🌍 Conditioned fear keeps behaviour suppressed after vaccination
Friedberg's thesis that a year of conditioning has trained people to be afraid, so consumption normalizes far slower than the medical picture — schools stay shut, people stay off planes and out of crowds, and constraining public rules persist long after the data says it is safe. Bearish for the reopening-levered consumer trade even as case counts fall.
0
CONVICTION
peaked 38.9 EMBER
DORMANT
band · contested
▼ SHORT JETS
expression · bearish macro
PARTIAL
outcome · R +11.6% · α -2.1%
2022-02-20
window closed
⚖ Why this verdict
fully deterministic — evaluate.py replays this from daily closes; nothing below is editable or hand-set
- Window: 2021-02-20 → 2022-02-20 — first mention + 12-month horizon, then the window locks.
- The call: ▼ SHORT JETS (primary play). JETS fell 11.6% over the window → direction-adjusted R = +11.6% (the call made money).
- Benchmark: holding SPY over the same window returned +13.7%
→ α = +11.6 − (+13.7) = -2.1%
— what this call made or lost against just owning the index. This is the number the verdict uses.
Stock-selection read: +25.2% — did JETS move the predicted way relative to the market. The two only differ on a SHORT: this call was right about direction relative to the index but still cost money versus holding it.
- Rule fired:
· HIT — R ≥ +10% AND α ≥ +5▶ PARTIAL — R ≥ +5% OR α ≥ 0· MISS — everything else
- Credit: supporters of a PARTIAL earn 0.5 each, opposers the inverse — this feeds the scoreboard weights. supported: Friedberg | opposed: Jason, Sacks | proxy-sensitive: MAR→MISS (-22.7%)
Conviction timeline
bands: green ≥ 65 · watch ≥ 45 · ember ≥ 15
Plays vs SPY · % since first mention (2021-02-20)
Plays
| expression | symbol | kind | relevance | rationale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ▼ SHORT | JETS | etf | PRIMARY | airline basket is the purest listed proxy for 'people aren't flying' persisting past vaccination |
| ▼ SHORT | DAL | stock | adjacent | largest-exposure legacy carrier, most levered to business and crowded-venue travel returning |
| ▼ SHORT | MAR | stock | adjacent | hotels need conferences and crowds, the exact behaviour he says stays suppressed |
Mention log
Friedberg
macro w=0.93 · n=40
· E23 (2021-02-20) · explicit_prediction · strength 3
▶ 47:43
SUPPORT
“if you think about what's happened over the last year, people have been conditioned to be afraid. And so even though we're getting vaccinated, even though this thing is moving and working, I'm concerned that we're not going to end up in a more civil state. Schools aren't opening. People aren't flying. People aren't doing stuff, even after vaccinations and science and data shows that these things are OK.”
Jason
macro w=1.27 · n=30
· E23 (2021-02-20) · sentiment · strength 2
▶ 53:01
OPPOSE
“It's like a shark, Friedberg, it's like a shark attack. You know, if this is a shark attack, you know, at Half Moon Bay or whatever, people don't swim there for a couple of weeks. And then somebody swims and they're like, oh, the water's great. People will jump back in.”
Sacks
macro w=1.12 · n=40
· E23 (2021-02-20) · explicit_prediction · strength 2
▶ 52:11
OPPOSE
“Let me go back to Friedberg's point about when will life get back to normal. I'm not as pessimistic as you are, Dave, about this idea that life won't get back to normal. And part of the reason why is I'm seeing so much outrage about school closures right now.”
Friedberg
macro w=0.93 · n=40
· E57 (2021-12-04) · explicit_prediction · strength 2
▶ 19:13
SUPPORT
“what's really important now is how policy makers are going to respond to this, right? Because there is a press cycle, there is a bit of a hysteria, everyone's asking me about it, everyone's freaked out about it, everyone's worrying about it. ... And the question is, are we about to face more lockdowns and things that are going to be adverse to the economy and how are markets going to react? ... And that seems pretty scary right now.”
Sacks
macro w=1.12 · n=40
· E64 (2022-01-22) · sentiment · strength 2
▶ 51:02
SUPPORT
“We could live with this variant of Covid, Omicron. ... But in large swaths of the country, we're not choosing to live with it. We're at each other's throats about these vaccine mandates, these other restrictions and school closures.”
Sacks
macro w=1.12 · n=40
· E66 (2022-02-05) · explicit_prediction · strength 2
▶ 1:27:34
OPPOSE
“It says a majority of voters, 55% say COVID should be treated as an endemic disease, while a majority of Democrats say it should be continued to be treated as an emergency. ... The Monmouth poll just came out where 89% of Republicans, 71% of of independents say that it's time we accept COVID is here to stay and we need to get on with our lives. ... So the reality is that the rest of the country, I think, has moved on. It's ready to move on.”
