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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 8
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      There’s an entire order of magnitude separating China and Germany. And another order of magnitude separating Germany and Spain. I don’t think this is explainable by political system. It’s underreporting + demographics + incidence of lifestyle diseases (diabetes etc)

      4 replies 1 retweet 17 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 8
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      Also possibly something like the rumored off-target BCG vaccine effect. Though California vs New York suggest that even short differences in lockdown might have order of magnitude effects, so China data are probably not off by an order of magnitude. Maybe 2x-3x off.

      5 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 8
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      Another possibility, if you believe the Chinese numbers, is that group quarantine has a huge effect, as opposed to self-isolation. In that case, you’d have to concede that the cost of liberal democratic civil liberties is a 10x-100x higher naive fatality rate.

      3 replies 0 retweets 13 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 8
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      Korea is an outlier due to much higher tech use for testing. So more tech can offset the disadvantage of more civil liberties.

      7 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 8
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      Pick 2 of 3: civil liberties, low tech use, low fatality rate.

      1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 8
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      People like to compare China and the west in very abstract, ideological terms, but really I think it boils down to the political feasibility of a *single* tactic: group quarantine. Everything else is pretty much legitimately available within all political systems.

      1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 8
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      It would be interesting to apply Dictator’s Handbook lens to this and determine actual extent of power. For example India is nominally a liberal democracy, but Modi probably has tactics available to him that democratically elected leaders generally don’t.

      1 reply 1 retweet 5 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 8
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted David Steven

      This is a good point. I wonder how internal connectivity of China compares to Europe. https://twitter.com/davidsteven/status/1248120867823005696?s=21 …https://twitter.com/davidsteven/status/1248120867823005696 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      David Steven @davidsteven
      Replying to @vgr
      Might look more reasonable if you ran your numbers province by province given size of country and concentration of infections.
      2 replies 0 retweets 7 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 8
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Sijan Khan

      Another good point. https://twitter.com/sijank524/status/1248123379762298881?s=21 …https://twitter.com/sijank524/status/1248123379762298881 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Sijan Khan @sijank524
      Replying to @vgr
      Comparison of California vs New York has a lot to do with European travelers rather just the lockdown timing https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/science/new-york-coronavirus-cases-europe-genomes.html#click=https://t.co/C9gYmve02h …
      1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 8
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      One of the difficult questions is: assuming there really is a “cost of democracy” holding tech-level constant, should you be personally willing to pay it? Can’t honestly answer that without normalizing for your relative safety as a function of class/wealth.

      2 replies 1 retweet 4 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 8
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      I’m totally willing to accept a 10x-100x higher fatality rate (on a low base like 0.1- 1%) for higher civil liberties but then I’m not most at risk from poverty, crowding etc. Healthcare workers at least knowingly sign up for a risky profession.

      10:56 PM - 8 Apr 2020
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      • Gunther Boogle coop portalnyc Dave Waite Farhat Habib
      5 replies 0 retweets 5 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 8
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          Hmm. Would you, in the wake of this, vote for a measure making forced group quarantine an emergency power, weakening habeas corpus in situations well short of martial law? I honestly don’t know.

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 8
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          If you could be administered a medical test against your will, by people who have entered your house without a specific warrant, and taken away to quarantine, would you be okay with that? I think it’s technically feasible in the US right now only under martial law right? 🤔

          6 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 9
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted John Burn-Murdoch

          So... the case that per capita is meaningless because outbreaks are scale free. I’m not sure I buy this. You can’t just assume scale-free based on lack of correlation. A country is a logistics/travel connectivity cluster, not a meaningless fiction. https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1244380095164420101?s=21 …https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1244380095164420101 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          John Burn-MurdochVerified account @jburnmurdoch
          A quick chart for those who keep asking for per-capita adjustment: Here’s population vs total death toll one week after 10th death. No relationship. As I’ve been saying, population does not affect pace of spread. All per-capita figures do is make smaller countries look worse. pic.twitter.com/yWsa4YNNxI
          Show this thread
          3 replies 1 retweet 0 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 9
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          I think the way to combine cluster analysis and country analysis is some notion like mean-free-path. The right unit of analysis is neither the “country” nor the “outbreak cluster” but something else. Populations are not structureless Petri dishes. They gave a mobility topology.

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 9
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          I’d buy the scale free argument if cities were large open spaces within walls where people all just stood still 3 feet apart and virus was jumping like a wildfire through a forest. No. We move, at varying speeds, through striations. The connectivity matters.

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 9
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          Per capita is likely a terrible way to control for country effects, but country effects must exist and show up if modeled right. Wuhan and New York are both important economic hubs with a lot of travel for example.

          1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 9
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          Maybe the right way to adjust is to Ignore country boundaries but segment graph of air travel and road travel connectivity bandwidth by a min-cut/max-flow logic, to define de facto “logistics countries”. This would make Seattle part of an Asian hub, NY part of an EU hub.

          1 reply 1 retweet 3 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 9
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          Add an MLM attribution logic. Wuhan gets a fraction of the case count of all 1-degree removed air linked cities, regardless of country they’re in. Recursively back from newest hubs. Many big cities are better connected to international trading partners than national hinterland.

          2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 9
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          Idea for a graph theory project: use the flight connectivity data and dates of travel restrictions to construct city-clusters that should be treated as “Covid19 nations”

          0 replies 1 retweet 1 like
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        11. End of conversation
        1. New conversation
        2. John Gaffney‏ @jfpgaffney Apr 8
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          Replying to @vgr

          100X fatality rate on a 1% base? I don't think you mean that...

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 8
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          Replying to @jfpgaffney

          Lol yeah. Meant 100x on 0.1, 10x on 1. So cap of say 10%

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
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