Coronavirus Hysteria

[Jared]

That Medium article is from March 29th, back when the "experts" were forecasting hundreds of thousands of deaths. They're now forecasting tens of thousands. I remember when they were forecasting millions.

Noticing a pattern?

The fact is, the virus isn't what we thought it was. About 95% of society hasn't realized this yet, and the media's in no hurry to tell them, so pay no attention to their misguided panic.

The virus is already widespread, likely with tens of millions of infections in the U.S. There are around 60,000,000 flu infections in the U.S. each year, and this virus is significantly more contagious.

The fatality rate is well under 1% -- probably under 0.5%. I've even seen as low as 0.1%.

This sounds alarming, but should be reassuring. Covid-19 takes 20-25 days to kill victims. The paper reckons that 7m Americans were infected from March 8th to 14th, and official data show 7,000 deaths three weeks later. The resulting fatality rate is 0.1%, similar to that of flu. That is amazingly low, just a tenth of some other estimates. Perhaps it is just wrong, possibly because the death toll has been under-reported. Perhaps, though, New York’s hospitals are overflowing because the virus is so contagious that it has crammed the equivalent of a year’s worth of flu cases into one week.

All of the deaths it's causing isn't because it has a high fatality rate, as was once thought, but because so many people have already been infected. 25,000 deaths in four months of circulating isn't all that bad. The flu kills around 60,000 a year, remember.

Anyone talking about two years of social distancing, or 6-12 months of lock down, isn't dealing in reality. The damage to the economy, and the domino effect that's going to set off, is probably already more damaging than the virus. Extending that is completely nonsensical.

 

[CCarter]

My bad, logged into the wrong account...

 

[Nargil]

I am really amazed how people who claim that we are being lied to about covid are taking those 60K flu deaths a year for a hard fact.

Have any of you ever heard of someone dying of flu? In the entire course of your life, have you heard of a family member, of a friend, of a friend of a friend of a friend "dying of flu"? Have you heard of a 20 year old kid dying of flu? I know I haven't.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Have any of you ever heard of someone dying of flu? In the entire course of your life, have you heard of a family member, of a friend, of a friend of a friend of a friend "dying of flu"? Have you heard of a 20 year old kid dying of flu? I know I haven't.

I have a family full of doctors and nurses. I hear about it every year. There's always a few flu death cases in each of their hospitals.

 

[BCN]

It's like if you're dying of aids. You're dying from the flu or pneumonia due to weakened immunity.

 

[eliquid]

But if I go down this line of reasoning, then life will become untenable as I'd have do do that for every single piece of content I read.

Don't take this the wrong way. This is not about you personally but the concept of your thinking.

Why do you think "life will become untenable"?

I've done what you are saying my whole life. I live life just fine. So do millions of others.

You haven't lived this life yet, but you make assumptions about it.

Focus on the part where I said, "You haven't lived this life yet, but you make assumptions about it."

Your brain is wired to focus on shortcuts. It's suppose to do that. So in some ways, your brain is working how it should. However, that doesn't mean it is right, correct, optimal, or best for you.

Also, maybe reading every piece of content is the problem.

When you don't live your life letting your brain shortcut everything, yes you will have to question everything by default. However, maybe you can narrow down what you read to only essentials. Maybe you can start saying NO to certain things.

For example, I use to think to be a better programmer meant I needed to learn 2-3 other programming languages. I thought since I owned a SaaS and several before, I needed to do this.

Then I sat down and realized, Im a better programmer than most for other reasons and that being a better programmer didn't mean shit in the real world or for me and my goals. So I started to read less and less about programming trends and new languages and concepts, etc.

I figured out what really mattered and I cut my consumption of TV and news and "other things" to almost nothing.

Once you do this for a while, you get a gut instinct.

Because of this, I don't have to be an expert on anything. I don't have to read anything. I don't have to learn anything.

Because?

I just know how shit works and has worked for a very long time and that won't be changing anytime soon for humans.

I am really amazed how people who claim that we are being lied to about covid are taking those 60K flu deaths a year for a hard fact.

Have any of you ever heard of someone dying of flu? In the entire course of your life, have you heard of a family member, of a friend, of a friend of a friend of a friend "dying of flu"? Have you heard of a 20 year old kid dying of flu? I know I haven't.

I hear of it a lot. When you have elderly family members or people very sick in your life.. you hear about it.

I also hear about teenagers that have heart attacks who are fit and had no prior health issues, or people who have smoked their whole life and never got cancer.

Oddly enough, I don't know one person that has COVID-19 or died of COVID-19. Almost 99% of the people I surveyed don't either.

The ones that said they did, couldn't tell me if that person actually took a COVID-19 test though. Even my son in the military is telling me their doctors aren't giving them test to verify, but just telling them to assume it is when they get sick.

