nopie
10mo ago
I cannot predict what will happen but Prigozhin is trying to convince people to join his side by appealing to their grievances.
No one could convince Russians to protest the war. They are all united in their struggle for Russian supremacy. When the military incursion towards Kyiv started, Russians on social media cheered. But they also expressed that 300 casualties was a very high price. Little they knew that soon it would be 3000, then 30 thousand and 300 thousand is not so far away and still losing.
Prigozhin manipulated those sentiments by saying that he is not against Putin but against the corrupted generals who are to blame for this loss. Russians like to talk how bad is their corruption, how the government doesn't care about them at all etc. They might or might not see Prigozhin as their saviour but he has certainly changed the situation irreversibly and the narrative that the current leadership is not competent is not going to go away until something big happens.
nopie
10mo ago
That's one way of looking at that. The other, completely naive way is to consider that previously Ukrainians were pushed back, then Ukrainians stopped and were able to defend their positions and now they are pushing Russians back albeit slowly.
That clearly shows that the rate of strengthening heir armies, for Ukrainians is slightly faster than for Russians.
With every day Ukrainians gains small but real superiority over Russians. Granted, this comes with very wide confidence intervals. Maybe both sides are bluffing, we don't know.
Also we have to consider that with time the support for Ukrainian army both nationally and internationally may wane. And Russians may gain more supporters and ramp up their war time production. That does not allow me to make predictions with strong confidence.
It may also be that the strength of Russian resistance increases with the distance from Kyiv. Ukrainians will be able to recover only up to certain limit.
In summary, it seems that sanctions on Russia is working as intended – to minimise their war production capabilities.
nopie
10mo ago
On 4) I haven't delved deeper into this but the claim that medical mistakes is one of the leading causes of death requires proper context. My intuitive understanding is that technically it could be true. And yet it is only because people live much longer with the help of the modern medical system. Everyone should read Scott's article “By very slow decay...”. People who are barely alive survive only because of constant medical care, requiring 10 or more concomitant medications, constant care and procedures etc. The likelihood that overworked staff makes a fatal mistake increases exponentially and then that mistake kills the patient who was already literary on the death-bed.
Without that medical care and 10 different medications he would be already dead from natural causes but now he is dead because a nurse overdosed his insulin or pushed too much morphine into his vein or whatever. This doesn't mean much, only that medicines helps to live longer albeit with a poor quality of life and with a better care that minimises medical errors we could extend their lives even more while seriously questioning whether such efforts are worth it.
nopie
10mo ago
I agree with everything said so far, just wanted to add that very often the question about masks tries to answer a different question.
One is whether masking prevents inhalation of viral particles. Maybe N95 does to certain degree. But that is not the question we are interested in, which is whether a policy of masking (mandates or recommendations) achieves any meaningful public health targets. Those targets could be expressed as lower mortality from respiratory diseases or less disease burden by >10% or something like that.
The Cochrane report was so devastating that even hospitals discreetly removed any remaining mask mandates shortly (2-3 months is superfast in health regulations) after it was published. It was quite amusing seeing mask fanatics arguing against this report by doing motte-and-bailey such as “it doesn't protect the society, it only protects an individual wearer” and failing even at that.
Failed leaders saved their faces by announcing that masks are no longer needed because covid is no longer a threat as if the situation was somewhat different from the mid-year of 2021 when elderly population had been already vaccinated.
nopie
1yr ago
Moreover, it was natural for people not to become obese with very few exceptions. The drug is merely fixing the issues that we have created in recent years. It is not an improvement, merely preventing more harm that we are causing to ourselves.
nopie
1yr ago
It always should be. But the idea is that almost always the decision is made to terminate the pregnancy. That's the point of making the test. Maybe in some countries that percentage is still not sufficiently high due to poorly understood information and we should think how to improve that.
nopie
1yr ago
What do you mean by Down syndrome is tolerated? We do screen all pregnancies for Down syndrome and terminate pregnancy in case of positive test. Sometimes the screening test is not done or the test fails but those are exceptions and not the norm.
nopie
1yr ago
They wouldn't do that because it would be so obvious conflict of interest that the outrage would follow and the government would simply shut the company or fined them billions.
We have done this to companies for much smaller conflicts of interests. For example, the company that misleadingly advertised opioids as non-addictive got liquidated (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdue_Pharma).
nopie
1yr ago
It's part of the risk.
The point is that he was right that things are going to get ugly and was not just lucky. Whether he succeeded to make money on that or not, is immaterial.
The whole discussion I started is also not about how one can become rich. It is about the maximum benefit for the society. I believe stock market is very beneficial for all of us but sometimes it fails and we should make a system that reduces failures.
nopie
1yr ago
That's why we need EMH to protect people from making simple mistakes like that. :)
Eli Lily can and will make good money on tirzepatide but it is a big company with tens of different drugs on the market. Some of them will be unprofitable which makes it hard to predict the final stock price of this company.
Also, it doubtful that it will make a noticeable dent in McDonald's profits. McDonald's is not the only fast food chain. People buy food in supermarkets too and throw out about half of it for whatever reason. It is very hard to predict what impact the appetite loss in a number of fat people will have.
nopie
1yr ago
That still is not utilization. My sources are the BMJ. I am too lazy now to search for the article I had read before but the quick search sent me an article that it had decreased by a third, so I am not sure which data is more trustable.
