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Of all the things I thought I'd see on hackernews tonight, "Covid is fake" wasn't one of them. The linchpin of this article is that the Germany death numbers a

Of all the things I thought I'd see on hackernews tonight, "Covid is fake" wasn't one of them. The linchpin of this article is that the Germany death numbers are not substantially different: that is, Germany has not had excess deaths due to the virus when compared to death numbers from last year. Unfortunately, this is the worst possible conclusion you could draw from that graph. Germany went into lockdown, and had people stay home and social distance. Consider, for example, that Germany's traffic deaths are the lowest they have been in 100 years[1]. Influenze has spread less extensively, people have died less from violent crimes, and other, similar phenomena have all occurred as a result of their lockdown. In spite of all of that, Germany has still hit their average death number. What could possibly explain this? Maybe, I dunno, the pandemic?! 1. https://www.dw.com/en/germany-traffic-deaths-fall-to-lowest-point-since-reunification/a-53556709 https://www.dw.com/en/germany-traffic-deaths-fall-to-lowest-...

thu2111 6y ago
That isn't the lynchpin of the article. Did you actually read it to the end? That graph is a throwaway at the top which it explicitly says immediately after, isn't the focus of the article. The article is about false positive rates on the PCR test. Germany went into a form of lockdown, but so did the UK, and the UK saw relatively high excess deaths. There has been a lot of analysis of the data on this, and lockdown duration/start/severity doesn't correlate with outcomes in any obvious way.
- discardable_dan 6y ago
  I know the article is about false-positive rates. I did read it. But the claim is: 1. There is not a significant uptick in deaths in Germany. 2. The test is not 100% accurate, and indicates some false positives. 3. From #1 and #2, we can conclude that the "pandemic" we saw there was the result of false positives, and not people actually getting sick. If #1 isn't reliable, then neither is the conclusion. As hospitalizations and death climb in the US, writing a think-piece article pointing at how Spain is mis-accounting for false positives is irresponsible and dangerous. It pushes a "reopening is fine" narrative, when the people most-likely to read the article are living in places where that is patently false.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    I don't believe (3) appears anywhere in the article. That's your inference, not the authors. As for (1), the graph clearly shows there is no uptick in deaths in Germany. So I'm not sure what you mean by, if (1) is not reliable. The graph is right there. As for your final point, you seem to be assuming the article was written by an American for a US audience. What's your evidence for that? COVID is bigger than the USA, you know.
    - discardable_dan 6y ago
      Here is where (3) is heavily implied in the conclusion of the article: ...if something causes test numbers to rise then so will case numbers, which in turn will cause a further increase in testing, causing the rise to continue, triggering local lockdowns and pointless evidence free rituals, until people get depressed and stop trying to do things causing numbers being tested to fall again... Health is run by people who suffer no consequences from policy over-reactions. Lockdown induced job losses won’t affect them, as they work for the government. A larger-scale case of “one rule for them and another for us” can’t be imagined. It’s thus no surprise when we read things like Public Health England defining a COVID death as anyone who has ever tested positive and then died, for any reason, at any time i.e. the UK being supposedly “one of the worst hit countries in the world” is a statistical fantasy. PHE officials defined it this way because they didn’t want to be accused of being a nasty libertarians who were underplaying the problem just to help capitalist workers. The idea that they’d create other, bigger problems simply didn’t occur to them — or worse, it did but they didn’t care. This is, indeed, a bit of speculation on my part, but I do not know how else to interpret this beyond "the pandemic wasn't anywhere near as severe as the tests suggests, the majority of cases we saw are false positives, and lockdowns are much worse than the actual risk." What do you think I should take away fro this conclusion, instead? -------------------- My top comment in this thread explains why (1) is not reliable. The graph is a trick of the eyes, due to a lack of consideration for externalities. Over the entire time period, ~10,000 people died in Germany of Covid. Amortized over a 10-week outbreak period, that's 1k / week, on a graph with a scale an order of magnitude higher. Combined with the citation I provided for fewer traffic deaths, plus additional drops in violent crimes, seasonal flu, etc., it is not unimaginable that "everyone staying home" saved a thousand lives a week, or more, during that same time period. -------------------- My final point is that the assumed audience is members of the UK, and given the author's concluding thoughts are mostly concerned with their degradation in respect for the UK health establishment, I think that's sort of a fair assumption to make.

thu2111 6y ago

That isn't the lynchpin of the article. Did you actually read it to the end? That graph is a throwaway at the top which it explicitly says immediately after, isn't the focus of the article. The article is about false positive rates on the PCR test. Germany went into a form of lockdown, but so did the UK, and the UK saw relatively high excess deaths. There has been a lot of analysis of the data on this, and lockdown duration/start/severity doesn't correlate with outcomes in any obvious way.

discardable_dan 6y ago
I know the article is about false-positive rates. I did read it. But the claim is: 1. There is not a significant uptick in deaths in Germany. 2. The test is not 100% accurate, and indicates some false positives. 3. From #1 and #2, we can conclude that the "pandemic" we saw there was the result of false positives, and not people actually getting sick. If #1 isn't reliable, then neither is the conclusion. As hospitalizations and death climb in the US, writing a think-piece article pointing at how Spain is mis-accounting for false positives is irresponsible and dangerous. It pushes a "reopening is fine" narrative, when the people most-likely to read the article are living in places where that is patently false.
- thu2111 6y ago
  I don't believe (3) appears anywhere in the article. That's your inference, not the authors. As for (1), the graph clearly shows there is no uptick in deaths in Germany. So I'm not sure what you mean by, if (1) is not reliable. The graph is right there. As for your final point, you seem to be assuming the article was written by an American for a US audience. What's your evidence for that? COVID is bigger than the USA, you know.
  - discardable_dan 6y ago
    Here is where (3) is heavily implied in the conclusion of the article: ...if something causes test numbers to rise then so will case numbers, which in turn will cause a further increase in testing, causing the rise to continue, triggering local lockdowns and pointless evidence free rituals, until people get depressed and stop trying to do things causing numbers being tested to fall again... Health is run by people who suffer no consequences from policy over-reactions. Lockdown induced job losses won’t affect them, as they work for the government. A larger-scale case of “one rule for them and another for us” can’t be imagined. It’s thus no surprise when we read things like Public Health England defining a COVID death as anyone who has ever tested positive and then died, for any reason, at any time i.e. the UK being supposedly “one of the worst hit countries in the world” is a statistical fantasy. PHE officials defined it this way because they didn’t want to be accused of being a nasty libertarians who were underplaying the problem just to help capitalist workers. The idea that they’d create other, bigger problems simply didn’t occur to them — or worse, it did but they didn’t care. This is, indeed, a bit of speculation on my part, but I do not know how else to interpret this beyond "the pandemic wasn't anywhere near as severe as the tests suggests, the majority of cases we saw are false positives, and lockdowns are much worse than the actual risk." What do you think I should take away fro this conclusion, instead? -------------------- My top comment in this thread explains why (1) is not reliable. The graph is a trick of the eyes, due to a lack of consideration for externalities. Over the entire time period, ~10,000 people died in Germany of Covid. Amortized over a 10-week outbreak period, that's 1k / week, on a graph with a scale an order of magnitude higher. Combined with the citation I provided for fewer traffic deaths, plus additional drops in violent crimes, seasonal flu, etc., it is not unimaginable that "everyone staying home" saved a thousand lives a week, or more, during that same time period. -------------------- My final point is that the assumed audience is members of the UK, and given the author's concluding thoughts are mostly concerned with their degradation in respect for the UK health establishment, I think that's sort of a fair assumption to make.