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I've just ordered a slab of Brewdog's latest beer -- Barnard Castle Eye Test.

 Dreadwinter wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
But he adds that caveat right here, he argues that if that does not occur the number is unchanged:

chaos0xomega wrote:
The number of people that will die from coronavirus, in the absence of a vaccine or some effective cure or treatment is X.

X remaining unchanged is based on the what if of that situation. The 'what if' he is making to demonstrate that X can never increase, only decrease. He is not making the argument that lockdowns don't work to reduce X, he is arguing that in a worst case scenario you never get an increased X with a lockdown.

Which is false.
Virus needs an active carrier to spread disease. If you've been infected you can't be infected again. What is interesting about this virus is the people spreading the disease mostly and the ones dying from it aren't the same group of people. If you isolated the vulnerable (65+) for 1 month and allowed the non vulnerable to be exposed the virus would literally lose it's ability to spread quickly. 65+ people mostly are retired and live at home or in nursing homes it is fairly easy to execute this plan.
It's easy to miss how this would change X in this situation but I will explain it.
X essentially means number of vulnerable people exposed to the virus and a certain high % of them die. X goes down because the number of carriers over time goes down. Time increases your chance of being exposed to an active carrier because as time passes you come in contact with more people.
Lets say this unnamed 65 year old came in contact with 5 random people in a month but came in contact with 30 random people in 6 months. In my proposed plan the people the later 5 months are less likely to carry the virus because they have already been exposed. This in effect reduces X. When everyone goes on lock down you are not reducing the viruses chance to spread because you keep the potential carrier population large. Once you get to the point where each infected person does not average another infection - the virus dies in a few weeks.

This is how heard immunity works. It would be extremely effective against this virus to because the majority of people who are active and spread the virus will not die from it. Older people and sick people should isolate and protect themselves by all means. Forcing the non vulnerable to isolate literally kills people. ESP due to the fact most will be non symptomatic when they carry it.

Sweden tried this. Sweden failed. It cost them many lives and is still costing them many lives.

Also, there are many conflicting reports about us gaining antibodies to fight off infection a second time. As far as the herd immunity, that mostly works because we have vaccines to back it up. To give us that immunity without having to risk infection. So, that is not how herd immunity works at all.

No. You can't possibly know if the approach worked yet. It takes time. collecting data takes time as does testing whole populations for a disease. Beyond the fact that most of these numbers across the world are being misrepresented for one reason or another. Lets just say all the number thus far were accurate. What % of the population has been exposed? No where near what is required to make these determinations.

In the case of Sweden it would be expected that they would have higher rates initially than other neighboring areas. Plus they did an absolutely horrible job of protecting the vulnerable so they are hardly a model for the strategy. Plus - this is completely ignoring the cost of the lockdown itself - which is also hard to measure immediately and admitably is likely also being misrepresented both ways due to the political nonsense. This is not political. It is logic. We as a people (as human beings) need to be able to use logic when making decisions with catastrophic ramifications.

If there are conflicting reports about gaining immunity after infection it should be front page news. From several credible sources I have seen more than enough to convince me those who are infected and recover gain immunity. Plus if that isn't true we are royally screwed anyways without a vaccine - which I work in the industry of clinical research. This stuff takes time. LONG time. More time than people can live in their houses. Plus as time passes the toll of the lockdown will become more apparent.

On a further note. To honestly compare the theories you have to be willing to look at two terribly bleek sets of data and chose which one is better. From a prospective of logic it is easy to do this. From the emotional prospective of most people - you are proclaimed evil for even suggesting it. It is absurd. It must stop.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
But he adds that caveat right here, he argues that if that does not occur the number is unchanged:

chaos0xomega wrote:
The number of people that will die from coronavirus, in the absence of a vaccine or some effective cure or treatment is X.

X remaining unchanged is based on the what if of that situation. The 'what if' he is making to demonstrate that X can never increase, only decrease. He is not making the argument that lockdowns don't work to reduce X, he is arguing that in a worst case scenario you never get an increased X with a lockdown.

