Random Rant Thread

[miscmisc]

Almost 1k people STILL die every day in America. You thought if the numbers were to decrease in big states like Florida and Texas, the total number would SURELY go down drastically too right?

Nope. Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia out, for now, and Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Minnesota in. 

It's just other states' turn now. Oh wait, Texas looks like it wants to come back in. Started ticking up again.

'twas ever thus. National failure.

[gols]

Sept 30, 2020 18:42:08 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

You probably expect the UK numbers to be lower than Germany's, but not THIS RIDICULOUSLY much lower. I wouldn't go into the details here, but it's basically a 25% vs. 65% level of difference. In fact, the British numbers seem considerably worse than even America's. This can't be right, can it? For instance, these numbers imply that a majority of Britons would go out for shopping without a facial mask while having Covid-19 symptoms.

That sounds like bs to me. I'd like to see the survey questions too...

[miscmisc]

Oct 1, 2020 14:32:27 GMT 1 gols said:

Sept 30, 2020 18:42:08 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

You probably expect the UK numbers to be lower than Germany's, but not THIS RIDICULOUSLY much lower. I wouldn't go into the details here, but it's basically a 25% vs. 65% level of difference. In fact, the British numbers seem considerably worse than even America's. This can't be right, can it? For instance, these numbers imply that a majority of Britons would go out for shopping without a facial mask while having Covid-19 symptoms.

That sounds like bs to me. I'd like to see the survey questions too...

Yeah, I decided to totally ignore those data.

I would dismiss such data instantly, but... you know, ever since Brexit...

And... call me a conspiracy theorist, but I kinda suspect that they are sorta kinda trying to blame it on British citizens if things go bad, sort of.

I feel that way especially since I think the UK government seems a little misguided on their Covid-19 policies. I will probably talk a bit about that some time.

[miscmisc]

Finally an article that is TOTALLY worth reading, and of course it's written by Zeynep Tufekci:

This Overlooked Variable Is the Key to the Pandemic
It’s not R.
www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/

Yes. It's not R. R0 is trees, and you are missing the forest if you're obsessed with it, like the UK government, who seems unable to stop talking about R0.

On the other hand, you almost never hear about R0 here in Japan, or South Korea.

It's k that is even more important - the dispersion factor. It's the super-spreading events. Tufekci will go deeper into the subject and show you why.

Unfortunately, averages aren’t always useful for understanding the distribution of a phenomenon, especially if it has widely varying behavior. If Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, walks into a bar with 100 regular people in it, the average wealth in that bar suddenly exceeds $1 billion. If I also walk into that bar, not much will change. Clearly, the average is not that useful a number to understand the distribution of wealth in that bar, or how to change it. Sometimes, the mean is not the message. Meanwhile, if the bar has a person infected with COVID-19, and if it is also poorly ventilated and loud, causing people to speak loudly at close range, almost everyone in the room could potentially be infected—a pattern that’s been observed many times since the pandemic begin, and that is similarly not captured by R. That’s where the dispersion comes in.

She also points out that most people totally misunderstand what Sweden actually did.

That's been driving me crazy too.

Sweden's approach was not about "herd immunity". Like I said many times, it was simply a different approach for the same goal. Anders Tegnell's stance on masks drives me crazy (I think it's an ego thing), but he was perhaps more right about this virus than a majority of other government officials in Europe in that he seemed to understand that it was super-spreading events that mattered more than anything else. Well, he actually said so in an interview too.

Although it did not have a complete lockdown, as Kucharski pointed out to me, Sweden imposed a 50-person limit on indoor gatherings in March, and did not remove the cap even as many other European countries eased such restrictions after beating back the first wave.

...and that they seems to have guessed correctly early on that younger children weren't much of a factor in viral transmissions.

It kept schools fully open without distancing or masks, but only for children under 16, who are unlikely to be super-spreaders of this disease. Both transmission and illness risks go up with age, and Sweden went all online for higher-risk high-school and university students—the opposite of what we did in the United States.

Sweden has been both shat on by center/left-wingers unfairly and praised by right-wingers for wrong reasons. Because those people had no interest in actual Sweden, but were only projecting.

And Tufekci finally mentions one of the most interesting cases in the world - Japan.