 

[BCN]

With current infections, you need to know at least 3500 people to know one person that has been confirmed with corona infection - based on a world population of 7 Bn people and 200 k cases currently (which both are likely off).

So it's very likely, that if people on average know 100 people, only one in 35 people will know someone that knows someone with corona. So how many people someone knows with corona isn't a great measure, because most of us won't know anyone with corona. Then you have the compound error that actually all the hundred people you know would have to ask all the hundred people they know.

That being said, I know a few.

Obviously people that suddenly get very sick with all signs of corona, will likely be deemed to be infected by corona. If you have all the symptoms of a disease that's very contagious, preliminary testing ruling out other diseases and so forth ... you can say it with a certain percentage certainty. And it will help doctors in their work to stop the virus from spreading.

Only a biopsy can really tell if you have cancer for most cancer forms, but if you feel a lump in your balls .. most doctors will think it's ball cancer and treat it accordingly.

It's the same if you're driving your car, switching lanes, and swirling around, not maintaining speed, running stop signs and traffic lights, and almost hitting signposts every 100 yards ... police will assume you're driving under influence. They will likely arrest you without doing a blood test (which is the only accurate way to know for sure).

They'll release you when the blood work is done unless they can hold you on other stuff ... but they assume before they know - which any professional can do with a certain degree of confidence.

Even blood work, breathalyzers and other "indicators" are off. The syringe used to draw blood has a known error. Even a flask in a lab is off with a known average fraction of its volume due to acid printing on the flask. So when you do scientific tests you always give the answers +/- a fraction. Different gear have different known and accepted error margins, and there are formulas to calculate the compound error. Breathalyzers do a series of tests, and discard the ones that are too high or too low, and does calculations based on rather letting the wrong guy go, than the wrong guy being arrested. But still you can, statistically, arrest someone who never drank a single drink in 20 years for DUI based on a breathalyzer test - but it's highly unlikely.

If a wife gets killed, they suspect the husband. Always. Because often they're right. This initial "verdict" will lead to more scrutiny, you otherwise wouldn't do (there's a limited amount of work hours, and they are invested where there's the highest chance of finding the right answer).

With unlimited tests, unlimited research hours, unlimited law enforcement and unlimited everything, you could test everything equally ... but until that happens, you need to make assumptions and keep the "real" tests for people that need them (you would do more "testing" of the husband's alibi and questioning than someone two states away).

In let's say 80% of the cases, you are driving under the influence with these "symptoms"/events, while the last 20% are either pure maniacs, overly tired, having a heart attack or other conditions. If you assumed heart attack you'd be right 5% of the time, if you assumed DUI you'd be right 80% of the time.

It's a qualified guess, based on the experience of doctors, law enforcement ... or for marketing, I "know" when my banners burn out based on patterns. In a fraction of the cases it's burned MIDs, but swapping banners is the likely cure.

If you use a commonly distributed software package, like a stripe package with 200 unit tests, for every edge case ... or a big library like Django, Laravel or React Native ... if it doesn't work, most people assume their own code is off before digging into the library ...

Basically we all - knowingly or unknowingly - accept the asymmetric risks in society.

The chance of "you" being locked up for murder and not being guilty is maybe 0.01% - on the other side more murderers are locked up. If we lower the risk of the wrong guy being locked up, you're increasing the chance of murderers getting away. If you locked up everyone, no murders would walk free.

The judicial system and the experience of law enforcement make it "pretty good", and way better than a coin flip, but it can't be perfect.

Nor can a doctor's diagnosis, tests or no tests conclude corona with absolute certainty. Test kits are more accurate than a doctors preliminary diagnosis. And a doctor's diagnosis is better than the layman's. And the layman's diagnosis is better than that of an animal or something else ...

The risk of letting the wrong patient go and infect others is worse than wrongfully telling someone they have corona, and they chill for 14 days. It's a good trade-off. If the consequences were really bad in the second outcome, you would weight the decision more (i.e. a murder trial).

Any doctor would do this, especially in the military where people are working and living close together. Countries quarantined everyone arriving from abroad, not because they had corona, but because the trade-off is good, and acceptable both to the individual and society.

If you could test a person an infinite amount of times with an infinite amount of test kits, you would have the right answer. But even using 1000 test kits on one person could falsely diagnose the person with corona. But the chances are ... I don't know exactly .. but pretty damn low.

 

[eliquid]

So your argument is..

"We just have to assume, because we don't know.. and don't have the time or resources to prove XYZ"?

Based on every example you gave, that seems to be it.

Let me know if I have this wrong.

If so, you're telling me that the government, lawyers, doctors, medical professionals, the military and essentially everyone in this world doesn't actually know what they are saying and doing. Based on that, can you see why people like me "self-research" and find out the actual facts to XYZ topic when it's important to them?