Which is false.
Virus needs an active carrier to spread disease. If you've been infected you can't be infected again. What is interesting about this virus is the people spreading the disease mostly and the ones dying from it aren't the same group of people. If you isolated the vulnerable (65+) for 1 month and allowed the non vulnerable to be exposed the virus would literally lose it's ability to spread quickly. 65+ people mostly are retired and live at home or in nursing homes it is fairly easy to execute this plan.
It's easy to miss how this would change X in this situation but I will explain it.
X essentially means number of vulnerable people exposed to the virus and a certain high % of them die. X goes down because the number of carriers over time goes down. Time increases your chance of being exposed to an active carrier because as time passes you come in contact with more people.
Lets say this unnamed 65 year old came in contact with 5 random people in a month but came in contact with 30 random people in 6 months. In my proposed plan the people the later 5 months are less likely to carry the virus because they have already been exposed. This in effect reduces X. When everyone goes on lock down you are not reducing the viruses chance to spread because you keep the potential carrier population large. Once you get to the point where each infected person does not average another infection - the virus dies in a few weeks.

This is how heard immunity works. It would be extremely effective against this virus to because the majority of people who are active and spread the virus will not die from it. Older people and sick people should isolate and protect themselves by all means. Forcing the non vulnerable to isolate literally kills people. ESP due to the fact most will be non symptomatic when they carry it.

This is literally nonsense. What, are you going to put all people over 65+ on an uninhabited island? Don't you understand that letting this spread uninhibited for a month will overload the healthcare system even with only healthy people under 65? This is a terrible way to make herd immunity work, because its completely unrealistic. You cannot just have it spread for a month, it will spread like wildfire and given the R rate and incubation time you're still talking about months if not years... This also ignores the fact that we have no idea if immunity is lasting or potentially only applicable for perhaps 2 years or so.

Unless you're arguing for a full on enforced quarantine like China has carried out to try and burn out the virus, but then in that sense this type of stricter lockdown still does not increase the number of deaths.

 Xenomancers wrote:
In the case of Sweden it would be expected that they would have higher rates initially than other neighboring areas. Plus they did an absolutely horrible job of protecting the vulnerable so they are hardly a model for the strategy. Plus - this is completely ignoring the cost of the lockdown itself - which is also hard to measure immediately and admitably is likely also being misrepresented both ways due to the political nonsense. This is not political. It is logic. We as a people (as human beings) need to be able to use logic when making decisions with catastrophic ramifications. .

Sweden is not doing so great and if a vaccine is found, it will have done worse at this rate. Add to this that Sweden is not having any better economic forecasts than the lockdown countries around it and there is no real argument for why Sweden is doing better. The cost of a lockdown, for better or worse is not very different from not having a lockdown, as Sweden demonstrates.

Can we try and spoiler long multi quote replies? Or delete everything in it bar the last quote?

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Can we try and spoiler long multi quote replies? Or delete everything in it bar the last quote?

Yeah, hard to edit these things on the phone sometimes, sorry.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8351649/amp/Lockdown-waste-time-kill-saved-claims-Nobel-laureate.html?__twitter_impression=true


'Michael Levitt, a Stanford University professor who correctly predicted the initial scale of the pandemic, suggested the decision to keep people indoors was motivated by 'panic' rather than the best science. '

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8351649/amp/Lockdown-waste-time-kill-saved-claims-Nobel-laureate.html?__twitter_impression=true

'Michael Levitt, a Stanford University professor who correctly predicted the initial scale of the pandemic, suggested the decision to keep people indoors was motivated by 'panic' rather than the best science. '

Stanford professor sounds nice, but looking into his background I don't really see what makes him qualified on this particular subject.

It's the Daily Mail - trash and sensationalist is basically what they peddle in more than honest factual reporting.

