Scattershots – 22dec21 (updated 29dec21)

George Rebane

Here’s the FDA approval of an Ivermectin wannabe that is touted by the conservative Daily Signal.  And here from Blaze is a more sobering look at the new pill therapeutics that discusses their problems and shortcomings, among them price.  Meanwhile IVM has all the proven requirements for an early stage pill to minimize subsequent Covid morbidity, and a medicine that is widely available, off-patent cheap, and doesn’t have the feared side effects of the recently rushed remedies from big pharma.

[24dec21 update]  Here is a gun culture that would give our totalitarians (aka Democrats) sanitary problems in their shorts.  And it's all made possible, as always, by the society's civilized culture; something that has been destroyed in America, the land of the formerly free.  (H/T to reader)

[26dec21 update]  Weather guessers (aka meteorologists) have no shame.  This becomes clear to anyone who attempts to use winter weather forecasts for planning purposes.  Their models are totally deficient in their attempts to predict impactive weather events like rain or snow.  Their unabashed predictions over the last five days for the imminent onset of heavy snow have witnessed a steady sequence of rollbacks without once diminishing the “100%” probabilities they continue to attribute the snows’ onsets that are only a few hours in the future.  Bottom line – no can do, but will continue publishing unabated bullshit hour after hour as the days pass.  So, the tribe that can’t hack getting major weather changes only hours away, still insist that their ‘science’ allows them to predict global temperatures 50 years from now to within one degree Celsius.  And then there are the millions of true believers out there eating it all up – don’t get me (re)started.

[27dec21 update] VDH's The Dying Citizen (2021) is a tour de force from a scholar and keen observer of the human condition that is not his first, nor will it be his last.  In Hanson's included essay on the progressivists' plan for global governance, I extract the following - "In sum, globalization rests on a few poorly examined laws: those who draft globalized rules for others have the resources to navigate around them.  Discussions of abstract cosmic challenges - achieving world peace, cooling the planet, lowering the seas, dismantling secure borders - are psychological ways to square the circle of failure to solve concrete problems at home from war to poverty.  Wealthy tech workers in San Francisco hold frequent conferences and symposia about addressing water, sewage, and disease in Africa, but the have demonstrated no ability to address California's own fetid city streets, which are home to over three hundred thousand homeless and rife with medieval diseases, refuse, excrement, and rodents.  In addressing such existential and age-old challenges, we are left where we started in Western civilization: the only means are transparent decentralized local governments, audited by a free and disinterested press and acting under the aegis of a constitutional, consensual republic, serving only at the pleasure of a voting citizenry." (emphasis added)

[29dec21 update]  To become an actuary is hard, so reports the 29dec21 WSJ in ‘Want to be an actuary?  Odds are you’ll fail the test.’  “Insurers need experts to calculate risks.  Among those number-crunchers’ riskiest endeavors are the tortuous exams for credentials.” Actuaries do all kinds of quantitative risk assessment work for insurance companies, M&A consultants, corporate investment activities, etc.  The two professional credentialed actuary levels are Associate and Fellow.  Passing multiple tests are required for each, the toughest being on probabilistics.  The tests are usually taken multiple times by successful candidates to get passing scores – even then only 15% of those attempting make it to Associate, 10% make it to Fellow.  Here’s one of the toughies on probabilistics.  “An urn contains 10 balls: 4 red and 6 blue. A second urn contains 16 red balls and an unknown number of blue balls. A single ball is drawn from each urn. The probability that both balls are the same color is 0.4720.  Calculate the number of blue balls in the second urn.”  Give it a try and post your answer in the comments.  I’ll post the correct answer after we see a few attempts (or not).

Comments

[Bill Tozer]

Army scientists develop COVID-19 vaccine protecting against 'known and unknown' variants

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/healthcare/army-scientists-develop-covid-19-vaccine-protecting-against-known-and-unknown-variants

[Gregory]

Pfizermectin and Merkmectin do look better targeting SARS2 than the original stuff but yes, I'm would have been better than the Nothingmectin most of us have been stuck with.

There is always vit D, zinc and colchicine to help keep Death from saying howdy...

[The Estonian Fox]

26dec21 update-
George, the only weatherman that I ever heard apologize was Al Sleet, your hippy-dippy weatherman. He apologized to the former residents of Rogers, Illinois, for THEIR sudden heavy rains.

Forecasting is a tough job, especially if it's forecasting the future. For myself, I am generally accurate at the 98% level for forecasting the past. As long as my internet is not down.

[The Estonian Fox]

Here we go George.
Pr1 = 0.4; Pb1 = 0.6 for the first urn. (Pr1 = Probability of choosing a red ball from the first urn).
Pr2 = [16/(16+Nb)]; Pb2 = [Nb/(16+Nb)] for the 2nd urn. Nb = unknown number of blue balls.

Probability of both red + Prob of both blue = final probability of 0.472, since the balls on both draws must be the same color. So we add the chance of both being red to the chance of both being blue.

Pr1 * Pr2 + Pb1 * Pb2 = 0.472
0.4 * [16/(16+Nb)] + 0.6 * [Nb/(16+Nb)] = 0.472
6.4 + 0.6 Nb = (16+Nb) * 0.472 = 7.552 + 0.472 Nb
0.128 Nb = 7.552 – 6.4

Nb = 1.152/.128 = 9 blue balls – an exact value, and not, for example, 9.023 rounding down to 9.

I took this problem to be a metaphor for the Biden administration compared to the Trump administration. I realized that for Biden, I had selected blue balls, since his own seem to be in a world of hurt right now. Then why didn’t I get the same answer for Trump? Then I realized my quandary – for Trump, the ‘b’ stood for BRASS, not blue. Quandary solved!

[George Rebane]

Efox 524am - Correctomundo! We even used the same variable names - great minds and all that ;-)

Again, I am grateful for your presence in these pages. It makes me feel good that my techie pieces do have an audience, albeit small.

[The Estonian Fox]

George,

If there is one part of math that I am uncomfortable with, it's probability. Only "the calculus of boiled okra" ranks below it. Since you think this is a tough problem for actuaries, then they, and other risk evaluators, are in real trouble.

And by the way, the IRS released new Life Expectancy Tables that applies for RMDs in 2022 and beyond. So you don't have to take as high an RMD from your 401k/IRA next year. The IRS basically shifted the divisor by 2 years, since 72 is now the required RMD age. Lizzie Warren kept pushing for a divisor of 1 for any age and amount. Cooler heads prevailed.

[George Rebane]

Efox 1124am - It is not me, but the actuary wannabes that think these are the tough kind of problems, as reported in the WSJ. That kind of problems in lower division engineering/physics courses would be encountered in the first couple of weeks. But then, to each his own.

[The Estonian Fox]

So let's see if I have this right - you're saying a freshman engg student could supplant at least one actuary candidate, a recognized STEM vocation. So how many diversity consultants could be replaced by just ONE engg student?

I think Prof Mark Perry counted over 150 diversity positions at the U of Michigan. So maybe 2 engg students could do the job. One to do the actual replacement, and one to hold, fold, wash & dry the crying towels. Sounds about right.