The Worldwide C0VlD-19 Coronavirus Pandemic Discussion Thread...

[Thoelt53]

@James Klymus - I can understand how they would strain your intellectual capacity.

But here you go:


New York Times has some cool models that if you play with them wil show you why it's pretty safe to reopen.

We did a 45 day lockdown and these are how the curves are projected afterwards

Opinion | Trump Wants to ‘Reopen America.’ Here’s What Happens if We Do. (Published 2020)

Many could die if we ease up too soon.

www.nytimes.com

Again, not interested in debating the accuracy of these models, it's just my strong opinion that they're useful.

All models are wrong, but some are useful - Wikipedia

You said you were bored of COVID.

I am bored of you.

If you don’t wish to debate your opinion, keep it to yourself or go find some Reddit echo chamber to post in.

 

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[ChrisV]

You said you were bored of COVID.

I am bored of you.

If you don’t wish to debate your opinion, keep it to yourself or go find some Reddit echo chamber to post in.

He asked.

 

[Kevin88660]

I think you see a sharp (and measurable) difference between those whose income is secure, so sheltering in place is a holiday... and those whose income is destroyed where sheltering and place is destructive and possibly cataclysmic. It's easy for those pummeled by the economy to say "get back to work" and easy for those whose financial fortunes are unaffected to say "safer at home." Business owners destroyed, workers in many cases better off. The balance between medical catastrophy and personal destruction has been a source of two groups of people talking past each other. Thus the phrase... we're all in the same storm but not all in the same boat.

Coronavirus Relief Often Pays Workers More Than Work

Roughly half of all U.S. workers stand to earn more in unemployment benefits than they did at their jobs before the coronavirus pandemic shut down wide swaths of the U.S. economy, a result of government relief that employers say is complicating plans to reopen businesses.

www.wsj.com

Ya I agree Vigilante.

There is no easy solution. Government needs to shift policies quickly. Nice summary about “same storm but in different boat”.

Looking back it is obvious that government should have accelerated in distancing since late Jan and Feb to prevent a biggest health Disaster and bigger eventually economic crisis.

But right now as we are speaking today at end April. It is time to shift away from stringent locked down to opening up the economy as quickly as possible because we might be repeat the previous mistake in the exactly opposite direction! I will explain why.

Data has show
1) Whenever get massive testing you seem to get a result on massive infection and some studies pointing to high antibodies among the population. The Death rate is likely to be a lot less than what we think. We probably looking at below 0.5 percent if we really can test everybody.

2) The badly hit countries are not the countries with worst medical resources or least socially conscious individuals. It is all in the northern hemisphere. Temperature and humility matter a lot more than your distancing measures.

3) You cannot revive dead business just like you cannot revive dead people. if business people get wiped out and they lose their lease and staffs and investors capital..it takes years before they can get up again. This is not just production and gdp number going down. People who invested their retirement in the market are going to get crushed as investment today is mainly investing in publicly traded businesses. It is time to look at the irreversible damage on economy and finance now.

I believe that it is time to react quickly and open up the economy strategically.
If you are making money and spending money to boost the economy you can leave home. If not stay at home.

a) Continue to stop all social activities such as house parties/religion gathering and schools that have no impact on the economy.

b) Continue to stop high risk low economic return business activities such as cinema and gym.

c) Continue to enforce work at home if the jobs obviously can be done at home.

d) Open up EVERYTHING else and force people to wear mask.

 

[Primeperiwinkle]

A guy I know who works at Chick Fil A is on unemployment right now.

They’re sending him $800 a week.

As you can imagine he has no reason to go back to work. $800 a week is a HUGE amount of money to him and he’s chillin like a villain while playin XBox.

When do we expect the full brunt of this economic fallout to be obscenely obvious even to a person like this?

(Without graphs or references to Atlas Shrugged, please.)

 

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[Bekit]

I've been taking screenshots from the Worldometer site when we reached certain milestones.

Here's when the world reached 1, 2, and 3 million cases:


Observations:

• It took ~4 months to go from 0-1 million cases. Then it took only 13 days to go from 1 million to 2 million cases. The fact that we went from 2 million to 3 million at roughly the same pace (12 days) is probably due to the lockdowns. It would probably have continued an exponential pace if the spread had continued unchecked.
• The first million cases produced 51,000 deaths. The second million cases produced 75,000 deaths. The third million cases produced 82,000 deaths.

Here's when the world reached 1M cases vs when the US reached 1M.

