E13: SPACsgiving Special! More promising vaccine news, innovation vs. regulation, reforming higher ed, morality of challenge trials & more

Evidence shows that by the end of 2020 there were mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines with ~94–95% efficacy that were authorized and being deployed:

• Pfizer–BioNTech (BNT162b2): Final Phase 3 analysis reported about 95% vaccine efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19. (investors.biontech.de) The U.S. FDA then issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) on December 11, 2020, making this mRNA vaccine available for use in people 16 and older in the U.S. (nasdaq.com)
• Moderna (mRNA‑1273): Phase 3 trial results published at the end of December 2020 showed 94.1% efficacy against symptomatic COVID‑19. (nih.gov) The FDA granted EUA on December 18, 2020, so this second mRNA vaccine was also available in the U.S. before year-end. (nih.gov)

Because at least one—and in fact two—mRNA vaccines with efficacy in the 90–95% range were authorized and available for use by December 31, 2020, Jason’s prediction that “by the end of the year we’d have vaccines … with 90–95% efficacy” was borne out by events.

Jason predicted that, in the U.S., the first two authorized COVID‑19 vaccines (Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna) would supply about 40 million doses in December 2020, 50 million in January 2021, and 60 million in February 2021, i.e., roughly 150 million doses by the end of February.

However, federal data and independent reporting show much lower actual deliveries:

• A Government Accountability Office report, citing CDC data, says that by December 30, 2020, Operation Warp Speed had distributed about 12.4 million doses of COVID‑19 vaccines (all Pfizer and Moderna at that time), far short of the administration’s own goal of 40 million doses available by the end of 2020.(files.gao.gov) This makes a December total of 40 million doses in the U.S. clearly unattained.
• The Operation Warp Speed summary notes that by January 31, 2021, a cumulative 63.7 million Pfizer+Moderna doses had been delivered in the U.S.(en.wikipedia.org) Jason’s numbers would imply 40 + 50 = 90 million cumulative doses by that date, which is significantly higher than the 63.7 million actually delivered.
• A Washington Post analysis, using CDC data, reports that by February 23, 2021, about 82 million doses had been delivered in total, split roughly evenly between Pfizer and Moderna, and explicitly notes that earlier projections of 40 million December doses, 60 million in January, and 100 million in February were ‘much higher than reality’.(washingtonpost.com) Even allowing for additional deliveries in the final days of February, cumulative supply remained far below the 150 million implied by Jason’s 40/50/60‑million‑per‑month prediction.

Because actual delivered doses in the U.S. in December 2020, January 2021, and February 2021 were well below 40, 50, and 60 million respectively, Jason’s prediction about vaccine supply from the first two vaccines in America did not come true.

Why this prediction is wrong

The prediction: “By May 2021, approximately 70% of the U.S. population will have been immunized with a COVID-19 vaccine.” (interpreted as ~70% of the entire U.S. population having received COVID-19 vaccination by the end of May 2021).

What actually happened (using CDC data):

• As of May 31, 2021, CDC data show roughly:
  • About 50–51% of the total U.S. population had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
  • About 40–41% of the total U.S. population was fully vaccinated (two doses of mRNA or one dose of J&J).

Multiple summaries of CDC data and contemporaneous reporting show that by late May / early June 2021 the U.S. had reached roughly 50% of the total population with at least one dose, not 70%, and that the Biden administration’s 70% goal by early July 2021 was explicitly for adults, not the whole population; even that adult-target milestone was reached only later in early August 2021, not by May.

Given that:

• The prediction explicitly refers to “70% of Americans” by May 2021.
• Actual vaccination uptake by May 31, 2021 was only about 50% with at least one dose and ~40% fully vaccinated for the total U.S. population.

The prediction substantially overshot the real outcome.

Conclusion: The prediction that about 70% of the U.S. population would be immunized with a COVID-19 vaccine by May 2021 is wrong based on CDC-reported coverage levels by that date.

