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Maybe I read that wrong, but wasn't the point that Japan wasn't acting appropriately, and that white paper, along with other research, forced (for lack of a bet

Maybe I read that wrong, but wasn't the point that Japan wasn't acting appropriately, and that white paper, along with other research, forced (for lack of a better word) them to own up to the scale of what they were seeing? Isn't the point that, while the particulars were proved false, the overall thrust of the article that Japan was stalling action which MAY lead to those numbers was true? Did I miss the point of this entirely?

kspacewalk2 7y ago
Honestly, who has 1-1.5h to read this without skimming through most of the verbiage to tease out the point? I read the "pre-registered" part. It was wrong on a bunch of points, both numbers and impact. I strongly doubt a major world economy of 126 million people with many world-class epidemiologists and doctors and generally non-disastrous political leadership was 'forced' into anything by this. The hubris of this guy is quite off-putting.
- wolco 7y ago
  You would be surprised by how doctors are forced to agree with medicial associations or lose their licease.
  - kspacewalk2 7y ago
    Can your point be made more explicitly? I fail to see a connection between my comment and your reply to it.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  > The hubris of this guy is quite off-putting. You’re not a certified expert. Shut up and listen to your betters. If there were actually the reserves of competence you and others like you believe in; if the authorities actually deserved our trust almost everywhere would have done as well as Taiwan or at least Korea. In the world we actually live in the CDC stopped the Seattle Flu Study from testing for COVID-19 and banned private labs from testing for more than two weeks after fucking up its own tests. In the world we actually live in the prestige media spent most of February making fun of people who thought this was a real problem that would spread outside China, and later Italy. They didn’t act like they were taking it seriously. They followed the lead of the WHO, which should have been setting the alarm and instead was telling people that the real enemy was prejudice. Many countries with well credentialed experts failed. You wouldn’t accuse them of hubris. But they failed.
  - abduhl 7y ago
    Yes, but do you have any thoughts about the topic we were talking about before your rant?
    - barry-cotter 7y ago
      A month ago it was obvious to Patrick that there was a great deal of untracked community spread of COVID in Japan. If the Japanese government was aware of that they would have shut the country down. In reality they only did that four days ago[1]. If they had done that a month ago there wouldn’t be such a shortage of PPE they’re calling for donations of raincoats. There are going to be thousands of excess deaths in Tokyo and they’ll be triaging people leaving the old to die like they did in Lombardy before the month is out. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52313807 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52313807 > One poll shows 75% of people think the prime minister took too long to declare a state of emergency in Tokyo. After a recent spike in cases in the capital Tokyo, experts warned that the city’s emergency medical facilities could collapse under the pressure. Officials in Tokyo have also urged people to work from home. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, centre, declared the state of emergency at a special meeting of medical experts After the initial state of emergency came into force on 8 April, a number of other regional governors called for the measures to be extended to their areas, saying that cases were growing and their medical facilities were overwhelmed. Japan’s two emergency medical associations also issued a joint statement warning that they were “already sensing the collapse of the emergency medical system”.
      - abduhl 7y ago
        Is patio11 a certified expert? Should he be considered my better? Your better? Should we consider him the better of the actual certified experts in infectious diseases? If not, then shouldn’t you shut up and listen to those people, who are certified as your betters when it comes to their subject matter? Even the ones who you called out as being wrong in your initial post? I think maybe you should kick up the leg rest on your La-Z-Boy and relax into your armchair rather than attacking other posters. Unless you’re a certified expert and not just an armchair expert.
- philwelch 7y ago
  > Honestly, who has 1-1.5h to read this without skimming through most of the verbiage to tease out the point? I’m not trying to flex on you, but it didn’t take me nearly that long to read it. And it really does not demonstrate good faith on your part to come here and tear down patio11 without even doing the basic due diligence of actually reading the damn thing you’re commenting on first.
SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
Everyone with disastrous predictions about the coronavirus can and does make that claim. If my predictions aren't true, give it a few weeks and exponential growth will make them true. If they still aren't true, then they would have been true, but whatever we did a few weeks ago must have been the correct reaction to my predictions. The very general thrust - that Japan surely had community spread - I agree was true and not widely acknowledged at the time. But I don't think that exempts the more specific projections from analysis.
- cortesoft 7y ago
  I understand the problem with some of the claims people make about things being really bad being unfalsifiable. At the same time, the expected outcome of social distancing is for the outcome to be not as bad... so people will always be able to make this complaint. What exactly do you expect from people who are advocating social distancing?
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    I expect a degree of epistemic humility. "We don't know how bad it's going to get, but we know that the worst case is very bad, so let's go to extreme lengths to make sure we don't hit it" - no objections to that message. But in my local area, and from what I understand many others, people were saying in mid-March that it was already too late and there would surely be bodies in the streets. Which hasn't been that bad until now, but it's going to be an increasingly large problem as most countries pass the peak and try to reopen. A lot of people have been convinced that reopening can never happen, that if people are allowed to go to school or restaurants that'll be what tips the health care system over.
    - XorNot 7y ago
      "We took the measures that mitigated a disaster, therefore the disaster was never going to happen" is an idiotic opinion. A virus that spreads from close proximity with infected people, and you're arguing that shoving people back in close proximity is not going to contribute to spreading it? Why? On what basis will this not happen, despite this being exactly what happened? Spain took about 1 month to go from "hm this coronavirus thing is spreading" to "if you're over 75 we're not going to bother with ventilators because we can't spare the capacity". Things have to reopen eventually, but if you haven't actually increased your test and tracing capacity, then the effect is going to be exactly what happened in 1918 https://www.popsci.com/story/health/coronavirus-1918-flu-pandemic/ https://www.popsci.com/story/health/coronavirus-1918-flu-pan... (wherein an experiment with a control was accidentally run at a substantial cost in lives between two US cities).

