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Mankind has a tendency to not accept what it cannot control. Our politicians and virologists often said something along the lines: "we need to do X to keep cont

Mankind has a tendency to not accept what it cannot control. Our politicians and virologists often said something along the lines: "we need to do X to keep control of the situation". In the end we never were in control of the situation but people cannot accept that.

spookthesunset 5y ago
Most of the measures we took were nothing more than modern day rain dances. Feeble attempts by humans arrogant enough to think they could defeat or control a natural phenomenon that is well beyond ours to control.
- teeray 5y ago
  Yep… “There’s nothing we can do” is just flatly unacceptable to the majority of the population. That’s when religion gets invented to create rituals to ward away evil.
  - jseban 5y ago
    Yeah, and a major function of the church is to help people deal with death.
- jacobolus 5y ago
  San Francisco has had less than 1/3 as many deaths per capita as the US national average, and somewhere between a third and half of the deaths SF did have can be attributed to one terrible policy mistake – re-opening indoor bars and restaurants in fall 2020 – which immediately kicked off 2–3 months of fast exponential growth. If the rest of the USA had been even as fast acting and careful as SF, more than half a million dead Americans would still be alive. And there are plenty of countries around the world which have done a much better job than SF of testing, contact tracing, vaccination, etc. We can compare e.g. Sweden to other Nordic countries to see what an abysmal failure the Swedish “herd immunity” strategy turned out to be. * * * “We haven’t tried anything and we’re all out of ideas” is easy to sell to grumpy people tired of a really shitty year or two, on the back of an unprecedented wave of anti-public-health propaganda, but it is an absolutely terrible pandemic response.
  - daddylongstroke 5y ago
    > San Francisco has had less than 1/3 as many deaths per capita as the US national average... What do you believe this comparison means? I'm not sure its saying much of anything. Perhaps you could come up with another similar sized city, with same socioeconomic/population-type makeup, with same latitude and seasonality profile to compare against? I'm not familiar with SF data sources on this, but I'm curious if you can provide a source for current IFR? My state here in southeast US's IFR is .012. That includes people who died in car accidents, of poisonings, of falls and other injurious actions while having tested positive for COV in last 28 days. My county is comprised of mostly older folks (median age 44), small at 186K people, and we haven't had a COV death registered in the last 11 months. >We can compare e.g. Sweden to other Nordic countries to see what an abysmal failure the Swedish “herd immunity” strategy turned out to be. Can you show some data sources for this? Everything I'm seeing is pointing to Sweden's last 2 flu seasons (encompassing COVID years) showing the same or lower all cause mortality than their previous 15-20 years. With 2018 being the major outlier not just in Sweden but all around the world, for which we still have no explanation.
    - jacobolus 5y ago
      San Francisco has done significantly better than any other city in the continental USA, despite being one of the most internationally connected, transit dependent, and densely populated. Honolulu is the only similarly successful large US city. > IFR is .012 Do you mean CFR (case fatality rate)? IFR (infection fatality rate) is always only speculative, because we don’t ever have complete knowledge of the number of infections. In total throughout the pandemic SF has had ~670 Covid deaths and ~54,000 confirmed Covid cases for a population of ~880,000. For the same population, the USA average would be ~2090 deaths and ~110,000 confirmed cases. Except those are both dramatic underestimates of the relative numbers because SF has consistently had a much lower percentage of positive tests, and hasn’t had anywhere near the US gap between confirmed Covid deaths and total excess deaths.
      - native_samples 5y ago
        0.012 would be too low to be a CFR. That roughly the right number for COVID IFR (maybe a bit too low), which can be calculated in ways that make it less speculative e.g. sero-surveys. Even so CFR is also speculative because so many cases aren't reported: that's the reason IFR exists as a separate concept. In science you're really meant to use all the data because the problem with this sort of cherry-picking is that it can go both ways. Florida removed all its restrictions and was predicted to become a bloodbath just like they predicted that for Sweden. It didn't happen, results appear to have been unaffected by the changes. Studies that look at all the data find no correlations between lockdowns and COVID mortality (but lots of correlations with other bad problems).
krater23 5y ago
During the complete pandemic I never heared a so good fiting wise word like this.
stormking 5y ago
It's called "illusion of control", most prominent example being rain dances.