Assessment of the prediction
Friedberg predicted that within “a couple of months” from late November 2020 (roughly January–February 2021), the U.S. would be in a “pretty kind of comfortable position” with respect to COVID-19 due to a combination of natural immunity and vaccine rollout. In reality, the U.S. entered the worst phase of the pandemic to that point during this window, with record deaths and hospitalizations and only modest vaccine coverage. This clearly contradicts the prediction.

1. Severity of the U.S. COVID situation in Jan–Feb 2021

• January 2021 was the deadliest month of the U.S. pandemic, with on the order of ~95,000–106,000 COVID deaths that month alone, more than any other month (including December 2020).(forbes.com)
• CDC data show the 7‑day average of new deaths peaked around 3,378 per day on January 11, 2021, the highest point of the pandemic up to then.(archive.cdc.gov)
• Hospitalizations hit record levels: Reuters and HHS data reported 130,834 people hospitalized with COVID-19 on January 6–7, 2021, the highest number since the pandemic began, with hospitals in states like California rationing care.(equities.com)
• CDC’s COVID-NET reports that cumulative hospitalization rates continued to climb through late January 2021 and that weekly rates had been on an elevated plateau above all earlier peaks for about three months.(archive.cdc.gov)

These indicators describe an acute crisis, not a “comfortable position.”

2. Status of natural immunity and vaccination by early 2021

• A Bayesian evidence-synthesis model estimated that about 27% of the U.S. population had ever been infected by January 1, 2021, with states ranging from ~7% to ~45% infected.(pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) This is far short of any plausible herd-immunity threshold for the original virus, particularly given uneven geographic spread and uncertain durability of infection-acquired immunity.
• Vaccine rollout was still in its early phases through February 2021:
  • As of February 1, 2021, CDC data (summarized by Respiratory Therapy) showed 32.2 million doses administered, with ~26 million people having received at least one dose and only ~5.9 million fully vaccinated—single‑digit percentages of the total U.S. population.(respiratory-therapy.com)
  • By March 11, 2021—already outside the “couple of months” window—The Washington Post reported 62.5 million people had received one or more doses and 32.4 million were fully vaccinated, still a minority of the population.(washingtonpost.com)

Thus, by January–February 2021, neither infection‑induced immunity nor vaccination levels were high enough to significantly tame spread or prevent severe outcomes at a national scale.

3. Overall judgment
Given that:

• January 2021 was the deadliest month of the U.S. pandemic and featured record hospitalizations and ongoing health‑system strain,(forbes.com)
• Vaccine coverage was still limited to a relatively small share of the population by late February 2021,(respiratory-therapy.com)
• Best estimates indicate that cumulative infections (natural immunity) covered only about a quarter of the population by early January 2021,(pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

the U.S. was not in a “pretty kind of comfortable position” with respect to COVID-19 within a couple of months of late November 2020. Any period that might reasonably be called “relatively comfortable” (e.g., summer 2021) arrived several months later than his forecast window and depended much more on expanded vaccination than on the near‑term natural immunity he emphasized.

Conclusion: The prediction did not come true; it is wrong.

Summary
Friedberg’s prediction was that as per‑mile/dynamic auto insurance gained adoption, low‑mileage/good drivers would move to these products, forcing incumbent insurers to raise rates on the worse‑risk customers left behind, which in turn would create a “huge market moat” for per‑mile insurers over the following years. By late 2025, the evidence points the other way: while telematics/usage‑based insurance (UBI) has grown, large incumbents dominate it, specialized per‑mile startups have not built a moat, and industry rate hikes are driven by other factors (inflation, claims costs, weather) rather than documented adverse selection from per‑mile migration.

