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BIAS
AI (inverted, as is right!) inside BS
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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oops  
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Never underestimate the power of bullshit: Flies are crazy about it 
Press F1 for help or google it.
Greetings from Germany
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https://ncase.me/covid-19/[^]
An excellent explainer, even if rather US-centric.
Don't like the numbers? Plug in your own and see what happens.
Cheers,
Peter
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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the mathmatics part is simple,
it's introducing humans into the equations that WILL screw it up:
- to officially report or not report
- to count this as X or call it something else
- fake news, and whose side are we on.
I can understand the frustrations of epidemiologists, to get even one of the factors (i.e. fatality rate) they need accurate information.
Contrast the differences between "official" figures released by governments. Even if you say let's take USA, UK, Germany as "reliable" and ignore those we know as fake (and being fair that's not only China) ... anyhow USA, UK and Germany have better healthcare, this lowers death rates, so even using their figures alone doesn't give you an accurate fatality rate
... And that's just one variable (mortality rate)
for "the world", i.e. richer to poorer countries: healthcare ability, population mobility, interaction, density, [effectiveness of] mitigation implementations (distancing, masks, isolating...), infra...
Playing with graphs is fun or AND IS scary,
- it's not a job I would want to do in real life,
... at least not without being able to remove humans from the equation
pestilence [ pes-tl-uh ns ] noun
1. a deadly or virulent epidemic disease. especially bubonic plague.
2. something that is considered harmful, destructive, or evil.
Synonyms: pest, plague, CCP
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Every country will have its small difference on how they count their statistics. What's important is they are consist on their methods so that a country can determine how they are going. The small differences in methods between countries is only important if you're comparing countries with each other.
Where the problem arises is when countries do inadequate testing and so are running blind or just confirming the obvious cases that are positive at hospitals and not finding the people who have no or little symptoms or just fight it stoically by themselves at home.
A Fine is a Tax for doing something wrong
A Tax is a Fine for doing something good.
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One specific example of differing reporting strategies:
According to the Worldometer statistics, Norway has almost 8000 active cases, only 32 has recovered. The problem is that if you are diagnosed with covid-19, but you are not hospitalized, there are no established figures for reporting your recovery. The 32 are patients who were classified as recoverd while in the hospital.
The way "active cases" is registred, Norway will have 8000+ cases "forever"; they will never "recover" in the statistics, even though they have recovered long ago. (At the moment, 51 patients are hospitalized.) So, the "active cases"/"recovered" is completely irrelevant for Norway. If you believe them to be relevant, you will get a completely wrong impression.
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but they do need other countries' data
- if further behind what to expect, what mitigation methods help...
- to give some verification of their own numbers / projections / time or escalation scale,
- because people may travel to/from - they need to assist with travel advisories
- different countries circumstances (say density, temp, ...) adds clues how much that is a factor
even a country like USA, between cities, towns and mountain men external data can only help
pestilence [ pes-tl-uh ns ] noun
1. a deadly or virulent epidemic disease. especially bubonic plague.
2. something that is considered harmful, destructive, or evil.
Synonyms: pest, plague, CCP
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lopatir wrote: Playing with graphs is fun or AND IS scary,
- it's not a job I would want to do in real life,
... at least not without being able to remove humans from the equation
Let nature take its course, and soon enough you won't have to worry about humans being part of the equation...
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dandy72 wrote: Let nature humankind take its course, and soon enough you won't have to worry about humans being part of the equation...
can't argue with the evidence.
pestilence [ pes-tl-uh ns ] noun
1. a deadly or virulent epidemic disease. especially bubonic plague.
2. something that is considered harmful, destructive, or evil.
Synonyms: pest, plague, CCP
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Wow, this is ... scary, to say the least. It looks we are going to have to live with that sh*t virus for quite a long time, if not forever. In France, we already had 8 people that were re-infected. There are no tracing mechanism installed. I keep on telling everybody around me to slow down their contacts and keep the social distancing since the lockdown is over in France, but it looks like the end of lockdown was assimilated to "virus is gone" in everybody's mind. Add to that all the fake news stuff plus the average person in France is dumb enough to not understand anything about transmission and risks - I am not really optimistic.
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I don't understand why anyone would think a virus is just going to disappear. Generally, they don't do that. At best (worst?) they lay low for a while, then come back in a new and improved version, cf. The Asian flu that came back a decade or so later as the Hong Kong Flu.
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When a vaccine is developed, we may come pretty close. At least as long as we manage to control those outbreaks of vaccine opponents...
Measels is one case of virus infection that is almost gone (but kept alive by those vaccine opponents). Smallpox is officially (by WHO, that is) eradicated for 40 years.
But it all depends on a vaccine, or some other means to control it. For the corona virus, we do not have that yet, and maybe we never will.
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Member 7989122 wrote: But it all depends on a vaccine, or some other means to control it. For the corona virus, we do not have that yet, and maybe we never will.