So all of these people above the "laymen" are just actually idiots and don't have the answers, but yet the layman is the idiot when he self research things, because NO one above him has the time or resources or information to prove otherwise. Key word PROVE, because everyone else is short-cutting and going off assumption.

@BCN

 

[harrytwatter]

Why do you think "life will become untenable"?

Because, in reference to that response, CCarter was implying the Medium article's author had fake credentials. The only way to contradict that baseless assumption would be to actually call Carnegie Mellon, wait on hold, speak to some admin, get transferred to some other admin, and hopefully then confirm they do indeed employ a man by the name of "John Smith" with the title "Professor of blah blah blah" ... and that's IF I were lucky enough to get ahold of someone.

So if I had to individually verify EVERY SINGLE PERSONS credentials before I read anything, it would most definitely very quickly become untenable.

You have to draw a line somewhere between "question everything" and "question nothing". In my previous response I stated how I perceive the scale of trust goes when evaluating opinions/ideas.

TL;DR (since that seems to be needed for everything I post in this forum) trust varies depending on the source. Yes, some random Youtuber with a million views, a Lamborghini and a paid course will very quickly, very obviously raise my bullshit shield to 100%.

On the other hand, in this instance in particular, some random shmuck on Medium, using existing data modelling to forecast a trend, with a minimal following, no history of self-promotion and no product advertised? Yeah, I probably will believe him over some randos in a marketing forum completely lacking in any data, evidence, or credentials to solidify for their arguments...no offense.

That DOESN'T MEAN I'm freaking out, locking down, hoarding toilet paper and euthanizing my cat to prepare for the end of times. It IS however being filed in my memory though as one big outstanding question mark (where we go from here as a society) that I'd like to continue to monitor as events progress.

 

[BCN]

I never said they were idiots.

I said nothing is for sure. Depending on how severe the reverse case is you add more scrutiny to make it more accurate, but it will never be accurate.

You can measure your height a hundred times, and get a different result, but they will all gravitate around a number which is "good enough" for its use (your driver's license, a Tinder profile, or whatever people need their height for). The reverse case here, being 6.025" or 5,11 and three quarters doesn't make a difference. Naturally, a doctor wouldn't put you in a medical laser device so you could for sure know that your real height was between 6.000231 +/v 0.00001 or whatever.

A machine that makes pint glasses for beer, is less accurate than one that makes syringes for medical testing. In the first case will have a machine making glasses, and two guys standing next to it discarding any glass that visually looks off. Glasses that slip through and look really funny, will be discarded before shipment or the bar won't use them.

These glasses will be used 20 times before some drunk idiot breaks them when he tries to carry 6 pints from the bar to his table. If you pour someone a pint, 0.97 pints or even 1.1 pints of beer - it really won't matter. It's a good balance. If the pint glasses were a random size, between a gallon and a shot glass, you would invest more in QC and production facilities until they were an acceptable volume - roughly a pint.

A medical flask, on the other hand, has a different use. It needs more accuracy. The reverse here, giving someone too much or too little of an active ingredient is worse than pouring someone a generous pint. Naturally, they are more expensive to make, have a higher degree of QC and more syringes are discarded during production.

A pint glass manufacturer wouldn't take that extra cost to make their glasses this way, because there's no benefit. The benefit is to keep the cost down and provide an adequate glass that is roughly one pint for all practical purposes, which you can replace when a new summer 2020 beer is out for a promo at a minimal cost.

You let people drink, drive a car, enlist and vote when they are 18 - because *generally* by then they are grown up enough to make these choices. Not always, some people never grown up, and sometimes people aged 15 could enlist and defend their country .. but you can't do an advanced test of cognition and grown-up-ness for everyone. So "when you're 18" is good enough for this practical purpose.

In corona terms:

A country has 100 000 test kits for corona. In the same country, you have 10 000 enlisted soldiers, 40 000 old people, 10 000 people working in critical infrastructure, the rest are either unemployed or work in a noncritical industry (pet store owner, gardener, SEO, makeup artist, clown or trapeze artistt). For doctors to catch a case early, it would mean a lower chance of mortality.

Who do you give tests to?

Case A: Do you give them to anyone who wants on until there are none?

Case B: Do you give them to those that need them the most?

Remember, the idea with test kits are not to tick up the stats on online aggregators or for news to have something to write about. It's to contain the disease and lower mortality of people who would likely not survive without treatment.

A man in his 20s, in the military, with above-average fitness has a change of let's say 0.005% of dying of corona, a senior citizen recovering from cancer has maybe a 20% chance.

You don't give the test for the man in his 20s in the military. You diagnose him with corona based on your medical experience and preliminary symptoms. This is done because if he was not isolated, and had corona, it could infect more soldiers.

