GeorgeBMac said: What people forget (or probably never understood) is that stay-at-home was only meant to slow down the infection rate enough to keep it from overwhelming the healthcare system. It was never meant nor possible for it to eliminate the virus.
Yeah, that's what I thought too, but now we've moved the goal post.
GeorgeBMac said: But Americans -- even the sane ones -- are eager to escape stay-at-home orders -- even though the U.S. never geared up to institute effective testing & tracing programs. They are rightly saying: "we can't sit here in our houses forever". Unfortunately, the alternative is either: effective testing and tracing or another 80K dead Americans. Hopefully we have a responsible president by the time the third wave rolls around. This one says he doesn't care how many die.
Or, it acts like past Covid outbreaks and burns out? Or, we come up with a good treatment? (BTW, we aren't near 80K dead Americans, as there has been a lot of mis-reporting, and shouldn't have to worry about another 80K until Fall).
Any actual evidence of misreporting? Or just right wing propaganda outlets spewing doubt and confusion?
Actually, if anything, the death count is likely understated because nursing home deaths were not being counted in many states. Plus, there is evidence that the virus was infecting people long before it was recognized as Corona virus and so some deaths may have been misreported early on as well. As well: we are now recognizing that not all people get the more typical lung issues and are affected in other ways -- particularly young people.
No, if anything, the death count is understated. And, since all it takes is a single Typhoid Mary (and we have thousands of them) to trigger another wave, we should look for many more tens of thousands to die from our lack of testing and tracing -- because they will be roaming our streets and businesses without anyway to identify them.
Or, it acts like past Covid outbreaks and burns out? Or, we come up with a good treatment? (BTW, we aren't near 80K dead Americans, as there has been a lot of mis-reporting, and shouldn't have to worry about another 80K until Fall).
svanstrom said: Sooo… I say that it's partially done over time with computers and your response is that it's also done over time with computers?
Fair point, I think I was more responding to the 'trust in advances of medicine' aspect, as I see that as part of that advancement. We're not in the same place now as we were even a decade ago.
GeorgeBMac said: Any actual evidence of misreporting? Or just right wing propaganda outlets spewing doubt and confusion?
Actually, if anything, the death count is likely understated because nursing home deaths were not being counted in many states. Plus, there is evidence that the virus was infecting people long before it was recognized as Corona virus and so some deaths may have been misreported early on as well. As well: we are now recognizing that not all people get the more typical lung issues and are affected in other ways -- particularly young people.
No, if anything, the death count is understated. And, since all it takes is a single Typhoid Mary (and we have thousands of them) to trigger another wave, we should look for many more tens of thousands to die from our lack of testing and tracing -- because they will be roaming our streets and businesses without anyway to identify them.
I've run across more, but didn't make note of them when I did.
And, I thought (was it in these here forums?) that I was being told I couldn't possibly have had Covid-19 (in late-January, early February), because the first case wasn't until January in Washington state? If I remember right, I was accused of being a nut-job conspiracy-theorist because, well, the news.
svanstrom said: Sooo… I say that it's partially done over time with computers and your response is that it's also done over time with computers?
Fair point, I think I was more responding to the 'trust in advances of medicine' aspect, as I see that as part of that advancement. We're not in the same place now as we were even a decade ago.
Here's the thing… people in pretty much every decade has said the same thing about the decade before.
People are great at amazingly stupid levels of optimism, and they see patterns that don't exist.
10 years from now we will probably have some new developments that we can't even imagine today, but we will also still be stuck with the same problems that "everyone" was sure would be solved decades ago. We won't all be commuting in self-flying cars, have immune systems boosted by nano-robots, solar powered 3D-printers magically creating anything, nor will we have our brains directly linked to computers; all of which some people at one point thought they knew were just a decade away.
Which is why we can't just trust what we think feels right when there's proper science available to us to give us actual facts. Like how we look at the approaches in medicine rather than some giga-this-and-that of the computers available to them, and we turn to actual statisticians (as in plural, we look to the community of them, not just that one crackpot that twists numbers to agree with what we want to "prove") to interpret numbers without the bias/stupid added by any layman with a "theory" and a twitter account.
svanstrom said: Here's the thing… people in pretty much every decade has said the same thing about the decade before.
People are great at amazingly stupid levels of optimism, and they see patterns that don't exist.
10 years from now we will probably have some new developments that we can't even imagine today, but we will also still be stuck with the same problems that "everyone" was sure would be solved decades ago. We won't all be commuting in self-flying cars, have immune systems boosted by nano-robots, solar powered 3D-printers magically creating anything, nor will we have our brains directly linked to computers; all of which some people at one point thought they knew were just a decade away.