 Overread wrote:
It's the Daily Mail - trash and sensationalist is basically what they peddle in more than honest factual reporting.

I know, I googled the name without clicking said link

 Overread wrote:
It's the Daily Mail - trash and sensationalist is basically what they peddle in more than honest factual reporting.

You could dispute the study, not the paper reporting it...

Could you maybe post another article on the same topic, and maybe this time not post one that's an unreadable mess?

Has your search bar stopped working?

No you're alright. If all you can do is attack the paper (everyone knows every newspaper has biases) then we're just tinkling in the breeze aren't we.

One concern I have is that the main thrust of the argument seems to be that he's disputing the casualty values for the study that the UK government used to aid justification of lockdowns. But he doesn't seem to be questioning any of the other lockdown studies being used in other countries to promote their choice of lockdown procedure.

Considering that many consider the UK launched lockdowns later than they could after first following the herd immunity science; its not surprising he might be able to make a case that the lockdown in the UK had less effect than it might otherwise have had.

That said it doesn't seem (at least in the mangled report on the report) that he's questioning other countries choices. Which to me would suggest that either there's a bunch the Daily Mail is leaving out (which is very likely); or that he's perhaps only targeting one study on some aspect of shaky ground (The death estimations) rather than on the policy of lockdowns in general. Since for the latter you'd expect a more comprehensive multinational survey.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

Stanford professor sounds nice, but looking into his background I don't really see what makes him qualified on this particular subject.

From Wikipedia : appeal to authority.

'it is also a fallacious ad hominem argument to argue that a person presenting statements lacks authority and thus their arguments do not need to be considered.[33] As appeals to a perceived lack of authority, these types of argument are fallacious for much the same reasons as an appeal to authority.'


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Fair enough. You have to admit that the ICL model could have some serious flaws though? It predicted 500 000 deaths in the UK alone, when so far there are about 350 000 confirmed deaths in the entire world?

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

Stanford professor sounds nice, but looking into his background I don't really see what makes him qualified on this particular subject.

From Wikipedia : appeal to authority.

'it is also a fallacious ad hominem argument to argue that a person presenting statements lacks authority and thus their arguments do not need to be considered.[33] As appeals to a perceived lack of authority, these types of argument are fallacious for much the same reasons as an appeal to authority.'

Vice versa getting advice from a Person not qualifierd or which Qualifications can be doubted is also a fallacy.

Aka an appeal to an biased authorithy or impropper one.

So what sort of fallacy is it when you advocate for a chemistry teacher who has so far nothing to substantiate his ideas other than he predicted numbers lower than the officially reported numbers of China prior to any sort of recurrence of disease purely because it supports your ideology rather than any sort of real credibility?

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

Stanford professor sounds nice, but looking into his background I don't really see what makes him qualified on this particular subject.

From Wikipedia : appeal to authority.

'it is also a fallacious ad hominem argument to argue that a person presenting statements lacks authority and thus their arguments do not need to be considered.[33] As appeals to a perceived lack of authority, these types of argument are fallacious for much the same reasons as an appeal to authority.'

Also from Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Levitt

Levitt spent 1963 studying applied mathematics at the University of Pretoria. He attended King's College London, graduating with a first-class honours degree in Physics in 1967...

Levitt was one of the first researchers to conduct molecular dynamics simulations of DNA and proteins and developed the first software for this purpose. He is currently well known for developing approaches to predict macromolecular structures, having participated in many Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction (CASP) competitions, where he criticised molecular dynamics for inability to refine protein structures. He has also worked on simplified representations of protein structure for analysing folding and packing, as well as developing scoring systems for large-scale sequence-structure comparisons.

As impressive as the man's resume is, saying Stanford professor is a massive appeal to authority for someone without a relevant background in epidemiology, so well noted!

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
As impressive as the man's resume is, saying Stanford professor is a massive appeal to authority for someone without a relevant background in epidemiology, so well noted!

It's true. I remember when I pointed something similar about Bill Nye, but I just got called a bigot.

