My apologies @GWcruiser , I thought that you started this thread because yours was the first post.
thank you @medtro for explaining the origin of this chat thread.
re-disengaging . . .
COVID-19 chat
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thank you @medtro for explaining the origin of this chat thread.
re-disengaging . . .
As always, the devil is in the details. You don't believe in science, you believe in scientism. Just remember, lies, damned lies, and statistics
Many people have died to protect our way of life, so let's not be so casual about giving it up over latest doomsday prediction. It's uncanny how the leftist answer to each of these alleged "emergencies" is a bigger, more powerful central government.
Our country has shut down a HUGE part of the economy, approved massive government spending, and (in some places) has placed unprecedented restrictions on assembly/freedom of movement. All of this was done on the basis of highly inaccurate death toll projections. Now that we have more data and the projections continue to be downgraded, it's becoming more and more clear that we've overreacted. Hopefully the long term cost of that overreaction isn't devastating to our country's long term prospects for success. Even with our faults, the world still needs this country to thrive.
Please delete this thread as Common sense would think we should avoid certain topics on this forum...everyone thinks their an expert on everything. Lets use our time for more productive things and not ruin this forum.
Me too, I could see the train wreck on the horizon.
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I heard an interesting interview with an epidemiologist back in February.
He warned that the lack of an apparent pandemic threat that results from social distancing policy can become fodder for downplaying both the pandemic threat itself, and the policy that suppressed it. Don't let your guard down, he said.
Where you see an overreaction driven by bad models, I see a public health policy that's actually working--and a bunch of expectedly mediocre models. (I welcome that we see things differently.)
Statisticians have a saying that all models are wrong, but some are useful. I think that was true here.
To their credit, all of the models (that I saw) suggested that a social distancing policy would suppress and delay the peak and not overwhelm hospital resources. Though particulars were wrong, the big picture was useful.
And so far that's what happened: The majority of people distanced (though some can't), things haven't been nearly as bad as they could have been, and we've avoided too many living hells like in Italy, where an excellent medical system was completely overwhelmed.
Thank God. Still, thousands of Americans are dying of Covid daily.
I'm am eager to see a cogent economic recovery strategy that's responsible to public health. And I hope that, throughout all of this, we keep a careful eye on that fine line where one person's rights abridge another's. That'll be challenging (and has been since 1788).
More broadly, I hope these discussions don't **** up our Land Cruising. There's no doubt that those of us on this forum are an unlikely collection of oddball-eclectic Japanese safari tractor enthusiasts whose politics are all over the map.
So, I look forward to getting out Land Cruising before too long. And I think I'll disengage now too--but feel free to thrash me in a response
.
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It really nice out this evening!
Very well putAs always, the devil is in the details. You don't believe in science, you believe in scientism. Just remember, lies, damned lies, and statistics
Many people have died to protect our way of life, so let's not be so casual about giving it up over latest doomsday prediction. It's uncanny how the leftist answer to each of these alleged "emergencies" is a bigger, more powerful central government.
Our country has shut down a HUGE part of the economy, approved massive government spending, and (in some places) has placed unprecedented restrictions on assembly/freedom of movement. All of this was done on the basis of highly inaccurate death toll projections. Now that we have more data and the projections continue to be downgraded, it's becoming more and more clear that we've overreacted. Hopefully the long term cost of that overreaction isn't devastating to our country's long term prospects for success. Even with our faults, the world still needs this country to thrive.
NYT reporting...... very interesting
"New York City, already a world epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, sharply increased its death toll by more than 3,700 victims on Tuesday, after officials said they were now including people who had never tested positive for the virus but were presumed to have died of it."
www.nytimes.com
"New York City, already a world epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, sharply increased its death toll by more than 3,700 victims on Tuesday, after officials said they were now including people who had never tested positive for the virus but were presumed to have died of it."
N.Y.C. Death Toll Soars Past 10,000 in Revised Virus Count (Published 2020)
The city has added more than 3,700 additional people who were presumed to have died of the coronavirus but had never tested positive.
