patrick.net

What are the biggest errors in thinking about the Corona virus ?

We won't know this for at least several weeks, possibly month.

Booger says

What are the biggest errors in thinking about the Corona virus ?

We won't know this for at least several weeks, possibly month.

This is very true. We do know urban hospitals are gonna see a lot of action. If someone needs to be intubated though, it's a new virus, they're likely dead when they rolled in. Why waste the time?

If people want to keep equating this to a war, Trump, Cuomo, both sides politically, etc., then sacrifices will need to be made by some of the living. Just as a soldier would in war. If anything it's easier as it's not young people with bright futures ahead regarding the fatalities in the vast majority of cases. Quarantine isn't the answer.

I'd guess most people don't want to die. But making it to 70-80 is a pretty solid life. I also don't think most people understand what your body feels like and your jumbo weekly pill box expands to 10 cubic inches (exaggeration) a day at that age to stay alive.

So what are we going to do to prep for the "next time?"

Require all households to have a propositioned supply of masks?

Require all old age facilities to have a quarantine plan, including how to keep staff sanitized from outside exposure?

Have laws requiring medicines and medical equipment to be made in the US?

Start now with medical academies and medical ROTC style programs to increase the supply of doctors?

Take the temperature of all non-US Citizens traveling to the US at the debarment point, and refuse boarding to any with a fever? Just like they check for a passport before you can board the plane.

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Reality says

The media is full of idiots and paid liars. Your premise would run directly counter to the common virologist observation that most virii evolve to become more benign over time due to hosts' deaths (and sick hosts being shunned by the rest of the herd) taking out the more deadly strains.

Reality says

Not backing away at all. Are you trying to lie deliberately? Marcus?

I didn't say backing away, I said backing your way, as one often does in a proof. Nothing wrong with that per se.

So many assumptions about things we don't know.

Your argument sounds like the argument of someone who thought we should not have locked down, now trying to fight against all the evidence that it was right to lock down.

DO I have the following right ?

"The reason why it's growing like this now is that the hospitals are petri dishes for the most deadly strains of the virus. And since we have lockdown the population itself isn't out there as a buffer against the deadly strain(s) that's being shared by the hospital workers."

Certainly you can't be saying that the number dying would be less without the lock down, becasue by your own theory the way that buffer works is by killing virus hosts of the more deadly strain. ,And there is little reason to believe it wouldn't be higher, or even much higher.

How deadly a strain is relative to how contagious is it would have to be known to have even the slightest idea as to whether your theory has merit, and even then what is your conclusion ? Of course there are unfortunate aspects of having healthy hospital workers treating people with highly contagious diseases that they might share either directly or very indirectly with people that are most vulnerable. WE know that most people that get even the deadly strains are not killed by it (if they aren't old or having other susceptibilities). Most people even when they get the more deadly strains pass it on to others, who pass it on to others. The lockdown greatly limits how many people the infected hospital works sees before they self quarantine (if they have symptoms or are tested - they should be tested frequently).

Yes, I know, you want to argue that the population is somehow immune by then anyway.

Again, you would have to know so much that we don't about contagion relative to how deadly it is, as well as how fast the evolution occurs in both settings and so much more.

Reality says

Just an intelligent person with solid math and science background

Creative too. Do you have any sources of others with similar theories ?

EVERYTHING
https://reason.com/video/when-it-comes-to-coronavirus-nobody-knows-anything/?itm_source=parsely-api

It's a cross-post, but relevant to the question of "biggest errors in thinking about CV":

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ (scroll down to the graphs)

We're about to hit the 0.0003 (a.k.a., 10,000 deaths) by the end of the weekend. The US is continuing its exponential climb in both infections and deaths -- a rate higher than either Italy's or Spain's -- without any downward shift.

Conservatives, please take this seriously. There's a "nothingburger" denialism on the right, similar to the left's "hug a Chinese person / fight xenophobia" laxity. The US is doing none of the mitigation efforts, beyond "self-quarantine," that east Asian countries have. We may doubt China's numbers (and I do, to some extent), but South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore report similar successes in keeping COVID under control. It wasn't herd immunity, either, accounting for the low infection and death rates -- S Korea tested 338,000 as of March 24th, and only 3% were positive. Additionally, the numbers flattened too quickly to reflect population-scale immunity.