Weird how some folks can be, right?

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
But he adds that caveat right here, he argues that if that does not occur the number is unchanged:

chaos0xomega wrote:
The number of people that will die from coronavirus, in the absence of a vaccine or some effective cure or treatment is X.

X remaining unchanged is based on the what if of that situation. The 'what if' he is making to demonstrate that X can never increase, only decrease. He is not making the argument that lockdowns don't work to reduce X, he is arguing that in a worst case scenario you never get an increased X with a lockdown.

Which is false.
Virus needs an active carrier to spread disease. If you've been infected you can't be infected again. What is interesting about this virus is the people spreading the disease mostly and the ones dying from it aren't the same group of people. If you isolated the vulnerable (65+) for 1 month and allowed the non vulnerable to be exposed the virus would literally lose it's ability to spread quickly. 65+ people mostly are retired and live at home or in nursing homes it is fairly easy to execute this plan.
It's easy to miss how this would change X in this situation but I will explain it.
X essentially means number of vulnerable people exposed to the virus and a certain high % of them die. X goes down because the number of carriers over time goes down. Time increases your chance of being exposed to an active carrier because as time passes you come in contact with more people.
Lets say this unnamed 65 year old came in contact with 5 random people in a month but came in contact with 30 random people in 6 months. In my proposed plan the people the later 5 months are less likely to carry the virus because they have already been exposed. This in effect reduces X. When everyone goes on lock down you are not reducing the viruses chance to spread because you keep the potential carrier population large. Once you get to the point where each infected person does not average another infection - the virus dies in a few weeks.

This is how heard immunity works. It would be extremely effective against this virus to because the majority of people who are active and spread the virus will not die from it. Older people and sick people should isolate and protect themselves by all means. Forcing the non vulnerable to isolate literally kills people. ESP due to the fact most will be non symptomatic when they carry it.

Sweden tried this. Sweden failed. It cost them many lives and is still costing them many lives.

Also, there are many conflicting reports about us gaining antibodies to fight off infection a second time. As far as the herd immunity, that mostly works because we have vaccines to back it up. To give us that immunity without having to risk infection. So, that is not how herd immunity works at all.

No. You can't possibly know if the approach worked yet. It takes time. collecting data takes time as does testing whole populations for a disease. Beyond the fact that most of these numbers across the world are being misrepresented for one reason or another. Lets just say all the number thus far were accurate. What % of the population has been exposed? No where near what is required to make these determinations.

In the case of Sweden it would be expected that they would have higher rates initially than other neighboring areas. Plus they did an absolutely horrible job of protecting the vulnerable so they are hardly a model for the strategy. Plus - this is completely ignoring the cost of the lockdown itself - which is also hard to measure immediately and admitably is likely also being misrepresented both ways due to the political nonsense. This is not political. It is logic. We as a people (as human beings) need to be able to use logic when making decisions with catastrophic ramifications.

If there are conflicting reports about gaining immunity after infection it should be front page news. From several credible sources I have seen more than enough to convince me those who are infected and recover gain immunity. Plus if that isn't true we are royally screwed anyways without a vaccine - which I work in the industry of clinical research. This stuff takes time. LONG time. More time than people can live in their houses. Plus as time passes the toll of the lockdown will become more apparent.

On a further note. To honestly compare the theories you have to be willing to look at two terribly bleek sets of data and chose which one is better. From a prospective of logic it is easy to do this. From the emotional prospective of most people - you are proclaimed evil for even suggesting it. It is absurd. It must stop.

You do understand that by opening back up, we are risking entire work forces getting sick and having to shut down, right? We are risking overloading an already burdened medical system and pushing more death than needs to be.

Get out in the field. See what happens when a hospital staff gets overburdened/overworked. Mistakes happen quickly and they are very costly.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Which is false

No its not.

Virus needs an active carrier to spread disease. If you've been infected you can't be infected again.

