Oh hi friends! It’s been a minute since I posted here, but I’ve appreciated the various well wishes/comments people have continued to send me. A lot has gone on personally since last I posted but I’ve had a lot of random data related thoughts kicking around in my head recently, and I’ve gotten a few nice comments in the past couple weeks of people suggesting I should do a post about various topics. These include: the replication crisis as applied to true crime, UK and Canadian healthcare systems vs the US, medications for substance abuse cessation, and possibly something about eye conditions. Since I’m out of practice writing posts I figured a brief life update might help me get some of the rust out and motivate me further. So what have I been up to in the last three years? Well here’s a brief overview:
- The potato diet I mentioned in the prior post didn’t work out. I get pretty bad migraines and about a week in I got one that last several days. It stopped when I changed my diet. Ah well.
- We had a third major death in the family, after the two I mentioned in this post, the third in 14 months. I now have an unfortunate amount of experience with planning funerals and eldercare.
- About 2 years ago, I started experiencing some eye problems in addition to my pre-existing migraines. It took about 8 months to sort out what was going on, but it turns out I had a previously unidentified genetic eye condition (epithelial basement membrane dystrophy) which had caused a condition called recurrent corneal erosions. I would suggest not reading that Wiki page if you’re squeamish, but suffice it to say the second sentence in the description calls it an “excruciatingly painful” disorder, and I can personally verify that is correct.
- Because of #3 I’ve had 2 eye surgeries in the past year, and then my gallbladder decided to get in on the action and I had to get that removed. I’m pretty much ready to be done with surgeries, thank you very much. The one plus side is it appears my eyes may have been causing some large portion of my migraine problems, so things seem improved on that front. We’ll see if that holds, but so far I’m hoping the second half of 2025 is better than the first.
So that’s the news from Lake Wobegon! Let me know how you all are doing and any particular posts you’d like to see if I get some posting up and running again.
graph paper diaries 
Welcome back! I’m very sorry to hear of your health problems, but happy that you are writing again.
If you would be interested, there is a subject that I think could really benefit from some good statistical analysis, and it has to do with COVID. Namely: what was the real effect of COVID on the number of deaths: how many people died directly from COVID itself, how many people died due to secondary effects (for example, not being able to get to a hospital, or skipping a routine checkup)? Also, were there a significant number of deaths incorrectly attributed to COVID? I recall a remarkably low number of flu deaths during the height of COVID. I think a study like this could have real public policy implications.
Similarly, it would be interesting to know what was the effect of the vaccines: how effective actually were the vaccines, and how many people died who could have been saved? Or, were there actually people who died, one way or another, due to a vaccine, like some have been speculating? Well, that could open up a real can of worms.
Hope 2025.5 is better for you!
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