Observations:

• Notice that the US deaths are higher. I wonder if part of the reason for this is that China was underreporting their deaths. I wonder if another part of the reason is that for a long time in the US, you had to be sick enough to be hospitalized in order to get a test, skewing the early case numbers to have a higher propensity toward death.
• It'll be interesting to watch how the US deaths compare to world deaths at 2 million cases.
• It'll also be interesting to compare how many days it takes the US to reach 2 million, compared to how many days the world took to reach 2 million.

 

[Thoelt53]

He asked.

Sure, and you love spouting your opinion so long as it isn’t challenged. As soon as your argument is broken down you’re either “tired of repeating” yourself or “bored of COVID.”

It’s healthy to challenge the opinions of others as well as your own. It’s how we grow, and it seems you know that. Just a few pages ago you were betting me that cases and catastrophe would spike if we lifted the lockdowns ‘early.’ Today you’ve said you are all for lifting lockdowns.

Clearly you are self aware and willing to change your opinions as you learn, like we all do. Why try to hide the fact that posts you’ve read here have influenced your opinion? It doesn’t make you appear any more intelligent.

 

[MoneyDoc]

@James Klymus - I can understand how they would strain your intellectual capacity.

But here you go:


New York Times has some cool models that if you play with them wil show you why it's pretty safe to reopen.

We did a 45 day lockdown and these are how the curves are projected afterwards

Opinion | Trump Wants to ‘Reopen America.’ Here’s What Happens if We Do. (Published 2020)

Many could die if we ease up too soon.

www.nytimes.com

Again, not interested in debating the accuracy of these models, it's just my strong opinion that they're useful.

All models are wrong, but some are useful - Wikipedia

What exactly are you trying to prove with this? What did I say that's straining your intellectual capacity?

I'm getting this VERY ignorant vibe from you where only your views and points are right, and everyone else that disagrees is intellectually below you.

It doesn't work like that buddy.

 

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[JamesQB8]

I've been taking screenshots from the Worldometer site when we reached certain milestones.

Here's when the world reached 1, 2, and 3 million cases:

View attachment 32639
Observations:

• It took ~4 months to go from 0-1 million cases. Then it took only 13 days to go from 1 million to 2 million cases. The fact that we went from 2 million to 3 million at roughly the same pace (12 days) is probably due to the lockdowns. It would probably have continued an exponential pace if the spread had continued unchecked.
• The first million cases produced 51,000 deaths. The second million cases produced 75,000 deaths. The third million cases produced 82,000 deaths.

Here's when the world reached 1M cases vs when the US reached 1M.
View attachment 32641
Observations:

• Notice that the US deaths are higher. I wonder if part of the reason for this is that China was underreporting their deaths. I wonder if another part of the reason is that for a long time in the US, you had to be sick enough to be hospitalized in order to get a test, skewing the early case numbers to have a higher propensity toward death.
• It'll be interesting to watch how the US deaths compare to world deaths at 2 million cases.
• It'll also be interesting to compare how many days it takes the US to reach 2 million, compared to how many days the world took to reach 2 million.

Confirmed cases vs Actual Cases = No Idea - Data may suggest anything for 10-50x Actual Cases.

Direct Deaths vs Co Morbidity = Different countries are categorising deaths differently. Heart attack after testing positive of Covid? Yup Covid. Coughed and then fell in front of bus, Covid.

Testing more people is naturally going to increase the number of confirmed cases, potentially EVEN IF total number of cases are declining.

This is one of the problems, we still have a lot of incomplete and poor data.

End house arrest and stop tyrannical governments pls

 

[Thoelt53]

What exactly are you trying to prove with this? What did I say that's straining your intellectual capacity?

I'm getting this VERY ignorant vibe from you where only your views and points are right, and everyone else that disagrees is intellectually below you.

It doesn't work like that buddy.

I think you mean “arrogant.”

Ignorance is tolerable, to an extent, arrogance can F*ck off.

 

[ChrisV]

What did I say that's straining your intellectual capacity?

The comments you bolded weren't meant for you, it was for the guy I tagged. Sorry for the confusion.

Sure, and you love spouting your opinion so long as it isn’t challenged. As soon as your argument is broken down you’re either “tired of repeating” yourself or “bored of COVID.”

It’s healthy to challenge the opinions of others as well as your own. It’s how we grow, and it seems you know that. Just a few pages ago you were betting me that cases and catastrophe would spike if we lifted the lockdowns ‘early.’ Today you’ve said you are all for lifting lockdowns.

