I really like this logo. Maybe use it for your upcoming book? Wishing you continued success and financial growth David. Much earned. I think IF people can afford, they should pay for your stack and regard it as an enjoyable "insurance policy " payment. We need honest voices in journalism reporting the truth wherever it may be found. These journalists should be paid for this work IMO.
I’m glad that people are getting better at noticing the problems with CoVid testing. Hopefully it will begin the process of questioning more of the claims of people.
Some of the comments from the editors who turned down Rav Arora's pitches are unreal-- "Kyrie Irving refused to help the public get out of the pandemic and now he’s suffering the consequences. It’s on him."
'Get out of the pandemic'. What does that mean exactly? That there was a law of physics that prevented normal life until everyone was vaccinated? Or that the elected officials and bureaucrats who put us in this position refused to lift their odious (and, in the end, useless) restrictions until their demands were met? Door #2 is what I'm inclined to believe.
The logo is okay, except that I think that AI-generated creative work should be avoided, rather than encouraged. Otherwise, who needs artists, writers, or journalists for that matter?
As someone who does branding, logos and creative output for a living I agree with you in theory. But these AI tools are insanely good quality all of a sudden, and we're going to have to start using them as tools/partners because they're not gong away. They're only going to get even better, in a very short amount of time. For this one I was merely playing around in MidJourney while also reading David's Substack…so I wondered what it would do with the simple "silent lunch" prompt (it often produces really neat results with non-specific commands). But the first output was a lunch scene in a crowded restaurant w/ nobody talking to each other, lol. I narrowed it down a tad, and got this basic image of a simple b/w guy sitting at a table. I then reiterated a few times and it generated a guy that kinda looked like David! So I sent it to him. I thought it captured his vibe pretty well… in fact, I was telling him that *to me* "Silent Lunch" reminds me of what they gave disruptive kids in my school; kids that spoke up in class, or challenged the administration, and had to have "silent lunch"…where the clever kids used it to their advantage to read and create things ;)
it seems to get the most out of these AI generated images, there still needs to be someone behind the scenes who knows what they are doing. The prompts and adjustments etc. I would have NO CLUE how to use.
Hi David, your research is revealing just the tip of the iceberg. Every level of stat surrounding the pandemic data chain was massively exaggerated, starting with the first in history "case definition" of COVID that allowed simply a positive test result to be considered a "case." Previously respiratory ailments had always required a positive test and clinical symptoms. We wrote up many of these issues of exaggeration in the below essay (we being myself, a public policy lawyer, an ER doc, and a PhD with training in epidemiology. Please contact me at tam hunt at gmail if you'd like to discuss. https://tamhunt.medium.com/how-covid-19-stats-are-grossly-exaggerated-a-brief-summary-of-the-arguments-53a5b4237c4c
You never responded to my comments about the article. Here's a little more detail:
"Think about it this way: even if every single student in a school without symptoms was infected, 96 percent of them still weren’t capable of transmitting to others." - This suggests that 96% were never infectious. But the study only tested people once at a single point in time. Viral loads shift by orders of magnitude in a matter of hours. Someone who is non-infectious one day will be infectious the next. Furthermore, the study was a convenience sample, not a random sample so you can't apply prevalence estimates to a totally different population. Finally, studies have shown [https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh0635] that the number of likely infectious samples in a cohort (based on CT values) is dependent on the phase of an epidemic wave. So the proportion varies wildly, as you point out with the omicron wave.
"This raises serious questions for those in charge of the CDC, NIH, and NIAID for why resources were not allocated toward making this test broadly available." As you will recall, there was a huge crisis over scaling of PCR tests. This was a monumental task for the lab community. The test is very complex so challenging to use at an unprecedented scale. Furthermore, this experimental add on correlates strongly with CT values, which were already available for routine PCR tests. Many people were advocating routine reporting of CT values as a measure of infectiousness. You might have mentioned this important debate.