Key points against the prediction

1. Per‑mile specialists did not build a competitive moat; they struggled instead.

   • Metromile, one of the original pay‑per‑mile pioneers and the likely reference for “our service,” went public via SPAC in 2021 and then collapsed in value; Lemonade acquired it in July 2022 for under $145M in stock, versus a prior valuation over $1B, and promptly laid off ~20% of staff. (techcrunch.com)
   • After the acquisition, Metromile’s written premiums declined: by mid‑2023 it had about $49M in written premiums, ~15% less than a year earlier, with decreases in every state, showing contraction rather than moat‑like growth. (coverager.com)
   • More broadly, analyses of the U.S. usage‑based/telematics market list major incumbents — Progressive, Allstate, State Farm, Liberty Mutual — as the primary players by share; specialized insurtechs like Metromile and Root are small by comparison. (futuremarketinsights.com)

2. Dynamic/telematics pricing is now led by incumbents, not by a separate per‑mile niche.

   • Market reports on telematics‑based and usage‑based auto insurance show rapid growth but emphasize that the segment is dominated by large traditional insurers (Progressive, Allstate, State Farm, Liberty Mutual, etc.), who have rolled out their own dynamic‑pricing and pay‑per‑use products at scale. (futuremarketinsights.com)
   • Examples: State Farm’s Drive Safe & Save, Progressive’s Snapshot, Allstate’s Drivewise, Nationwide’s SmartRide and SmartMiles (explicitly pay‑per‑mile for low‑mileage drivers) are all usage‑based products offered by incumbents. (statefarm.com)
   • So instead of per‑mile specialists pulling good risks away from incumbents, incumbents themselves are offering the same or similar telematics/low‑mileage products, blunting any moat for standalone per‑mile insurers.

3. Adoption of telematics/UBI is meaningful but still a minority of the market.

   • A 2025 survey of U.S. drivers finds only about 12% currently enrolled in an insurer telematics program; 88% are not. (autoinsurance.com)
   • A Maryland regulator report shows similar figures: roughly 13.2% of auto policies in that state were in a telematics program in 2023 (up from 9.5% in 2021), indicating steady but not overwhelming penetration. (insurancejournal.com)
   • Global and U.S. UBI/pay‑per‑mile markets are growing quickly in dollars but remain a relatively small slice of the overall auto insurance market, which is on the order of hundreds of billions annually in the U.S. alone. Estimates put pay‑per‑mile globally around $8.2B in 2024, projected to ~$32.7B by 2033 — material, but far from dominating auto insurance. (marketintelo.com)
   • With such partial adoption, the kind of severe adverse‑selection spiral Friedberg described (good drivers en masse leaving incumbents) has not materialized at industry scale.

4. Auto insurance rate hikes since 2020 are explained by inflation and loss costs, not by losing good risks to per‑mile.

   • From 2020 to 2024, U.S. motor vehicle insurance costs rose about 54%, but analysis attributes this primarily to inflation, sharply higher vehicle repair and replacement costs, medical inflation, higher claim severity, and climate‑driven catastrophe losses, plus investment‑income pressures — not to an exodus of low‑risk drivers to pay‑per‑mile insurers. (usafacts.org)
   • Major insurers’ own explanations for recent rate hikes align with those factors (repair labor and parts, more severe accidents, weather, litigation) rather than adverse selection from telematics/pay‑per‑mile programs. (thezebra.com)
   • In fact, incumbents often enroll their better risks into their own telematics programs and give them discounts, keeping many good drivers within their portfolios rather than ceding them to niche per‑mile startups. (autoinsurance.com)

5. Some telematics‑first startups are improving, but still without a clear moat over incumbents.

   • Root, a telematics‑heavy personal‑auto insurtech, has recently posted its first profitable year and strong stock performance, but it remains tiny relative to Progressive or Allstate in policies‑in‑force and premiums. (investors.com)
   • At the same time, incumbents like Geico, which initially lagged in telematics, have been making “rapid strides” and are now described by Berkshire Hathaway leadership as competitive with peers on telematics capabilities — again undercutting the notion that startups enjoy a durable moat. (reuters.com)

Conclusion
Over almost five years since the November 2020 prediction, we do see:

• More usage‑based and pay‑per‑mile options in the market;
• Low‑mileage/safe drivers sometimes benefiting from such programs; and
• Significant overall auto premium inflation.