Clearly you are self aware and willing to change your opinions as you learn, like we all do. Why try to hide the fact that posts you’ve read here have influenced your opinion? It doesn’t make you appear any more intelligent.

I'm genuinely bored of the topic, but I'm not going to ignore people when they tag me or reply to my comments. Plus a little ADHD on my part.

The posts here have influenced my opinion. Which is the entire reason I interact with people on the left and the right. It challenges my opinion. I posted this video earlier, really explains why I engage opposing opinions people (to combat the echo-chamber effect.)

For the most part, I'm exposed to New Yorkers. Posting on here gives me a sense of what other parts of the country feels.

I actively seek out dissenting views, and engage opposing views. It's a way of increasing viewpoint diversity, like discussed in that video. Both the Pro-lockdown group and the Anti-lockdown group have valid points. My goal is to develop a balanced perspective by listening to both sides of an argument. Not to join a "team."

I'm challenging the Fastlane Orthodoxy, and allowing the Fastlane Orthodoxy to challenge mine. I mean I'm obviously not out to win any popularity contests here and if I were I'm doing a terrible job.

Regading this:

Just a few pages ago you were betting me that cases and catastrophe would spike if we lifted the lockdowns ‘early.’ Today you’ve said you are all for lifting lockdowns.

Both are true. It will likely spike cases, and I'm also for lifting them (of course depending on the state.) The point in saying that it would 'spike cases' wasn't to imply I didnt they shouldn't lift them, it's to cite evidence that the lockdowns have had an effect. In other words, the ~20% of new cases that might result from lifting them (costs) wouldn't outweight the benefits.

 

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[James Klymus]

Testing more people is naturally going to increase the number of confirmed cases, potentially EVEN IF total number of cases are declining.

And governments are going off of this flawed data, like Illinois, who is still under lockdown order until June.

Of course if you start testing more people, you will see an artificial increase, because you are finding more cases in the pool of sick people. Yet politicians are using the "well, I'm just listening to the experts" Scapegoat.

Yet somehow a layperson, like my self and many others on this forum, can draw this conclusion from 1 minute of critical thought combined with freely available public data, not having to consult with the government's "experts".

By the way, do you think politicians can keep getting away with citing these "mystery experts"?

I know JB pritzker (illinois gov) was asked in a press conference who his sources were, and he refused to disclose that information.

I feel that politicians probably could get away with this until about a decade ago, ever since then the general public has had access to the same and better information that these law makers have access to.

So that begs the question, why do they have to hide their sources? Is this the 1950's where I have no access to information and I have to blindly trust the government? Does that strategy work in a world where us laypeople have unlimited access to info? Or are they still playing the "I know more than you so trust me unwaveringly"

 

[James Klymus]

The comments you bolded weren't meant for you, it was for the guy I tagged. Sorry for the confusion.

Yeah @MoneyDoc, I'm the dumbass he was referring to.

I'm so stupid that I can't comprehend his graphs, But he's so smart that he has to resort to personal attacks instead of arguing his point.

See you guys, I'll be eating glue if you need me

 

[Kak]

A guy I know who works at Chick Fil A is on unemployment right now.

They’re sending him $800 a week.

As you can imagine he has no reason to go back to work. $800 a week is a HUGE amount of money to him and he’s chillin like a villain while playin XBox.

When do we expect the full brunt of this economic fallout to be obscenely obvious even to a person like this?

(Without graphs or references to Atlas Shrugged, please.)

The answer is never.

 

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[Primeperiwinkle]

The answer is never.

I meant more from an economics point of view than a metaphysical awakening pov.

Do you really think that the government will somehow keep sending out money or printing money and that America won’t see a huge depression? Because if we will.. my question was more.. when will it get bad enough that the majority agrees about the economy tanking.

Everyone keeps comparing this to a Depression Level event but I can’t use the curve or trends from the actual Depression to anticipate stuff now. I guess I’m wondering.. are we in for a four year thing? Ugh. I can’t even formulate a sentence on this. Sorry if I’m not being clear.

I just.. I keep expecting a bunch of you to do what Walter did in his new post, the one where he shares his expectations about manufacturing. I want to stop belaboring the point about what’s happening because of Covid19 right now and get on to what needs to be done next.

How will a severe downturn in the economy affect specific businesses in America?

How can someone prepare now for a significant economic decline?

That sort of thing. Unless that’s too much for this morbidly obese thread..and we start a new one.

 

[Thoelt53]

The comments you bolded weren't meant for you, it was for the guy I tagged. Sorry for the confusion.


