Calling it now, covid is over! (But not the hoax)

[sd_shooter]

Great essay, it's what everyone in America is already thinking

Longer article but it will only take you 5 min, promise!

https://spectator.org/flattening-the-curve-and-other-lies/

[Jeepergeo]

Good article. Yeah, I read the whole thing.

America may be thinking those thoughts now, but Americans have short memory and no doubt, they'll be soon back to the mentalities that vote in politicians like the ones that have caused this problem, and they'll do that by casting Dem/Lib ballots and many by not having sufficient spine to stand up and demand that their Union support moral and constitutional and Patriot politicians. The folks that got this country the likes of BHO, NP, AOC, and IO to name a few will no doubt do it again.

[CmdrChuch]

As XKCD put it:

[ACfixer]

As XKCD put it:

And here's some real numbers, well as real as we can make them based on what we are told.

Let's say $3,000,000,000,000 in costs, yes that's what three trillion looks like. For an easy number to work with, let's say 100,000 end up dying from this... pretty much what it looks like what it will be. $30,000,000 each. Thirty million per death.

[The War Wagon]

Calling it now, covid is over! (But not the hoax)

Agreed. But MEDIA PANDEMONIUM VIRUS , shall NEVER END(so long as a Republican is in the White House )

[SAN compnerd]

Good piece. Says what I've been trying to say for weeks.

[as_rocketman]

Great essay, it's what everyone in America is already thinking

Longer article but it will only take you 5 min, promise!

https://spectator.org/flattening-the...nd-other-lies/

There's lies, and then there's ignorance.

It doesn’t occur to you until weeks later, when those models utterly fail to predict anything like the real impact of the virus, that what they reflect is garbage in, garbage out. And one main reason your models fail so completely is the public health bureaucrats you put all your faith in never even bothered to wonder what it would mean if the Chinese communists were lying to us about the virus.
Namely, that if they denied its existence for two months, the virus was probably everywhere long before your response kicked in, and shutting down the American economy was a tragic waste of lives, livelihoods, and capital.

So this betrays a fundamental ignorance of epidemic modeling. The models are a mixture of what we call "physics-based" and "data-driven," meaning the equations are derived from a behavioral model, and parameters of those equations are adjusted through trajectory comparison to existing data. The author is correct that initial models were worse, which is typical, but that isn't the basis of his complaint.

What the author is complaining about, and citing as evidence for the uselessness of such models, is the timing of "Patient Zero." But this isn't something the model is based on, sensitive to, or particularly good at extrapolating. We had our first estimate of "Patient Zero" from surveillance and contact tracing, both of which are known to be incomplete.

This simply doesn't matter. Suppose we take our model, using the most up-to-date parameters having now priced in large uncertainties from Chinese data, and run two different simulations. In the first, we pick a Patient Zero boundary condition according to the old estimates. In the other, we pick a date much earlier. Those two trajectories will diverge -- and the latter will diverge rapidly from reality, including along metrics that are pretty unambiguous (viz., case fatalities, aggregate number of admissions with respiratory distress, and virus genomic drift). On this basis, the latter model is "wrong," and we will solve this problem by adjusting its parameters differently until we recover a reasonable fit to those key observables.

What the author is suggesting is that there are only two ways to adjust that latter model: First, by proposing that community spread is in fact far higher than we've predicted so far, and somehow all of our measurements are flawed in the same way. Failing that, second: Modeling is flat out useless.

This compound fallacy is begging the question and destroying the exception. There is in reality a far, FAR simpler explanation: Patient Zero is not well predicted by these models, nor is it a strong boundary condition. The reason is simple: We think of transmissibility of the virus as a single parameter, but it's actually dynamic and highly uncertain. If the "Real" Patient Zero was a hermit interacting only with germophobes, we'd get far different results than an initial victim who panhandled on a subway.

Bottom line, while this is cited as a failing of the model, it's not an issue. This uncertainty is factored in by those who know how the models work.

