by Simon 656 Replies latest jw friends
you might think the world over-reacted based on false data and wonky models that were just wrong.
Crystal ball gazing definitely tends towards being a black art, rather than a precise science!
However, in a crisis such as this, one has to start somewhere.
Declaring that "She'll Be Right, Mate" just because we cannot be 100% sure - and using that as an excuse for doing nothing - is NOT an option.
However, in a crisis such as this, one has to start somewhere.
Declaring that "She'll Be Right, Mate" just because we cannot be 100% sure - and using that as an excuse for doing nothing - is NOT an option
Right. Models exist as part of a decision making system. They are not an accurate prediction of the future. But that is exactly what people have been selling the world on models for the last few decades when it comes to climate change and other modelling - that they are absolutely accurate (to fractions of a degree) and absolutely certain. And it's not like we don't already have the benefit of hindsight - we have decades worth of model predictions showing that they were way off, not even close, and yet they are still held up as 'the future'.
At least with Covid we know to scrap the models as wrong.
Some promising results of a drug given to Covid patients on ventilators - most were able to come off them within a day.
In less good news, more people are being found dead in care homes which have been hit hard by the virus. Here in Canada they did lockdowns too little too late and have only recently stopped people from working in multiple homes which seems like a bleeding obvious way to spread a virus between multiple vulnerable people.
I think there's also a real risk that there will be people who have died and home that no one will know about. Maybe this is a time when some controlled access to data (such as phone, utilities, banking records) could be combined to identify people who may not be consuming anything so they can be checked on.
These are examples where mortality rates can lag reality - more people will have the virus than we realize, but also more people will have died from it than we know about.
In other news, China has "revised" their Wuhan stats upward by 50%. Expect their numbers to be revised multiple times until the real number is reported, with little press coverage each time or condemnation by our politicians because they are all in their pockets.
From the officials that claim "zero deaths in Tiananmen Square"
In other news, China has "revised" their Wuhan stats upward by 50%.
Simon ...
That was a "rounding error" ... lol. Those 20,000 or 30,000 or 40,000 dead just fell off the radar somehow.
The bastards.
Rub a Dub
Good news about that drug being used in the States Simon
The Chinese government is a biased propaganda machine that will block out damaging negative information about whats happening in their country, it is not an openly honest or transparent government which one can find in most modernized democratic countries.
A measure of a person's loyalty to the country and its leaders is what you say about the activity within the country be it truthful based upon facts or not.
Kind of like how many mind controlling religoius cults persuade or enforce its members to behave, if you say anything about the organization it better be good or you'll find yourself chastised and muzzled.
The Jehovah Witnesses cult is just an example where the real truth to how this cult actually effects its members or their families gets covered over and hushed.
The term "cautious optimism" best describes the present situation regarding the anti-viral drug Remdesiver. As its manufacturer, Gilead Sciences, is emphasising:
"The totality of the data need to be analyzed in order to draw any conclusions from the trial. Anecdotal reports, while encouraging, do not provide the statistical power necessary to determine the safety and efficacy profile of remdesivir as a treatment for Covid-19," Gilead said.
Amongst the better news on the COVID-19 front is that this drug is one of a number currently being trialled. Should Remdesiver not live up to promise, the fight to develop an effective COVID-19 treatment is far from over.
@Simon: On the other hand, the government won't have to fund as many people in elderly care and hospitals.
My parents were complaining about the same policies in Belgium that with a bit of tinfoil hat seem to be designed to maximize death amongst the most vulnerable (the elderly). They are basically treating it as a form of involuntary euthanasia and a lot of the elderly still in their own homes are fearing having to go to a home as a result.
My mother said they were refusing to bring those above a certain age range to the hospitals and had doctors and nurses go to the homes for care which off course continued spreading and spiked the numbers over the last couple of days with 50% of their dead now in (government funded) elderly care institutions.
Another useful site with stats by state showing the R0 value - possibly where each is on the curve:
Note that some states saw it decline to under 1.0 ... but have seen it go up again in the last week or so.
I also read some interesting comments about Sweden, who are not doing the lockdown. One was that the virus could be more widespread than we realize, which changes the mortality stats, and that the curve flattening is possibly as much to do with the most vulnerable dying first than the lockdowns.
I'm not sure I buy it but there's probably some element to it. The trouble is, no one knows for certain at this point, but we do know that the models were wrong, which means some of the assumptions are wrong.
One tip: if a model shows a symmetrical curve then it's too simplistic and wrong - a realistic model would show a sharper growth and slower decline after it's levelled off.
One cannot be too complacent with this thing, if the experience of Singapore is anything to go by!
Singapore, together with several other Asian countries, were being upheld as examples of how best to handle this pandemic. Now they are having to do it all over again.