I'm genuinely bored of talking about this, but I'm not goin to ignore people when they tag me or reply to my comments

The posts here have influenced my opinion. Which is the entire reason I interact with people on the left and the right. It challenges my opinion. I posted this video earlier, really explains why I engage opposing opinions people (to combat the echo-chamber effect.)

I mean I'm obviously not out to win any popularity contests here.

Regading this:



Both are true. It will likely spike cases, and I'm also for lifting them. The point in saying that it would 'spike cases' wasn't to imply I didn't think it was a good idea, it's to cite evidence that the lockdowns have had an effect.

I’ve replied to a few of your posts within this thread with zero response from you. Not that it matters, but I wanted to point that out.

I don’t think anyone disagrees that a lockdown could possibly reduce the number of cases. That doesn’t make it constitutional.

When you have testing resulting in false positives, what good does that do anyone? How does that give us accurate data?

Many of us have been arguing that the data we have is absolute shit, and therefor any model produced with that data is shit.

Yet you have continually argued that we don’t understand how modeling works because we’re not statisticians. What does that matter? How can a model be of any use if the data is shit?

Bad testing and fudged COVID deaths doesn’t support that the lockdowns had an effect. However our government used these garbage models and deaths to lockdown the nation resulting in unprecedented hardship and unconstitutional actions.

The country can’t simply be “reopened.” So many businesses are gone for good, and we’re now living with surveillance, authoritarian precedent and socialism that isn’t going away.

The coming depression is going to cause more death and suffering at the hand of authoritarianism. All because ignorant people were spoon fed shit data, shit models and shit science.

I previously mentioned conspiracy (@Vigilante). Is this not? The writing is on the wall. Again, I am not talking “conspiracy theory.” Conspiracy is a real thing and it doesn’t involve tinfoil hats. At its most basic existence, conspiracy is often seen in foiled murders, robberies and terrorism. Unfortunately it also exists in the higher realms of finance and government.

Throttle Up: Criminal Government - LewRockwell

“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” – Richard Feynman – Rogers Commission “It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The...

www.lewrockwell.com

“The phrase “Throttle Up” jumped into my consciousness in the last week when Trump and his coronavirus task force of government hacks and bureaucrat lackeys announced the guidelines for re-opening America, as if a formerly $22 trillion economy, tied to a $90 trillion global economy, could be turned off and on like a light switch. Clap off, clap on. It just doesn’t work that way. The arrogance and hubris of people who think they can declare a global shut down for a virus and think they can easily deal with the intended and unintended consequences of doing so, is breathtaking in its outrageous recklessness and egotistical belief in their own infallibility.

This contemptible belief in their own superiority has permeated every fiber of those who rule over us, particularly among captured central bankers, corrupt politicians, bought off scientists, and billionaire oligarchs. It is the same groupthink, purposeful failure to address risks, and willfully ignoring those in the trenches that murdered seven astronauts on January 28, 1986 and has created the 2nd Great Depression of today. “Throttle Up” is going to result in the same outcome as it did in 1986.


If you want to figure out who benefits from a man-made crisis, just follow the money. The Federal government has committed at least $3 trillion of your grandchildren’s money to the crisis thus far, with the Federal Reserve announcing another $6 trillion of monetary support. That’s $9 trillion, or $70,000 per household. The average household size is 2.5. If we assume each household got their $1,200 C0VlD-19 rebate (actually just giving them back the taxes they already pay), that’s $3,000 per household.

A critical thinking individual might wonder who got the other $67,000 of stimulus, or 95.7% of the money allocated to “save America”. It certainly hasn’t made its way to small business owners who are going out of business faster than burning gas through a defective O-ring. If only $400 billion is making its way into the pockets of formerly working Americans, where did the other $8.6 trillion go?”

 

[James Klymus]

Posted this a few times in this thread, but they keep updating it so it's relevant:

https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-C0VlD-19/

Some interesting points:

According to data from the best-studied countries such as South Korea, Iceland, Germany and Denmark, the overall lethality of Covid19 is between 0.1% and 0.4% and thus up to twenty times lower than initially assumed by the WHO.

50% to 80% of test-positive individuals remain symptom-free. Even among the 70 to 79 year old persons about 60% remain symptom-free, many more show only mild symptoms.

Many media reports of young and healthy people dying from Covid19 have proven to be false upon closer inspection. Many of these people either did not die from Covid19 or they in fact had serious preconditions (such as undiagnosed leukaemia).