What that means is we were a lot further along this curve you told us putting us under house arrest was going to flatten than you knew. And because we were further along that curve, the potential impact of the virus on our health-care system was never even remotely close to what your awful data models said it would be.
That’s OK, though. Lives are more important than money, right? Except you’ve spent decades pushing government programs aimed at redistributing wealth on us based on the premise, which we’ve been promised is true (and might well be), that poverty, unemployment, and social isolation create catastrophic health outcomes. So making the whole country broke, unemployed, and unable to interact in person with their friends is now a good idea … because of this virus?

As noted above, the error in establishing "Patient Zero" means nothing to the model. It does not, in fact, imply we are much further along the curve -- and there are other, independent metrics showing that this simply is not the case. Predictably, the author cites as his only evidence the structurally weak Santa Clara results, and although it is fair to say the actual spread is not well understood, there is absolutely no sign of "herd immunity" leading to a decrease in test hit rate, hospital admissions, or fatalities. Even if the study were unassailable, it would be irresponsible at best to extrapolate it to the entire nation. Indeed, a large part of his complaint originates from the idea that one-size-fits-all lockdowns are inappropriate. He can't have it both ways, and he shouldn't try it at all.

Based on this error, he then ascribes a motive to the lockdowns that is ideological in origin. This is known as appeal to motive, a form of the "Red Herring" logical fallacy -- it only serves to distract. It has no value in a logical train of thought.

We promise we won’t notice none of that was in the initial justification for forcing us to stay home. We wouldn’t suspect you guys of bad faith for having bait-and-switched us like that. Because we know that if we did notice, and we did express dissatisfaction, we would be descended upon by our betters at the Big Tech companies, who are doing us a big favor by censoring “misinformation” about the virus like for example people questioning the WHO or noting the virus likely came out of a Chinese bioweapons lab. Or we’ll get arrested because protesting is “non-essential.” Or maybe we’ll just be griped at by the hordes of busybody Karens across the country who call us “selfish” for wondering whether this wasn’t all just a too-costly overreaction.

And the coup de grace of the piece is nothing more than an circumstantial ad hominem fallacy, abusive. In other words, all of the above unsavory actors have selfish or even evil motives to bring about this situation, and therefore, the situation is imaginary, and the opposite is literally true.

Nope.

If we extract the authors opinions from this delusional assessment, we find that he is advocating for a sharp relaxation of government controls and restrictions, in particular orders and fines on individuals who won't protect themselves. I agree with him here, as I've said consistently here for months.

However, if you do decide to go out, bear in mind you are taking a risk, and you are responsible for managing that risk. The author is instead choosing to deny the risk -- and that's simply idiotic.

One could apply the author's own methods to himself. You should all note well that the Chinese government would very, very much like this virus to be of limited impact. They are the ones who benefit the most from tales that it really isn't that harmful, and our own governments are to blame, whether through incompetence or malice. Think about it. Fortunately, this reasoning is equally specious, so you should discount it -- but it is at least as possible as the nonsense scenario being promulgated here.

File under "F" for False. I don't believe this rises to the level of disinformation, but I've seen those too.

[SanDiego619]

There's lies, and then there's ignorance.



So this betrays a fundamental ignorance of epidemic modeling. The models are a mixture of what we call "physics-based" and "data-driven," meaning the equations are derived from a behavioral model, and parameters of those equations are adjusted through trajectory comparison to existing data. The author is correct that initial models were worse, which is typical, but that isn't the basis of his complaint.

What the author is complaining about, and citing as evidence for the uselessness of such models, is the timing of "Patient Zero." But this isn't something the model is based on, sensitive to, or particularly good at extrapolating. We had our first estimate of "Patient Zero" from surveillance and contact tracing, both of which are known to be incomplete.