This is conjectural. While that is how many viruses work that is not how all viruses work. Science says this is likely the case for COVID, but there is still data implying otherwise.

If you isolated the vulnerable (65+) for 1 month and allowed the non vulnerable to be exposed the virus would literally lose it's ability to spread quickly. 65+ people mostly are retired and live at home or in nursing homes it is fairly easy to execute this plan.

This is a fantasy that cannot happen in reality. You cannot magically section off a segment of the population by age. Who do you think is caring for the elderly? Its predominantly people in their 20s through 40s.

X essentially means number of vulnerable people exposed to the virus and a certain high % of them die. X goes down because the number of carriers over time goes down. Time increases your chance of being exposed to an active carrier because as time passes you come in contact with more people.
Lets say this unnamed 65 year old came in contact with 5 random people in a month but came in contact with 30 random people in 6 months. In my proposed plan the people the later 5 months are less likely to carry the virus because they have already been exposed. This in effect reduces X. When everyone goes on lock down you are not reducing the viruses chance to spread because you keep the potential carrier population large. Once you get to the point where each infected person does not average another infection - the virus dies in a few weeks.

If you're going to try to explain "how something works" it would help if you understood what it is you're explaining and how, on a really basic level, reality works.

This is such an absolutely stupid argument that you made. I'm honestly incredibly distraught that you took the time to type this out and could not comprehend on a really basic level where the big gaping logical hole is. Like, you've completely failed to comprehend the basic function of what SOCIAL DISTANCING means. It means MINIMIZING your contact with others. An unnamed 65 year old person will come into contact with 5 random people per month over 6 months for a total of 30 people under a distancing scenario. Under a non-distancing/non-lockdown scenario the unnamed 65 year old will come into contact with 5 HUNDRED people per month for a total of 3,000 people over the same time period. I.E. Social distancing reduces the unnamed 65 year olds contact and thus makes him *less* likely to be exposed to an active carrier, because over time you come into contact with *less* people.

Additionally, due to the lockdown, the number of "active carriers" during any given point in time is drastically reduced - the whole point is to maintain a case count as close to zero as possible for as long as possible - so not only does the unnamed 65 year old come into contact with 1/100th the number of individuals he would have if he hadn't socially distanced, but the probability that any of the 30 people he encounters has the virus is itself a fraction of the probability that one of the 3,000 people he would have encountered otherwise has it. I.E. 1 in 30 might have the virus under the distancing scenario, whereas in the non-distancing scenario the number is more like 1,500.

And theres no time discount here, by the way. Based on the data we have collected its estimated that in an uncontrolled scenario the virus would be active for 6-9 months before it reached a herd immunity tipping point. One month of isolation for senior citizens would not cut it at all.

No. You can't possibly know if the approach worked yet. It takes time. collecting data takes time as does testing whole populations for a disease. Beyond the fact that most of these numbers across the world are being misrepresented for one reason or another. Lets just say all the number thus far were accurate. What % of the population has been exposed? No where near what is required to make these determinations.

We've collected enough data at this point to know that it hasn't worked. Sweden expected 20-25% of the population to have been exposed by this point, statistcal analysis of randomly sampled antibody tests determined that 7.3% of Stockholms population had been infected/showed antibodies, and the number outside of Stockholm was lower, slightly above 1%. Swedens deaths per capita was already almost 10x higher than that of its neighbors (many of which are more densely populated than Sweden itself is and thus should have seen a much bigger impact from the virus), but right now they are seeing something like 500 deaths per week from COVID, whereas their neighbor Norway is only seeing 7. Mind you, Norway has a population of about 5 million compared to Swedens 10, but you're still talking a couple orders of magnitude in difference between the two. It should not be that large. Their deaths per capita is offically higher than the US - 36 for them, vs 27 for us, and unlike the US Swedens curve is not bending and that number is not slowing down or decreasing. Statistically and mathematically speaking, there is no future point in which the situation in Sweden suddenly becomes "successful" under these circumstances. No amount of "collect more data over time" will improve these figures based on the established trends.