The often shown exponential curves of “corona cases” are misleading, since the number of tests also increases exponentially. In most countries, the ratio of positive tests to total tests either remains constant between 5% to 25% or increases rather slowly.

Countries without lockdowns and contact bans, such as Japan, South Korea and Sweden, have not experienced a more negative course of events than other countries. This might call into question the effectiveness of such far-reaching measures.

According to leading lung specialists, invasive ventilation of Covid19 patients is often counterproductive and causes additional damage to the lungs.

The Californian physician Dr. Dan Erickson described his observations regarding Covid19 in a much-noticed press briefing. Hospitals and intensive care units in California and other states have remained largely empty so far. Dr. Erickson reports that doctors from several US states have been „pressured“ to issue death certificates mentioning Covid19, even though they themselves did not agree.

Dr. Erickson recommends quarantining only the sick and not the healthy or the whole society, as this could have negative effects on health and psyche.

Dr. Erickson estimates the lethality of C0VlD-19 to be about 0.1% or similar to influenza. According to Dr Erickson, a face mask only makes sense in acute situations such as in hospital, but not in everyday life. (Note: Youtube deleted the press briefing after it had 5 million views. You’ll find a backup here.)

In 2019, a WHO study found „little to no scientific evidence“ for the effectiveness of measures such as „social distancing“, travel restrictions and lockdowns. (Original study)

 

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[GIlman]

Here is something I wrote in another thread 10/19/2019, which in light of current events pretty much sums up my opinions on a lot of things.



But, @Bekit I will offer my explanation for the infection vs death paradox you brought up. This is my best explanation, but part of the problem from the beginning has been sloppiness In the data available. Maybe the federal or state gov’s have done the data right, but I haven’t seen direct evidence of that.

When you are counting infections, you at classifying people by what we refer to as a Cohort, fancy name for grouping by some parameter. Your Cohort is based on time, with breaks at the million mark. So if you want to know the deaths, you really need to actually follow deaths by cohort. The problem is that it takes usually 3 weeks on average for people to go from infected to dead. So deaths from earlier cohorts bleeds over into the later cohorts. If you were infected during the first cohort but died when the second cohort of infections were being calculated, you need to be counted in the 1 million group not the 2 million group.

This can create an artifact as if deaths are increasing per million, but really the deaths have to be kept and catalogued in each million infected group. Actually if you go back to some of my very early posts you would see that I was saying this from the beginning. The only way to know what was really happening was to group people each day or week, then follow and categorize the outcomes tracked specifically to the group they were assigned to. Otherwise the data is basically sh&t because the stream of new cases today obscures what the deaths today mean. We have one big group that is constantly changing - 100% likely to obscure the data.

 

[Thoelt53]

And governments are going off of this flawed data, like Illinois, who is still under lockdown order until June.

Of course if you start testing more people, you will see an artificial increase, because you are finding more cases in the pool of sick people. Yet politicians are using the "well, I'm just listening to the experts" Scapegoat.

Yet somehow a layperson, like my self and many others on this forum, can draw this conclusion from 1 minute of critical thought combined with freely available public data, not having to consult with the government's "experts".

By the way, do you think politicians can keep getting away with citing these "mystery experts"?

I know JB pritzker (illinois gov) was asked in a press conference who his sources were, and he refused to disclose that information.

I feel that politicians probably could get away with this until about a decade ago, ever since then the general public has had access to the same and better information that these law makers have access to.

So that begs the question, why do they have to hide their sources? Is this the 1950's where I have no access to information and I have to blindly trust the government? Does that strategy work in a world where us laypeople have unlimited access to info? Or are they still playing the "I know more than you so trust me unwaveringly"

The scapegoat of US politicians is the American taxpayer. There is no accountability.

 

[Andreas Thiel]

Notice that the US deaths are higher. I wonder if part of the reason for this is that China was underreporting their deaths. I wonder if another part of the reason is that for a long time in the US, you had to be sick enough to be hospitalized in order to get a test, skewing the early case numbers to have a higher propensity toward death.

There is the difference between coutries that some only count deaths among known cases (Germany does that) while others test pretty much all people that die. If the US gradually tested more people who died who were not known cases for the virus, then that would also raise the number over time.

Remember that China at some point said they did not officially count some people as infected, even though they were tested positive. They did not have to, because those people showed no symptoms. So it is not unlikely that they have an interest in prettifying the numbers while the US seems hellbent on being number #1 in the carnage department.

 

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[ChrisV]

Okay, I'll individually address points.

