7 ms·

That's a great example; and, the instant we got 1 (one!) report that gave evidence of a significant percentage of the population having experienced the virus wi

That's a great example; and, the instant we got 1 (one!) report that gave evidence of a significant percentage of the population having experienced the virus with few symptoms -- thus lowering the CFR (Case Fatality Rate) for that segment of the population to something near a low multiple of the normal Flu -- the "lockdown" hypothesis should have been discarded, violently, for that segment of the population! But, it wasn't; because these "falsifying" signals were ignored (or worse yet, stridently denied), and were certainly not actually tested -- we have yet to see even a single case of a country aggressively testing a random sampling of their entire population for immunity! This one example is an astonishing repudiation of the global response to Coronavirus. Its insane! Wholesale self-destruction of the global supply-chain and division of labor, because the political, medical and scientific elites just don't want to be shown to be wrong.

guscost 6y ago
The botched response to COVID-19 will bring the whole institution of modern science crashing down, when all is said and done. Maybe you don't want to believe that, but there it is: https://guscost.com/2020/05/12/pandemic-woo/ https://guscost.com/2020/05/12/pandemic-woo/ By the way, I still have not heard of a single serosurvey being run in South Korea. Why is that?
- pjkundert 6y ago
  Why, indeed. It's almost like people just don't want to know the CFR of this thing... Why wouldn't you want to know the CFR, in exquisite detail, down to groups refined by as many distinguishing details as you can possibly measure? But, surprise! You simply cannot know the CFR of Covid-19 without statistically valid immunity studies of the general population. Which nobody is doing! Just ... crazy. Its stunningly clear that outcomes for this disease are wildly variable. For some, its extremely risky, for other groups, its not even a passing thought! And yet, here we are -- global, carte-blanche "quarantining", to "flatten the curve" -- that big, ill-defined "curve" that means sudden death to our civilization if we get near it! And yet, here I sit in a community with virtually empty hospitals, but almost no progress toward herd immunity. But, with an undercurrent of well-distributed carriers -- because nobody is interested in testing the general population (for either infection or immunity). And, we're starting to "open up". Heaven help the elderly and immune-compromised -- they are just toast. In 2-3 weeks, a brutal "second wave" is just ... guaranteed. And, it'll be presented as a "surprise"! Who could have possibly predicted it! By golly, we'll have to really put the hammer down, this time! I pray that this bungled, too-terrible-to-be-an-accident response to Covid-19 comes home to roost on those who should have known better. But, the truth won't be coming out from the criminally complicit "media". If only we had any "Journalists" to expose this thing! But, big-media is on the gravy-train of the politicians (here in Canada, at least), so there's no hope of that. Independent journalists need to step up, somehow run the gauntlet of our controlled Internet media outlets (say something contrary to WHO -- ban-hammer!), and expose this thing! Fortunately, evidence-based reality cannot be suppressed forever!
  - guscost 6y ago
    > In 2-3 weeks, a brutal "second wave" is just ... guaranteed. And, it'll be presented as a "surprise"! Who could have possibly predicted it! By golly, we'll have to really put the hammer down, this time! I don’t think this will happen in the northern hemisphere, thankfully. There is reason to believe both that effective R drops off a cliff in the summer months, and that we’re much closer to herd immunity (or whatever is possible with this kind of virus) than most people think. If you want references I can dig them up, but I guess we’ll see either way in a few weeks.
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      > we’re much closer to herd immunity (or whatever is possible with this kind of virus) than most people think Certainly for SF/LA, which is basically an extension of China because of the daily flights to SFO and LAX. The SF tests show 3.6% of 78,000 exposed to corona, but nobody knows how accurate those tests are. The hospital dashboard has been flat. I just checked, and the numbers have been flat (no growth) for over a month, with only 62 deaths to date and 38 in ICU now: https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#hospital https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#ho...
    - roelschroeven 6y ago
      > I don’t think this will happen in the northern hemisphere, thankfully. There is reason to believe both that effective R drops off a cliff in the summer months, and that we’re much closer to herd immunity (or whatever is possible with this kind of virus) than most people think. If you want references I can dig them up, but I guess we’ll see either way in a few weeks. All sources I've seen before say something different about those two things (i.e. supposedly effective R will maybe go a bit down in summer but in all likelihood not by much; and herd immunity is in most (or all) places still very far away), but I'm not following the science very close so I might very well be wrong. I'd be very grateful if you could dig up those references!
