I have to point out that the same is true in ALL fields.

Even an engineer designing vents for a specific kind of oil rig is contributing to society, as lame as that may seem. A biochemist working on a certain kind of protein folding is contributing to society.

Even a historian working on a biography of Virginia Minor is contributing to society, as lame as that may seem. Even a philosopher working on problems of applied ethics in the meat-packing industry is contributing to society.

Most poets publishing something just to say they did.

Most engineers get jobs just to make a living.

The problem we are illustrating here is that contributions of people employed in the sciences are more quantifiable than contributions of people employed in the humanities. But quantification does not necessarily equal value. Indeed, that is the whole point of the humanities. Are you merely so many millions of atoms, combined into a certain mixture of chemicals? If I assemble the right ingredients into a perfect physical copy of you, have I proved that you are nothing more than the sum of your parts? Even speaking socially, are you merely the sum total of your interactions with other piles of chemicals? Or is there something more to you…something ineffable that is worth attention?

I forget the episode of The Twilight Zone that I’m about to reference, but I know it starred Donald Pleasance. It was about a high school English teacher who spent a quiet night despairing of his worth and value…until visited by the ghosts of former students, to tell him what he had meant to them. Fanciful, yes, but it suggests a valuable point. The work of the humanities is to shape lives. You can’t measure them with a scale. If you could, our lives would be meaningless. We would merely be biological computers, able to perfectly program our successors to exceed our own capacities.

In fact, the next great philosopher could very well be the physicist. The next great poet could very well be the engineer.

And vice versa…at least in terms of inspiration. How many current scientists were inspired by Star Trek?

Do we need PHD programs in English? Maybe at Rice or Harvard, not at the University of Houston. Those fields might actually be enhanced if they weren’t polluted with dumbasses, which I believe they are.

As someone who has spent time in academia, my lived experience tells me that dumbasses are spread more or less evenly through its various branches. Why do we need an ag school in every state? Texas A&M can keep its doors open, but then do we need Oklahoma State? Why have so many colleges of medicine? I mean, at Harvard, sure, but why Brigham Young?

Well let’s think about the great contributions to ethics and art versus the great contributions to science and medicine. Just list a few of the things we really care about in those fields. Isn’t it the case that real impacts in humanities seem much more rare?

Maybe that’s because the humanities are supposed to be about timeless truths. Science eats its own every few centuries. Aristotle is no longer the last word in biology (though I would argue he’s still an important figure in ethics). We no longer consult Ptolemaic charts. Even Newton was rewritten a hundred years ago. It is in the nature of science to have periodic revolutions that overthrow much of what came before. The humanities are not subject to the same turbulence.

By the way, there’s a whole book outlining what I just said. I read it in grad school. It’s called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and it was written by Thomas Kuhn…who is a philosopher. And all the branches of science you value so highly started out as branches of philosophical inquiry. How do you know people with your attitude won’t end up curtailing the development of another field or sub-field of scientific research?

My point about subsidizing what society really needs more of is not intended to imply I don’t value the humanities.

But I get the impression that you value them only for what you see as their utility…hence your comment about “well-rounded,” as if human beings need merely to be built into the right shape. UTILITY IS THE REASON TO VALUE THE SCIENCES. Your attitude prejudges the whole question.

What utility can be found in Rembrandt and Caravaggio? (None, obviously, can be found in dilettantes and posers like Jackson Pollock. I speak of the masters.) Perhaps you would just like to make an easy class where students can look at their pictures, not to be exposed to facets of their own humanity, but merely to say “Oh, how pretty.” This attitude will ultimately lead to their complete devaluation, and eventually their elimination from curriculums. And they will lie dormant forever, buried deep in a history that students will never have been taught to access. Also buried will be the scholars, like Roger Scruton, who spent their whole lives pointing to the need we have for these ornamental things.

But hey, build your world of metal and glass and programmable people, modeled on whatever Green Book you wish. By the time our descendants find out that C.S.Lewis was right, we’ll both be past caring. (I guess C.S. Lewis is another person who made no important contributions in your eyes. In mine, The Abolition of Man is the single most important book of the twentieth century. And it’s a work of…philosophy.)
Demosthenes (0d7362) — 4/29/2020 @ 10:17 am
Dustin:

I should add that at my current school, I have to work with a teacher of science who shares your attitude. She also tells her students that hers is the most important subject, and that mine (history, just so you know) is the least…because “all he’ll teach you is names and dates and who did what to whom when.”