Perhaps one of the most interesting cases has been Japan, a country with middling luck that got hit early on and followed what appeared to be an unconventional model, not deploying mass testing and never fully shutting down. By the end of March, influential economists were publishing reports with dire warnings, predicting overloads in the hospital system and huge spikes in deaths. The predicted catastrophe never came to be, however, and although the country faced some future waves, there was never a large spike in deaths despite its aging population, uninterrupted use of mass transportation, dense cities, and lack of a formal lockdown.

It’s not that Japan was better situated than the United States in the beginning. Similar to the U.S. and Europe, Oshitani told me, Japan did not initially have the PCR capacity to do widespread testing. Nor could it impose a full lockdown or strict stay-at-home orders; even if that had been desirable, it would not have been legally possible in Japan...

No, Tufekci won't really talk about masks there. That would be a boring article. She's taking you to a more interesting place.

If you talk about Sweden, you also have to talk about Japan. And Thailand. And Nigeria. And Uruguay. And so on.

I'm not dwelling on and on about this country because it's where I am now, and where I'm from - but simply because it is very clearly a very interesting case with a very different approach and even perhaps vital in order to understand what we are fighting against.

Like I said, ventilation has been a main component of the Japanese official guideline on SARS-CoV-2 since March-April. And this article will tell you why.

She also explains why quick non-PCR tests should have a vital role in our fight against Covid-19.

And everything all circles back to that variable - k. The dispersion.

I have spent way too much time on this post and don't have time to comment on the details, but just read her article. It's brilliant, as always. It's not behind the paywall.

[miscmisc]

gols:

This is totally my impression too. From the Tufekci article:

...Countries that have ignored super-spreading have risked getting the worst of both worlds: burdensome restrictions that fail to achieve substantial mitigation. The U.K.’s recent decision to limit outdoor gatherings to six people while allowing pubs and bars to remain open is just one of many such examples.

I wouldn't say the government is totally misguided, but their policies do seem based on the notion that on average every case infects someone else on the one-to-one basis. That sounds like total nonsense from where I am, but I probably wouldn't feel that way if I lived there and only consumed British news every day.

The information/knowledge on this virus hasn't been evenly distributed or shared despite the world being so small now. There is no coordination between countries, and in such case some countries do better than others for whatever reason. The problem is that the ones who haven't been doing terribly well don't seem eager to learn from others.

The UK is a leading country in epidemiology, virology and immunology. I wonder if it's maybe just an ego/pride thing.

[miscmisc]

And this new study fresh out of India:

Many countries and their "experts" should open their eyes and see it. They are missing the forest, and it's costing lives.

There's been so much evidence for this, yet so many countries in the world are still obsessed with R0.

That variable is MEANINGLESS. Wake up. Or you'd have to do another lockdown. You'd have to rely on blanket brute force because you refuse to change your view despite all the evidence.

[miscmisc]

If you are American and have never lived in any other country, please remember that this is completely abnormal by the international standards.

In fact this is madness, and calling this "third-world stuff" would be massive disrespect to third-world countries.

We ought to do something about this. Even in Russia this would be considered wrong, and it's a country whose elections are a fucking joke for the most part.

This is pure election interference and voter suppression in its most naked form. You can NEVER laugh at or criticize any other country while letting one political party get away with this crime in your own country.

Do you know how fucking huge Harris County is? Yet ONE location in that vast area.

[miscmisc]

Bob Barr!

Norm Coleman!

Pete Wilson!

LOL

It's a fucking all-star team of lying degenerates. A list of utter freaks.

[miscmisc]

Oh boy.

[miscmisc]

I was going to post this after Hicks tested positive, but decided not to. Because I actually didn't quite expect this.

People started making Bolsonaro/Trump comparison as Trump has to quarantine now. Well, it's obviously premature as Trump hasn't tested positive.

But beyond that, Jair Bolsonaro really acted like he didn't give a shit, and got Covid.

OTOH, Donald Trump built this reverse-Potemkin village where it appears casual and loose and who-cares and all on the surface but behind it there's actually a fucking fortress, one of the most strict Covid testing regimes out there. But these viruses are clever enough. A mere testing regime can't block them. He, a germaphobe who is undoubtedly actually terrified of Covid-19, might have to learn that the hard way now. I know he thinks he's been careful, but after spending so many months downplaying the seriousness of it, I think he started believing his own bullshit a bit and has become a tad too careless feeling invincible.