We in the US must adopt what worked in E Asian countries: widespread availability of masks, medications (HCQ, azithromycin, zinc), testing, mandatory quarantine of positives, and urban spraying.

I see the CDC's weak response -- no foresight on masks, defective tests, no clinical trials of promising medication (apart from the most expensive, Gilead's Remdesivir), no availability of hydroxychloroquine -- as the fault of the CDC. Trump can be blamed insofar as he keeps worthless hacks like Anthony "masks don't work / hydroxychloroquine is anecdotal" Fauci on his task force.

I leave it to the reader to decide if any of Mister Reality's theories are correct regarding how St. Louis handled the Spanish Flu pandemic. As for the second peak...
Commercial businesses were allowed to open beginning November 13, with St. Louis’s 100,000 schoolchildren returning to their classrooms the day after that. The ban on public meetings would remain in place until Monday, November 17. Starkloff was quick to point out to businesses and the public that the state of public health emergency was still in effect, allowing him to reinstate the measures if necessary.
For the next two weeks, the infection rate gradually declined, lulling residents into what proved to be a false sense of security. Keeping a vigilant eye on new case tallies, Starkloff spotted a spike on November 27, when more than 700 cases were reported for the previous 24-hour period, half of them children.31 After a hurried conference with other health department personnel, city officers, and public school authorities, Starkloff announced that he was closing schools once again.
As far as muh area under the curve goes...
Because of the quick and sustained action by its leaders, St. Louis experienced one of the lowest excess death rates in the nation, just 358 per 100,000 people.
YMMV...

EBGuy says

I leave it to the reader to decide if any of Mister Reality's theories are correct regarding how St. Louis handled the Spanish Flu pandemic.

I think one is best off considering his posts an extended April Fool's joke. Almost nothing comports with "reality."

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I didn't see this before.

Reality says

Why would lockdown magically cure those 8 people?

It wouldn't. They either die or get better. The point was that the presence of the virus ended before everyone was exposed.

It wasn't meant to be anything more than a (contrived) counter example to the idea that a lockdown can't work or that the same number of people must die, with or without the lockdown.

marcus says

Your argument sounds like the argument of someone who thought we should not have locked down, now trying to fight against all the evidence that it was right to lock down.

DO I have the following right ?

"The reason why it's growing like this now is that the hospitals are petri dishes for the most deadly strains of the virus. And since we have lockdown the population itself isn't out there as a buffer against the deadly strain(s) that's being shared by the hospital workers."

Certainly you can't be saying that the number dying would be less without the lock down, because by your own theory the way that buffer works is by killing virus hosts of the more deadly strain. ,And there is little reason to believe it wouldn't be higher, or even much higher.

I did not write what you put between quotation marks. See, Marcus, one thing about a person capable of independent thought process is that I do not regurgitate what other people say. In fact, I hadn't even read what you put between the quotation marks there. You will have to ask whoever wrote those to explain to you what he or she meant.

In my view, the number of deaths would be less without the lock-down of society (while not locking the hospitals), for two reasons: (1) The lock-down of society while not locking down the hospitals resulting in artificially selecting the more deadly strains of the virus (already explained several times, but you insist on pretending not being able to understand, will make one more attempt later in this post); (2) The economic devastation resulting from locking down the society will put stress on people and cause more deaths than the virus does.

marcus says

How deadly a strain is relative to how contagious is it would have to be known to have even the slightest idea as to whether your theory has merit, and even then what is your conclusion ? Of course there are unfortunate aspects of having healthy hospital workers treating people with highly contagious diseases that they might share either directly or very indirectly with people that are most vulnerable. WE know that most people that get even the deadly strains are not killed by it (if they aren't old or having other susceptibilities). Most people even when they get the more deadly strains pass it on to others, who pass it on to others. The lockdown greatly limits how many people the infected hospital works sees before they self quarantine (if they have symptoms or are tested - they should be tested frequently).

You are arguing for the locking down of hospitals during pandemic. Locking down hospitals (not allowing anyone (including all medical workers and patients) there to leave without passing a positive antibody test showing immunity) while not locking down the rest of the society is actually a position that I can support and have been advocating: locking down the hospitals during pandemic, not locking down the society outside hospitals.