kspacewalk2 7y ago

Honestly, who has 1-1.5h to read this without skimming through most of the verbiage to tease out the point? I read the "pre-registered" part. It was wrong on a bunch of points, both numbers and impact. I strongly doubt a major world economy of 126 million people with many world-class epidemiologists and doctors and generally non-disastrous political leadership was 'forced' into anything by this. The hubris of this guy is quite off-putting.

wolco 7y ago
You would be surprised by how doctors are forced to agree with medicial associations or lose their licease.
- kspacewalk2 7y ago
  Can your point be made more explicitly? I fail to see a connection between my comment and your reply to it.
barry-cotter 7y ago
> The hubris of this guy is quite off-putting. You’re not a certified expert. Shut up and listen to your betters. If there were actually the reserves of competence you and others like you believe in; if the authorities actually deserved our trust almost everywhere would have done as well as Taiwan or at least Korea. In the world we actually live in the CDC stopped the Seattle Flu Study from testing for COVID-19 and banned private labs from testing for more than two weeks after fucking up its own tests. In the world we actually live in the prestige media spent most of February making fun of people who thought this was a real problem that would spread outside China, and later Italy. They didn’t act like they were taking it seriously. They followed the lead of the WHO, which should have been setting the alarm and instead was telling people that the real enemy was prejudice. Many countries with well credentialed experts failed. You wouldn’t accuse them of hubris. But they failed.
- abduhl 7y ago
  Yes, but do you have any thoughts about the topic we were talking about before your rant?
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    A month ago it was obvious to Patrick that there was a great deal of untracked community spread of COVID in Japan. If the Japanese government was aware of that they would have shut the country down. In reality they only did that four days ago[1]. If they had done that a month ago there wouldn’t be such a shortage of PPE they’re calling for donations of raincoats. There are going to be thousands of excess deaths in Tokyo and they’ll be triaging people leaving the old to die like they did in Lombardy before the month is out. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52313807 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52313807 > One poll shows 75% of people think the prime minister took too long to declare a state of emergency in Tokyo. After a recent spike in cases in the capital Tokyo, experts warned that the city’s emergency medical facilities could collapse under the pressure. Officials in Tokyo have also urged people to work from home. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, centre, declared the state of emergency at a special meeting of medical experts After the initial state of emergency came into force on 8 April, a number of other regional governors called for the measures to be extended to their areas, saying that cases were growing and their medical facilities were overwhelmed. Japan’s two emergency medical associations also issued a joint statement warning that they were “already sensing the collapse of the emergency medical system”.
    - abduhl 7y ago
      Is patio11 a certified expert? Should he be considered my better? Your better? Should we consider him the better of the actual certified experts in infectious diseases? If not, then shouldn’t you shut up and listen to those people, who are certified as your betters when it comes to their subject matter? Even the ones who you called out as being wrong in your initial post? I think maybe you should kick up the leg rest on your La-Z-Boy and relax into your armchair rather than attacking other posters. Unless you’re a certified expert and not just an armchair expert.
philwelch 7y ago
> Honestly, who has 1-1.5h to read this without skimming through most of the verbiage to tease out the point? I’m not trying to flex on you, but it didn’t take me nearly that long to read it. And it really does not demonstrate good faith on your part to come here and tear down patio11 without even doing the basic due diligence of actually reading the damn thing you’re commenting on first.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

Everyone with disastrous predictions about the coronavirus can and does make that claim. If my predictions aren't true, give it a few weeks and exponential growth will make them true. If they still aren't true, then they would have been true, but whatever we did a few weeks ago must have been the correct reaction to my predictions. The very general thrust - that Japan surely had community spread - I agree was true and not widely acknowledged at the time. But I don't think that exempts the more specific projections from analysis.

cortesoft 7y ago
I understand the problem with some of the claims people make about things being really bad being unfalsifiable. At the same time, the expected outcome of social distancing is for the outcome to be not as bad... so people will always be able to make this complaint. What exactly do you expect from people who are advocating social distancing?
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  I expect a degree of epistemic humility. "We don't know how bad it's going to get, but we know that the worst case is very bad, so let's go to extreme lengths to make sure we don't hit it" - no objections to that message. But in my local area, and from what I understand many others, people were saying in mid-March that it was already too late and there would surely be bodies in the streets. Which hasn't been that bad until now, but it's going to be an increasingly large problem as most countries pass the peak and try to reopen. A lot of people have been convinced that reopening can never happen, that if people are allowed to go to school or restaurants that'll be what tips the health care system over.
  - XorNot 7y ago
    "We took the measures that mitigated a disaster, therefore the disaster was never going to happen" is an idiotic opinion. A virus that spreads from close proximity with infected people, and you're arguing that shoving people back in close proximity is not going to contribute to spreading it? Why? On what basis will this not happen, despite this being exactly what happened? Spain took about 1 month to go from "hm this coronavirus thing is spreading" to "if you're over 75 we're not going to bother with ventilators because we can't spare the capacity". Things have to reopen eventually, but if you haven't actually increased your test and tracing capacity, then the effect is going to be exactly what happened in 1918 https://www.popsci.com/story/health/coronavirus-1918-flu-pandemic/ https://www.popsci.com/story/health/coronavirus-1918-flu-pan... (wherein an experiment with a control was accidentally run at a substantial cost in lives between two US cities).