Most of the problem is that I don't feel like people genuinely want to understand this. I feel more like people have decided a position and want to maintain that position.

Many of us have been arguing that the data we have is absolute shit, and therefor any model produced with that data is shit.

Yes, the data that that was used to build the models was crappy.

But when there are unknown variables, you plug in the most likely guess.

That's why statisticians say "all models are wrong, but some are useful"

Don’t Believe the COVID-19 Models

That’s not what they’re for.

www.theatlantic.com

If you note these projections have an upper and lower range, as denoted by the orange area. That it used to project a range of possibilities.

Yet you have continually argued that we don’t understand how modeling works because we’re not statisticians. What does that matter? How can a model be of any use if the data is shit?

Yes the data wasn't perfect. But they needed to use the best data available to get out a model quickly to make our best estimate.

Let's say there's a chef, and he has to make a cake. He has to use the ingredients that are available to him right now. If he only has mediocre materials - he just has to use the materials he has. It doesn't make him a bad chef, it just means the materials weren't ideal.

The models are our best guess based on the resources we have.

Okay it wasn't perfect data. Maybe the deaths would have only been 1.1 million. Maybe it would have been 4.2 million. That's why we say "all models are wrong, but they're useful." They're not meant to pick out the exact number of deaths, they're meant to give a rough idea. The model was useful in that it told us "uhhhh.. we got a pretty big problem on our hands" whether it's 1.1 million, or 2.2 million or 4.4 million. There's a range of 'wrongness' that a model is capable of. I mean the mode wasn't so wrong that it would have only been 7 deaths.

Once we have better data we can go back, and update the Imperial College model, just to see what it would have been with better data, but with the resources we had at the time 2.2 million was the best guess. I'm fairly confident that when we go back and update it it will still be well over a million, but we'll see when that happens.

I mean you don't even need complex models to tell you that a virus that doubles in numbers every 4 days is gonna be pretty bad. It's not gonna stop until it infects the majority of the population, since almost no one has immunity.

But the Imperial College model was likely more accurate than even the IMHE model. The Imperial College (again the one predictiong 2.2 million) model isn't just a projection but uses “agent-based models” which works basically like a game of the sims. They actually emulate how humans move but while also including pathogens. These models have historically been very accurate and accurately predict seasonal flu outbreaks every year.

But regardless... for almost 45 days almost no one left the house. Therefore we will never know the actual number of people who would have been infected had it been allowed to spread. But we do know that these social distancing measures had a major impact.

Our best guess without social distancing measures is ~2.2 million
Our best guess with social distancing measures is ~75K

People are saying "oh only 75K people died, so the model predicting 2.2 million was wrong" and it's a complete non-sequator. The fact that only 58K people died so far is not evidence that the models were wrong. Whether they were wrong or not, you absolutely can not determine that the original models were wrong from the current death count. It's completely impossible.

I don't know how to better explain this.

In reality here's the only way you could get perfect numbers. This is obviously impossible, so it's hypothetical. To get perfect numbers you'd have to take 2 completely identical Planet Earths. You take Planet Earth A, and do quarentine measures. Then you take Planet Earth B, with no quarantine measures. Count everything up and find the differences.

But we obviously can't do that, so we run simulations. So our best guess for the US oly count on Planet Earth A would be 75K deaths, and our best guess for the US only count on Planet Earth B would be 2.2 million deaths.

But you can not say "Planet Earth A only had 75K deaths, therefore the model for Planet Earth B was wrong"

You're comparing the treatment group to the control group!

I really don't know how else to explain this.

They're simply conflating two different models built for two different purposes.

I don’t think anyone disagrees that a lockdown could possibly reduce the number of cases.

Well in the last post you said there was little evidence that they help unless I'm mistake.

That doesn’t make it constitutional.

Regarding constitutionality, a judge will have to rule that I'd people sue. We'll see what happens.

Bad testing and fudged COVID deaths doesn’t support that the lockdowns had an effect

The discrepancies in testing aren't having that big of an effect on the numbers. They're a problem, but not nearly as big as people are making them, imo.

This is a forum with a heavy libertarian rhetoric, and libertarians just hate regulation. Libertarians are more likely to agree with statements like “regulations trigger a sense of resistance in me.” It's no surprise that a libertarian forum would despise lockdown measures.

So people are finding any and all evidence to support "the lockdowns are bullshit." They're going to take any evidence that supports their case and magnify the living shit out of it.

