Substack cometh, and lo it is good. (Pricing)

Open Thread – 12/13/2020

Posted on by Razib Khan

Sorry about the spare “open thread”, but busy. I should mention I have a gated version of my David Shor interview up. Lots of talk about Miami and being Sephardic Jewish.

Also, the ungated Unsupervised Learning podcast site is up. I’ll do a delay before releasing it. Right now we’ve got Anders Bergstrom, Charles Murray, and Eric Cline. There are lots of more I prerecorded. As I have said before the goal with the new podcast is to have more ‘evergreen’ discussions, rather than what’s just “in the news.”

Obviously, thanks to all the paying subscribers, but I also suggest you subscribe free because I’m going to use it as my newsletter in general. If you subscribed via Mailchimp you are already in the system, so don’t worry.

I’m a little worried about Substack as a platform because who knows in this day and age? But as long as Andrew Sullivan is there, I assume I’ll be OK. Also, Colin Wright has started a Substack, Noah Smith has been cranking stuff out.

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9 thoughts on “Open Thread – 12/13/2020”

  4. I don’t understand all this worry about substack as a platform. Everyone afraid of being canceled should love substack because it is designed so that they can’t cancel you. They give you email addresses and a stripe account with the credit cards on file. If they cancel you, all you lose is the google juice of the domain, but the whole point is to emphasize email. Just spin up ghost and keep charging your customers. Maybe it’s uglier and maybe it’s not as good at conversion. But no loss over not having tried substack.

  5. Not sure this belongs here. I’ve got concerns about COVID vaccine and infections. There is a lot of conflicting information our there, most information comes from polarized sources, and I suspect that common knowledge on immune system function in our societies generally is wrong.

    Is it true once we get a particular cold-type virus, we’re immune to it forever after recovery (with a normal immune system)? Is it true the reason we keep getting colds because the various cold causing viruses evolve and each time we get a cold, it’s a new version? Is this why, for instance, people who get the flu shot still end up getting the flu, because they caught a version of the virus that differed from one they were already immune to?

    I’m concerned about this because there are rumours of people getting COVID 2 or 3 times, and that if you catch COVID, you are only immune for 3-6 months after, and that people who have already had COVID still need the vaccine. If immunity is so short lived, what good will vaccines do? This does not jive with what I’ve been told about how vaccines or immune systems work, and I suspect what I “know” is wrong or incomplete on these things. Also, since this is a virus, won’t it just evolve so that in a short time, the vaccine will no longer be effective?

    I suspect I’ve got many misconceptions, leading to my concerns above. I’ve looked for answers online, but I’m not sure what sources can be trusted. Any recommendations for good sources on immunology would be appreciated.

  6. Missed this paper in May (if it has been posted before, apologies!) – https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.19.104455v1 – 1 “Genome-wide analysis identifies genetic effects on reproductive success and ongoing natural selection at the FADS locus”

    Covered a bit in video by Iain Mathieson here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyfmMHQJoQo, along with this more recent paper 2: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.17.387761v1 – “Estimating time-varying selection coefficients from time series data of allele frequencies” that looks directly at change in frequencies among ancient samples.

    Finds some signals of reproductive association in UK Biobank (NumKids). Some interesting associations. Only one crossover with selection in historical samples except FADS1 (which is directly shown to change in frequency in both East Asia and Europe in the paper 2)!
    This might be limited by sampling in ancient dna in some cases, though not in others – e.g. possibly there might still be the same ongoing some variants that aren’t well sampled in ancient capture dna, but in other variants that are present in both ancient and modern like SLC24A5 and LCT, no ongoing selection (at least as realised through NumKids rather than early life mortality).

    They don’t really know why FADS is under selection but explore some hypotheses, but suggest it may be due to effects on behaviour and possibly sex-hormones. Suggests *might* be worthwhile to know your FADS genotype and choose dietary fats accordingly (olive oil or oily fish!) – you might have slightly more kids, all things being equal ;).

    More meta, it’s a cool line of research, I hadn’t really thought about implications and possible utility before – but if people worry about TFR rates and replacement, it seems like it would be useful if we could identify from genotypes genes linked to higher numbers of kids and then use that to make interventions. Might work better than somewhat speculative kind of “Oh, give people bigger cars” type very speculative interventions that are mostly about chucking money at the problem and might not work. Target people who have fewer kids and then boost them up. Ideally those would be non-zero sum associations (e.g. which would end up changing who has kids rather than increase total population number of kids!)

  8. @Huerfano, I’ll try to take a stab at your questions, perhaps someone here can offer can offer corrections. I listen to podcasts like This Week in Virology and hope to understand a fraction of it.

    Q. Is it true once we get a particular cold-type virus, we’re immune to it forever after recovery (with a normal immune system)?

    A. Probably not true, as we age our immune response declines, our body forgets older intruders, so the response might be slow or poorly modulated. Also natural immunity lass for varying durations, depending both on the particular virus and how our body reacted to it. Vaccine design tries to replicate the optimal infection scenarios safely.

    Q. Is it true the reason we keep getting colds because the various cold causing viruses evolve and each time we get a cold, it’s a new version?

    A. That might be one reason, but a previous infection may not have created long-lasting memory of the virus. Also, worth keeping in mind that infections from one respiratory virus might improve immune response to another. My impression is that mild infections don’t produce a lot of changes to our immune system, which is why people suspect colds caused by corona viruses are less likely to improve immune response when compared to SARS.

    Q. Is this why, for instance, people who get the flu shot still end up getting the flu, because they caught a version of the virus that differed from one they were already immune to?

    A. I think mostly so. Influenza viruses constantly change and there are a lot of them spreading in the community any given season. Some of the problem is predicting the upcoming season’s probable influenza virus. I think flu vaccines average about 45% effectivity across a ten year average, compared with most vaccines which are over 80%.

    Q. there are rumours of people getting COVID 2 or 3 times, and that if you catch COVID, you are only immune for 3-6 months after, and that people who have already had COVID still need the vaccine. If immunity is so short lived, what good will vaccines do?

    A. Cases of reinfection with COVID-19 have been reported, but remain rare, according to CDC. I don’t think anybody knows how long natural immunity lasts, and it would depend on individual factors. I personally think that people previously infected who are not otherwise at higher risk should get vaccinated later with children. Overall vaccine immunity should be better than natural immunity.

    Q. Also, since this is a virus, won’t it just evolve so that in a short time, the vaccine will no longer be effective?

    COVID-19 has a unique error-correcting capacity not seen in other respiratory viruses, which makes it relatively stable and probably well-suited for vaccines. Low genetic diversity may be an Achilles heel of SARS-CoV-2

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