Covid-19 Discussion (moderated)

Europe is over a million cases now, and US will hit 700k today.

    Yesterday, Michigan had their protesters out circleling the State House. Today, its Minnesoda. Just down the street in Illinois, they lost 125 people to the virus yesterday.

Here we go again.

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-tweets-apparent-support-protestors-stay-home-orders-212755985.html

Conspiracy debunking:

https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-spawns-conspiracy-theories-120017208.html

5g seems an unbelievable theory politicians overstating this crisis too install laws that we otherwise would'nt approve of taking liberties away and enforcing rules that hurt privacy and make sure we have to work longer won't have pensions and give more power to governments is more likely.

The blame game shotgun approach continues:

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-suspends-immigration-coronavirus-022125650.html

I doubt this will stand up in court unless the country is willing to completely throw away their ideals and history, but who knows these days...

There's probably going to be some kind of legal challenge on US stimulus checks...

https://news.yahoo.com/fact-check-banks-keep-stimulus-122140187.html

The checks are being direct deposited by default if the bank info is on file with the IRS, but banks are allowed to withhold the funds to pay off debts, while those people that are getting their stimulus checks by mail can take it to any other bank and cash it, avoiding debt collection.

And this about the 2 serosurveys that have come out recently about detecting Covid-19 antibodies in large sample sizes and extrapolating that to the general population:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/new-studies-suggest-huge-undercount-of-coronavirus-infections-but-are-they-right-161418566.html

Problems with the methodology of the serosurveys:

- As I mentioned before, they used Facebook to recruit participants, and any number of respondents could have been accepting the anti-body test as a free way for determining if they have or had the virus when they suspect that is already the case.  Self-selecting test admissions are big no-no for accurate studies.

- They then test these self-selecting people who probably have a higher infection rate anyway, and uncover a generalized infection rate of 1.5%...but the test has a 1.7% false positive rate, so everything they are finding is within the "margin of error" of the test.

- Then they extrapolate these doubly imprecise numbers to the total population of the area they are in, and make their conclusions about overall infection rate by comparing apples to oranges.

This is why studies are peer-reviewed, because this methodology coming out of a college is exactly the kind of mistakes that some student doing an ill-conceived thesis would make.  It's good for headlines, but it's bad science.  They may not have the wherewithal or access to do a better test, but they should not then represent these tests to be anything more than they are...wildly variable guess-timates.  In this case, the margin of error of the study is 100% of the findings.  It could 50-85 times the number of infections, and it could be as low as zero extra infections, so, barely better than pure conjecture.

 "If in reality we’re only identifying one in 50 infections, or fewer, that would make COVID-19 a lot less deadly than previously believed while also making it a lot more contagious (and asymptomatic “silent carriers” a lot more widespread). That would be a paradigm shift in how to combat the virus. 

The problem, though, is that these studies may not be accurate."

"

One criticism is that the antibody test they used — a kit purchased from Premier Biotech in Minneapolis — has a false positive rate as high as 1.7 percent, according to some estimates, meaning that even if you test only people who have never had the disease, as many as 1.7 percent of them would still test positive. 

To a layperson, that sounds relatively low. But when your sample size is small and the disease you’re testing for is rare, it’s actually big enough to render your results potentially meaningless. Of the 3,330 Santa Clara residents tested, 50 came back positive — or 1.5 percent. Most or all of them, in other words, could have theoretically been false positives. "

Statistician John Cherian of D. E. Shaw Research, a computational biochemistry company, made his own calculations given the test’s sensitivity and specificity — and conservatively estimated the proportion of truly positive people in the Stanford study to range from 0.2 percent to 2.4 percent of the Santa Clara population. Adjusting for demographics, Cherian’s calculations suggest that county prevalence could plausibly be under 1 percent. 

But Nood also pointed out that “the fatality rate is not the only number we should focus on,” because “that is not the only number that determines the burden of disease.” 

Meanwhile, as the virus spreads, hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans will never know they were infected — and could be spreading a very contagious disease to other, more vulnerable people. 

That may complicate efforts to transition out of lockdown. 

There's some decent info in there, some of which you quoted, but the overall tenor of the article draws conclusions about the "British State" and "who controls the WHO" that don't follow from the facts presented.  Hanlon's Razor applies.  Don't attribute to malicious intent what is adequately explained by incompetence.

Conspiracy theorists take the easy way out. Lack of information is proof of a cover-up. Abundance of counter evidence to disprove the conspiracy is proof the nameless faceless "they" are controlling the narrative. Meanwhile it's only human to make mistakes, so they can point to any errors as proof that governments or other organizations aren't looking out for your interests.

It's all a play on the emotional weak and uneducated. The bottom line is you're easy to fool because you're weak... and perhaps you have some vague realization of that yourself, which only draws you closer to the carnival barkers selling "true" knowledge.

In reality truth isn't so easy, and reality isn't so simple. There's no bogyman out to get you, and you can't obtain ultimate truth by simply resenting the establishment. As a believer in conspiracies you enrich immoral actors, even more humiliating, you're a testament to the inherent weakness and fallibility of humans.

It took me 5 seconds to realize it wasn't written by or for rational people.

Do organizations make mistakes? Yes.

Is there a hidden conspiracy? No.

It's far too self referential. People are afraid of their liberty being taken away... but that itself is not a motivation for supposed secret global powers to take away your freedom. If you want to argue secret forces want to issue stay at home orders you have to come up with a believable motivation... from their perspective not the scared audience you're writing to.

So make this damning argument 10 years ago, not today.

The only reason to make it today is to prey on people who are living with daily anxiety.

That's not a terrible quote. My concern is it discredits people who reach correct conclusions.

My motto is similar... why you believe something is more important than what you believe.

Anyway, human incompetence is as common as greed. Of course we can point to events 10 years ago and talk about these things.

And of course it makes the most sense to use this hindsight during a pandemic.

I didn't respond because the tone is silly and I'm too drunk to give it much attention.

In any case you seem too excited to find information that agrees with you. Just like in chess, finding something we like is easy. Even beginners can do that. What separates beginners from experienced players is spending time and energy on trying to discredit the things we'd like to be true.

You seem to want the WHO to fall from grace, so it's only natural I don't trust your defense of such sources, even if I haven't read them.