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>Wait, this suggests that Canada and Australia are highly misreporting, but Russia isn't? I thought it was well established that Russia's count was very, very o

>Wait, this suggests that Canada and Australia are highly misreporting, but Russia isn't? I thought it was well established that Russia's count was very, very off. This would imply that this model doesn't work very well. Ontario officially admitted they inflated numbers significantly early in the pandemic because we didn't fit the global trends. The numbers were fudged by over 50%. We also had the problem of Fauci chastising Ontario for running PCR cycles far too high causing significant false positives. This actually accounts for the significant portion of 'symptomless spreader' having not actually been covid but rather just false positives. Vaccination numbers were also impossibly high. We had a shortage of vaccines available and it was reported ~80% of the population had 1 shot when nobody under 40 could have the shot without some high risk diseases. The numbers were either false or Ontario is far worse off than official numbers allow in terms of aging population and illness. The assumption is that Ontario also misreported how many people were vaccinated. The actual real numbers seem to be much more in line with the USA, at that time period it was most likely more like 30-40%. The next problem is the misrpresentation of covid being the problem. How many people go to the hospital for not-covid and get tested but test positive. They aren't there for covid but they are represented as being there for only covid. Which is not right.

SeanLuke 5y ago
All this may be true: but it's a drop in the bucket compared to Russia's likely mendacity. There's something wrong with their model or data.
- sleepingadmin 5y ago
  - arcbyte 5y ago
    > Early on, the justification for lockdowns, was that covid was going to be worse than the spanish flu. Hindsight now shows that was wrong and that lockdowns were significantly more harmful to society. Certainly the extended lockdowns were harmful, I totally agree. I do think it's important to call out our increasing knowledge over time. Executively imposed lockdowns we're certainly justified under most states' emergency laws. Firstly, based on what we knew at the time, lockdowns in March and April were absolutely warranted. Beyond that, many states started building frameworks to manage public health, relying on indicators and public data. Mostly those frameworks stopped adapting in summer/fall 2020 despite radically increasing knowledge. That's when it all became politicized. Metrics should have been updated over time and they largely didn't. We started hearing whispers of hospital utilization and some metrics like bed count started showing up but then it became clear Those were misleading numbers anyway. We never got any sense of the medical staff burnout crisis which should have been critical. Those emergency laws were badly abused though and many legislatures simply allowed the executive to usurp power instead of jealously guarding it (as they should) and taking up debate on its own. Emergency laws have expiration dates to prevent executive overreach and few states complained when the executive just started declaring the same emergency over and over again, a clear corruption of the purpose of the statute.
    - sleepingadmin 5y ago
      >Certainly the extended lockdowns were harmful, I totally agree. I do think it's important to call out our increasing knowledge over time. Executively imposed lockdowns we're certainly justified under most states' emergency laws. It's always a 20/20 hindsight thing. I think I would have also locked down for 2 weeks and shutdown the borders. >Firstly, based on what we knew at the time, lockdowns in March and April were absolutely warranted. Beyond that, many states started building frameworks to manage public health, relying on indicators and public data. Mostly those frameworks stopped adapting in summer/fall 2020 despite radically increasing knowledge. That's when it all became politicized. Yep, this. >Metrics should have been updated over time and they largely didn't. We started hearing whispers of hospital utilization and some metrics like bed count started showing up but then it became clear Those were misleading numbers anyway. We never got any sense of the medical staff burnout crisis which should have been critical. 100% of ICU beds are occupied! Oh wait.. that's true literally all the time. >Those emergency laws were badly abused though and many legislatures simply allowed the executive to usurp power instead of jealously guarding it (as they should) and taking up debate on its own. Emergency laws have expiration dates to prevent executive overreach and few states complained when the executive just started declaring the same emergency over and over again, a clear corruption of the purpose of the statute. Now imagine another virus escapes a lab. One that is actually far worse than the spanish flu. Will kill 50% of the world population. Are we ready for it now? Nope. No way.
EngCanMan 5y ago
Do you have sources for this? Especially the part about fudging the numbers? Anecdotally I believe this is true, but have not seen the admission.

SeanLuke 5y ago

All this may be true: but it's a drop in the bucket compared to Russia's likely mendacity. There's something wrong with their model or data.

sleepingadmin 5y ago
- arcbyte 5y ago
  > Early on, the justification for lockdowns, was that covid was going to be worse than the spanish flu. Hindsight now shows that was wrong and that lockdowns were significantly more harmful to society. Certainly the extended lockdowns were harmful, I totally agree. I do think it's important to call out our increasing knowledge over time. Executively imposed lockdowns we're certainly justified under most states' emergency laws. Firstly, based on what we knew at the time, lockdowns in March and April were absolutely warranted. Beyond that, many states started building frameworks to manage public health, relying on indicators and public data. Mostly those frameworks stopped adapting in summer/fall 2020 despite radically increasing knowledge. That's when it all became politicized. Metrics should have been updated over time and they largely didn't. We started hearing whispers of hospital utilization and some metrics like bed count started showing up but then it became clear Those were misleading numbers anyway. We never got any sense of the medical staff burnout crisis which should have been critical. Those emergency laws were badly abused though and many legislatures simply allowed the executive to usurp power instead of jealously guarding it (as they should) and taking up debate on its own. Emergency laws have expiration dates to prevent executive overreach and few states complained when the executive just started declaring the same emergency over and over again, a clear corruption of the purpose of the statute.
  - sleepingadmin 5y ago
    >Certainly the extended lockdowns were harmful, I totally agree. I do think it's important to call out our increasing knowledge over time. Executively imposed lockdowns we're certainly justified under most states' emergency laws. It's always a 20/20 hindsight thing. I think I would have also locked down for 2 weeks and shutdown the borders. >Firstly, based on what we knew at the time, lockdowns in March and April were absolutely warranted. Beyond that, many states started building frameworks to manage public health, relying on indicators and public data. Mostly those frameworks stopped adapting in summer/fall 2020 despite radically increasing knowledge. That's when it all became politicized. Yep, this. >Metrics should have been updated over time and they largely didn't. We started hearing whispers of hospital utilization and some metrics like bed count started showing up but then it became clear Those were misleading numbers anyway. We never got any sense of the medical staff burnout crisis which should have been critical. 100% of ICU beds are occupied! Oh wait.. that's true literally all the time. >Those emergency laws were badly abused though and many legislatures simply allowed the executive to usurp power instead of jealously guarding it (as they should) and taking up debate on its own. Emergency laws have expiration dates to prevent executive overreach and few states complained when the executive just started declaring the same emergency over and over again, a clear corruption of the purpose of the statute. Now imagine another virus escapes a lab. One that is actually far worse than the spanish flu. Will kill 50% of the world population. Are we ready for it now? Nope. No way.

EngCanMan 5y ago

Do you have sources for this? Especially the part about fudging the numbers? Anecdotally I believe this is true, but have not seen the admission.