So, what are the potential outcomes:

1) He has corona, but because of the diagnosis, he stays at home. Watches Netflix, feels well, no severe symptoms and in 2 weeks he's out doing military stuff again as nothing happened. The disease was contained. The military loses 2 weeks of pay without him doing anything military-related.

2) He does not have corona, but was wrongfully diagnoses. Watches Netflix, feels well, no symptoms and in 2 weeks he's out doing military stuff again as nothing happened. He spent two weeks watching TV, poor guy. The military loses 2 weeks of pay without him doing anything military-related. The corona stats for the newspapers are off, but does it matter?

His test kit can be used for the senior citizen. With the senior citizen, the doctor could also ballpark the diagnosis. But if it's not detected early, the patient would return in 5 days with a worse state, and it will be too late. Due to the potential outcome here, the ballpark is not good enough, and they do a more accurate test. The accuracy went from let's say 60% to 97%. It's valid in this case, as the opposite income is worse than to wrongfully diagnose the healthy soldier.

You accept that by doing this, the stats will be maybe 65% correct in absolute numbers, but they will indicate a spread and containment on a larger scale, and they are still useful for tracking spread. But you can't know for sure if 840 or 1122 people in Poland now have corona.

You will be able to identify cases where they matter quicker and save more lives. The cost of this is less accurate stats. but the point is to concentrate efforts (tests, doctors, ventilators ...) to where it matters most.

It's maximizing a limited resource, getting the desired outcome of containing the disease and guarding people who are vulnerable, at the expense of slightly inaccurate stats and 10% of the population watching tv for 2 weeks. Totally acceptable.

If you have a small country or unlimited tests ... test everyone ... but until you can, test people where it matters. You can obtain the same stats (plenty good enough for newspaper use) with almost as good accuracy for what we need the stats for, by using 10 000 test kits vs 1 million test kits, and it's a good decision.

 

[Nargil]

Then I sat down and realized, Im a better programmer than most for other reasons and that being a better programmer didn't mean shit in the real world or for me and my goals. So I started to read less and less about programming trends and new languages and concepts, etc.

I figured out what really mattered and I cut my consumption of TV and news and "other things" to almost nothing.

Once you do this for a while, you get a gut instinct.

Because of this, I don't have to be an expert on anything. I don't have to read anything. I don't have to learn anything.

Because?

I just know how shit works and has worked for a very long time and that won't be changing anytime soon for humans.

Hard to take someone seriously, when the final argument comes down to "Because I know!"

So your argument is..

"We just have to assume, because we don't know.. and don't have the time or resources to prove XYZ"?

Based on every example you gave, that seems to be it.

Let me know if I have this wrong.

If so, you're telling me that the government, lawyers, doctors, medical professionals, the military and essentially everyone in this world doesn't actually know what they are saying and doing. Based on that, can you see why people like me "self-research" and find out the actual facts to XYZ topic when it's important to them?

So all of these people above the "laymen" are just actually idiots and don't have the answers, but yet the layman is the idiot when he self research things, because NO one above him has the time or resources or information to prove otherwise. Key word PROVE, because everyone else is short-cutting and going off assumption.

@BCN

These last two posts are basically contradicting each other. In one you don't need to read nor research, because "you know". Then in the other you have to do research, because everyone else is idiot, but you are a special snowflake. I wonder what kind of articles and data you research, if not written by lawyers, doctors and other professionals.

I didn't want to join this conversation, but it's amazing (or rather ridiculous) to watch.

The level of privilege and self importance of some people from the western bloc is amazing. Instead of just shutting up for a few days, putting your face mask on and just "going with it", you have to bitch and cry and shout about your freedoms and ego. You can't go to KFC or Walmart? Bo-hoo. End of the world.

And of course, everything is just one big conspiracy to control you, destroy the economics and ruin the "western way of life". And nobody else could see it, but you. Governments (at least some of them) are trying they best, nobody knows the answers, but you. You do. And it was so easy to figure out, gee, aren't you special?! Isn't that amazing? I wonder why some of you aren't advising the governments all over the world.

And panic? I don't see any panic anywhere. All I see is a bunch of people crying about their freedoms, because "They are US citizens and they won't be limited in any way!1!!1!" Jesus. Then again, I heard the same from Swiss and Dutch. Worked out well indeed.

We were the first country (outside of Asia) who had face masks obligatory. People wore them before that regardless. We still wear them. We have less than 900 cases now, out of population of 5.5 mil. That's ratio of 1:6373. US has ratio of 1:626. Obviously, I agree that the official numbers are completely off, but the "ratio of the ratio", which is 1:10 will be relatively precise. We will be slowly opening our economy and borders next week. Easy. And why? Because we don't bitch and cry and don't feel like everything in the world belongs to us.

And let's not compare this to heart attacks and cancers and shit. Main difference is, that this crap is easily preventable. So having approach like "Oh well people die of flu and other diseases anyway", yes, they do. Do more people need to die though, because someone can't sit at home for a month or two? I don't think so.