      - guscost 6y ago
        Keep in mind these are mostly preprints, so adjust their value accordingly: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.26.115832v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.26.115832v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.18.100545v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.18.100545v1 https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30610-3 https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30610-3 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20061440v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20061440v... https://hal-pasteur.archives-ouvertes.fr/pasteur-02569149 https://hal-pasteur.archives-ouvertes.fr/pasteur-02569149 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.21.108308v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.21.108308v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.02.20120477v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.02.20120477v... https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.27.20081893v3 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.27.20081893v... There isn't much completed research about the seasonality of COVID-19 itself (understandably), the "cliff" is mostly an educated guess based on the strong seasonal pattern we see with every other respiratory virus. Here are a couple papers: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.12.20034728v3 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.12.20034728v... https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.22.20025791v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.22.20025791v...
- WildParser 6y ago
  Yes, indeed. When you talk to an epidemiologist (e.g. a doctor of physics), ask him to look at f'/f (death per day/death total) in a log-chart they'll tell you that it is 'useless' to look. If you show him a straight line with R²>0,99 (e.g. Germany using 7 day averages) - they will tell you that it all means nothing and that the curve in fact is bending - because the 'policies' must have worked. If you tell them that working policies should have left visible marks in the curve and that the curve is converging: They will just block you. Science is dead - at least in the field of epidemiology.
bsder 6y ago
> thus lowering the CFR (Case Fatality Rate) for that segment of the population to something near a low multiple of the normal Flu -- the "lockdown" hypothesis should have been discarded, violently, for that segment of the population! You are deeply into "Not even wrong" territory. The plural of anecdote is not data. Did you forget HCQ already? Lots of "positive reports" and yet controlled studies shows that it kills more Covid patients than leaving them untreated. We have data and hypotheses showing that it's mostly continuous exposure that matters (which means that nongroup workers are better off than we expected and casual interactions to buy groceries and such are safer than expected), and yet everybody wants to get back into groups--which is known wrong. Two Mother's Day gatherings account for more than 50% of the Covid cases in Santa Cruz county. Data by itself is meaningless. Data leads to a "falsifiable hypothesis" which can then be tested. AFTER the test passes or fails, you modify your Bayesian priors and your working tasks. Lather, rinse, repeat.
- pjkundert 6y ago
  OK, I'll bite, and ignore the dismissive "not even wrong" insult! Remember how the scientific method works: if you make a hypothesis, it's the most fragile thing in the universe -- a single falsification is all it takes to send you packing. So, every time someone trots out "the plural of anecdote is not data" when presented with a refutation, this tells us something important... Like it or not, that's just how it works. A group's CFR is almost the only thing that matters to that specific group. If the CFR is low, it literally does not matter at all how, or how fast you got infected -- the statistical outcomes are now known! The "continuous exposure" vs. "casual interactions" thing? That R-0; interesting, but almost irrelevant vs. CFR. In fact, once low group-CFR has been ascertained, the "normal behavior case" R-0 defines the societal infection/immunity rate required to achieve their group's contribution to societal herd immunity, but otherwise is of little interest: the average group participant just wants to gain immunity, as quickly as possible, to provide protection for the high-risk groups. So, the fact that multiple independent instances of (accidentally measured, statistically significant) high rates of group infection without demise, leading to a low group CFR are extremely surprising, and that should have led to a "stop work, tools down" moment for those engineering our societal response. But, it did not. That is disappointing. I think the most disappointing thing, to me, is how many in our society are more than ready and willing to throw the innocent, high-risk elderly and those with co-morbidities "under the bus", just to avoid their own (very low) CFR. Take it like a man/woman.