Whether you realize it not, you’re on her side.
Demosthenes (0d7362) — 4/29/2020 @ 10:31 am
I have just re-read my own comment @ #87. While I am mostly very pleased with it, I see that in the last paragraph, I allowed my passions to control me, and I made some unjust remarks. This is obviously a subject about which I care deeply, but that’s no excuse for straw-manning my opponent. I apologize, Dustin.
Demosthenes (0d7362) — 4/29/2020 @ 11:17 am
A vaccine could actually make a second infection more serious, and there’s some evidence that a SARS vaccine did.

And with flu, a vaccination to one version can make the body less resistant to another, especially if this happens to someone very young.
Sammy Finkelman (af3697) — 4/29/2020 @ 11:58 am
Felipe, just so you know you’re quite credible and shouldn’t worry about the haters. I appreciate your positivity towards me and a lot of the folks here.

No hard feelings at all, Demosthenes. I enjoyed your comments and I get where you’re coming from.

Perhaps you would just like to make an easy class where students can look at their pictures, not to be exposed to facets of their own humanity, but merely to say “Oh, how pretty.” This attitude will ultimately lead to their complete devaluation, and eventually their elimination from curriculums.

This is a good point. I do envision 95% of students taking only electives in these subjects, taught by graduates of highly ranked programs. I do not want art or history or phi eliminated from curriculum or devalued. This is a matter for accreditation. At all schools this should be taken seriously. I’d go so far as to say a lot of sub 200 ranked institutions should covert to community colleges, we should develop a culture of working full time while in school for the first two years, and after the core classes are taken, students take some time to just work before choosing their profession.

But I get the impression that you value them only for what you see as their utility…hence your comment about “well-rounded,” as if human beings need merely to be built into the right shape. UTILITY IS THE REASON TO VALUE THE SCIENCES. Your attitude prejudges the whole question.

I would only tweak this a little. I think society should subsidize them only for their utility to society. It’s not like the philosophy and art go away if there are fewer BA students pursuing those fields. In fact, I think ethicists and artists should be informed and educated in STEM fields or applied fields. So they can better inform these fields, so their work can be richer.

I studied Philosophy, History, English because those are things I enjoy. But I studied them at a lower ranked school. Most of the classes were jokes. If you can write a short paper without typos, you’ll get an A. Trying to have an ethical discussion in these classes was frustrating because I could tell a lot of the students (and faculty, to be quite honest) didn’t actually care. Then I went to UT, which in my book is a great school. I had better ethical arguments in a class where we were programming in Python than I had in advanced ethics classes at the poorly ranked school. I had better arguments about history at UT than I had from the actual history program at a poorly ranked school.

So my views are informed primarily from this transition. I don’t think all the 19 year olds in the poorly ranked liberal arts program understand what they are paying in time and money. I didn’t. And since this is society’s money, not theirs, why not steer things into what’s useful to society? The brightest will always care about the things you care about, even if they study a different field, because all fields are related. Art and engineering, ethics and computers, history and law. If you’re really into it, you’re going to need to know a lot of stuff.
Dustin (e5f6c3) — 4/29/2020 @ 12:27 pm
@ Dustin, #91:

No hard feelings at all, Demosthenes.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Sometimes I wish these comments could be edited. (That also would have given me a reprieve from posting three times in a row.)

I do envision 95% of students taking only electives in these subjects, taught by graduates of highly ranked programs.

Actually, to the extent that you value these subjects, I would argue that this is precisely what you shouldn’t want. The most highly-ranked English departments, for example, still rest under the debilitating thumb of the postmodernist movement and its Critical Theory, descended directly from Marxism. Many highly-ranked History departments, likewise, have been entranced by revisionism, race/gender/alphabet studies, and other offshoots of the same Critical Theory movement. And while most highly-ranked Philosophy departments in this country continue to be more analytic than continental in nature, I have doubts about whether and how long that will last. Many of the lower-ranked schools, by contrast, are more lightly regarded precisely because they teach traditional methods of scholarship. Close those schools’ programs…rely on the top departments to turn out more graduates in their fields, ready to mold the minds of students nationwide…and you hasten the devaluation and destruction of these subjects. Read John Ellis’s book Literature Lost if you want a trench-level analysis of the phenomenon.

I do not want art or history or phi eliminated from curriculum or devalued. This is a matter for accreditation. At all schools this should be taken seriously.