This situation gets even worse if a vaccine is identified, as Sweden is currently trending towards another 30k deaths over the course of the next year. Norway, Denmark, and Finland are trending towards less than 1000 each. In effect Seden will have killed 30,000+ people unnecessarily, whereas the other 3 nations will have likely saved the lives of tens of thousands, each.

More importantly, almost half of Swedens deaths have come from the elderly, despite the fact that the majority of stringent measures enacted by the Swedish government were intended to isolate and protect the elderly. Why? Because its not possible to isolate an 80 year old when they are reliant on 20 and 30 year olds for care.

In the case of Sweden it would be expected that they would have higher rates initially than other neighboring areas

You would expect the numbers in Sweden to be 2-3x higher, not 17x higher (Norway), 7x better (Denmark), or 13x higher (Finland). In the comparison between the 4 nations, we find that Denmark, in particular, has a population density about 5.5x higher than Swedens - Denmark should, based on density-trends we've seen elsewhere, be the hardest hit of the 4 nations, and yet it isn't, in large part because Denmark has successfully suppressed the virus through lockdown measures, whereas Sweden has not.

Plus they did an absolutely horrible job of protecting the vulnerable so they are hardly a model for the strategy.

And yet thats the only thing they actually really attempted to do - it didn't work, not because they did a gak job, but because its an unrealistic scenario.

Plus - this is completely ignoring the cost of the lockdown itself - which is also hard to measure immediately and admitably is likely also being misrepresented both ways due to the political nonsense.

Sweden is projected to have a 7-10% hit to its GDP in 2020 as a result of COVID based on economic data they have collected thus far, the US is expected to have a 4-8% hit based on current data for CY2020. So, it seems that not only has Sweden failed from a healthcare standpoint, but also an economic standpoint.

This is not political. It is logic

You haven't used an ounce of valid logic in your entire argument, which leads me to believe its mostly political and you're going to extreme lengths of rationalization and cognitive dissonance to try to justify your position.

Q_A_R wrote:Fair enough. You have to admit that the ICL model could have some serious flaws though? It predicted 500 000 deaths in the UK alone, when so far there are about 350 000 confirmed deaths in the entire world?

I pointed this out 10-20 pages ago, but I'll restate it again. The ICL model predicted 500k deaths as a WORST CASE SCENARIO where everything went wrong.

The ICL model has actually born out to be reasonably accurate, the 1.1-2.2 million death figure that was reported was always the worst case "do nothing" scenario in which governments took zero response whatsoever and individuals made no changes to their behavior - which was already essentially obsolete when it was published because by that time governments globally had already taken steps to address the crisis and individual behavior had already altered in an unforseen and unprecedented manner. The model *always* included more conservative scenarios with varying degrees of individual and governmental response that indicated a lower number of deaths - anyone who spent more than 5 seconds glancing at headlines already knew this and was aware of it, your own ignorance of it is not indicative of a failure on the part of the model. https://reason.com/2020/03/27/no-british-epidemiologist-neil-ferguson-has-not-drastically-downgraded-his-worst-case-projection-of-covid-19-deaths/

Contrary to what you may have read or heard, British epidemiologist Neil Ferguson has not suddenly reduced his worst-case projection of COVID-19 deaths in the U.K. by a factor of 28. To the contrary, he says the policies adopted by the British government, which are in line with the aggressive control measures recommended by a highly influential March 16 paper that Ferguson and other researchers at Imperial College wrote, should keep the number of deaths below 20,000.

"We assessed in that report…that fatalities would probably be unlikely to exceed about 20,000 with effectively a lockdown, a social distancing strategy," Ferguson, who is himself recovering from COVID-19, told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday. "But it could be substantially lower than that."

