Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg on Wednesday cited an “uptick” in recent aviation incidents and called on participants at a Federal Aviation Administration safety summit to help find the “root causes” of the problem.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/15/us/faa-air-safety-summit-close-calls/index.html
The virologists I hang out with refer to the fundamental problem as C19-induced decerebration:
I have not read the underlying study, but that Times of India thumbnail is a red flag of incompetence.
First, often, the word “may” in a headline means “it’s not likely but we want you to think it is”.
Second, the “up to“ is also another weasel phrase that often means the opposite of reality. Literally, that would apply to a situation where the study confirmed the effect always subsided by the stated time. But, a combination of incompetence and weaselness often means people use it instead of “at least” such as where the study only lasted for the stated time and did not establish any end of the effect.
We don’t know the recovery trajectory for C19 - the virus hasn’t been around that long, but it looks pretty nasty when you plot raw data:
It’s a combination of the scientists who are overly cautious about reporting findings, and reporters lacking quantitative understanding. The reporter should have written “as much as” rather than “up to”, for example. I had assumed this audience can error-correct sloppy reporting, but now that I’ve provided extra information myself, I’ve removed the Times of India article.
What we do have is long-term longitudinal data about a closely related virus, SARS, where around 40% of SARS survivors haven’t maintained normal lung function 15 years after the event.
In other news, wet streets continue to cause rain - pedestrians self report amazing correlations of streets being wet either during or shortly after rain episodes.
VA studies ~ streetlight effect (when extrapolated to the general population)
It’s worth invoking Pascal’s Wager:
| Long Covid untreatable (G) | Long Covid treatable (¬G) | |
|---|---|---|
| Belief & Precaution (B) | -c (finite cost) | −c (finite cost) |
| Disbelief & Virus Splatter (¬B) | −∞ (infinite loss) | +c (finite gain) |
Glad to see COVID-19 elevated to a well deserved epistemic belief position /s