I'm very shocked that an alleged math teacher like you has shown inability to understand what amounts to the law of large numbers, a very basic statistics/probability concept, and how it works in evolution. Perhaps you teach elementary school or public school in school districts where the teacher's primary function is being a warden (which may also explain why you advocate lock-downs). The basic idea behind why lock-down of society while not locking down hospitals would promote the more deadly strains is the same as the idea behind vaccines: vaccine works by exposing a wide cross section of the population to a relatively impotent strain of the virus. That's what people are more likely to be exposed to in normal social setting that do not involve medical personnel (because whoever falls ill or dead is more likely to be taken out of the normal social circle as they get carted off to hospitals). Flocking birds have evolved the natural instinct of killing whichever bird that looks sick as their anti-pandemic strategy; that's why birds spend so much preening themselves in order to make themselves looking healthy, so as to avoid being pecked to death quickly. Locking down hospitals while not locking down the society at large is a good strategy of giving evolutionary advantage to the less harmful strains while further isolating the more deadly strains. Locking down the society while not locking down the hospitals (which is the current government policy) would perversely give the more deadly strains an evolutionary advantage to spread over the more benign strains.

Yes, I know, you want to argue that the population is somehow immune by then anyway.

Again, you would have to know so much that we don't about contagion relative ...

You don't seem to understand the law of large numbers. Mutations in a RNA-virus like the Coronavirus are random and relatively frequent.

marcus says

Why would lockdown magically cure those 8 people?

It wouldn't. They either die or get better. The point was that the presence of the virus ended before everyone was exposed.

It wasn't meant to be anything more than a (contrived) counter example to the idea that a lockdown can't work or that the same number of people must die, with or without the lockdown.

The strategy in the contrived example would work for a virus like the Ebola virus a few years ago: when the government flew in a single patient from Africa, and the virus had relatively low R0 while having extremely high fatality rate (well over 50%). The high FR naturally helps the elimination of the virus.

However, for a virus like the coronavirus, with much higher R0 and very low fatality rate, the strategy wouldn't work at all: for a starter, having only tests that are 30-80% accurate, you wouldn't even be able to find all of the 8 people in the 100 with high degree of certainty without running thousands of tests on the 100 people, much less finding all 800k people in 10mil. The lock-down strategy doesn't scale at all.

EBGuy says

As for the second peak...
Commercial businesses were allowed to open beginning November 13, with St. Louis’s 100,000 schoolchildren returning to their classrooms the day after that. The ban on public meetings would remain in place until Monday, November 17. Starkloff was quick to point out to businesses and the public that the state of public health emergency was still in effect, allowing him to reinstate the measures if necessary.
For the next two weeks, the infection rate gradually declined, lulling residents into what proved to be a false sense of security. Keeping a vigilant eye on new case tallies, Starkloff spotted a spike on November 27, when more than 700 cases were reported for the previous 24-hour period, half of them children.31 After a hurried conference with other health department personnel, city officers, and public school authorities, Starkloff announced that he was closing schools once again.
As far as muh area under the curve goes...
Because of ...

If that's how that article presented the 2nd peak, then the article was classic FUD. Nov 13 vs. Nov 27 was only 14days apart. Both dates belonged to the same peak in the graph, which was showing a second peak many months after the first peak.

The lower excess death per 100,000 count in St. Louis was likely due to lower population density in a relatively frontier city (contrasting too heavily built-up urban Philadelphia back then) and less Asprin use than in cities with easier access to Europe and east coast industrial drug makers. Interesting to note that, at least back then American public (and consequently media catering to their appetite) had enough clue to focus on "excess death" instead of just counting deaths as if nobody ever dies in normal time. For all the cries of end-of-world apocalypse, neither Italy (outside the tiny town of Bergamo) nor the US is showing significant excess deaths compared to the total number of deaths of whatever cause government bureaucrats assign during the same winter weeks in years past. The bureaucrats in NYC have to resort to banning funerals to force the piling up of bodies.

Reality says

If that's how that article presented the 2nd peak, then the article was classic FUD. Nov 13 vs. Nov 27 was only 14days apart. Both dates belonged to the same peak in the graph, which was showing a second peak many months after the first peak.

That was me editorializing about this graph.

The whole "excess death" question is interesting. I'm sure it was a bit more obvious with the Spanish Flu as it hijacked the immune system, with healthier, young people being more susceptible.
Even today, NYC Health is showing less than 2% of the deaths attributed to individuals having "No Underlying Conditions" (numbers juiced a bit by including 380 deaths with Underlying Conditions Pending).

