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The government pays out a lot of money to make us fat (I’m munching on a tortilla chip right now). One of the most quietly disguised facts of the coronavirus outbreak is that obesity is a major comorbidity. If the government could somehow make obese people exercise an hour a day, it would be far more effective than masks and lockdowns. From Barry Brownstein at aier.org:

Austrian mathematician Abraham Wald was a World War II hero. He worked out of a nondescript apartment building in Harlem for the Applied Mathematics Panel. Wald’s ability to see the unseen was a significant factor in the Allied victory in World War II.

Allied bomber planes were being shot down at such an alarming rate that bomber airmen were called “ghosts already.” The Air Force concluded that more armor was needed on the planes but adding armor would add weight. David McRaney, the author of several books on cognitive biases, tells the story of how Wald saved the military from a major blunder:

“The military looked at the bombers that had returned from enemy territory. They recorded where those planes had taken the most damage. Over and over again, they saw that the bullet holes tended to accumulate along the wings, around the tail gunner, and down the center of the body. Wings. Body. Tail gunner. Considering this information, where would you put the extra armor? Naturally, the commanders wanted to put the thicker protection where they could clearly see the most damage, where the holes clustered. But Wald said no, that would be precisely the wrong decision. Putting the armor there wouldn’t improve their chances at all.”

Wald looked at the same bullet holes and saw a pattern revealing “where a bomber could be shot and still survive the flight home.”

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