spookthesunset 5y ago

Most of the measures we took were nothing more than modern day rain dances. Feeble attempts by humans arrogant enough to think they could defeat or control a natural phenomenon that is well beyond ours to control.

teeray 5y ago
Yep… “There’s nothing we can do” is just flatly unacceptable to the majority of the population. That’s when religion gets invented to create rituals to ward away evil.
- jseban 5y ago
  Yeah, and a major function of the church is to help people deal with death.
jacobolus 5y ago
San Francisco has had less than 1/3 as many deaths per capita as the US national average, and somewhere between a third and half of the deaths SF did have can be attributed to one terrible policy mistake – re-opening indoor bars and restaurants in fall 2020 – which immediately kicked off 2–3 months of fast exponential growth. If the rest of the USA had been even as fast acting and careful as SF, more than half a million dead Americans would still be alive. And there are plenty of countries around the world which have done a much better job than SF of testing, contact tracing, vaccination, etc. We can compare e.g. Sweden to other Nordic countries to see what an abysmal failure the Swedish “herd immunity” strategy turned out to be. * * * “We haven’t tried anything and we’re all out of ideas” is easy to sell to grumpy people tired of a really shitty year or two, on the back of an unprecedented wave of anti-public-health propaganda, but it is an absolutely terrible pandemic response.
- daddylongstroke 5y ago
  > San Francisco has had less than 1/3 as many deaths per capita as the US national average... What do you believe this comparison means? I'm not sure its saying much of anything. Perhaps you could come up with another similar sized city, with same socioeconomic/population-type makeup, with same latitude and seasonality profile to compare against? I'm not familiar with SF data sources on this, but I'm curious if you can provide a source for current IFR? My state here in southeast US's IFR is .012. That includes people who died in car accidents, of poisonings, of falls and other injurious actions while having tested positive for COV in last 28 days. My county is comprised of mostly older folks (median age 44), small at 186K people, and we haven't had a COV death registered in the last 11 months. >We can compare e.g. Sweden to other Nordic countries to see what an abysmal failure the Swedish “herd immunity” strategy turned out to be. Can you show some data sources for this? Everything I'm seeing is pointing to Sweden's last 2 flu seasons (encompassing COVID years) showing the same or lower all cause mortality than their previous 15-20 years. With 2018 being the major outlier not just in Sweden but all around the world, for which we still have no explanation.
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    San Francisco has done significantly better than any other city in the continental USA, despite being one of the most internationally connected, transit dependent, and densely populated. Honolulu is the only similarly successful large US city. > IFR is .012 Do you mean CFR (case fatality rate)? IFR (infection fatality rate) is always only speculative, because we don’t ever have complete knowledge of the number of infections. In total throughout the pandemic SF has had ~670 Covid deaths and ~54,000 confirmed Covid cases for a population of ~880,000. For the same population, the USA average would be ~2090 deaths and ~110,000 confirmed cases. Except those are both dramatic underestimates of the relative numbers because SF has consistently had a much lower percentage of positive tests, and hasn’t had anywhere near the US gap between confirmed Covid deaths and total excess deaths.
    - native_samples 5y ago
      0.012 would be too low to be a CFR. That roughly the right number for COVID IFR (maybe a bit too low), which can be calculated in ways that make it less speculative e.g. sero-surveys. Even so CFR is also speculative because so many cases aren't reported: that's the reason IFR exists as a separate concept. In science you're really meant to use all the data because the problem with this sort of cherry-picking is that it can go both ways. Florida removed all its restrictions and was predicted to become a bloodbath just like they predicted that for Sweden. It didn't happen, results appear to have been unaffected by the changes. Studies that look at all the data find no correlations between lockdowns and COVID mortality (but lots of correlations with other bad problems).

krater23 5y ago

During the complete pandemic I never heared a so good fiting wise word like this.

stormking 5y ago

It's called "illusion of control", most prominent example being rain dances.