But it doesn’t necessarily matter what you want. The system you’re proposing, whether you realize it or not, is set up to encourage students not to take these subjects seriously. They will come to see them much as they currently regard any class for which they have no practical use, but which they need in order to fulfill a requirement — as checking a box, jumping through a hoop, or what have you. It is human nature to devalue what we do not think we need, especially when it does not naturally interest us. Can I drink a painting? Can I take shelter under a poem? Will knowing about the Silk Road help me land that job at the auto-repair yard? No? Then screw it, far too many people are going to say…and in so doing, miss out on the civilizing developmental influences they can get from the humanities. More students will start to ask, as too many of them do now, “What can we use this for?” They don’t mean the question sincerely. They mean, why do we have to learn this at all? That’s devaluation. But hey, they’ll science good, I guess.

Under your system, moreover, I can guarantee that even more pressure would be put on humanities professors teaching intro classes (which would be almost all of their classes, if I’m understanding you right) to just pass through their STEM students. “He came here to be an engineer. She came here to be a doctor. They came here to be computer programmers. It doesn’t matter if they don’t know who was the second president, or how to analyze a passage, or what Van Gogh was trying to convey here, because that’s not what they’re going to do in life. So just given them a C or D, and let them go.” I’ve had these conversations…I know whereof I speak. You say you want people to be “well-rounded.” If you mean what I think you mean by that, then I have to tell you that your system would produce the opposite.

I’d go so far as to say a lot of sub 200 ranked institutions should covert to community colleges, we should develop a culture of working full time while in school for the first two years, and after the core classes are taken, students take some time to just work before choosing their profession.

I’d go so far as to say that every English department in the country should fire all their pomo professors, and find them more gainful employment in the field of coffee-related customer service. Our wishes have about an equal chance of happening. You may be able to push society in the direction you want it to go, but you won’t get to design a new system of higher education from the ground up. Such Rawlsian endeavors work best as theoretical constructs in books…and they don’t work well there. Moreover, nothing you have said thus far convinces me that — smart as you obviously are — you possess the knowledge and the experience to propose broad, top-down, workable reforms of the existing system. It’s Chesterton’s fence all over again.

…I think ethicists and artists should be informed and educated in STEM fields or applied fields.

I agree.

So they can better inform these fields…

You lost me. The point of reading Shakespeare is not to make you a better chemist, physicist, etc. The point of reading Shakespeare, to the extent that it has a point and is not simply an end-in-itself, is to make you a better person. There are some nations and cultures in history, however, that would share your perspective on the primary purpose of the arts and humanities being their potential social utility, designed to encourage the fields that really matter. The Soviets, for instance…

I studied Philosophy, History, English because those are things I enjoy. But I studied them at a lower ranked school. Most of the classes were jokes. If you can write a short paper without typos, you’ll get an A.

I’m sorry you had a bad experience at a lower-tier school. There are lots of professors who shouldn’t be in a classroom…and a lot of students who shouldn’t be, either. I readily agree with that. And that’s why I think higher education as it currently exists is about to collapse under its own weight. But I promise you that if you want to divert the vast majority of students to STEM, the talented children of the next generation who go to that school (assuming it survives the collapse) will be saying the same things you’re saying right now, only they’ll be saying them about their STEM classes. That’s because the problem is not with any field of study, or any group of them, but with the people themselves. Oh, if only there were a group of fields that collectively studied the problems of humanity! Oh, wait…

And since this is society’s money, not theirs, why not steer things into what’s useful to society?

Well, it’s not actually society’s money in most instances. But I know what you’re trying to say. Here’s the thing, though…you can’t say for certain what will be useful to society twenty years from now or ten years from now, or even tomorrow. No one does. An obvious example: people operating on your line of thought were responsible, during the last decades of the twentieth century, for shuttering most Arabic-language departments in this country. Not enough people wanted to study it to make the expense worthwhile, you see…and in any case, what could you do with an Arabic degree? What value did it have to society? There were no jobs in that field. Then September 11, 2001 came and went, and as it turned out, the military — and various journalism schools — suddenly had a tremendous need for Arabic speakers. The few remaining departments literally could not handle the strain placed on their enrollment.

At this point, I think what you’ll say is that while certain humanities fields may suddenly be relevant enough to make a limited exception for them, we know certain fields will be valuable on an evergreen basis — STEM fields, for example. But even if I grant you that, it does not follow that every line of inquiry pursued in those fields will be valuable. Someone who spends their whole career pursuing a line of research that turns out to be a dead end has produced no value to society by your lights. That money was wasted. Meanwhile, you cannot say that humanities degrees are not useful to society. It is just much harder to quantify their use and heir impact. To demand that they do so, however, as a precondition for putting them on equal footing with air-conditioner repair programs, is to provide evidence that one is insufficiently educated. For as a wise man once said, “it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits.” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I.iii)
Demosthenes (7fae81) — 4/29/2020 @ 5:47 pm
I’ll definitely give it more thought. Thank you for your detailed discussion.