[miscmisc]

But there's one thing. Things don't add up if it's just a case of Hicks bringing it in from somewhere and infecting the Trumps. The timing is off. I suspect there are others who are responsible.

Or the testing regime in the White House has been a complete joke in practice.

Anyhow, unlike Johnson, he tested positive while having no symptoms. Those people are lucky, and goddamn it that's what you expect from Donald Trump. I'll just assume that the fucker will be just fine, and do the Bolsonaro until the election day or something. Whatever.

So, business as usual. This will surely complicate the election, a lot, but we'll just move along. 43,000 Americans tested positive, and hundreds died on the same day Trump tested positive. Mississippi has just surpassed 1,000 per million Covid-19 deaths. One out of 1,000 people have passed away due to Covid-19, and it's not even close to the worst state in the US. We can't pause. And by "we," I mean you and me.

[miscmisc]

Oh BTW, Occum's razor. OK?

Of course the chances are not zero. But he was dumb and got it despite being terrified of it, is the whole story, I believe. No conspiracy.

[gols]

Oct 1, 2020 18:20:45 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

gols:

This is totally my impression too. From the Tufekci article:

...Countries that have ignored super-spreading have risked getting the worst of both worlds: burdensome restrictions that fail to achieve substantial mitigation. The U.K.’s recent decision to limit outdoor gatherings to six people while allowing pubs and bars to remain open is just one of many such examples.

I wouldn't say the government is totally misguided, but their policies do seem based on the notion that on average every case infects someone else on the one-to-one basis. That sounds like total nonsense from where I am, but I probably wouldn't feel that way if I lived there and only consumed British news every day.

The information/knowledge on this virus hasn't been evenly distributed or shared despite the world being so small now. There is no coordination between countries, and in such case some countries do better than others for whatever reason. The problem is that the ones who haven't been doing terribly well don't seem eager to learn from others.

The UK is a leading country in epidemiology, virology and immunology. I wonder if it's maybe just an ego/pride thing.

Personally I think it is all just down to standard Conservative Party ideology. People meeting at home and outdoors does not directly effect the economy. People not going to pubs/bars and restaurants does. After everything that has happened, they still would prefer COVID to run wild than spend money to prop up these businesses. And no they have not realised that the vuris running wild will affect the ecomony anyway.

[gols]

Oct 2, 2020 10:43:32 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

Oh BTW, Occum's razor. OK?

Of course the chances are not zero. But he was dumb and got it despite being terrified of it, is the whole story, I believe. No conspiracy.

The Bidens must be glad they wore masks throughout the debate. Except Joe of course...

If Biden gets it I'm sure he will die immediately, whereas Trump will be just fine.

[miscmisc]

Oct 2, 2020 14:16:25 GMT 1 gols said:

Oct 1, 2020 18:20:45 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

gols:

This is totally my impression too. From the Tufekci article:

I wouldn't say the government is totally misguided, but their policies do seem based on the notion that on average every case infects someone else on the one-to-one basis. That sounds like total nonsense from where I am, but I probably wouldn't feel that way if I lived there and only consumed British news every day.

The information/knowledge on this virus hasn't been evenly distributed or shared despite the world being so small now. There is no coordination between countries, and in such case some countries do better than others for whatever reason. The problem is that the ones who haven't been doing terribly well don't seem eager to learn from others.

The UK is a leading country in epidemiology, virology and immunology. I wonder if it's maybe just an ego/pride thing.

Personally I think it is all just down to standard Conservative Party ideology. People meeting at home and outdoors does not directly effect the economy. People not going to pubs/bars and restaurants does. After everything that has happened, they still would prefer COVID to run wild than spend money to prop up these businesses. And no they have not realised that the vuris running wild will affect the ecomony anyway.

Well it might be as simple as that, but I'm kind of worried about the general tone of the British Covid-19 guideline beyond politics/ideology/economy. Their understanding of the pattern of the spread sounds awfully linear. Keeping pubs open is one thing, but there's no sign of recognizing the importance of k whatsoever. Their model seems awfully anachronistic given what we have learned over the last several months.

New York is a good example of being eager to learn from others. Their current policies are based on how to break a chain of super-spreading events. Their emphasis on ventilation naturally comes from that premise.