And the type of virus... the "normal" flu gets a vaccine every year, but we can't get rid of it, no matter how hard it is tried.
Member 7989122 wrote: When a vaccine is developed, we may come pretty close. At least as long as we manage to control those outbreaks of vaccine opponents morons...
FTFY
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Member 7989122 wrote: For the corona virus, we do not have that yet, and maybe we never will.
I'd put money on "never".
So far, in decades upon decades of trying, there has never been an effective human-coronavirus vaccine. I highly doubt SARS the Sequel will be any different.
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While I was already a bit aware of it, this whole pandemic thing confirmed several things to me:
- It is so really easy to influence people, especially when using fear and social media.
- I assumed so far that about 50% of people are not smart enough to let them decide by themselves what is good for society. I was wrong, this must be much more, which to me is a terrifying perspective and a big philosophical question about one's liberty vs. society well-being.
- Governing is definitely not easy - I would not have wanted to be in the government's shoes to make decisions in the last four months. In my career and my hometown responsibilities, I had to make decisions that would have consequences on people's life - not whether they would live or die, but whether the company would keep them employed or whether the company must relocate them to other countries, so hard enough to deeply impact their lives. This was hard enough on such a local scale, I cannot imagine how hard it is on the global scale, and for matters or life or death. And it is always a lose/lose situation : I take the example of the lack of masks in France. There were lacking and the government decided to lie about their importance at the beginning of the crisis, so that helpers and priority jobs could get as much as possible. Then media bashed them because they lied, but what other option was possible ? Tell the whole population "Yes, masks are important, but please do not buy them because we need them for medics and nurses" ? That would have cause havoc and a massive rush on any available mask - just remember what happened to toilet paper, which is an item that was not even relevant for anything related to health.
- Relocation in so called low cost countries is not a future-safe option, but this is nothing new. Yet I hope there will be another look about it at my workplace in the future. Of course money talks, and will talk whatever happens or happened, but still..
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One thing that fascinates me is how fast we turn around. When China ("which we call Red China") started closing up the country and express building hospitals, before the pandemic had reached the Western world, we said: "That is possible only in a communist dictatorship where the authorities are in a poisition to control the whole population!" - two to three months later, we did very much of the same thing, and you have to search for extreme cases to point out details that we wouldn't accept: "But in China, they do ...". Yet the main ideas that we a couple months rejected completely were implemented here as well.
How long did it take to go from "By Easter, it wil have died out" to cries about not reacting fast enough to the pandemic?
We have seen a crowd of pandemic apps, intended for tracing the spread of the virus. Some of these (among them the Norwegian variant) trace the location of the users, intending for research on which environments are the most dangerous: Night clubs? Training centers? Shops? ... If this information is used for other purposes, the authorities can trace every one of us, more closely than the horror stories we tell about the East German STASI. Yet, if you in any way question this e.g. in discussion fora, you must be prepared for being a traitor, an enemy of the people, one who wants to kill off the old people by letting the virus spread ... I have seen such responses, and a lot more along the same line, lots of times the last few weeks.
It really is an old thing. The police has played their cards well: More than ten years ago, there was a kidnapping case where the victim's phone was traced by the GSM signals - a lot less precision than GPS, but good enough for the police to follow the kidnappers' car. So in media, they had to "admit" that sure, it takes only a few keystrokes to activate tracing any mobile like this. At this stage, the police were great heros in media, and noone in their right mind would raise any sort of critisism, indicating that they should not have tracked the kidnappers. With a single case, tracking phones as part of a police operation went from STASI-like to full acceptance.
In the next big media case where a young girl had disappeared, the police published their tracking while still searching for her, and requested full access to her entire Facebook profile. FB rejected the request, as the girl might very well show up (unfortunately that was not the case), but the police search for the girl was presented in such a heroic way that lots or people were furious about FB's rejection of the request. So this case opened up for more or less full acceptance for the police's moral right to access anyone's FB profile.
Right now, we have an outcry against the lockdown. To save the nation's economy, the lockdown is being lifted. If that leads to a second wave of spreading - which is a serious fear with pandemic experts - I am curious to see how rapidly, and to which degree, the population will turn around from their outcry of today, to heavy attacks on the authorities for not keeping it under control.
Henrik Ibsen (world famous Norwegian playwright) states in one of his plays that "An average truth lives for about thirty years". I think that is grossly exaggregated. In times like these, the lifetime of "truths" may be down to weeks.
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Member 7989122 wrote: One thing that fascinates me is how fast we turn around
Count me in : I was also in complete disbelief at first. On my defense:
- In the past, most authorities cried wolf[^] and you cannot believe anything coming from China, plenty of examples at my workplace - unbelievable how faking can be a cultural thing.
- I am used to make decisions based on known facts, and starting of March, facts were describing CoViD as a strong flu, and was still rejected by many "authorities" as a real threat.