Someone who spends their whole career pursuing a line of research that turns out to be a dead end has produced no value to society by your lights.

The whole body of knowledge is useful.

I think I would say that the best 10,000 poets are approximately as useful as the best 500 poets. I can’t prove it. It would be interesting to quality control these fields, but no one could ever agree on a way to do that. But I do think the best 10,000 biomedical engineers are more useful than the best 9,900.

Many highly-ranked History departments, likewise, have been entranced by revisionism, race/gender/alphabet studies, and other offshoots of the same Critical Theory movement.

You raise several excellent pragmatic problems with my approach. I remember my history classes not covering some pretty interesting and important things. Quality control is a problem throughout academia, but it’s gotta be worse in the areas where you can’t measure things very well.

The point of reading Shakespeare is not to make you a better chemist, physicist, etc. The point of reading Shakespeare, to the extent that it has a point and is not simply an end-in-itself, is to make you a better person.

Do better people make better chemists? Still, great point.

But who needs college? There’s hardly a subject I can’t seek information about on the internet. I’m sure we both go down rabbit holes all the time.

It is just much harder to quantify their use and heir impact. To demand that they do so, however, as a precondition for putting them on equal footing with air-conditioner repair programs, is to provide evidence that one is insufficiently educated.

Utilitarianism is simple, unsatisfying, and yet it’s a good way to make some decisions. But I concede your point anyway. The financial benefits of AC repair skills aren’t on the same plane as the enrichment of a successful education. To the 19 year old kid envisioning building a life for his family? He shouldn’t feel bad that he chooses a nursing degree.

I am extremely skeptical of many facets of higher education. I think it’s unsustainable and therefore it will become sustainable (because it’s not going away). I am not sure how to reconcile a good education with tons of cheap online colleges.

Oh, if only there were a group of fields that collectively studied the problems of humanity!

Nicely done.
Dustin (e5f6c3) — 4/29/2020 @ 9:50 pm
The Oxford vaccine does show promise, but it’s going to take months of trials and testing before approval, and more before production can begin. Then there’s distribution and vaccination, so it’s probably going to be about a year or so before an effective vaccine is available. Still, it’s good to see that scientists and doctors are hard at work trying to develop treatments and a vaccine. They need to be, because this novel coronavirus is spreading like wildfire and proving more lethal than previously assumed or reported.

https://hotair.com/archives/allahpundit/2020/04/29/highest-one-day-coronavirus-death-toll-far/

As Allahpundit notes, yesterday saw the highest one day death toll thus far. Right in the middle of the week when red states, in thrall to Trump, are reopening. (Imagine that.) He also points out that the number of flu deaths appear to be greatly exaggerated. This is because the number of deaths reported come from the CDC, which uses some complex algorithm to guesstimate fatality rates. But the actual number of recorded deaths is anywhere from half to a third of reported deaths. If that’s true, it means this novel coronavirus has already killed more than two or three times as many people in just the last few months than influenza did in all of last year. It’s a scary read.

No one knows which numbers to trust. Like in Florida, Gov. DeSantis ordered city, county and state health authorities to only include deaths of permanent residents by coronavirus, and to exclude deaths of out-of-state visitors, like Snowbirds, Spring Breakers, tourists. His logic is that the resident state or country should record those deaths, even though these travelers may have been infected in but definitely died in Florida. That only makes sense in some warped protect-the-tourist industry at all costs mentality. Florida’s economy is heavily dependent on out-of-state visitors. He certainly doesn’t want to portray his vacation-destination state as a petri dish for coronavirus infection and death. That’s understandable. It’s also stupid and dangerous, but he’s in thrall to Trump.

Trump and Kushner, and their slavish media outlets, have been touting their successes. The made bold and brave, decisive and determinative decisions and took action, which saved thousands, millions of lives, when nothing could be farther from the truth. More and more people are dying, due to their, the Trump administration’s ignorance and inaction, and that’s the simple truth.

I don’t blame them exclusively (or actually I do), I blame the entire Republican party for coming under their thrall. Stupid is as stupid does, and the Republicans have long been known as the stupid party. This thing is a long way from over, and it’s only going to get worse, as the economy implodes.
Gawain's Ghost (b25cd1) — 4/30/2020 @ 8:40 am

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