Which is why we can't just trust what we think feels right when there's proper science available to us to give us actual facts. Like how we look at the approaches in medicine rather than some giga-this-and-that of the computers available to them, and we turn to actual statisticians (as in plural, we look to the community of them, not just that one crackpot that twists numbers to agree with what we want to "prove") to interpret numbers without the bias/stupid added by any layman with a "theory" and a twitter account.
I think we're actually more on the same page than you realize. I think most 'futurists' are full of it.
But, in some ways, we're going to have to walk things back a bit based on what we're learning... especially in medicine. A lot of what we're learning actually shows the ancients knew more about health than your average doctor today. We don't necessarily need nano-robots to boost the immune system, but more things like proper nutrition, sleep, mushrooms (good immune modulators), etc.
For example, some of the data sure seems to be shaping up to show the role vitamin D (and more importantly, deficiency) played in how hard Covid-19 hit people. Or, possibly the opposite, neglected the negative impacts of some of our go-to solutions.
re: statisticians and twitter accounts - Ok, so who (plural) do we trust then? When it becomes obvious that the data sources the media is using are wrong or worse, where do we go to get better looks at the data, or even better data?
svanstrom said: Sooo… I say that it's partially done over time with computers and your response is that it's also done over time with computers?
Fair point, I think I was more responding to the 'trust in advances of medicine' aspect, as I see that as part of that advancement. We're not in the same place now as we were even a decade ago.
Here's the thing… people in pretty much every decade has said the same thing about the decade before.
People are great at amazingly stupid levels of optimism, and they see patterns that don't exist.
10 years from now we will probably have some new developments that we can't even imagine today, but we will also still be stuck with the same problems that "everyone" was sure would be solved decades ago. We won't all be commuting in self-flying cars, have immune systems boosted by nano-robots, solar powered 3D-printers magically creating anything, nor will we have our brains directly linked to computers; all of which some people at one point thought they knew were just a decade away.
Which is why we can't just trust what we think feels right when there's proper science available to us to give us actual facts. Like how we look at the approaches in medicine rather than some giga-this-and-that of the computers available to them, and we turn to actual statisticians (as in plural, we look to the community of them, not just that one crackpot that twists numbers to agree with what we want to "prove") to interpret numbers without the bias/stupid added by any layman with a "theory" and a twitter account.
That is quite true...
Until a century or so ago the leading cause of death was infectious diseases -- like Corona Virus. That isn't to say that heart disease, cancer, etc. didn't kill but that infections got them first.
The first major advance was sanitation -- people started washing dishes, shitting in their water and surgeons stopped wiping their scalpels on their pants between patients.
The next major advance were the creation of antibiotics -- which was able to kill off most bacterial infections.
But, since then the advances have been mostly halting and incremental.
-- Most medical dollars go to treat the symptoms of so called "age related chronic" diseases such as high blood pressure & heart disease without actually curing the underlying disease. So, they're pretty much just treading water and largely we're just keeping sick people alive a bit longer.
-- We never did learn how to effectively treat viral infections (and prions and funguses) like Corona. We're still in the "huddle in your house in fear stage" -- just as we were in 1918 and will be for the next one.
-- The next pandemic has long been predicted to be, not a virus, but an antibacterial resistant bacteria. And we are breeding just that in our factory farms where precious antibiotics are dumped in by the truckload and are teaching the bacteria how to resist our most potent medications.
Nature keeps reminding us that we are not in charge here with hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes and pandemics. But, we humans seem to prefer blind hubris to clear eyed thinking.
ians and twitter accounts - Ok, so who (plural) do we trust then? When it becomes obvious that the data sources the media is using are wrong or worse, where do we go to get better looks at the data, or even better data?
Data can be gathered in many different ways; and the measuring made based on different interpretations etc. For instance, an automated system measuring traffic might include bicycles, while another system might not. And when it comes to deaths by a sickness there are similar things that might happen; like some reporting all deaths by someone with the diagnoses, and others only when it's the primary cause.
You don't go running to some crackpot with a twitter account for some higher truth when the data simply isn't available yet. It will take years before all reported data has been correlated and cleaned and whatnot, by trained researchers; and while that happens the data might swing back and forth and be hard to interpret. That's just the way it is rn.
ians and twitter accounts - Ok, so who (plural) do we trust then? When it becomes obvious that the data sources the media is using are wrong or worse, where do we go to get better looks at the data, or even better data?