guscost 6y ago

The botched response to COVID-19 will bring the whole institution of modern science crashing down, when all is said and done. Maybe you don't want to believe that, but there it is: https://guscost.com/2020/05/12/pandemic-woo/ https://guscost.com/2020/05/12/pandemic-woo/ By the way, I still have not heard of a single serosurvey being run in South Korea. Why is that?

pjkundert 6y ago
Why, indeed. It's almost like people just don't want to know the CFR of this thing... Why wouldn't you want to know the CFR, in exquisite detail, down to groups refined by as many distinguishing details as you can possibly measure? But, surprise! You simply cannot know the CFR of Covid-19 without statistically valid immunity studies of the general population. Which nobody is doing! Just ... crazy. Its stunningly clear that outcomes for this disease are wildly variable. For some, its extremely risky, for other groups, its not even a passing thought! And yet, here we are -- global, carte-blanche "quarantining", to "flatten the curve" -- that big, ill-defined "curve" that means sudden death to our civilization if we get near it! And yet, here I sit in a community with virtually empty hospitals, but almost no progress toward herd immunity. But, with an undercurrent of well-distributed carriers -- because nobody is interested in testing the general population (for either infection or immunity). And, we're starting to "open up". Heaven help the elderly and immune-compromised -- they are just toast. In 2-3 weeks, a brutal "second wave" is just ... guaranteed. And, it'll be presented as a "surprise"! Who could have possibly predicted it! By golly, we'll have to really put the hammer down, this time! I pray that this bungled, too-terrible-to-be-an-accident response to Covid-19 comes home to roost on those who should have known better. But, the truth won't be coming out from the criminally complicit "media". If only we had any "Journalists" to expose this thing! But, big-media is on the gravy-train of the politicians (here in Canada, at least), so there's no hope of that. Independent journalists need to step up, somehow run the gauntlet of our controlled Internet media outlets (say something contrary to WHO -- ban-hammer!), and expose this thing! Fortunately, evidence-based reality cannot be suppressed forever!
- guscost 6y ago
  > In 2-3 weeks, a brutal "second wave" is just ... guaranteed. And, it'll be presented as a "surprise"! Who could have possibly predicted it! By golly, we'll have to really put the hammer down, this time! I don’t think this will happen in the northern hemisphere, thankfully. There is reason to believe both that effective R drops off a cliff in the summer months, and that we’re much closer to herd immunity (or whatever is possible with this kind of virus) than most people think. If you want references I can dig them up, but I guess we’ll see either way in a few weeks.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    > we’re much closer to herd immunity (or whatever is possible with this kind of virus) than most people think Certainly for SF/LA, which is basically an extension of China because of the daily flights to SFO and LAX. The SF tests show 3.6% of 78,000 exposed to corona, but nobody knows how accurate those tests are. The hospital dashboard has been flat. I just checked, and the numbers have been flat (no growth) for over a month, with only 62 deaths to date and 38 in ICU now: https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#hospital https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#ho...
  - roelschroeven 6y ago
    > I don’t think this will happen in the northern hemisphere, thankfully. There is reason to believe both that effective R drops off a cliff in the summer months, and that we’re much closer to herd immunity (or whatever is possible with this kind of virus) than most people think. If you want references I can dig them up, but I guess we’ll see either way in a few weeks. All sources I've seen before say something different about those two things (i.e. supposedly effective R will maybe go a bit down in summer but in all likelihood not by much; and herd immunity is in most (or all) places still very far away), but I'm not following the science very close so I might very well be wrong. I'd be very grateful if you could dig up those references!
    - guscost 6y ago
      Keep in mind these are mostly preprints, so adjust their value accordingly: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.26.115832v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.26.115832v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.18.100545v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.18.100545v1 https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30610-3 https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30610-3 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20061440v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20061440v... https://hal-pasteur.archives-ouvertes.fr/pasteur-02569149 https://hal-pasteur.archives-ouvertes.fr/pasteur-02569149 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.21.108308v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.21.108308v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.02.20120477v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.02.20120477v... https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.27.20081893v3 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.27.20081893v... There isn't much completed research about the seasonality of COVID-19 itself (understandably), the "cliff" is mostly an educated guess based on the strong seasonal pattern we see with every other respiratory virus. Here are a couple papers: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.12.20034728v3 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.12.20034728v... https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.22.20025791v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.22.20025791v...
WildParser 6y ago
Yes, indeed. When you talk to an epidemiologist (e.g. a doctor of physics), ask him to look at f'/f (death per day/death total) in a log-chart they'll tell you that it is 'useless' to look. If you show him a straight line with R²>0,99 (e.g. Germany using 7 day averages) - they will tell you that it all means nothing and that the curve in fact is bending - because the 'policies' must have worked. If you tell them that working policies should have left visible marks in the curve and that the curve is converging: They will just block you. Science is dead - at least in the field of epidemiology.

bsder 6y ago

> thus lowering the CFR (Case Fatality Rate) for that segment of the population to something near a low multiple of the normal Flu -- the "lockdown" hypothesis should have been discarded, violently, for that segment of the population! You are deeply into "Not even wrong" territory. The plural of anecdote is not data. Did you forget HCQ already? Lots of "positive reports" and yet controlled studies shows that it kills more Covid patients than leaving them untreated. We have data and hypotheses showing that it's mostly continuous exposure that matters (which means that nongroup workers are better off than we expected and casual interactions to buy groceries and such are safer than expected), and yet everybody wants to get back into groups--which is known wrong. Two Mother's Day gatherings account for more than 50% of the Covid cases in Santa Cruz county. Data by itself is meaningless. Data leads to a "falsifiable hypothesis" which can then be tested. AFTER the test passes or fails, you modify your Bayesian priors and your working tasks. Lather, rinse, repeat.

pjkundert 6y ago
OK, I'll bite, and ignore the dismissive "not even wrong" insult! Remember how the scientific method works: if you make a hypothesis, it's the most fragile thing in the universe -- a single falsification is all it takes to send you packing. So, every time someone trots out "the plural of anecdote is not data" when presented with a refutation, this tells us something important... Like it or not, that's just how it works. A group's CFR is almost the only thing that matters to that specific group. If the CFR is low, it literally does not matter at all how, or how fast you got infected -- the statistical outcomes are now known! The "continuous exposure" vs. "casual interactions" thing? That R-0; interesting, but almost irrelevant vs. CFR. In fact, once low group-CFR has been ascertained, the "normal behavior case" R-0 defines the societal infection/immunity rate required to achieve their group's contribution to societal herd immunity, but otherwise is of little interest: the average group participant just wants to gain immunity, as quickly as possible, to provide protection for the high-risk groups. So, the fact that multiple independent instances of (accidentally measured, statistically significant) high rates of group infection without demise, leading to a low group CFR are extremely surprising, and that should have led to a "stop work, tools down" moment for those engineering our societal response. But, it did not. That is disappointing. I think the most disappointing thing, to me, is how many in our society are more than ready and willing to throw the innocent, high-risk elderly and those with co-morbidities "under the bus", just to avoid their own (very low) CFR. Take it like a man/woman.