Who built this conviction
each voice's total force on the score — supports and opposes from every mention, weighted exactly as the replay applied them · share = % of all mention-driven movement
⏳ decay drained -12.0 over the idea's life — that's time passing, attributed to no one
Score events
| episode | kind | Δ | after | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E23 2021-02-20 | init | +38.9 | 38.9 | E23 born by Friedberg (explicit_prediction x3) [w=0.93] |
| E23 2021-02-20 | oppose | -13.5 | 25.4 | E23 Sacks opposes x2 [w=1.12] |
| E23 2021-02-20 | oppose | -15.2 | 10.1 | E23 Jason opposes x2 [w=1.27] |
| E24 2021-03-06 | decay | -0.4 | 9.7 | E24 silent |
| E25 2021-03-13 | decay | -0.4 | 9.4 | E25 silent |
| E26 2021-03-20 | decay | -0.4 | 9.0 | E26 silent |
| E27 2021-03-27 | decay | -0.4 | 8.6 | E27 silent |
| E28 2021-04-01 | decay | -0.3 | 8.3 | E28 silent |
| E29 2021-04-17 | decay | -0.3 | 7.9 | E29 silent |
| E30 2021-04-23 | decay | -0.3 | 7.6 | E30 silent |
| E31 2021-05-01 | decay | -0.3 | 7.3 | E31 silent |
| E32 2021-05-13 | decay | -0.3 | 7.0 | E32 silent |
| E33 2021-05-22 | decay | -0.3 | 6.7 | E33 silent |
| E34 2021-05-31 | decay | -0.3 | 6.5 | E34 silent |
| E35 2021-06-13 | decay | -0.3 | 6.2 | E35 silent |
| E36 2021-06-18 | decay | -0.2 | 6.0 | E36 silent |
| E37 2021-06-25 | decay | -0.2 | 5.7 | E37 silent |
| E38 2021-07-03 | decay | -0.2 | 5.5 | E38 silent |
| E39 2021-07-09 | decay | -0.2 | 5.3 | E39 silent |
| E40 2021-07-16 | decay | -0.2 | 5.1 | E40 silent |
| E41 2021-07-23 | decay | -0.2 | 4.9 | E41 silent |
| E42 2021-07-30 | decay | -0.2 | 4.7 | E42 silent |
| E43 2021-08-06 | decay | -0.2 | 4.5 | E43 silent |
| E44 2021-08-28 | decay | -0.2 | 4.3 | E44 silent |
| E45 2021-09-04 | decay | -0.2 | 4.1 | E45 silent |
| E46 2021-09-14 | decay | -0.2 | 4.0 | E46 silent |
| E47 2021-09-18 | decay | -0.2 | 3.8 | E47 silent |
| E49 2021-10-02 | decay | -0.2 | 3.7 | E49 silent |
| E50 2021-10-09 | decay | -0.1 | 3.5 | E50 silent |
| E51 2021-10-16 | decay | -0.1 | 3.4 | E51 silent |
| E52 2021-10-23 | decay | -0.1 | 3.2 | E52 silent |
| E53 2021-10-30 | decay | -0.1 | 3.1 | E53 silent |
| E54 2021-11-06 | decay | -0.1 | 3.0 | E54 silent |
| E55 2021-11-13 | decay | -0.1 | 2.9 | E55 silent |
| E56 2021-11-20 | decay | -0.1 | 2.7 | E56 silent |
| E57 2021-12-04 | reinforce | +13.5 | 16.2 | E57 Friedberg support x2 [w=0.93] |
| E58 2021-12-11 | decay | -0.6 | 15.6 | E58 silent |
| E59 2021-12-17 | decay | -0.6 | 15.0 | E59 silent |
| E60 2021-12-23 | decay | -0.6 | 14.4 | E60 silent |
| E61 2021-12-29 | decay | -0.6 | 13.8 | E61 silent |
| E62 2022-01-08 | decay | -0.6 | 13.2 | E62 silent |
| E63 2022-01-15 | decay | -0.5 | 12.7 | E63 silent |
| E64 2022-01-22 | reinforce | +14.7 | 27.4 | E64 Sacks support x2 (flipped from oppose) [w=1.12] |
| E65 2022-01-29 | decay | -1.1 | 26.3 | E65 silent |
| E66 2022-02-05 | oppose | -13.5 | 12.8 | E66 Sacks opposes x2 [w=1.12] |
| E66 2022-02-05 | oppose | -12.8 | 0.0 | E66 Jason opposes x2 [w=1.27] |
| E67 2022-02-12 | decay | · | 0.0 | E67 silent |
| E68 2022-02-19 | decay | · | 0.0 | E68 silent |