Data can be gathered in many different ways; and the measuring made based on different interpretations etc. For instance, an automated system measuring traffic might include bicycles, while another system might not. And when it comes to deaths by a sickness there are similar things that might happen; like some reporting all deaths by someone with the diagnoses, and others only when it's the primary cause.
You don't go running to some crackpot with a twitter account for some higher truth when the data simply isn't available yet. It will take years before all reported data has been correlated and cleaned and whatnot, by trained researchers; and while that happens the data might swing back and forth and be hard to interpret. That's just the way it is rn.
At one point the U.S. had world class public agencies able to both conduct basic research as well as monitor and manage threats to the public like this infectious disease.
But, 20 years of "limited government" budgets and favoring private industry over supposedly evil government -- and then capping it all off with a wanna be dictator with a "Great Brain" (whose uncle was very smart) means we threw away much of our ability to know the truth. Now we rely on Tweets and propaganda.
svanstrom said: Data can be gathered in many different ways; and the measuring made based on different interpretations etc. For instance, an automated system measuring traffic might include bicycles, while another system might not. And when it comes to deaths by a sickness there are similar things that might happen; like some reporting all deaths by someone with the diagnoses, and others only when it's the primary cause.
You don't go running to some crackpot with a twitter account for some higher truth when the data simply isn't available yet. It will take years before all reported data has been correlated and cleaned and whatnot, by trained researchers; and while that happens the data might swing back and forth and be hard to interpret. That's just the way it is rn.
Oh, I get that.... BUT, they are counting it a particular way right now, I think for a reason. Essentially, whether you die OF it or WITH it, it gets counted. The question is whether there are enough uncounted to make up for the over-counting, though I'm not sure it ever will actually be corrected. And then, of course, hardly anyone is going to count all the people who die due to the lockdowns.
svanstrom said: Data can be gathered in many different ways; and the measuring made based on different interpretations etc. For instance, an automated system measuring traffic might include bicycles, while another system might not. And when it comes to deaths by a sickness there are similar things that might happen; like some reporting all deaths by someone with the diagnoses, and others only when it's the primary cause.
You don't go running to some crackpot with a twitter account for some higher truth when the data simply isn't available yet. It will take years before all reported data has been correlated and cleaned and whatnot, by trained researchers; and while that happens the data might swing back and forth and be hard to interpret. That's just the way it is rn.
Oh, I get that.... BUT, they are counting it a particular way right now, I think for a reason. Essentially, whether you die OF it or WITH it, it gets counted. The question is whether there are enough uncounted to make up for the over-counting, though I'm not sure it ever will actually be corrected. And then, of course, hardly anyone is going to count all the people who die due to the lockdowns.
Paranoia and conspiracy theories will not be treated by statisticians, no matter how much they clean up the data.
The real problem right now is stuff like how to compare data from different countries working with different tools and criteria etc; and meanwhile you head straight to "they" and "I think" etc… Who the f*ck are the "they" you imagine having some sort of worldwide secret organisation built up to take control of and misrepresent the number of dead?
Most people can't even keep their own secrets for more than a few minutes, and yet there's somehow all kinds of worldwide groups of "theys" that in perfect secrecy is controlling aspects of your life? Like seriously, if these death counts were too much off every damn nurse and doctor working even just at the same hospital that treats people with COVID-19 would notice; and it'd be leaked to the news fast enough that they'd get flooded by emails and phone calls.
svanstrom said: Data can be gathered in many different ways; and the measuring made based on different interpretations etc. For instance, an automated system measuring traffic might include bicycles, while another system might not. And when it comes to deaths by a sickness there are similar things that might happen; like some reporting all deaths by someone with the diagnoses, and others only when it's the primary cause.
You don't go running to some crackpot with a twitter account for some higher truth when the data simply isn't available yet. It will take years before all reported data has been correlated and cleaned and whatnot, by trained researchers; and while that happens the data might swing back and forth and be hard to interpret. That's just the way it is rn.
Oh, I get that.... BUT, they are counting it a particular way right now, I think for a reason. Essentially, whether you die OF it or WITH it, it gets counted. The question is whether there are enough uncounted to make up for the over-counting, though I'm not sure it ever will actually be corrected. And then, of course, hardly anyone is going to count all the people who die due to the lockdowns.
Paranoia and conspiracy theories will not be treated by statisticians, no matter how much they clean up the data.
The real problem right now is stuff like how to compare data from different countries working with different tools and criteria etc; and meanwhile you head straight to "they" and "I think" etc… Who the f*ck are the "they" you imagine having some sort of worldwide secret organisation built up to take control of and misrepresent the number of dead?