As a note, the UK has seen 32k deaths so far - the paper was calculated on the basis of Great Britain rather than the UK, I don't have stats for GB specifically, but it seems like if anything the results derived from the ILC model were *too* conservative, as GB/the UK have exceeded the 20,000 figure by 50%, though the 32k figure is still very squarely within the range of likely values within the various mitigation scenarios presented - i.e. the Imperial War College model is actually scarily accurate.

link to the paper itself: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

In reality, the only major model that has really been wrong has been the IHME model used by the Trump administration which predicted 70,000 deaths in the US by August (newsflash, we've already exceeded that number) - in large part because it doesn't* actually model the virus at all but attempts to project results by extrapolating data from the performance of other countries and fitting it to a curve - which brings me back to a previous point: if every country followed the same curve regardless of action, then the IHME model would be right and would not have needed to be revised multiple times (with the latest going from 70k deaths by august to 134k deaths by august).

*The model was revised - and I mean, revised, completely changed from the ground up - recently to take disease transmission rates and epedemiological modeling and data into account rather than just trying to extrapolate from aggregate performance. Ultimately, this means the model was as wrong as wrong could be.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trump-falsely-claims-covid-19-death-projection-assumes-no-mitigation/

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/5/2/21241261/coronavirus-modeling-us-deaths-ihme-pandemic

and the "moneyshot":



So no. The ICL study did not have "serious flaws". Perhaps your understanding of the study had serious flaws, but the study itself is and has been "on the money" thus far. Now, if you wanted to say that the MEDIA COVERAGE of the study had serious flaws, then I would agree with you, as you heard a hell of a lot about the worst case scenario 500k dead, but next to nothing about the mid/low range estimates of the study.

Sometimes there are lines of reasoning or discussion in a thread which are so 'oversimplified' that trying to engage them drags the content of posts away from quality conversation and into constant circles of re-explaining concepts that should be basic knowledge.

Theres plenty of scepticism about the model and the rushed implementation of its advice on policy decision.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238186-uks-scientific-advice-on-coronavirus-is-a-cause-for-concern/


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aier.org/article/how-wrong-were-the-models-and-why/amp/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/science/2020/mar/25/coronavirus-exposes-the-problems-and-pitfalls-of-modelling

https://johnmenadue.com/ramesh-thakur-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-coronavirus-models/

The guy has a record of overpredicting numbers. I know this isn't a counter argument to this specific study, but it's pertinent to mention.




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Lockdowns work. Tighter and earlier lockdowns work better. See China and New Zealand.

To get out of lockdown you need a good test, trace and isolate system.

Even South Korea is having some trouble with new hotspots, despite having an early tight lockdown and a very strong TTI system.

South Korea's new outbreaks are hundreds or low thousands of people. Hopefully that is controllable.

The problem with the economy is two things. Firstly that we live in a globalised world where every country is to some degree dependent on other countries. More importantly, every advanced economy is based largely on services, not manufacturing. Lots of service industries are crippled by social distancing.

We got told lockdown was to flatten the curve and protect the NHS. Turns out now that there are other criteria to get out of it. Which is fair enough, but the gov could've at least been transparent about it.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I'm aware of what an appeal to authority is. I wasn't appealing to his authority to prove anything. I merely linked an article, presenting no opinion on the matter either way. Then I pointed out the fallacy in your dismissal.

I'm pointing out that the article you quote starts off with an appeal to authority. Introducing him as a Stanford professor is pretty misleading given that his background doesn't give him any particular expertise on said subject. Its like saying you're about to be operated on by a doctor, which turns out they got their doctorate in literature. Sure they might do a good job, but there is also this horde of qualified doctors saying the opposite. The fact that you don't find that piece of information relevant but respond with a wikipedia quote doesn't really make that my mistake.

Given the fact that his prediction matches official Chinese numbers is even more questionable, as the expectation is that those numbers are downplayed by a significant factor (some observers believe it may be in the tens of thousands.)