 

[CCarter]

Because, in reference to that response, CCarter was implying the Medium article's author had fake credentials.

I never implied that. Re-read what I wrote. You stated we didn't read the article, but then how would I know he worked at the university if I didn't read the article?

 

[eliquid]

Because, in reference to that response, CCarter was implying the Medium article's author had fake credentials. The only way to contradict that baseless assumption would be to actually call Carnegie Mellon, wait on hold, speak to some admin, get transferred to some other admin, and hopefully then confirm they do indeed employ a man by the name of "John Smith" with the title "Professor of blah blah blah" ... and that's IF I were lucky enough to get ahold of someone.

So if I had to individually verify EVERY SINGLE PERSONS credentials before I read anything, it would most definitely very quickly become untenable.

You have to draw a line somewhere between "question everything" and "question nothing". In my previous response I stated how I perceive the scale of trust goes when evaluating opinions/ideas.

TL;DR (since that seems to be needed for everything I post in this forum) trust varies depending on the source. Yes, some Youtuber with a million views, a Lamborghini and a paid course will very quickly, very obviously raise my bullshit shield to 100%. Some random shmuck on Medium, using existing data modelling to forecast a trend, with a minimal following, no history of self-promotion and no product advertised? Yeah, I probably will believe him over some randos in a forum completely lacking in any data or evidence for their arguments..

That DOESN'T MEAN I'm freaking out, locking down, hoarding toilet paper and euthanizing my cat to prepare for the end of times. It IS being filed in my memory though as one big outstanding question mark (where we go from here as a society) that I'd like to continue to monitor as events progress.

And your example is exactly why I "question everything" and "trust no one" until I find out for myself.

It is a lot of work.

But if its important to me, I find out and figure out the gotchas and downturns and upturns on my own.

Key point on the "if its important to me" part. Some random journalist giving me statements about a topic I could care less about, Im not going to fact check. It's not important to me. So Im not going to live life trying to call up all the contacts to verify that.

And what would calling them up to verify actually solve? Lets say you call them up and you do verify they are John Smith at XYZ University and they have a degree in ABC topic. Does that actually PROVE anything they say or write? Humans do lie and get influenced and get things wrong.

This is why I think a lot of people have really bad decision making skills. They think if they do X or Y, it validates something or proves something, but in reality it doesn't do much of anything.

Again, this isn't personal. I am just focusing on the thought process part. Not you as a person of forum member.

 

[harrytwatter]

I never implied that. Re-read what I wrote. You stated we didn't read the article, but then how would I know he worked at the university if I didn't read the article?

You most certainly did. You claimed this guy was setting me up for some long con, leaving breadcrumbs for me to follow back to some disingenuous sales pitch.. that I can't trust him because I don't know for certain he actually works at Carnegie Mellon, which prompted the following "verifying every persons identity online is untenable" remark.

As to not reading the entire Medium story I obviously have no proof, but since you never debated the data in the actual story, either here or privately, makes me ASSUME that you simply scrolled through, skimmed the pictures, and then went straight to the bio at the bottom. Not a personal attack, that's just how 90% of people read web pages anyways..

 

[eliquid]

I never said they were idiots.

Yeah, didn't mean you personally said this. Was using as an example of how other people on the forum have acted on that specific thought prior.

I never said they were idiots.

I said nothing is for sure. Depending on how severe the reverse case is you add more scrutiny to make it more accurate, but it will never be accurate.

You can measure your height a hundred times, and get a different result, but they will all gravitate around a number which is "good enough" for its use (your driver's license, a Tinder profile, or whatever people need their height for). The reverse case here, being 6.025" or 5,11 and three quarters doesn't make a difference. Naturally, a doctor wouldn't put you in a medical laser device so you could for sure know that your real height was between 6.000231 +/v 0.00001 or whatever.

A machine that makes pint glasses for beer, is less accurate than one that makes syringes for medical testing. In the first case will have a machine making glasses, and two guys standing next to it discarding any glass that visually looks off. Glasses that slip through and look really funny, will be discarded before shipment or the bar won't use them.

These glasses will be used 20 times before some drunk idiot breaks them when he tries to carry 6 pints from the bar to his table. If you pour someone a pint, 0.97 pints or even 1.1 pints of beer - it really won't matter. It's a good balance. If the pint glasses were a random size, between a gallon and a shot glass, you would invest more in QC and production facilities until they were an acceptable volume - roughly a pint.

A medical flask, on the other hand, has a different use. It needs more accuracy. The reverse here, giving someone too much or too little of an active ingredient is worse than pouring someone a generous pint. Naturally, they are more expensive to make, have a higher degree of QC and more syringes are discarded during production.