Like realistically given the fact that tests are limited i think it's fair that if Sally dies of pneumonia and her Husband who she lived with had COVID - why would you waste a test to confirm it was COVID.

It's blown way out of proportion here, imo. There are 57K people dead. I strongly believe they're not affecting the numbers that much.

 

[ChrisV]

I mean I honestly have other stuff that I have to do, and some of these replies take me like 20 minutes to write out so if it's just going to be going back and forth I don't really see the purpose.

I mean if people are genuinely asking questions, that's one thing.. but it'd it's just a veiled argument I'd rather be working on other projects.

 

[Vigilante]

A little bit of both. I'm self-employed, but I subcontract.

I file 1099s.

Also, I think you're misunderstanding what a stimulus check is. Every American citizen gets a stimulus check. They do it during a recession to stimulate economies.

Not every American. I didn’t get one, and a lot of people from here did t get one.

 

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[ChrisV]

Not every American. I didn’t get one, and a lot of people from here did t get one.

Oh my mistake then. I didn't get one, but I figured it was because of the 1099s.

 

[Vigilante]

Okay, I'll individually address points.

Most of the problem is that I don't feel like people genuinely want to understand this. I feel more like people have decided a position and want to maintain that position.


Yes, the data that that was used to build the models was crappy.

But when there are unknown variables, you plug in the most likely guess.

That's why statisticians say "all models are wrong, but some are useful"

Don’t Believe the COVID-19 Models

That’s not what they’re for.

www.theatlantic.com

If you note these projections have an upper and lower range, as denoted by the orange area. That it used to project a range of possibilities.

View attachment 32649


Yes the data wasn't perfect. But they needed to use the best data available to get out a model quickly to make our best estimate.

Let's say there's a chef, and he has to make a cake. He has to use the ingredients that are available to him right now. If he only has mediocre materials - he just has to use the materials he has. It doesn't make him a bad chef, it just means the materials weren't ideal.

The models are our best guess based on the resources we have.

Okay it wasn't perfect data. Maybe the deaths would have only been 1.1 million. Maybe it would have been 4.2 million. That's why we say "all models are wrong, but they're useful." They're not meant to pick out the exact number of deaths, they're meant to give a rough idea. The model was useful in that it told us "uhhhh.. we got a pretty big problem on our hands" whether it's 1.1 million, or 2.2 million or 4.4 million. There's a range of 'wrongness' that a model is capable of. I mean the mode wasn't so wrong that it would have only been 7 deaths.

Once we have better data we can go back, and update the Imperial College model, just to see what it would have been with better data, but with the resources we had at the time 2.2 million was the best guess. I'm fairly confident that when we go back and update it it will still be well over a million, but we'll see when that happens.

I mean you don't even need complex models to tell you that a virus that doubles in numbers every 4 days is gonna be pretty bad. It's not gonna stop until it infects the majority of the population, since almost no one has immunity.

But regardless... for almost 45 days almost no one left the house. Therefore we will never know the actual number of people who would have been infected had it been allowed to spread. But we do know that these social distancing measures had a major impact.

Our best guess without social distancing measures is ~2.2 million
Our best guess with social distancing measures is ~75K

People are saying "oh only 75K people died, so the model predicting 2.2 million was wrong" and it's a complete non-sequator. The fact that only 58K people died so far is not evidence that the models were wrong. Whether they were wrong or not, you absolutely can not determine that the original models were wrong from the current death count. It's completely impossible.

I don't know how to better explain this.

In reality here's the only way you could get perfect numbers. This is obviously impossible, so it's hypothetical. To get perfect numbers you'd have to take 2 completely identical Planet Earths. You take Planet Earth A, and do quarentine measures. Then you take Planet Earth B, with no quarantine measures. Count everything up and find the differences.

But we obviously can't do that. So our best guess for the US oly count on Planet Earth A would be 75K deaths, and our best guess for the US only count on Planet Earth B would be 2.2 million deaths.

But you can not say "Planet Earth A only had 75K deaths, therefore the model for Planet Earth B was wrong"

You're comparing the treatment group to the control group!

I really don't know how else to explain this.

They're simply conflating two different models built for two different purposes.

Well in the last post you said there was little evidence that they help unless I'm mistake.


Regarding constitutionality, a judge will have to rule that I'd people sue. We'll see what happens.


The discrepancies in testing aren't having that big of an effect on the numbers. They're a problem, but not nearly as big as people are making them, imo.