Your article also ignores everything we know about rapid antigen testing. Why would the public health agencies use this experimental test, which like all PCR has difficulty scaling and takes hours at a minimum to result, instead of rapid tests? From the study: "The assay lacks viral culture data and is hampered by longer turnaround time and complexity. " We know now that rapid tests correlate very well to culture positivity, so they are going to be as good of a correlate of infectiousness as this experimental test.
The UK did institute routine rapid test screening in schools and other places in lieu of many restrictions. There are millions of tests worth of data you can review that gives you a true population sample of degree of infectiousness at different points in time. It's odd to suggest the US do something that was done in a major country and not comment on all of the public data about it.
I am aware of CT values functioning as a guesstimate for infectiousness. The minus strand test removed the guess work. Also, most people were not informed of the CT value of their PCR. Rapid antigen tests of course are not without benefit, but they lack the accuracy of the minus strand test and they were not widely available early on. I disagree with some of your other assertions, and I had two infectious diseases physicians review my text before publication so I stand by my reporting. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
That you and Silent Lunch here on Substack are gaining exposure is exactly what we want to see! Thank you thank you! Upgraded to paid. Onward and forward, young man!
i listened to rav arora's first interview with dr. battacharya. the sound quality and technical aspects were so poor that i found it difficult to follow. i was surprised when they teamed up but delighted to discover that they seem to have fixed those issues and can now treat us to wonderful, important conversations. battacharya has a lot to say about his treatment during the pandemic.
I really like this logo. Maybe use it for your upcoming book? Wishing you continued success and financial growth David. Much earned. I think IF people can afford, they should pay for your stack and regard it as an enjoyable "insurance policy " payment. We need honest voices in journalism reporting the truth wherever it may be found. These journalists should be paid for this work IMO.
Thank you so much for your support.
Subscribed! Keep up the good work.
I’m glad that people are getting better at noticing the problems with CoVid testing. Hopefully it will begin the process of questioning more of the claims of people.
Some of the comments from the editors who turned down Rav Arora's pitches are unreal-- "Kyrie Irving refused to help the public get out of the pandemic and now he’s suffering the consequences. It’s on him."
'Get out of the pandemic'. What does that mean exactly? That there was a law of physics that prevented normal life until everyone was vaccinated? Or that the elected officials and bureaucrats who put us in this position refused to lift their odious (and, in the end, useless) restrictions until their demands were met? Door #2 is what I'm inclined to believe.
BTW - I like the logo !
The logo looks all right, but the man's posture is a bit too close to "hunched over in despair."
Looking forward to your upcoming pieces.
“Don’t measure what you can’t improve” maxim of engineering applies equally to test hysteria, but I might be quite wrong
So until then, earlier comment stands
https://davidzweig.substack.com/p/the-most-important-test-youve-never/comment/15752144?r=7v442&utm_medium=ios
The logo is okay, except that I think that AI-generated creative work should be avoided, rather than encouraged. Otherwise, who needs artists, writers, or journalists for that matter?
As someone who does branding, logos and creative output for a living I agree with you in theory. But these AI tools are insanely good quality all of a sudden, and we're going to have to start using them as tools/partners because they're not gong away. They're only going to get even better, in a very short amount of time. For this one I was merely playing around in MidJourney while also reading David's Substack…so I wondered what it would do with the simple "silent lunch" prompt (it often produces really neat results with non-specific commands). But the first output was a lunch scene in a crowded restaurant w/ nobody talking to each other, lol. I narrowed it down a tad, and got this basic image of a simple b/w guy sitting at a table. I then reiterated a few times and it generated a guy that kinda looked like David! So I sent it to him. I thought it captured his vibe pretty well… in fact, I was telling him that *to me* "Silent Lunch" reminds me of what they gave disruptive kids in my school; kids that spoke up in class, or challenged the administration, and had to have "silent lunch"…where the clever kids used it to their advantage to read and create things ;)
it seems to get the most out of these AI generated images, there still needs to be someone behind the scenes who knows what they are doing. The prompts and adjustments etc. I would have NO CLUE how to use.