Reality says

I did not write what you put between quotation marks. See, Marcus, one thing about a person capable of independent thought process is that I do not regurgitate what other people say. In fact, I hadn't even read what you put between the quotation marks there. You will have to ask whoever wrote those to explain to you what he or she meant.

Well, I'll take this as a sign of where we are at in this.

Maybe it's wrong to put quotation marks around a paraphrasing of someones argument. How could it not be obvious that I did not think you said exactly that ?

I was paraphrasing. Was this not an indication of anything to you ?

Reality says

DO I have the following right ?

Was asking if if my paraphrasing is correct.

In any case, it's very clear where we are in this argument. "I hadn't even read what you put between the quotation marks there."

Gotcha, I'm done.

marcus says

Well, I'll take this as a sign of where we are at in this.

Maybe it's wrong to put quotation marks around a paraphrasing of someones argument. How could it not be obvious that I did not think you said exactly that ?

I was paraphrasing. Was this not an indication of anything to you ?

It was an indication that you were resorting to mis-attribution and lies. I used to have more respect for your integrity.

marcus says

Reality says

DO I have the following right ?

You wrote that sentence. I didn't.

marcus says

Was asking if if my paraphrasing is correct.

In any case, it's very clear where we are in this argument. "I hadn't even read what you put between the quotation marks there."

Gotcha, I'm done.

I not only did not write what you put between the quotation marks, I hadn't even read anyone writing that before reading your words between the quotation marks. What you put between the quotation marks had little to do with what I wrote. Your words between those quotation marks were projecting your own murderous proclivities, whereas I was pointing out removing the lock-down would save lives even without considering economic effect.

Marcus, you are proving to be a shameless lying propagandist with little knowledge in science or math but resorting to silly word games to facilitate your lies. At this point, I'm inclined to disbelieve your claim to be a public school math teacher, but likely a paid shill that one day may well hang upside down from a lamp-post if this lock-down continues for any significant length. To answer your titular question of the thread: the biggest error in thinking regarding Covid-19 is that whoever cooked up this hoax exploiting a bad flu season mistakenly thought destroying the economy under the pretense of a pandemic would automatically make Trump unpopular due to bad economy, whereas in reality crises tend to galvanize support for sitting presidents . . . and the overwhelming majority of the public see through the scam quite readily and lay the blame on the scammers.

There are now 3000+ different strains of "Covid-19" having been genetically sequenced. Obviously, much of whatever are tossed under "Covid-19" umbrella have been in existence among human population for many years if not decades; what used to be called Flu, Cold and Pneumonia in years past are all being tossed under the "Covid-19" label.

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Some people just aren't good at losing arguments.

Me, when I'm wrong I admit it.

marcus says

DO I have the following right ?

"The reason why it's growing like this now is that the hospitals are petri dishes for the most deadly strains of the virus. And since we have lockdown the population itself isn't out there as a buffer against the deadly strain(s) that's being shared by the hospital workers."

I can be accused of trying to make sense of what largely didn't make sense to me. Or of using quotation marks for what very obviously was not a quote, otherwise why would I say "have I got this right ?"

I was arguing in good faith and not attacking you. But when someone is too self absorbed to even care or listen to a person they are arguing with, or when they are triggered becasue they realize their argument doesn't make sense, I guess this is what happens:

Reality says

Marcus, you are proving to be a shameless lying propagandist with little knowledge in science or math but resorting to silly word games to facilitate your lies. At this point, I'm inclined to disbelieve your claim to be a public school math teacher, but likely a paid shill that one day may well hang upside down from a lamp-post if this lock-down continues for any significant length. To answer your titular question of the thread: the biggest error in thinking regarding Covid-19 is that whoever cooked up this hoax exploiting a bad flu season mistakenly thought destroying the economy under the pretense of a pandemic would automatically make Trump unpopular due to bad economy,

Well at least now I get the goal of your word games. I tried to cut through the crap and make sense out of them, and right when I had dug deep enough to see it was a conclusion looking for an argument, and your logic completely falls apart, somehow I'm a liar that's attacking you.

Have a little honesty and read the exchange up to and including comment number 46. I know you have neither the honesty nor the integrity to admit that I was arguing in good faith. If it's wrong to use quotes on an attempted paraphrase. fine - but how can you not know what I was saying was not a quote quote.

Read what you said before. How is my paraphrase not an honest attempt to succinctly paraphrases a part of your argument ?