However, the specific mechanism Friedberg forecast — low‑risk drivers flocking to per‑mile specialists, forcing incumbents to raise rates on a deteriorating pool and thereby creating a “huge market moat” for per‑mile insurers — has not occurred in observable data. Instead, telematics has been widely adopted by incumbents themselves, per‑mile specialists like Metromile have shrunk or been absorbed, and rate hikes are driven by cost and loss trends rather than documented adverse selection from per‑mile migration.

On balance, the prediction is wrong as of late 2025.

No post‑COVID event has yet met the bar of a new, global, COVID‑like respiratory pandemic, so there has been no real‑world test of a “Warp Speed 2.0” program.

• No new pandemic of similar character: Current lists of major epidemics and pandemics show COVID‑19 as the only ongoing respiratory pandemic; other recent emergencies (e.g., mpox outbreaks) are classified as epidemics/PHEICs, not a new global pandemic on the scale of COVID‑19.(en.wikipedia.org) Analyses of COVID’s status now frame it as transitioning toward endemicity rather than being replaced by a new pandemic.(time.com) Thus the condition in Jason’s prediction—“when the next Covid comes”—simply hasn’t occurred yet.
• Preparedness and mRNA capability have theoretical improvements: Global initiatives such as CEPI’s “100 Days Mission” explicitly aim to design and advance vaccine candidates (often using mRNA platforms) to trials within about 100 days of identifying a new threat, and emphasize that mRNA allows designs to be created and manufactured very rapidly—potentially within days.(investors.modernatx.com) WHO commentary in 2025 similarly says the world is in some ways more ready for the next pandemic than it was in 2019, though with important caveats.(who.int) These support Jason’s logic that future responses could be faster, but they are plans and capabilities, not yet stress‑tested in a new COVID‑scale event.
• Policy backtracking complicates the picture: In 2025, the U.S. HHS under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. moved to wind down or cancel many BARDA‑funded mRNA pandemic‑preparedness projects (including bird‑flu and next‑gen COVID vaccines), a step that former officials and experts criticized as undermining readiness for future pandemics.(reuters.com) This suggests that, at least in the U.S., the institutional conditions for a rapid “Warp Speed 2.0” response may be weaker than they appeared when the prediction was made.

Because the triggering event—a new COVID‑like pandemic—has not happened, and existing evidence is mostly about hypothetical capabilities and shifting policies rather than actual deployment in such an event, the prediction cannot be judged as correct or incorrect yet. It remains too early to tell.

Evidence since 2020 strongly suggests that mRNA platforms can generate a vaccine design within days of obtaining a pathogen’s genome, and that most remaining delay is indeed due to manufacturing scale‑up, clinical trials, and regulation. For SARS‑CoV‑2, Moderna has stated that its successful vaccine candidate mRNA‑1273 was designed in about two days once the viral genetic sequence was available, and the company went from sequence to a clinical‑grade batch ready to ship for human trials in 42 days, with first‑in‑human dosing starting in March 2020 and later phase II/III trials following over subsequent months. (symposeum.us) This experience broadly validates Sacks’ claim about what the technology can do and about where the bottlenecks lie. However, his prediction is explicitly about a future highly lethal, fast‑spreading pathogen. Since late 2020 there has not been a new, clearly distinct pandemic‑scale virus of that kind; the most notable concern has been H5N1 bird flu spreading in U.S. dairy cattle and sporadically infecting humans, for which Moderna and others have developed mRNA vaccine candidates that entered clinical trials in 2024–2025, again with the main time cost in trials and regulatory work. (reuters.com) Public sources, though, do not give day‑by‑day design timestamps for these newer candidates, and the specific scenario he described (a brand‑new, highly lethal, rapidly spreading virus emerging after his prediction) has not yet occurred. Because the crucial condition for testing his forecast has not really been met, and we lack direct evidence that a future vaccine was locked in literally within one day of sequence, the safest assessment is that it is too early to say whether his prediction was fully correct or not.

