@Symmetry Well, the results came back negative so this doesn't resolve yet. Given that this is the only time in my life I've had (mild) pneumonia I still think it's more likely than not actually Covid and the test came back negative due to it having mostly cleared up by the time I could get a test scheduled. Still, I clearly don't meet the resolution criteria.

Will nuclear, chemical, biological, or radiological weapons be deployed in the conflict?

Well, I've come down with some symptoms that are mild but potentially consistent with Covid-19. I'll let you all know if the scheduled test comes back positive.

@(Jgalt) Apparently the reason they didn't go with a flame trench in the first place is that excavation below the water line would trigger a complicated new permitting process. I'm concerned that their only options here are to raise everything up, causing a large construction delay, or deal with the new permitting process and deal with a six+ month delay there. Or they could just rebuild everything to the initial spec but then they have to deal with the FAA approval which was based on the idea that the danger from ejected materials was minimal at a ran...

A question about the details of the resolution, ignoring the controversy about the attractor for a moment. Lets say a researcher in bat pathogens flies out to take samples at some cave in Yunan. SARS-Cov-2 isn't in any of the samples collected but is in a particle of bat guano the researcher inhales and they contract Covid-19 and then pass it along to others when buying dinner in the Hubei wet market. Lets say some poor farmer in Yunan gets Covid-19 from a pangolin and gets seriously ill. A sample of the virus is sent back to Hubei in vitro, its exam...

@holomanga Yes, there's reason to think that the number of infections is under-reported but less reason to think that the number of deaths is.

In Kim Jong Un's January 2021 deference speech he mentioned “make nuclear weapons smaller and lighter for more tactical uses” as a top priority so we should expect to see numbers growing there.

@(cmeinel) There's certainly enough radiation at Chernobyl to give you cancer if you go around digging trenches without a mask but unless they were going inside the sarcophagus there should be no way they actually came down with acute radiation sickness. My first guess would be that this is a classic case of mass hysteria. Soldiers are afraid of radiation. Someone gets afraid enough to exhibit physical symptoms, vomiting maybe. That raises the fear in people nearby who also start exhibiting symptoms. Etc. Or it's possible that soldiers are pretendi...

Looks like aspects of the environmental review are likely to delay things: https://twitter.com/BCCarCounters/status/1703…

@Jgalt Elon is known for being optimistic in his timelines, a well tread joke is that any time Elon gives a timeline in years we should consider it to be in 687 day Mars years. Applying that expansion factor to this prediction would set the landing for 2036.

I must confess I'm still a bit confused as to the linearity of the growth in the number of infections outside of China, seemingly caused by very few person to person transmissions. Possibly this is just the incubation period I suppose but even so the number of confirmed infections shouldn't be large enough to make a substantial impact before February 17th.

Precedent is against it but in our current cycle of escalating constitutional hardball it seems that unprecedented but legal things are being brought into the partisan conflict every other year.

79%: Putin's war goals seem to require him to occupy the capital unless the Ukranians roll over without a fight and Russian troops to end up entering with the consent of the government. And I'm very pessimistic about Ukraine's ability to hold them off.

Reports of a naval operation landing there: https://twitter.com/Charles_Lister/status/149…

This paper discussed in This Week In Virology about patients who clear up the virus with an adaptive T cell response without developing antibodies is making me downgrade my estimate of the lethality.

Really this is the sort of thing that should have been going lower over time and I'm vaguely embarrassed for not doing that, even though I accrued points.

I would give very different estimates to questions where he only has to say he lost once to resolve versus where he only has to say he didn't lose once for it to resolve.

Shortage of testing kits in the US

@Zermelo Never say 100%, given reports can be wrong, but nearly certain and I'm at 99

It seems that Putin is officially declaring the start of hostilities with Ukraine.