A pint glass manufacturer wouldn't take that extra cost to make their glasses this way, because there's no benefit. The benefit is to keep the cost down and provide an adequate glass that is roughly one pint for all practical purposes, which you can replace when a new summer 2020 beer is out for a promo at a minimal cost.

In corona terms:

A country has 100 000 test kits for corona. In the same country, you have 10 000 enlisted soldiers, 40 000 old people, 10 000 people working in critical infrastructure, the rest are either unemployed or work in a noncritical industry (pet store owner, gardener, SEO, makeup artist, clown or trapeze artistt). For doctors to catch a case early, it would mean a lower chance of mortality.

Who do you give tests to?

Case A: Do you give them to anyone who wants on until there are none?

Case B: Do you give them to those that need them the most?

Remember, the idea with test kits are not to tick up the stats on online aggregators or for news to have something to write about. It's to contain the disease and lower mortality of people who would likely not survive without treatment.

A man in his 20s, in the military, with above-average fitness has a change of let's say 0.005% of dying of corona, a senior citizen recovering from cancer has maybe a 20% chance.

You don't give the test for the man in his 20s in the military. You diagnose him with corona based on your medical experience and preliminary symptoms. This is done because if he was not isolated, and had corona, it could infect more soldiers.

So, what are the potential outcomes:

1) He has corona, but because of the diagnosis, he stays at home. Watches Netflix, feels well, no severe symptoms and in 2 weeks he's out doing military stuff again as nothing happened. The disease was contained. The military loses 2 weeks of pay without him doing anything military-related.

2) He does not have corona, but was wrongfully diagnoses. Watches Netflix, feels well, no symptoms and in 2 weeks he's out doing military stuff again as nothing happened. He spent two weeks watching TV, poor guy. The military loses 2 weeks of pay without him doing anything military-related. The corona stats for the newspapers are off, but does it matter?

His test kit can be used for the senior citizen. With the senior citizen, the doctor could also ballpark the diagnosis. But if it's not detected early, the patient would return in 5 days with a worse state, and it will be too late.

You accept that by doing this, the stats will be maybe 65% correct in absolute numbers, but they will indicate a spread and containment on a larger scale, and they are still useful for tracking spread. But you can't know for sure if 840 or 1122 people in Poland now have corona.

You will be able to identify cases where they matter quicker and save more lives. The cost of this is less accurate stats. but the point is to concentrate efforts (tests, doctors, ventilators ...) to where it matters most.

It's maximizing a limited resource, getting the desired outcome of containing the disease and guarding people who are vulnerable, at the expense of slightly inaccurate stats and 10% of the population watching tv for 2 weeks. Totally acceptable.

If you have a small country or unlimited tests ... test everyone ... but until you can, test people where it matters. You can obtain the same stats (plenty good enough for newspaper use) with almost as good accuracy for what we need the stats for, by using 10 000 test kits vs 1 million test kits, and it's a good decision.

I understand your view point on this.

However, based on this understanding.. many people who also share your thoughts push the whole "the world is coming to an end, old people are getting left to die, protect the innocents" and when someone like me ask what are they talking about, they point to the incorrect stats your example points out ( talking about ranges and just having to shortcut to get a number ).

I am not saying you said this or take this viewpoint about the old people and innocents, etc. But there is a large crowd of people doing that, with the same thought process you have.

But the fact is, millions of people did not die of this like the media and professionals said would. The people in Italy that died, that huge number.. is false. Italy can not even get their range of numbers right. They incorrectly counted their death numbers. If that can happen in Italy, it can happen far more places.

So all this hype and hoopla end up based on false and fake numbers. Stats that are incorrect and will continue to be. Stats that hardly include ANY testing done with real test kits.

These numbers have fucked up the world economy. These numbers will likely unhinge a lot of corruption years to come once things slowly roll out.

These numbers are based on shortcuts from people that assumed. That thought process right there is what the issue it.

 

[harrytwatter]

And your example is exactly why I "question everything" and "trust no one" until I find out for myself.

It is a lot of work.

I'm not taking anything personal. As long as people treat others with respect, are civil, and make attempts at backing up their statements I'm happy to continue dialogue.

In regards to your quote, that's fine.. but I must then ask, how DO you form trusted opinions? If you trust literally no one, are you also a data scientist, statistician, or virologist? If so, kudos, please enlighten us.

But if you're not a modern day renaissance man, then you MUST be forming opinions and beliefs based off of something and I would wager $20 you are not launching full-blown FBI identity verification background checks on every piece of content you consume in your life. Or are you? <actually not sarcasm

 

[BCN]

Have you ever been to Africa @eliquid?

Like physically been in the rain-forest and done your research on the flora and fauna to know it's real? Or do you accept that this continent in fact exist? Do you trust the generally accepted maps of the world, continents and the 7 seas?