Hi David, your research is revealing just the tip of the iceberg. Every level of stat surrounding the pandemic data chain was massively exaggerated, starting with the first in history "case definition" of COVID that allowed simply a positive test result to be considered a "case." Previously respiratory ailments had always required a positive test and clinical symptoms. We wrote up many of these issues of exaggeration in the below essay (we being myself, a public policy lawyer, an ER doc, and a PhD with training in epidemiology. Please contact me at tam hunt at gmail if you'd like to discuss. https://tamhunt.medium.com/how-covid-19-stats-are-grossly-exaggerated-a-brief-summary-of-the-arguments-53a5b4237c4c
I forgot who said it, but it goes sth like this "In a democracy the journalists have a holy job."
Keep going!
You never responded to my comments about the article. Here's a little more detail:
"Think about it this way: even if every single student in a school without symptoms was infected, 96 percent of them still weren’t capable of transmitting to others." - This suggests that 96% were never infectious. But the study only tested people once at a single point in time. Viral loads shift by orders of magnitude in a matter of hours. Someone who is non-infectious one day will be infectious the next. Furthermore, the study was a convenience sample, not a random sample so you can't apply prevalence estimates to a totally different population. Finally, studies have shown [https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh0635] that the number of likely infectious samples in a cohort (based on CT values) is dependent on the phase of an epidemic wave. So the proportion varies wildly, as you point out with the omicron wave.
"This raises serious questions for those in charge of the CDC, NIH, and NIAID for why resources were not allocated toward making this test broadly available." As you will recall, there was a huge crisis over scaling of PCR tests. This was a monumental task for the lab community. The test is very complex so challenging to use at an unprecedented scale. Furthermore, this experimental add on correlates strongly with CT values, which were already available for routine PCR tests. Many people were advocating routine reporting of CT values as a measure of infectiousness. You might have mentioned this important debate.
Your article also ignores everything we know about rapid antigen testing. Why would the public health agencies use this experimental test, which like all PCR has difficulty scaling and takes hours at a minimum to result, instead of rapid tests? From the study: "The assay lacks viral culture data and is hampered by longer turnaround time and complexity. " We know now that rapid tests correlate very well to culture positivity, so they are going to be as good of a correlate of infectiousness as this experimental test.
The UK did institute routine rapid test screening in schools and other places in lieu of many restrictions. There are millions of tests worth of data you can review that gives you a true population sample of degree of infectiousness at different points in time. It's odd to suggest the US do something that was done in a major country and not comment on all of the public data about it.
The issue with asymptomatic PCR testing in hospitals is just very different from general population testing to control infection. This a unique population with unique tradeoffs. I wrote about the problems with asymptomatic PCR testing in hospitals here: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/05/can-covid-19-spread-through-organ-transplants/618852/
Hi Ben.
I am aware of CT values functioning as a guesstimate for infectiousness. The minus strand test removed the guess work. Also, most people were not informed of the CT value of their PCR. Rapid antigen tests of course are not without benefit, but they lack the accuracy of the minus strand test and they were not widely available early on. I disagree with some of your other assertions, and I had two infectious diseases physicians review my text before publication so I stand by my reporting. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I was simply providing the views of a third expert (me). Happy to discuss offline.
I’m happy for you - and happy for all of us. There’s hope!
Given the media blackout on skepticism, I was surprised the NYT published this story:
"Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be."
https://web.archive.org/web/20200829094039/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html
That you and Silent Lunch here on Substack are gaining exposure is exactly what we want to see! Thank you thank you! Upgraded to paid. Onward and forward, young man!
i listened to rav arora's first interview with dr. battacharya. the sound quality and technical aspects were so poor that i found it difficult to follow. i was surprised when they teamed up but delighted to discover that they seem to have fixed those issues and can now treat us to wonderful, important conversations. battacharya has a lot to say about his treatment during the pandemic.