According to current answers to "[When will the first humans land successfully on Mars?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3515/when-will-the-first-humans-land-successfully-on-mars/)", there is only a 27% chance that humans will set foot on Mars before 2030. According to "[Will SpaceX land people on Mars prior to 2030?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/349/will-spacex-land-people-on-mars-prior-to-2030/)", there is a 50% chance that not only will humans set foot on Mars before 2030, but that SpaceX in particular will be successful in doing so. *— e...

When I added that stipulation it was because I didn't want people to get their friends with coronavirus to make accounts simply to resolve this as positive. Maybe adding it wasn't necessary, but it made sense to me at the time.

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> The transcript for a primary or general presidential election debate in America. Maybe too late, but I think this should be limited to mainstream debates (i.e., Republican and Democratic primaries + general election debates), and not be inclusive of third-party debates. I also assume this is how people have been interpreting the resolution criteria by default. For instance, there's a US Transhumanist Party, and I'm sure their primary debates have mentioned anti-aging research, but that party is not "culturally significant". *— edited by ignorance.pr...

There seems to be a serious inconsistency between the coronavirus death toll question and this one.

Global population grows by roughly 80 million people every year:

https://www.worldometers.info/world-populatio…

According to current community predictions, P(deaths > 80 M) = 11%. Granted, some of those people would have died anyway. But even P(deaths > 100 M) = 9%.

Should we open another question now that the coronavirus is potentially threatening this?

The author of that piece, Tom Chivers, wrote a book about the LessWrong community, which heavily overlaps with the userbase of this site.

Fewer people died from COVID-19 in Italy today (349) than yesterday (368): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:2019–20_coronavirus_pandemic_data/Italy_medical_cases The number of new confirmed cases was also lower (3,233 vs. 3,590). This data point may be an outlier without any real significance (the overall trend is still positive). But if this continues, it could mean that growth is starting to decline, indicating that China's quarantine model can be successfully replicated by other countries, at least in the West. H/T Matthew Barnett for bringi...

Possible idea: When will someone develop a computer bot that earns a Brier score less than X on Metaculus questions / Good Judgement Open / etc.?

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@Jgalt What's the base rate of coughing during a debate, without being sick from the coronavirus?

The CDC has issued a multi-country Level 3 warning for Europe: https://web.archive.org/web/20200312025347/https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/warning/coronavirus-europe It includes 29 countries as of writing: > Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Monaco, San Marino, Vatican City Note that the Vatican is not a UN member state so it doesn't...

@(Jgalt) The [reddit thread](https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ezazij/tencent_may_have_accidentally_leaked_real_data_on/fgm98o7/) is skeptical of this theory: > These look like the numbers were mixed > 154,023 is close to the number being monitored > 24,589 is about 20 different from number infected. > Also why would Tencent have this info? Information control is tight in China, you honestly think the CCP is going to let that leak to anyone? Additionally, the source (Taiwan News) may be biased against Mainland China, and the screenshot cou...

If they release a Level 3 continent-wide advisory, something like this:

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/alert/po… https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/alert/po… https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/watch/de…

Then I think all the countries mentioned in the advisory should count. What do you think?

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@(Jgalt) There have already been Wikipedia bots that have been used to create thousands of formulaic articles. For example, [ClueBot II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contribs/ClueBot_II?namespace=0&newOnly=1&end=2008-04-01&limit=500) was used to create thousands of stubs about asteroids on the English Wikipedia, although most of these have now been turned into redirects as they were later deemed non-notable. Another bot was used to create thousands of articles on US localities. You can see [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bot_crea...

Looks like this article might be misleading:

https://twitter.com/lookner/status/1243201734…

Seeing some posts claiming Neil Ferguson "backtracked" on dire virus predictions yesterday. He didn't. Just watched his testimony to UK MPs. He says UK has enough ICU capacity GIVEN THE LOCKDOWN MEASURES, which is what original report said. Testimony here: https://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/2b1c71d…

According to current answers to "When will the first humans land successfully on Mars?", there is only a 27% chance that humans will set foot on Mars before 2030.

According to "Will SpaceX land people on Mars prior to 2030?", there is a 50% chance that not only will humans set foot on Mars before 2030, but that SpaceX in particular will be successful in doing so.

I'd like to see a question on these claims of lots of undocumented COVID deaths in Wuhan:

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/wuhan-…

Taipei Times, "Virus Outbreak: Researcher says COVID-19 likely synthetic"

Humans likely synthesized COVID-19, although more studies are needed to be certain, National Taiwan University (NTU) public health researcher Fang Chi-tai (方啟泰) said yesterday.

Fang made the statement during a disease-prevention education seminar held at NTU by the Taiwan Public Health Association.

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[The Telegraph](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/10/coronavirus-news-uk-china-wuhan-virus-outbreak-latest/#update-20200210-1418): > Some interesting reporting from Alex Lam, a reporter for Apple Daily in Hong Kong, who has found that many provinces and cities have subtracted confirmed cases from the records in the last few days. > The move reportedly comes after the National Health and Medical Commission changed the definition of what constitutes a "confirmed case" - patients who test positive but have no confirmed symptoms will no longer be c...

I'd lean toward using the number of unique countries (so count as one), to keep it simple. Thoughts?

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@Uncle Jeff Let's make a question about the total deaths, IFR or CFR in the US then. I'd be curious about that too.