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- #50
@AK101 - this is exactly the same method of counting deaths as used for the flu numbers, so it's no real surprise. Some are for this method, some are against this method. But they don't just tally up everyone, they actually use some common sense to determine if it was an underlying cancer, heart condition, or general known issue that caused the death: and whether or not they had flu or COVID symptoms before death. This is how most other countries are counting/attributing deaths, too. Also, in reading many sources, agencies are looking at deaths-per-month in past years, and finding this years numbers are way above average.
So no, this probably isn't a conspiracy to inflate numbers.
ps: this is the CDC line:
*Because influenza surveillance does not capture all cases of flu that occur in the U.S., CDC provides these estimated ranges to better reflect the larger burden of influenza. These estimates are calculated based on CDC’s weekly influenza surveillance data and are preliminary.
So no, this probably isn't a conspiracy to inflate numbers.
ps: this is the CDC line:
*Because influenza surveillance does not capture all cases of flu that occur in the U.S., CDC provides these estimated ranges to better reflect the larger burden of influenza. These estimates are calculated based on CDC’s weekly influenza surveillance data and are preliminary.
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I heard an interesting interview with an epidemiologist back in February.
He warned that the lack of an apparent pandemic threat that results from social distancing policy can become fodder for downplaying both the pandemic threat itself, and the policy that suppressed it. Don't let your guard down, he said.
Where you see an overreaction driven by bad models, I see a public health policy that's actually working--and a bunch of expectedly mediocre models. (I welcome that we see things differently.)
Statisticians have a saying that all models are wrong, but some are useful. I think that was true here.
To their credit, all of the models (that I saw) suggested that a social distancing policy would suppress and delay the peak and not overwhelm hospital resources. Though particulars were wrong, the big picture was useful.
And so far that's what happened: The majority of people distanced (though some can't), things haven't been nearly as bad as they could have been, and we've avoided too many living hells like in Italy, where an excellent medical system was completely overwhelmed.
Thank God. Still, thousands of Americans are dying of Covid daily.
I'm am eager to see a cogent economic recovery strategy that's responsible to public health. And I hope that, throughout all of this, we keep a careful eye on that fine line where one person's rights abridge another's. That'll be challenging (and has been since 1788).
More broadly, I hope these discussions don't **** up our Land Cruising. There's no doubt that those of us on this forum are an unlikely collection of oddball-eclectic Japanese safari tractor enthusiasts whose politics are all over the map.
So, I look forward to getting out Land Cruising before too long. And I think I'll disengage now too--but feel free to thrash me in a response
In my career I have worked with many models. As a general rule the absolute numbers predicted by models should always be taken with a grain of salt. However, good models are able to predict trends and rates reliably .
Generally speaking the models aren't the issue. The real problems are things like communication about the limitations of any given model, disclosure of the source data and algorithms, and clear discussion of the potential for important variables to be missing from the model.
There can also be a huge differences of opinion when drawing conclusions from a model. The "I believe in science" narrative, that usually carries an accompanying implication that anyone who disagrees with certain opinions and conclusions doesn't believe in science, is arrogant and wrong.
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- #54
And the latest: people are most contagious the day before they begin showing symptoms. And 15% of pregnant women entering hospitals to give birth are testing positive, with no symptoms.
And no model would have predicted that people panic and buy up all the toilet paper and baking goods. I'm comfortable think this panic is not caused by the press: it is caused by people not understanding how viruses propagate. At times like this, lack of basic knowledge - aka ignorance - is just as dangerous as ignoring good science or listening to bad science.
The reason early estimates seem exaggerated is they are intended to show what will happen if nothing is done: mainly to get people off their butts to do something to mitigate the problem that is brewing. If social distancing rules weren't followed, we'd be seeing the millions of deaths that were predicted by the models. Just as we are seeing a higher per capita death rate where these rules are ignored, or aren't even in force. In the end, we'll see the models weren't wrong.