Do you maybe trust that the photos from National Geographic are in fact real, and there exist such creatures as gorillas, lions, and chimpanzees ... or do you have to self-research it?

I have been many times in Africa, central, north, east, south. Would you believe me if I told you it's real?

At what point is something proven enough? Who is a good authority to speak "truth" to you? You don't trust doctors, lawyers?

The great thing about mankind, unlike other animals such as cats or fish, is that we can write down and pass along knowledge, so every person does not have to experience everything first hand to use this knowledge to better themselves and build upon it to research new concepts. Every doctor does not need to discover that not washing hands before surgery passes bacteria to the operation wound, because some doctor discovered and documented this - and now other doctors can "assume" it's true and go on researching more important new things.

Even intelligent animals such as monkeys and great apes make tools, but everything has to be taught first hand, they don't have the great encyclopedia of chimpanzee knowledge, so their growth from generation to generation is stagnant.

The great expansion of wealth and quality of life for normal people beyond royals and aristrocracy came with the accessibility of knowledge in books, and to learn beyond what's passed down from generation to generation by "show and tell".

Edit: this is not a personal attack, I'm just curious, I really struggle to see how your concept of self-research works. I.e. how do you know the deaths are fake? Because someone said it online? How do you know they are right? At what point is something proven right? In my personal opinion, something in the medical field by a doctor is more likely to be correct, because of their experience and training. They are not always right, but compared to "anyone else" - I trust them more.

How do you know that more people did not die, because the containment and precautions did work? Would you react differently if we did nothing and it turned out to be far worse? Is it acceptable to do too much, given the knowledge people had of the virus in January and December is not the knowledge we have now? What if it was worse? How bad would it have to be to warrant an economic setback? 2% deaths, 5%, 10%, 30%? Who decides when it's bad enough and how much economic loss is warranted vs how many deaths? Would you lose 100 000 to save 10 lives, 100 lives, 10 000 lives, 10% of the population? I don't know the answer personally.

 

[eliquid]

Hard to take someone seriously, when the final argument comes down to "Because I know!"

That's right, I do know.

You only need to know a few very basic things about life and humans, to know all you NEED to know.

I'll share one with you today.

1. Humans are flawed. All humans. Not just those without degrees or 100+ years of life experience. All humans. They lie, they manipulate, they influence, they mis-understand, they do things to others they don't intent and those other people take offense. Humans are also selfish.

This one thing by itself unhinges a lot.

When you know and understand basics like this, other things become very clear and a lot more doesn't have to "researched" to know.

Example. When the stats first came out about COVID-19 and how millions would die. I didn't need to research it or get a degree to verify it. I knew it was wrong based on #1 above.

Easy.

Why?

Because I know. I know #1 along with a lot of other things.

These last two posts are basically contradicting each other. In one you don't need to read nor research, because "you know". Then in the other you have to do research, because everyone else is idiot, but you are a special snowflake. I wonder what kind of articles and data you research, if not written by lawyers, doctors and other professionals.

I didn't want to join this conversation, but it's amazing (or rather ridiculous) to watch.

The level of privilege and self importance of some people from the western bloc is amazing. Instead of just shutting up for a few days, putting your face mask on and just "going with it", you have to bitch and cry and shout about your freedoms and ego. You can't go to KFC or Walmart? Bo-hoo. End of the world.

I'm actually introverted and dont like groups or events. This COVID-19 scare and stay at home scare has actually impacted me 0%. My kids are schooled at home and I work online. The only thing that impacted me is my yearly vacation to the beach, but I know I can do that later. No biggie for me. Not sure what you mean here honestly.

Also, just bc someone has a degree or job title, doesn't mean they are right. So if a article was written by a doctor, it means nothing. I could prove this a lot of ways if you want.

And of course, everything is just one big conspiracy to control you, destroy the economics and ruin the "western way of life". And nobody else could see it, but you. Governments (at least some of them) are trying they best, nobody knows the answers, but you. You do. And it was so easy to figure out, gee, aren't you special?! Isn't that amazing? I wonder why some of you aren't advising the governments all over the world.

And panic? I don't see any panic anywhere. All I see is a bunch of people crying about their freedoms, because "They are US citizens and they won't be limited in any way!1!!1!" Jesus. Then again, I heard the same from Swiss and Dutch. Worked out well indeed.

We were the first country (outside of Asia) who had face masks obligatory. People wore them before that regardless. We still wear them. We have less than 900 cases now, out of population of 5.5 mil. That's ratio of 1:6373. US has ratio of 1:626. Obviously, I agree that the official numbers are completely off, but the "ratio of the ratio", which is 1:10 will be relatively precise. We will be slowly opening our economy and borders next week. Easy. And why? Because we don't bitch and cry and don't feel like everything in the world belongs to us.