Such a childish tactic, but then again you are a Trump fan boy.

NoCoupForYou says

 

Schools should be open. Workplaces should be open. For anybody under 60-65,life should be normal

For those over 60-65, there should be voluntary "Senior Hours" at Pharmacies and Groceries the first couple of hours in the morning to give the old folks a chance and piss off hoarders.

No visiting assisted living, senior care facilities, nursing homes. They can set up skype chats. Retirees should stay at home, and there should be fines for repeat frivolous trips or gathering to play cards and shit for the elderly.

International Travel to places currently experiencing increasing levels or peak spread should be banned. It gets lifted a week or so after the trajectory clearly has plateaued.

Other than that, Life's a Bitch So Keep on Trucki

This is a test run for the next inevitable pandemic that kills children and babies... people would be losing their minds x100 if this virus targeted kids new immune systems.

marcus says

But when someone is too self absorbed to even care or listen to a person they are communicating with

Speak of yourself. You are way too self-absorbed in your "petri dishes" and "buffer" (treating people/population like livestock in your mind) while keep twisting my words instead of trying to listen. Virus doesn't recognize "petri dishes" or "buffer" assignment. Virus only face opportunities vs. lack of opportunities. If the government locks down the healthier human population that statistically carry the less lethal virus strains, while not locking down the hospitals where dying patients go and statistically the more deadly strains are over-represented, the result is that the more deadly strains get more opportunities to find new hosts and replicate than the relatively benign strains do. As the virus continues to mutate (as RNA virii always do), the perverse selection continues at every generation, yielding more and more deadly strains at the expense of less deadly strains. It's really not complicated.

I know you have neither the honesty nor the integrity to admit that I was arguing in good faith.

You were not arguing in good faith. It's astonishing that a self-claimed math teacher would have no inkling about the Law of Large Numbers. It's astonishing that such a person would have so little inkling about how evolution / artificial-selection works. It's astonishing that such a person would have no idea that RNA virus mutates frequently, and therefore a survey of the relative lethality of different strains snap-shot at a particular time is nowhere nearly as important/fundamental as statistical dynamics in ongoing generations. Why the insertion of "petri dishes" and "buffer"? neither words I ever used, then for you to build your core argument on them being expendables therefore they'd all be dead by definition of being expendables. My argument did not at all assume them to be expendables; it's simply a statistical Law of Large Numbers argument, pointing out the effective artificial-selection under the societal lock-down while not locking-down the hospitals.

ThreeBays says

I found this video useful for explaining more of the viruses' lifecycle that we should be considering here.

Admittedly I didn't watch this. Understand you're looking at a YouTub channel with over half a million subscribers with content that can make them money. This does appear to be a medical channel. But, every YouTube channel on the planet has come out with a Corona video. Why do you think that is? And would you necessarily believe that information?

I'm not a pilot, but a few aviation channels I watch had subscription rates double when Kobe Bryants chopper went down putting out daily updates. People need to open their eyes and understand generating revenue does not equate to truth anymore. Probably never has anyway. This is a moment of opportunity for tons of people that know dick about a virus.

The only people I'd trust right now are nurses and doctors. In my area bordering 2 of the largest cities/town in IL, things have been relatively tame. Rely on Youtube for entertainment, not medial advice. It's almost certainly clickbait. During the Trump era I'd also be HIGHLY skeptical of government, especially from parties that don't agree with Trump. We've seen it time and time again that they'll eat their young to try and take Trump down.

Reality says

Why the insertion of "petri dishes" and "buffer"? neither words I ever used, then for you to build your core argument on them being expendables therefore they'd all be dead by definition of being expendables.

I was only making a concise statement of what I honestly thought you were saying (i.e. a part of your argument) before refuting it (and I prefaced it with, "have I got this right?"). The purpose of those words was to paraphrase, it was my attempt to be concise and clear as to what I was going to refute.

I don't make rambling statements only designed to impress that are devoid of any logical content or argument . I needed to make my best attempt at understanding what you were saying before I responded. Being concise allowed me to clearly get to my logical point which had nothing to do with that choice of words.

Making a concise statement of what one believes the other is saying, before refuting it, is showing the respect of trying to understand the point the other is making. (and again, I did say, have I got this right ?)

As far as I can tell you are just floundering now in an attempt to explain why you spazzed out after comment # 46.