See, if you'd just gone to that straight away, that would be fine. but outright dismissal based on his credentials or lack thereof is the fallacy.

your equivalency doesn't really hold water either. Someone pointing out flaws in scientific data with or without appropriate credentials, is not remotely comparable to performing a surgical operation without the correct training. And that I didnt automatically work out some sort of (false) equivalency to then apply to my own point is definitely not a valid line of reasoning either.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I've just ordered a slab of Brewdog's latest beer -- Barnard Castle Eye Test.

That is pretty funny. thats the one part of his story that seems a bit absurd.

QAR, my equivalency wasn't about capability, its about misleading the audience. By using the term "Stanford professor" without any qualifier, you're creating the impression to a reader that this is going to be the opinion of a man who knows what he is talking about. If I told you I was going to be operated on by a doctor, you wouldn't expect me to go to a person who got their doctorate in literature. Its an intentionally misleading way of presenting an opinion as better by referencing credentials that are irrelevant. With enough training and education, a local fry cook could point out flaws in scientific data, but if you write "... local fry cook thinks" most people would likely close the article.

As for this man, googling brings up no real study of this man himself. As far as can see he just gives opinions that just happened to corrospond with what China is officially saying. If you as a person get proven right by the Chinese government, that usually should give you pause, given that the massage almost any number in any field for PR reasons. As I said, the "doctor" might do a good job, as seems to have happened in his off the cuff prediction coming true by official Chinese standards, but being 'right'then does not suddenly make his opinion more valuable as it might be a once off (based on very shaky foundations).

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
See, if you'd just gone to that straight away, that would be fine. but outright dismissal based on his credentials or lack thereof is the fallacy.

your equivalency doesn't really hold water either. Someone pointing out flaws in scientific data with or without appropriate credentials, is not remotely comparable to performing a surgical operation without the correct training. And that I didnt automatically work out some sort of (false) equivalency to then apply to my own point is definitely not a valid line of reasoning either.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I've just ordered a slab of Brewdog's latest beer -- Barnard Castle Eye Test.

That is pretty funny. thats the one part of his story that seems a bit absurd.

Not being unable to find childcare within two streets of two immediate relatives, being unable to secure help as one of the most powerful people in country, he and his wife publishing totally different narratives before he was caught out, or not just getting his wife to drive home?

Track and trace starting today in England and Wales. Tracers saying last night that no one has told them they are starting - presumably because outs been rushed out ahead of time to try and shift attention away from Cummings. Nothing but the most careful, science-led strategy here!

Pushing it out early seems a really bad idea given it's built upon asking members of the public showing no symptoms to self-isolate whilst 'instinct is fine' is still all over the news.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In other news the UK is now sitting with the highest death rate amongst nations with comparable published data.

FT analysis of data from 19 countries finds Britain hit hardest, ahead of US, Italy, Spain and Belgium

Also see useful bullet point walkthrough, here

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
We got told lockdown was to flatten the curve and protect the NHS. Turns out now that there are other criteria to get out of it. Which is fair enough, but the gov could've at least been transparent about it.

Government messaging and leadership has been poor throughout. They've tried to control the crisis with slogans and spin, when it needs an integrated public health approach.

Missed targets again and again, after setting them for themselves. Remember the 84 tons of PPE from Turkey, which was delayed for several days, when it arrived there was only half of it because they didn't send a big enough place to fetch it, then on testing the material failed spec.

The promise to deliver 100,000 daily tests by the end of April, which was achieved by counting 43,000 postal kits sent out the day before.

The daily press conference with the death stats graph, which quietly disappeared when it started to be obvious the plan hadn't worked, just that deaths were being under-reported.

I expect the new Test and Track system to fail at first too. The app is an integral part of it, and it doesn't work on several levels. We'll probably end up using the Apple and Chrome apps by the end of June. Then maybe it will start to work.

Ironically the one good piece of messaging they did was Stay at Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives. Then they abandoned that in favour of Stay Alert, something something, something something else.

Can anyone remember it?