This simply doesn't matter. Suppose we take our model, using the most up-to-date parameters having now priced in large uncertainties from Chinese data, and run two different simulations. In the first, we pick a Patient Zero boundary condition according to the old estimates. In the other, we pick a date much earlier. Those two trajectories will diverge -- and the latter will diverge rapidly from reality, including along metrics that are pretty unambiguous (viz., case fatalities, aggregate number of admissions with respiratory distress, and virus genomic drift). On this basis, the latter model is "wrong," and we will solve this problem by adjusting its parameters differently until we recover a reasonable fit to those key observables.

What the author is suggesting is that there are only two ways to adjust that latter model: First, by proposing that community spread is in fact far higher than we've predicted so far, and somehow all of our measurements are flawed in the same way. Failing that, second: Modeling is flat out useless.

This compound fallacy is begging the question and destroying the exception. There is in reality a far, FAR simpler explanation: Patient Zero is not well predicted by these models, nor is it a strong boundary condition. The reason is simple: We think of transmissibility of the virus as a single parameter, but it's actually dynamic and highly uncertain. If the "Real" Patient Zero was a hermit interacting only with germophobes, we'd get far different results than an initial victim who panhandled on a subway.

Bottom line, while this is cited as a failing of the model, it's not an issue. This uncertainty is factored in by those who know how the models work.



As noted above, the error in establishing "Patient Zero" means nothing to the model. It does not, in fact, imply we are much further along the curve -- and there are other, independent metrics showing that this simply is not the case. Predictably, the author cites as his only evidence the structurally weak Santa Clara results, and although it is fair to say the actual spread is not well understood, there is absolutely no sign of "herd immunity" leading to a decrease in test hit rate, hospital admissions, or fatalities. Even if the study were unassailable, it would be irresponsible at best to extrapolate it to the entire nation. Indeed, a large part of his complaint originates from the idea that one-size-fits-all lockdowns are inappropriate. He can't have it both ways, and he shouldn't try it at all.

Based on this error, he then ascribes a motive to the lockdowns that is ideological in origin. This is known as appeal to motive, a form of the "Red Herring" logical fallacy -- it only serves to distract. It has no value in a logical train of thought.



And the coup de grace of the piece is nothing more than an circumstantial ad hominem fallacy, abusive. In other words, all of the above unsavory actors have selfish or even evil motives to bring about this situation, and therefore, the situation is imaginary, and the opposite is literally true.

Nope.

If we extract the authors opinions from this delusional assessment, we find that he is advocating for a sharp relaxation of government controls and restrictions, in particular orders and fines on individuals who won't protect themselves. I agree with him here, as I've said consistently here for months.

However, if you do decide to go out, bear in mind you are taking a risk, and you are responsible for managing that risk. The author is instead choosing to deny the risk -- and that's simply idiotic.

One could apply the author's own methods to himself. You should all note well that the Chinese government would very, very much like this virus to be of limited impact. They are the ones who benefit the most from tales that it really isn't that harmful, and our own governments are to blame, whether through incompetence or malice. Think about it. Fortunately, this reasoning is equally specious, so you should discount it -- but it is at least as possible as the nonsense scenario being promulgated here.

File under "F" for False. I don't believe this rises to the level of disinformation, but I've seen those too.

Lower mortality rate than the flu. Panic all you want - we destroyed the economy for a virus that's milder than the flu. Because orange man bad.

[as_rocketman]

Lower mortality rate than the flu. Panic all you want - we destroyed the economy for a virus that's milder than the flu. Because orange man bad.

No evidence supports that statement.

[K001]

And we're off...

[skirunman]

Originally Posted by SanDiego619
Lower mortality rate than the flu. Panic all you want - we destroyed the economy for a virus that's milder than the flu. Because orange man bad.

No evidence supports that statement.

This is not true. Lot's of data is pointing in this direction including the multiple antibody tests done in LA, NYC, Santa Clara, Kern Co, etc. Yes, all studies have flaws, but data is pointing in this direction.