Evidence shows the UK’s first COVID-19 human challenge trials did not begin in January 2021.

• Planning articles in late 2020 said the UK government–funded challenge trials were expected to begin in January 2021, which matches what Jason was predicting. For example, an Irish Times report in September 2020 cited people involved in the project saying the UK studies were expected to begin in January at an hVIVO quarantine clinic in London.(irishtimes.com)
• However, formal ethics approval for the UK COVID-19 human challenge “characterisation study” was only granted on 17 February 2021, with the UK government press release saying the first COVID-19 human challenge study would begin within a month following that approval.(gov.uk)
• Imperial College London and the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust report that the first volunteers were actually inoculated with SARS‑CoV‑2 in a controlled setting in early March 2021, and that the first volunteers left quarantine by 25 March 2021. An Open Orphan / hVIVO update the same day likewise states that, following the 17 February ethics approval, the study began earlier in March 2021.(imperial.ac.uk)
• Imperial’s own overview of its human challenge programme summarizes that it ran the world’s first human challenge study for COVID‑19 in February 2021, again confirming a start no earlier than February 2021, not January.(imperial.ac.uk)

Since the first UK human COVID-19 challenge trials actually started around February–March 2021, not January 2021 as Jason predicted, the prediction is incorrect.

Evidence from mid‑2021 shows both in‑person conferences and U.S.–Europe leisure travel had resumed at clearly non‑trivial scale by summer 2021.

• In‑person conferences: Mobile World Congress 2021, one of the world’s largest tech trade shows, was held in Barcelona from June 28–July 1, 2021 as a hybrid event and drew about 20,000 in‑person attendees from over 100 countries, plus ~100,000 online participants.(icfo.eu) Coverage at the time described it as the first major tech convention to return physically, with organizers capping capacity around 35,000 but still calling the in‑person comeback a success and a springboard for more physical gatherings.(standard.co.uk) That level of attendance indicates conferences had resumed in a meaningful, not merely symbolic, way.

• International leisure travel (U.S. to Europe): By early June 2021, a long list of European countries—including Spain, France, Germany, Italy (via special flights), Greece, Denmark, Portugal, and others—had formally reopened for non‑essential / tourist travel from the U.S., usually for vaccinated Americans or those with negative tests.(traveloffpath.com) The EU as a bloc had also announced plans to reopen to fully vaccinated foreign tourists, specifically including Americans, by the start of summer 2021.(theguardian.com)

• Demand and volume indicators: A May 21, 2021 analysis by Hopper reported that, after the EU signaled it would allow vaccinated Americans in, searches from the U.S. to Europe jumped 47% in a day and 32% on a weekly basis, with strong clustering around July 4th weekend departures. It forecast higher transatlantic airfares driven by pent‑up demand and airlines adding capacity for summer 2021.(media.hopper.com) That behavior is consistent with a broad resumption of leisure trips, not just rare exceptions.

Conditions were still constrained compared to 2019 (capacity caps, testing/vaccine requirements, some big firms skipping conferences), but by any ordinary reading, large international conferences were happening again and Americans were vacationing in Europe in significant numbers by summer 2021. That matches Jason’s normalized prediction that “by summer 2021, in‑person conferences and international leisure travel (e.g., trips to Europe from the U.S.) will have resumed to a meaningful extent.”

Summary: As of late 2025, income share agreements (ISAs) have not become broadly successful or dominant in workforce training, nor have economically valuable trades generally moved to ISA-based schools. Traditional colleges remain central for high-earning fields. The trajectory of ISAs since 2020 has been contraction and regulatory pushback, not the expansion underlying Sacks’s scenario.

