Was it a good idea? Hanson’s variolation proposal seemed like a possibly good idea ex ante, but ex post, at first glance, it now looks awful to me.
It seems like the sort of people who would do that had little risk of going to the hospital regardless, and in practice, the hospital overload issue, while real and bad, doesn’t seem to have been nearly as bad as it looked when everyone thought that a fixed-supply of ventilators meant every person over the limit was dead and to have killed mostly in the extremes where I’m not sure how much variolation could have helped*. And then in addition, variolation became wildly ineffective once the COVID strains mutated again—and again—and again—and again, and it turned out that COVID was not like cowpox/smallpox and a once-and-never-again deal, and if you got infected early in 2020, well, you just got infected again in 2021 and/or 2022 and/or 2023 probably, so deliberate infection in 2020 mostly just wasted another week of your life (or more), exposed you to probably the most deadly COVID strains with the most disturbing symptoms like anosmia and possibly the highest Long COVID rates (because they mutated to be subtler and more tolerable and also you had vaccines by that point). So, it would have done little under its own premises, would have wound up doing less as it turned out, and the upfront cost turned out to be far higher than expected.
* for example, in India, how would variolation have made much of a difference to running out of oxygen tanks everywhere? Which I was reading at the time was responsible for a lot of their peak deaths and killed the grandmother of one LWer I know. Or when China let Zero COVID lapse overnight and the ultra-infectious strains, capable of reinfection, blew through the population in weeks?
That’s a pretty good point—I was mostly thinking from my position, which was the rapid end of lockdowns in China in late 2022. I had a ~100% chance of catching COVID within a month, and had no idea how prepared the hospitals were in regards to that. I ended up with a really bad cough and secondary lung infection that made me consider going to the hospital, so I guess I made the right choice? If I did develop pneumonia, I would have looked foward to a less crowded hospital with more amenities, which would have been nice. My decision was also based on the possibility of “this may be worse than expected and the hospitals will somehow fuck it up”, which thankfully didn’t take place.
But yeah, I didn’t consider the consequences pozing yourself in 2020/2021. I agree with you that it’s a bad idea in hindsight for almost everyone. I was one of the few people who could have benefited from it in theory, and all I really got was internet bragging rights.
Still very curious about those who did variolate themselves and their reasoning behind it.
Was it a good idea? Hanson’s variolation proposal seemed like a possibly good idea ex ante, but ex post, at first glance, it now looks awful to me.
It seems like the sort of people who would do that had little risk of going to the hospital regardless, and in practice, the hospital overload issue, while real and bad, doesn’t seem to have been nearly as bad as it looked when everyone thought that a fixed-supply of ventilators meant every person over the limit was dead and to have killed mostly in the extremes where I’m not sure how much variolation could have helped*. And then in addition, variolation became wildly ineffective once the COVID strains mutated again—and again—and again—and again, and it turned out that COVID was not like cowpox/smallpox and a once-and-never-again deal, and if you got infected early in 2020, well, you just got infected again in 2021 and/or 2022 and/or 2023 probably, so deliberate infection in 2020 mostly just wasted another week of your life (or more), exposed you to probably the most deadly COVID strains with the most disturbing symptoms like anosmia and possibly the highest Long COVID rates (because they mutated to be subtler and more tolerable and also you had vaccines by that point). So, it would have done little under its own premises, would have wound up doing less as it turned out, and the upfront cost turned out to be far higher than expected.
* for example, in India, how would variolation have made much of a difference to running out of oxygen tanks everywhere? Which I was reading at the time was responsible for a lot of their peak deaths and killed the grandmother of one LWer I know. Or when China let Zero COVID lapse overnight and the ultra-infectious strains, capable of reinfection, blew through the population in weeks?
That’s a pretty good point—I was mostly thinking from my position, which was the rapid end of lockdowns in China in late 2022. I had a ~100% chance of catching COVID within a month, and had no idea how prepared the hospitals were in regards to that. I ended up with a really bad cough and secondary lung infection that made me consider going to the hospital, so I guess I made the right choice? If I did develop pneumonia, I would have looked foward to a less crowded hospital with more amenities, which would have been nice. My decision was also based on the possibility of “this may be worse than expected and the hospitals will somehow fuck it up”, which thankfully didn’t take place.
But yeah, I didn’t consider the consequences pozing yourself in 2020/2021. I agree with you that it’s a bad idea in hindsight for almost everyone. I was one of the few people who could have benefited from it in theory, and all I really got was internet bragging rights.
Still very curious about those who did variolate themselves and their reasoning behind it.