And no model would have predicted that people panic and buy up all the toilet paper and baking goods. I'm comfortable think this panic is not caused by the press: it is caused by people not understanding how viruses propagate. At times like this, lack of basic knowledge - aka ignorance - is just as dangerous as ignoring good science or listening to bad science.
The reason early estimates seem exaggerated is they are intended to show what will happen if nothing is done: mainly to get people off their butts to do something to mitigate the problem that is brewing. If social distancing rules weren't followed, we'd be seeing the millions of deaths that were predicted by the models. Just as we are seeing a higher per capita death rate where these rules are ignored, or aren't even in force. In the end, we'll see the models weren't wrong.
The 2nd gen models were presented as having mitigation baked in to their calculations. The ongoing revisions have already proven they were wrong.
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- #56
I'd like to see references that support the claim.
Here's the March 16 Imperial College model that turned heads:
It's hard to find number of hospital beds in use today. So the numbers in the models below are only indicators of cases, you have to extrapolate bed to cases. The curves though are what is important.
Here's an example of todays US data showing what mitigation is doing. Red line is a guesstimate of mine - but is not a quadratic function curve that it would have been if we did nothing. But even as a linear function, shows we'd be well above the current daily infection rate.
Here's data from the model. So far I don't see any major discrepencies in how the model is working, especially when so many states are ignoring mitigation measures, and so many people just don't care and are ignoring the measures even if they are asked to try to help.
This shows a prediction for doing nothing versus a few mitigation strategies in the UK.
And the UK data from today:
Again, no discrepency I can see.
Main thing I take away is that we are not over the hump by any means.
Here's a very interesting review of the data:
Conclusion: No reason for lockdown to continue any longer
Nobody can prove what would have happened without the lockdown one way or another, but there is evidence that the normal epidemic curve was already going to lead to tapering off short of overwhelming the healthcare delivery system.
If that's the case, what a colossal blunder by the masters of the universe to shut off the economy.
Conclusion: No reason for lockdown to continue any longer
Nobody can prove what would have happened without the lockdown one way or another, but there is evidence that the normal epidemic curve was already going to lead to tapering off short of overwhelming the healthcare delivery system.
If that's the case, what a colossal blunder by the masters of the universe to shut off the economy.
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- #60
@Clunky - if you believe that raving lunatic saying the curve in China or Italy didn't stop because of radical closure of everything, well, I have no clue what to say.
Let's use the fact his Italy chart shows infections going to zero. Compare that to this data: Italy Coronavirus: 168,941 Cases and 22,170 Deaths - Worldometer
I can assure you Italy is still fighting new infections today. So I call farce.
Even using his "it was getting better by Jan 23" the chart he used clearly shows Jan 25 had higher counts, even with his fudged data. Most people don't get tested until they seek a hospital bed. That is generally 10-12 days after infection, or longer.
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) --- Among patients who developed severe disease, the medium time to dyspnea ranged from 5 to 8 days, the median time to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) ranged from 8 to 12 days, and the median time to ICU admission ranged from 10 to 12 days.5,6,10,11 Clinicians should be aware of the potential for some patients to rapidly deteriorate one week after illness onset.
The guy ranting has zero credibility ... a money manager with a financial interest in ending the social distancing.
Let's use the fact his Italy chart shows infections going to zero. Compare that to this data: Italy Coronavirus: 168,941 Cases and 22,170 Deaths - Worldometer
I can assure you Italy is still fighting new infections today. So I call farce.
Even using his "it was getting better by Jan 23" the chart he used clearly shows Jan 25 had higher counts, even with his fudged data. Most people don't get tested until they seek a hospital bed. That is generally 10-12 days after infection, or longer.
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) --- Among patients who developed severe disease, the medium time to dyspnea ranged from 5 to 8 days, the median time to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) ranged from 8 to 12 days, and the median time to ICU admission ranged from 10 to 12 days.5,6,10,11 Clinicians should be aware of the potential for some patients to rapidly deteriorate one week after illness onset.
The guy ranting has zero credibility ... a money manager with a financial interest in ending the social distancing.
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