1. ISAs have struggled rather than “proved successful” at scale

• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) ruled in 2021 that ISAs are essentially private education loans and must comply with Truth in Lending Act requirements, signaling heightened regulatory scrutiny of the entire ISA model. (consumerfinancemonitor.com)
• A prominent early ISA program, Purdue University’s Back a Boiler (often cited as a flagship), stopped accepting new applicants and was effectively suspended by 2022; Purdue’s own site now states the program “is not accepting new applicants.” (purdue.edu)
• A 2023 bootcamp-market report notes “the fall of ISAs”: fewer than a quarter of coding bootcamps still offered ISAs, and only four of roughly 15 accredited colleges and universities that experimented with ISAs in the late 2010s had not paused or ended their programs as of 2022. (careerkarma.com)
• Major ISA-heavy providers have faced enforcement actions. Bloom Institute of Technology (Lambda School), a high-profile ISA bootcamp, was fined by the CFPB in 2024 for deceptive practices, with students released from ISAs and the company and CEO banned from consumer lending. (en.wikipedia.org)

Collectively, these developments show ISAs have encountered serious headwinds rather than the broad, sustained success Sacks implicitly assumed.

2. Training for valuable trades has not broadly migrated to ISA-based schools

• Some niche trade and tech programs (e.g., welding or specific tech bootcamps) use ISAs, but they represent a small, scattered set of providers, not “every trade that’s valuable.” (citybiz.co)
• The same bootcamp report emphasizes that ISA use is now a minority financing option even in the bootcamp segment, and that most traditional institutions that tried ISAs have exited. (careerkarma.com)

3. Traditional colleges still dominate economically valuable fields

• Bachelor’s degrees in computer and information sciences more than doubled over the last decade, reaching about 112,720 U.S. bachelor’s earners in 2022–2023, almost all from conventional colleges and universities. (studentclearinghouse.org)
• Overall U.S. bachelor’s degree production remains above 2 million per year, with strong representation in high-earning majors like business, engineering, health professions, and computer science, indicating that universities remain the primary pipeline into lucrative careers. (nu.edu)
• There is no evidence that “what’s left for colleges to do” is merely “the stuff that doesn’t add value”; on the contrary, high-earning fields are still core to university offerings and are growing in some cases. (studentclearinghouse.org)

Conclusion: Sacks’s forecast was that if ISAs became successful, then over time each economically valuable trade would develop its own ISA-based school, those functions would be “peeled out” of universities, and colleges would be left mainly with low–economic-value activities. By late 2025:

• ISAs have not become broadly successful; many early programs have been paused or dismantled, and regulators have tightened oversight. (consumerfinancemonitor.com)
• Economically valuable training remains largely inside traditional colleges and universities, which continue to confer the overwhelming majority of credentials in high-earning fields. (studentclearinghouse.org)

Given both the lack of ISA success and the absence of the predicted structural shift in higher education, this prediction has not come true and is best classified as wrong rather than merely “too early to tell.”

The prediction tied a strong 2021 economic rebound to successful vaccine rollout that would "end COVID" within about 3–5 months from late Nov 2020.

What actually happened with COVID and vaccines (Mar–May 2021)

• By May 22, 2021, 57% of U.S. adults had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, and eligibility had been opened to all adults a month earlier; by May 26, roughly half of U.S. adults were fully vaccinated. (cdc.gov)
• Cases and hospitalizations fell sharply from the January 2021 winter peak into late winter and spring, reflecting a substantial curbing of the initial winter wave, though not elimination of the virus. (abc7news.com)
• However, COVID was not "ended" within 3–5 months: the Delta variant became dominant by early July 2021 and drove a major resurgence in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths later that year. (cdc.gov)

Economic outcomes in 2021

• Real U.S. GDP grew 5.7% in 2021 after a 3.4% contraction in 2020, the fastest annual growth since 1984 and widely described as a sharp, historic rebound. (bea.gov)
• The economy added about 6.4 million jobs in 2021, and the unemployment rate fell from 6.7% in December 2020 to 3.9% in December 2021, returning close to pre-pandemic levels. (washingtonpost.com)
• This strong real growth was accompanied by supply-chain problems and the beginnings of the high inflation that would peak in 2022, so the year was not problem-free, but by standard macro indicators 2021 was a very strong recovery year.