You seem very butt hurt you weren't born in a western world. Sorry. Maybe you should change your life and move? You have a deep infatuation about the western world it seems.

And let's not compare this to heart attacks and cancers and shit. Main difference is, that this crap is easily preventable. So having approach like "Oh well people die of flu and other diseases anyway", yes, they do. Do more people need to die though, because someone can't sit at home for a month or two? I don't think so.

Are you trying to prove to me, OR YOURSELF.. that you are right. uhmm.....

 

[CCarter]

You most certainly did.

You should really read carefully what I wrote, it was one sentence: "But than how did I know he's a professor at Carnegie Mellon?"

It was in response to your "Since it seems like nobody is actually bothering to read the article itself let me summarize in a BoSu friendly succinct manner:"

Those are direct quotes.

Logically if I didn't read the article than how did I know he worked at Carnegie Mellon? There would be no way, so I must have read the article.

Everything else is you going off on a tangent. Similar to you going off on a tangent that I stated Dr. Fauci was going to write a book - I never said that. It was an example of personal brand awareness that now exist that didn't.

That building of personal brand, giving Dr. Fauci's personal brand increase in recent months as an example, is an ROI to the clickbaiting purpose of the article. That's what the author gains out of creating the Medium clickbait article.

Either English isn't your first language or you aren't reading and comprehending what I'm writing carefully.

 

[harrytwatter]

Not to be a dick, but to make my point, just now I didn't read your response, but I still know you are trying to insult me by mocking a perceived lack of reading comprehension.

How do I know that? I skimmed your response.

See? You can not read something, skip to the bottom, and read one line. It's again, how most people consume web pages.


But hey thanks for dragging this discussion down into petty insults! Class act you are CCarter..

 

[NetZero]

Are you starting seeing red states turning on Trump? Family members of mine in those states are starting to use a lot of "They" "The Government" and posting videos of outrage, protests, in getting back to work etc.. It reminds me of when they referred to Voldemort, he who shall not be named. The whole states rights are coming into light. Any good hypothetical scenarios you guys have?

 

[CCarter]

How do I know that? I skimmed your response.

See? You can not read something, skip to the bottom, and read one line. It's again, how most people consume web pages.

But you stated that we didn't read the article, even though @Samwise89 LITERALLY summarized it:

^^ How could he have summarized it if he didn't read it?

Direct links: post-50608

Then you literally go on again and state no one read the article. You probably mean "no one agreed with you", cause we read the clickbait article and concluded it was clickbait.

 

[harrytwatter]

@NetZero Yeah I think that is happening, largely because a lot of people who voted for Trump did it not based off his actual policies, but simply because he wasn't a politician.

Poor America is way less partisan than professional-class and wealthy America. Lot of these people gave up on politics a long time ago and are more concerned with putting food on the table. Politicians failed them their entire lives so when a brash shoot-from-hip kind of guy came along who WASN'T a politician, they figured it worth a shot...can't expect change if you're not willing to try something new right?

But poor people aren't stupid either, despite what many democrats want you to believe, and I think they are now seeing the incompetence in Trumps administration, but also our legislature, our business leaders, the WHO...all of it hard to trust with such lack of certainty..

 

[CCarter]

 

[BCN]

My 2 cents... Politics is all smoke and mirrors to please people.

Poor people love trump, even when he's the complete opposite of them. Why would someone who makes a shit salary and living paycheck to paycheck, justify the actions of someone who is on the complete opposite side of the spectrum financially? They have literally nothing in common.

He blames immigrants, they blame immigrants, for different reasons of course ... but it works.

A poor person will justify support rich anytime, as long as they think "one day I'll make it". A "self made" billionaire is perfect for this. You have someone making 10$ an hour, defending CEO salaries, because of the false hope that one day they will run the company. Mexicans who want to build a wall to Mexico. It's the same in any country, and it's quite funny.

Politics do not interest most people, including me.

So politicians add a bit of flair to spice it up. It's the immigrants, it's the Chinese, it's these guys or those over there. When stuff gets boring they throw another log on the fire. Now it's genders and bathrooms ... it sparks up interest again. Everyone can mean something, even without knowing anything about it.

They make it interesting for most, talking about "people like us" and "people like them". It makes it easy to digest. Politics won't sell to most without a villain and polarization. It's like a good movie, it has a hero, the bad guys and maybe a love story. People just aren't interested in "real" politics.

Voters, for the most part, aren't interested in the underlying problems, just the action and fireworks in the media, and when the action is over or directly affect them in a negative way (like now, people losing their jobs), their support is gone.

With the corona, there's no way to justify these measures that resonate with the core values of many of his voters ... Blaming the Chinese is old - it doesn't work, he used that card earlier. He has to do something to show he's acting on corona, but can't resonate with them... and this whole charade is over as the support is just superficial. Until next time.