In addition, we have no hard data that COVID-19 is more deadly on an annualized basis than the flu. Confirmed tested mortality rate of the annual flu in the US averages about 10%, twice as high as what we are seeing in COVID-19 at approximately 5%. The oft quoted mortality rate of the annual flu at 0.1% in the US is based on estimated population burdens, not based on actual tested flu patients.

[as_rocketman]

This is not true. Lot's of data is pointing in this direction including the multiple antibody tests done in LA, NYC, Santa Clara, Kern Co, etc. Yes, all studies have flaws, but data is pointing in this direction.

In addition, we have no hard data that COVID-19 is more deadly on an annualized basis than the flu. Confirmed tested mortality rate of the annual flu in the US averages about 10%, twice as high as what we are seeing in COVID-19 at approximately 5%. The oft quoted mortality rate of the annual flu at 0.1% in the US is based on estimated population burdens, not based on actual tested flu patients.

I'm familiar with all of the antibody evidence, and it does not support that conclusion.

Your second paragraph is an apples-to-oranges comparison. "Confirmed tested mortality rate of the annual flu" is hardly useful, since the conditions for testing the flu are radically different than COVID-19. I shouldn't have to explain that your quoted rate of 10% is wildly misleading, and it is obvious you chose that on purpose.

To actually compare mortality rate, you need to estimate either CFR (Case Fatality Rate) or IFR (Infection Fatality Rate) and control for differences in the measurement. The yearly flu is something we have experience with and its estimate is thus pretty stable, estimated CFR at < 0.1%. COVID-19 is new and will take some time to estimate, but we can put some bounds on it -- current studies are predicting a 1.4% CFR, and if we restrict to European countries only, rates vary between 0.4% and 4.4%.

Your complaint about undetected cases (c.f. the antibody studies) does not impact CFR, but does impact IFR. For the flu, IFR is estimated at 0.04%. Taking New York City as the simplest example, even if we make the conservative assumption that penetrance is 100% (actual estimates are ~20% per your own sources, and could be lower), there have been 16,600 fatalities as of today, with 158,000 known cases still open... out of a population of 8.4 million. This gives us a lower bound of 0.2%, and we haven't even turned the corner yet.

As I said, your statement is not supported by ANY evidence. You may wish to reexamine your choices accordingly.

[LBDamned]

Lower mortality rate than the flu. Panic all you want - we destroyed the economy for a virus that's milder than the flu. Because orange man bad.

No evidence supports that statement.

That's why it was so successful.

It landed in the left's lap and they realized the opportunity... they were/are very crafty in their approach. They couldnt have created a better opportunity - this was the perfect storm that fit right in their agenda.

It worked.

BTW - a few of us (very few) saw it from the beginning... so this isn't an afterthought or justification analysis... it was calculated from the beginning and called out from the beginning.

[L84CABO]

Our Founders would be shooting people by now.

[Wherryj]

And here's some real numbers, well as real as we can make them based on what we are told.

Let's say $3,000,000,000,000 in costs, yes that's what three trillion looks like. For an easy number to work with, let's say 100,000 end up dying from this... pretty much what it looks like what it will be. $30,000,000 each. Thirty million per death.

It would be FAR less expensive if we would just stop being cheap on our healthcare reimbursements to providers. THAT was what the concern was about, overwhelming the system so that the people who could be saved wouldn't get treatment and we'd have more deaths.

Yet I suspect that the country will continue to reimburse physicians and hospitals at or below the cost to provide the service. This is done because other groups such as pharmaceuticals (which aren't being reimbursed at ludicrous levels either) have more bargaining power, and can actually collectively bargain without committing a felony.

Anyone care to wage on whether this gets "fixed" after this lesson? It would be a lot less expensive to make it so that providers aren't always having to provide more care than is possible during the busy times of the year so that hey aren't carrying too much "unused capacity" during slower times-causing bankruptcy.