This is a forum with a heavy libertarian rhetoric, and libertarians just hate regulation. Libertarians are more likely to agree with statements like “regulations trigger a sense of resistance in me.” It's no surprise that a libertarian forum would despise lockdown measures.

So people are finding any and all evidence to support "the lockdowns are bullshit." They're going to take any evidence that supports their case and magnify the living shit out of it.

Like realistically given the fact that tests are limited i think it's fair that if Sally dies of pneumonia and her Husband who she lived with had COVID - why would you waste a test to confirm it was COVID.

It's blown way out of proportion here, imo. There are 57K people dead. I strongly believe they're not affecting the numbers that much.

There was no 75,000 best case. If the baker doesn’t know his cake tastes like shit, that would make him a bad baker. Every single aspect of every point in this post is bullshit but it’s really not worth anyone’s time to break it down because you’re not here to learn anything.
Can you describe a scenario in which you could have been wrong all along about this? Since a 98% forecast miss was still right, in your world what would it take to be wrong? Is there one?

 

[ChrisV]

Can you describe a scenario in which you could have been wrong all along about this? Since a 98% forecast miss was still right, in your world what would it take to be wrong? Is there one?

Yes. When everything is over and we look at everything in retrospect we will know for sure.

But the models that the Imperial College used are usually very good. They're used every year to project seasonal flu outbreaks.

 

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[Al Berton]

Hi everybody
I’m from Italy. Hope this post finds you and your beloved ones OK.
I always looked at the USA as an economic model, and I am interested to know what are the measures that the government is willing to take regarding touristic structures as Restaurants, Hotels, Beach clubs etc. that of course are strongly affected from this F*cking COVID19 and will be at reopening.
Here for the moment everything’s quite undefined, but of course you can’t ask to a Restaurant owner to cut the number of his tables of say a 50-60% and maintain the same structure he had before…

 

[Vigilante]

Yes. When everything is over and we look at everything in retrospect we will know for sure.

But the models that the Imperial College used are usually very good. They're used every year to project seasonal flu outbreaks.

I didn’t ask about the Imperial College model. I asked what specific criteria would make you wrong here. It seems like you simply use a sliding scale of varying degrees of right.

it’s an intellectual exercise. For example, if there were 4,000,000 dead I personally would have been wrong.

What is the scenario in which you hypothetically could be wrong here? What does wrong look like specifically?

 

[Vigilante]

Hi everybody
I’m from Italy. Hope this post finds you and your beloved ones OK.
I always looked at the USA as an economic model, and I am interested to know what are the measures that the government is willing to take regarding touristic structures as Restaurants, Hotels, Beach clubs etc. that of course are strongly affected from this F*cking COVID19 and will be at reopening.
Here for the moment everything’s quite undefined, but of course you can’t ask to a Restaurant owner to cut the number of his tables of say a 50-60% and maintain the same structure he had before…

There’s a majority of those in power in the United States that have zero concept of the impact of your last statement. Since they lack basic intelligence for what it takes to run a restaurant they figure a restaurant can just reopen under draconian economic restrictions and carry on. It’s a grand experiment wherein government not Darwinism will determine who survives. In the USA so far money has flowed to large corporations but the best the local restaurant could hope for is a few months worth of operating expenses while his business was forced closure. This was the United States first countrywide foray into socialism and at first glance it has created an insatiable thirst for power through societal control that the people might never recover from. We don’t know the answer to your question yet.

 

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[ChrisV]

I didn’t ask about the Imperial College model. I asked what specific criteria would make you wrong here. It seems like you simply use a sliding scale of varying degrees of right.

it’s an intellectual exercise. For example, if there were 4,000,000 dead I personally would have been wrong.

What is the scenario in which you hypothetically could be wrong here? What does wrong look like specifically?

I think that a sliding scale is exactly the right way to look at it, but If I had to choose a number, I'd say if we reran it with updated data and under a million died in the simulation in comparison to the 2.2 million, that would pretty egregious error.

 

[David Harrison]

While everyone's being entertained, the lions are being released, (and they're hungry)

The UK government has gained “unprecedented powers” in its bid to curb the coronavirus pandemic.
The Emergency Coronavirus Act grants police, immigration officers and public health officials new powers to detain “potentially infectious persons” and put them in isolation facilities.
It will also enable the government to prohibit and restrict gatherings and public events for the purpose of curbing the spread of C0VlD-19.
The 329-page Bill became law on Wednesday (25 March) after passing through Parliament in just three days without opposition MPs forcing any votes and without amendment from the Lords.

It's getting more interesting by the day...