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Member 7989122 wrote: To save the nation's economy, the lockdown is being lifted. If that leads to a second wave of spreading - which is a serious fear with pandemic experts
Well, of course. The virus isn't going anywhere. If you've been locked up at home, with no exposure to it, the first time you encounter enough virions to cause an infection, you'll have it.
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Rage wrote: one's liberty vs. society well-being
It's that incredible contradiction involved with essentially all freedoms. Ultimately, they have to end where the next person's freedoms begin. A tricky dance.
Freedom of speech - should it allow slander, liable, and incitement to violence?
Freedom of religion - should it allow human sacrifices and child molestation?
Freedom of the press - see 'Freedom of speech' - they're all but identical concepts.
The point, above, is really redundant and the judgement of each action that exercise/limits them clearly depends upon which end of it's exercise you are on: giver or receiver.
And, sadly, people are stupid. You can decide if the percentage is closer to "a few" or "most of them". It ultimately doesn't matter compared to the mischief they can do (or, more timely, be convinced to do). Words similar to ones I posted within the last week: 'people believe the facts so long as they're the ones they want to hear".
In the US, we have what I consider morons (with obvious political leanings based upon their signage) that are protesting the lock-downs or, for that matter, any restrictions at all. Many believe it's all a big fake or not true at all. Totally convinced that if they ignore it it will be no big deal and go away.
I have since, however, seen the same morons throughout the world, each in their language of choice, wanting to do what they want and to hell with their neighbors. Meanwhile, an assortment of hate groups has latched on and are using it to recruit - targeting their particular enemy group as either the cause of the spread or taking advantage of limiting rights to "take over".
So - I agree with your underlying premise - how do you determine what is the best option - which will be criticized, no matter. I'm probably not fit as I would prevent stupid people from getting their way as a matter of principal and hold them accountable. But aren't these stupid people someone else's martyrs?
Solution: dig a hole and hide.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote:
Freedom of speech - should it allow slander, liable, and incitement to violence?
Freedom of religion - should it allow human sacrifices and child molestation?
Freedom of the press - see 'Freedom of speech' - they're all but identical concepts.
In any discussion of "Freedom of", we should consider equally important "Freedom from".
Slander and its relatives has to do with freedom from other people's speech.
Religious opression has to do with with freedom from religion.
Freedom of the press - if you haven't yet read Heinrich Böll: The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum[^], it would be a good idea to do so before entering a discussion about freedom of the press.
If you move into the different aspects of freedom of economy, you should definitely ponder freedom from exactly the same aspect.
If you want to take it further: Twist it around the other way! When freedom from oppression is turned aound to freedom of oppression. Freedom from bugging vs. freedom of bugging. And so one.
Always consider who should have the right to exercise their freedom to do something. And who should have the right to freedom from that same something.
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The question is, what are we going to do about it?
Sitting at home isn't the answer, especially not for longer periods of time.
I am appalled at how the Dutch government fines groups of over two people, even in their own homes.
If you were to go to a barber, which was forbidden, you'd get a fine of €400, but the barber gets one of €4000!
To top it off, you get a criminal record.
Is this a free country or what!?
It's beyond all proportions and hurting people in sometimes financially unrecoverable ways.
All we do is "flatten the curve", which may or may not be important (currently, 0.03% of the population died), but what about other factors such as economy and happiness?
A woman who would die soon was locked up in a nursing home because "those are the rules".
She had like a few weeks left to live and she was cut off from her family, WHAT THE F***!?
Her family tried everything and the day after they finally got to see her the woman passed away.
Other people, like mentally ill, are experiencing backlashes that they may not recover from.
This crisis started as one created by a virus, driven by such graphs created by epidemiologists, but I think the crisis is currently driven by fear and rules and the virus is only a small part of it.
Now I'd like to see similar graphs for the economy and the effect of staying at home on businesses and happiness.
In a few months from now we may have beaten the virus, but at what cost?
For many people the cost has already become too big and all they want now is to go back to work and earn some money again.
The problem is that the costs are going to be even higher because we're not there yet.
To quote some movie:
"Did you do it (flatten the curve)?"
"Yes."
"What did it cost?"
"Everything."
That said, I'm still "doing my part" and staying at home to "flatten the curve".
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I think those are really well thought out points, I have been following Chris Martenson on youtube and one of the points he makes is that if we do manage to get the virus under control all the efforts taken to do this will seem extreme.
Meaning that in order to bring a pandemic under control the measures taken, in hindsight, will seem extreme.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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A thought experiment:
I we would simply not care about the covid-19 and just let it roll, and instead took all the trillions of money and invested it in research against cardiovascular disease (approx 1/4 of all deaths) and cancer research (approx 1/6 of all deaths).
How many people would live or die in the long run?
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Interesting, can't say.
I've been told the whole idea isn't to save other's lives though.
It's potentially saving your own.
I don't have cancer and the chance of me getting it is small so we don't need more money for cancer research.
There's a big chance I'll get COVID-19 if we don't do something so something must be done.
If the chances of getting cancer increase there'll be a lot more funding.
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