It seems like the sweet spot is the startup has to be made in a garage. So basically you'd have enough wealth to own a garage (as well as afford the cutting edge tech you're using), but be too broke to rent a nice office downtown.
A suite of blogs on the latest advancements in technology that are shaping the future. From artificial intelligence and wearables to nano-sensors, cutting-edge diagnostics and less discussed medical cases.
Pfizer selected New Mexico, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Texas for their pilot delivery program "due to the states' immunization infrastructures, urban and rural variations, size and population diversity". First batches of vaccine will probably go to frontline medical workers first, followed by frail old people. a paper in Medrxiv favored "older first" model based on evolutionary game theory and mobility data, for largest decrease in mortality rates.
Pretty interesting paper, although I'm not sure it's the one OP was referring to. It's a pretty short paper with a whole pile of graphs at the end, so I encourage people to read it themselves.
Quick notes from skimming:
- Treats it as an optimization problem for various levels of vaccine efficacy (10-100%), availability(10-100%), spread rate (R0 in {1.5, 2, 2.5, 3}), susceptibility to infection and symptomatic infection per age group.
- Four objective functions: symptomatic infections, deaths, non-ICU hospital usage at peak, and ICU usage at peak
- 5 age buckets: 0-19, 20-49, 50-64, 65-74, 75+
- Assumes 20% of population has immunity, and immunity lasts for a year.
- At higher efficacy and availability levels, there are some odd shifts to optimal vaccine distribution strategies. It's not strictly "oldest first" or "youngest first", there are some weird discontinuities in the middle buckets as well.
I had some questions about the wide 20-49 age bucket but it appears that it comes from a CDC planning scenario. It does look like that various curves start accelerating sharply past 50 or higher, so I guess treating the 20-49 group as one reasonably low risk group could be reasonable.
Yes, there could be many different scenarios; when vaccine supply is limited, vaccinate those at risk of death. BioNTech claims their vaccine efficacy is consistent across age groups, but we won't know for sure until large clinical trials are completed. Also, older people are less willing to be vaccinated earlier. More variables to include in the model...
From reading the abstract, that study comes to the interesting finding that with a highly effective vaccine, it is better to vaccinate the YOUNG first, to reduce the spread.
What about... workers in the cafeteria who handle our food, cashiers at supermarkets and waiters who bring food over to you. I'm shocked most of the papers I'm reading don't mention these folks who are at the very intersection of our daily lives!
The paper assumes those people are vaccinated first, before the analysis for other age groups comes into play.
"Here, we consider that front-line health care workers and other essential personnel (e.g. firefighters, police) who should obviously be prioritized, have already been
vaccinated."
Probably too late for anybody's interest, but the risk of getting this from food is suspected to be incredibly low. Droplets being inhaled, entering through the eyes, or nasal mucous membranes are the likely real threats.
I guess that makes sense. The young seem to be the primary spreaders of the disease. Stop them, and then it slows the whole chain of infections. I can also see why they'd want to vaccinate the most vulnerable, if the young aren't really affected by the disease, it makes sense to skip them first. Conundrum I suppose.
Connectivity-driven innovation is cheaper. Science is becoming harder and is getting less bang for its buck.
We saw great progress in AI over the past few years but even this has taken far more effort and money than building social networks. Perhaps connectivity-driven innovation could help to speed up applied science innovation if power of the crowd is more efficiently utilized?
I don't agree that connectivity and applied science are two separate things. We don't get to netflix without applied sciences: encryption, compression, networking, neural networks. I don't know why the author said that. He has a degree in computer science
What does that have to do with taxpayer funded R&D for medicine?
Presumably, taneq's point was that medicine owned by taxpayers can be sold at the cost to manufacture and distribute it at far lower costs, as opposed to the current system where the owners of the research also needed to be compensated.
Most (if not all) new medicines came out of basic research supported by the NIH. This research was tweaked and patented by companies who profit from selling the drugs. Is start-to-finish government drug pipeline a better solution? Perhaps, but current academic culture doesn't support it. It's not just about pouring more taxpayer money.
That is awful and I'm so sorry to hear. :( It also doesn't invalidate my point, although it highlights that I should have said the government should run its own competent R&D
You are right, according to medical journal "The Lancet", 85% of (government-funded) research funding is “avoidably wasted across the entire biomedical research range (e.g., clinical, health services, and basic science)” Government-funded medical R&D (budget for the NIH: $34.4 billion for 2019) needs smarter spending.
Mind uploading predictions are fascinating (Edmond Hamilton, 1936; Isaac Asimov, 1956, 1957; Arthur C. Clarke, 1956; Bertil Mårtensson, 1968).
Also predictions about automating boring and mundane human tasks:
Waldemar Kaempffert, 1950: "When Jane Dobson cleans house she simply turns the hose on everything... After the water has run down a drain in the middle of the floor (later concealed by a rug of synthetic fiber) Jane turns on a blast of hot air and dries everything."
"With the advent of frozen foods in the shape of bricks, cooking as an art is only a memory in the minds of old-people. A few die-hards still broil a chicken or roast a leg of lamb, but <by using ingredients in frozen bricks> Jane Dobson can serve a steak in less than three minutes, and an elaborate multi-course meal never takes more than half an hour to prepare.
"discarded linens and underwear are recycled and turned into candy."
Isaac Asimov, 1964: "Gadgetry will continue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs. Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare 'automeals,' heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on."
About Asimov's predictions: those (incl. listed above) either haven't yet materialized, or are rather funny from today's perspective (Robotics, AI and "psychohistory" as described in the Foundation series). He's been rather poor futurologist IMO, contrary to the level of his popularity.
It should be possible, but might take a lot of effort. Smell-detecting dogs are trained from birth to 18 months and it takes another 6 months to specialize them on specific scent like diabetes. Small rodents could be trained too. In Harry Potter, Ron carried one in his breast pocket.
The authors suggest to introduce an extra field in death certificates indicating if it was a medical error, but the responsible parties may not acknowledge mistakes for fear of malpractice suits.
> the responsible parties may not acknowledge mistakes for fear of malpractice suits
Accountability is part of life for everyone; even somene merely licensed to drive goes to jail for hit and run. Accountability is especially to be expected if you are a professional, and especially if you are given the status and pay that goes with holding others' lives in your hands.
Not taking responsibility in these situations should be acrime, IMHO.