The rebounding after 1-2 months of depression is simply not believable. We had unexplained excess mortality of 10-15% in December 2022 which was neither due to vaccines, nor covid (despite panicking voices on both sides). In medicine we don't just look at test results to make diagnosis. We have to corelate to what we observe in patient, all manifestations and functions. And we have to admit what we don't know.
It may be fully possible that the measures introduced to limit covid exposure increased actual spending while utilization remained below the normal.
I can now better understand why 2008 crisis caught so many unprepared. That was the belief in reported numbers that everything is fine. It took a doctor to actually look behind those numbers and see what is going on in the field.
nopie
1yr ago
I was in Spain and it definitely hadn't recovered in 2021. The amount of people on streets were visually lower.
Healthcare utilization in the UK during covid was 80% of normal. That is one of the most contra-intuitive things because most people believe that healthcare was totally overwhelmed during pandemic. Well, some places were but in general the income of healthcare workers took a hit.
However, the amount of money we spent on vaccines that later were thrown out were unusually high. That means that other needs did not get financed sufficiently. The distortions are quite clear and apparent in every sector where I look.
nopie
1yr ago
This data does not show this. Even if the expenditure increased but it could be the case that it went to wrong sectors of the economy.
nopie
1yr ago
I am not sure I believe that. The reason of the crash and everything that followed was solely due to the government's mistaken actions. I don't know specifically about the US, but the life in 2021 was far from normal and it was also solely due to the government's mistaken actions. It would be strange if it had no deleterious effect on the economy.
The government was trying to whitewash the negative effects on people.
nopie
1yr ago
No, the overreaction to the pandemic was a terrible risk management, instead of understanding it and acting contrary to the government's recommendations during this time. The same probably applies to the activities in the market during times when you clearly see the world being collectively afflicted by wrong decisions.
nopie
1yr ago
You are missing the main reason why the stimulus was too much this time. It was simply because the government acted in contradictory ways and prevented people spending money. The fact that different restrictions continued after most elderly had received vaccine was the biggest unforced error.
nopie
1yr ago
Should you yolo your life savings in the next time there’s an event like COVID where you think the market is wrong?
It is impossible to tell. The next time when we get a pandemic, it will not be the same as COVID. We don't know if it will be the case when people get overreact or the case when the risk ir real and measures like lockdowns and travel restrictions are effective and need to be implemented. We don't even know whether markets will be so wrong then.
But the idea is that everybody knows something that other people don't. Sometimes it gives you opportunity to make better bets on the stock market. Should you use this opportunity? EMH says that we shouldn't because the current price already includes the publicly available information that you have but other people don't.
nopie
1yr ago
Well, I had read Krugman's “End This Depression Now” explaining why stimulus in certain conditions is needed. I read the book because I was going through personally depressive period in my life but the book had some insights anyway. Krugman was proven right with sufficient evidence that I was surprised that so many experts still disagreed with him and demanded austerity policies instead. Nevertheless, even the staunchest critics have to admit that stimulus worked better during economic contraction, so it was no-brainer that the governments faced with economic contraction during covid pandemic would try to use stimulus too. I didn't believe that it will be very effective because unlike normal conditions people were prevented from spending money. The government had little choice though because they had to make sure that people who were forced out of work by their policies can still pay rent, buy food etc.
Incidentally, the lack of spending opportunities also gave me chance to invest some money. I expected that other people would do the same and it seems that eventually they did. But when I saw stock market taking a dive, it made no sense. I didn't expect to make a quick profit, I thought that recovery would take longer time. I believed that eventually everybody would get covid and then all the restrictions will be shown useless. Even the most totalitarian governments would have to admit that their policies are futile. Once restrictions are gone, people would quickly restart economic activities and stock market would rise.
Scott wrote that the stock market dive actually happened due to automatic selling. Many funds set automatic scripts to sell when the price reaches certain low threshold to prevent from further losses. Selling moved the price even lower with more and more funds initiating automatic selling.
nopie
1yr ago
I don't need the EMH to avoid doing things that are clearly reckless and most likely leading to ruin. But apparently many people need something that is softer on their ego. Instead of saying to them – don't overestimate your ideas, you probably know less whether the potential investment opportunities are good deals or not – we have to tell them soft lies about the EMH. It is like saying that you are a genius instead of an idiot but other investors are geniuses too and they have already cornered the market so you have very little chance to be the first. :)
Comparison with gas in a chamber is really strange. Avogadro number (the number of molecules in 1 mole) is 6×10^23 and that amount of gas will occupy about 22 Liters. The number of humans is no more than 10^10. We definitely cannot use gas example to provide intuitive understanding about markets.
nopie
1yr ago
That precisely is my understanding too. But why not play the market with the same attitude in every case? I saw a big issue of market going into the wrong direction without being an expert in this because it was so obvious. But many people are experts and they know about about multiple smaller cases where it makes sense to invest with smaller but sufficiently good returns. The fact that they help to correct the market and bring it back to equilibrium just means that you need to be an expert. Why make a theory that basically says – if you are not an expert, don't pay in the market and simply invest in index funds?
Just a thought: maybe investing has attracted too many non-experts that it becomes like a mass delusion that they all believe that they know how to beat a market and we need some warning for those people?
Lockdowns were like imprisonment for me. Like a prolonged home arrest for no reason. Somehow it was very clear that they will be useless and the policies didn't even make sense.
Yes, they were the worst human rights violations in the western world since the war ended or something like that.
Only when you widen your comparison to places where wars and genocide still happens (Ukraine, other wars, Uigurs etc.), we can find examples with even worse violations.
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