Assessment

• The conditional epidemiological assumption (that vaccines would effectively "end" COVID within 3–5 months) was too optimistic, but vaccines did substantially curb the initial winter wave by spring 2021.
• The core economic forecast—that 2021 would be a "great" year economically with a very strong rebound—was borne out by GDP growth, job gains, and falling unemployment.

On balance, given that the main claim being evaluated is the strength of the 2021 economic rebound contingent on reasonably successful vaccine rollout, this prediction is best judged as right, though its timeline and optimism about fully ending COVID were overstated.

Assessment

The prediction was that once COVID-19 vaccines became available (late 2020 / early 2021), conditions in the United States would improve and 2021 would be “a much, much better year” than 2020.

Key facts:

• Vaccine availability and rollout

  • The first COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer–BioNTech) received FDA Emergency Use Authorization on December 11, 2020; Moderna followed on December 18, 2020, and Johnson & Johnson in February 2021.
  • By mid-April 2021, all U.S. adults were eligible for vaccination, and by the end of 2021, a majority of U.S. adults had been fully vaccinated.

• Public health and social conditions vs. 2020

  • 2020 saw the initial pandemic shock: widespread lockdowns, school and business closures, extremely limited testing early on, and no vaccines.
  • In 2021, after vaccine rollout, many U.S. states substantially relaxed restrictions, schools and universities widely reopened for in‑person learning, travel and entertainment resumed to a large extent, and economic activity rebounded strongly compared with 2020.
  • While variants such as Delta did cause serious waves and 2021 still involved significant illness and death, the overall level of social and economic normalcy and available medical protection was clearly higher than in 2020.

Conclusion

The prediction was not that the pandemic would be over, but that conditions would improve once vaccines came to market and that 2021 would be significantly better than 2020 overall in the U.S. That is broadly what occurred (greater medical protection, fewer restrictions, and substantial economic and social recovery compared with 2020), even though COVID remained a major problem.

Result: right – The general direction and qualitative comparison (2021 much better than 2020 in the U.S. once vaccines arrived) was borne out by subsequent events.

Time window
Chamath said in late Nov 2020 that “within 3 or 4 years” (i.e., by roughly late 2023–late 2024) the falling cost of wind and solar would make *“pulling the oil out of the ground economically infeasible.” We’re now past that window (late 2025), so the claim is testable.

1. Oil extraction and consumption remained economically attractive and grew

• Global oil consumption in 2024 reached about 101.8 million barrels per day, an all‑time high, slightly above 2023 levels. (forbes.com)
• The IEA’s 2025 oil outlook still expects global oil demand to rise further to ~105.5 mb/d by 2030, with only a plateau/peak near the end of the decade, not a collapse. (iea.org)
• The U.S. hit record oil production, and global production capacity is projected to exceed demand, implying oversupply risk rather than uneconomic extraction; producers are still incentivized to pump. (reuters.com)

If extracting oil had broadly become “economically infeasible” by 2023–24, we would not observe record demand, record U.S. output, and fears of future surplus capacity.

2. Large new oil projects continued to be sanctioned

• Rystad Energy projected and observed a surge in offshore greenfield oil and gas investment, with more than $214 billion in new projects lined up and annual offshore greenfield capex breaking the $100 billion mark again in 2022–24—the strongest growth in a decade. (ogj.com)
• ExxonMobil approved the $12.7 billion Uaru offshore project in Guyana in 2023, targeting about 800 million barrels and 250,000 bpd of new capacity starting 2026. (energy-analytics-institute.org)
• Additional deepwater/offshore FIDs (e.g., Shell’s Gato do Mato project in Brazil) have been taken with production expected late this decade, reflecting confidence that these barrels will be profitable. (reuters.com)

Continuing to approve multi‑billion‑dollar, high‑cost offshore projects is inconsistent with oil extraction having become uneconomic in general.

3. Wind and solar did become the cheapest new electricity, but that didn’t by itself kill oil

• Lazard’s LCOE analyses show that by the early–mid 2020s, utility‑scale solar and onshore wind were the lowest‑cost sources of new-build electricity, often well below coal and gas on an unsubsidized basis. (pv-magazine.com)
• BloombergNEF and other analyses confirm that costs for solar, wind, and storage continued to fall globally through 2024–25, with new wind and solar typically cheaper than new coal or gas plants in most markets. (reuters.com)

However, oil’s primary uses are transport fuels and petrochemical feedstocks, not power generation. Even though renewables have undercut fossil fuels in electricity, this has not yet translated into oil extraction becoming broadly uneconomic within a 3–4 year horizon. The IEA still projects oil demand growth into the late 2020s, and fossil fuels retained ~80% of global energy demand as of 2023. (iea.org)

Conclusion
By late 2023–24:

• Oil demand and production were at or near record highs, not collapsing.
• Companies were sanctioning and expanding large, often high‑cost offshore oil projects.
• While wind and solar became the cheapest new electricity sources, they did not render oil extraction generally “economically infeasible.”

Given both the timeframe and the breadth of his claim, Chamath’s prediction did not come true.

As of November 29, 2025, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has not run for President of the United States, let alone won a presidential election.

Key facts:

• Johnson has repeatedly been discussed in the media as a potential presidential candidate and has said he would consider a run if that’s what people wanted. (the-independent.com)
• In an October 2022 CBS interview, he explicitly said a presidential run was “off the table” at that time, citing family priorities. (thewrap.com)
• Later reporting in 2023–2025 notes that political parties sounded him out and that betting/prediction markets speculate about him as a future candidate (e.g., 2028), but confirm that he has not officially declared any campaign. (euronews.com)

The prediction from late 2020 was that within roughly 15 years (by about 2035) Johnson would both run for president and win. As of late 2025, we are only about five years into that 15‑year window. Because:

• He could still decide to run in a future cycle (e.g., 2028, 2032, or 2036, depending on how strictly you interpret “15 years”).
• The outcome of any such hypothetical future race is unknown.

…it is too early to determine whether the prediction will ultimately be correct or incorrect.

Therefore, the appropriate classification today is:

• Result: inconclusive (too early to tell).

Jason predicted that Iran “is going to be a crazy civil war” and implied this internal conflict would occur before or without Iran having nuclear bombs. He did not give any timeframe.

As of November 29, 2025, Iran has experienced severe unrest and uprisings—most notably the 2022–2023 Mahsa Amini ("Woman, Life, Freedom") protests, which were nationwide and unprecedented but ultimately suppressed with the Islamic Republic’s leadership still firmly in power, and later waves of protests and strikes in 2025 over water, electricity, and economic conditions.(en.wikipedia.org)(en.wikipedia.org)(en.wikipedia.org) Analysts and human-rights reports consistently describe these events as protests/uprisings and heavy crackdowns, not as an organized, sustained civil war between major internal armed factions.(cnbc.com)(hrw.org) There is no credible source describing the situation in Iran up to late 2025 as a civil war.

On the nuclear side, Iran has become a "nuclear threshold" state with large stocks of highly enriched uranium (up to 60%) and very short breakout time, but open-source assessments from arms-control and parliamentary research bodies indicate Iran has not produced weapons-grade (90%) uranium nor demonstrably built or deployed nuclear weapons as of 2025.(iranprimer.usip.org)(iranwatch.org)(commonslibrary.parliament.uk) These sources explicitly treat Iran as capable of moving quickly to a bomb if it chooses, rather than as a state that already possesses nuclear weapons.

Because (1) the forecast civil war has not occurred yet, and (2) Iran has not openly acquired nuclear weapons, while (3) no explicit deadline was given for when this civil war was supposed to happen, there is no way to judge Jason’s prediction as fulfilled or disproven by late 2025. It remains a statement about an open-ended future scenario.

Therefore, the appropriate classification is inconclusive (too early to tell).