Most people can't even keep their own secrets for more than a few minutes, and yet there's somehow all kinds of worldwide groups of "theys" that in perfect secrecy is controlling aspects of your life? Like seriously, if these death counts were too much off every damn nurse and doctor working even just at the same hospital that treats people with COVID-19 would notice; and it'd be leaked to the news fast enough that they'd get flooded by emails and phone calls.
Spreading doubt and confusion is an effective propaganda tool when the facts are against you.
svanstrom said: Paranoia and conspiracy theories will not be treated by statisticians, no matter how much they clean up the data.
The real problem right now is stuff like how to compare data from different countries working with different tools and criteria etc; and meanwhile you head straight to "they" and "I think" etc… Who the f*ck are the "they" you imagine having some sort of worldwide secret organisation built up to take control of and misrepresent the number of dead?
Most people can't even keep their own secrets for more than a few minutes, and yet there's somehow all kinds of worldwide groups of "theys" that in perfect secrecy is controlling aspects of your life? Like seriously, if these death counts were too much off every damn nurse and doctor working even just at the same hospital that treats people with COVID-19 would notice; and it'd be leaked to the news fast enough that they'd get flooded by emails and phone calls.
Oh, I completely agree with you regarding traditional conspiracy theories.
The problem here is that it isn't much of a traditional conspiracy theory. There aren't really many secrets, just fairly obvious collusion of misreporting and censoring/labeling to control a narrative for political purposes. It's done right out in the open.
Or, another way of putting it, 'conspiracy theory' lately has become more just an ad hominem attack to try and get the general population to help enforce the narrative control.
svanstrom said: Paranoia and conspiracy theories will not be treated by statisticians, no matter how much they clean up the data.
The real problem right now is stuff like how to compare data from different countries working with different tools and criteria etc; and meanwhile you head straight to "they" and "I think" etc… Who the f*ck are the "they" you imagine having some sort of worldwide secret organisation built up to take control of and misrepresent the number of dead?
Most people can't even keep their own secrets for more than a few minutes, and yet there's somehow all kinds of worldwide groups of "theys" that in perfect secrecy is controlling aspects of your life? Like seriously, if these death counts were too much off every damn nurse and doctor working even just at the same hospital that treats people with COVID-19 would notice; and it'd be leaked to the news fast enough that they'd get flooded by emails and phone calls.
Oh, I completely agree with you regarding traditional conspiracy theories.
The problem here is that it isn't much of a traditional conspiracy theory. There aren't really many secrets, just fairly obvious collusion of misreporting and censoring/labeling to control a narrative for political purposes. It's done right out in the open.
Or, another way of putting it, 'conspiracy theory' lately has become more just an ad hominem attack to try and get the general population to help enforce the narrative control.
Soooo… here's the thing, that whole "the other ones are crazy, but I'm not"-approach is what they all have. If I bothered to google for it I'd probably find someone saying that the ones believing in UFOs are crazy, while they with a straight face would talk about how Bigfoot actually are fifth dimensional Atlaneans.
In your case it's of course way less something from a comic book, but there's still that whole thing with a "they"; and somehow those people are in complete secrecy manipulating numbers on a global scale so expertly that worldwide experts are falling for it, yet you have that special level of clarity that you can see the patterns that no one else can see?
You can sort of see where I was going with that, right? It's just not in any way shape or form any type of reasonable that every single person with insight is in on some conspiracy (and everyone managing to keep it quiet) to control these numbers; and if you (or I, or anyone) in a situation like that sees patterns that no one else is able to see, then it's actually quite reasonable to doubt those patterns that we think we see, right? It's reasonable that we either simply are wrong, or that we, colloquially speaking, have caught a case of being batshit crazy; right?
Personally, even though I'm qualifiedly "damn smart", and to a certain degree work with information and patterns, I stay waaaay far away from certain areas of maths (in the widest possible sense of the word) simply because it is very unintuitive; so without more specialised knowledge I would end up making predictions that aren't true. I would see patterns that aren't there. (For a fairly basic example of "unintuitive math" you can take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem, and its implications for cryptography.)
Right now there are many uncertainties when it comes to most things about this virus, and you simply must accept that that's it; people are doing their best to react to information that is as good as it can get at the moment. There's no "they" with perfect information trying to control your life because of some sort of (secret) agenda about manipulating all people.
Just to loop back to some actual information about this virus…
About once a week I in a social setting meet a doctor that's spent a great deal of time with COVID-19 patients at a major hospital; and we're talking a teaching hospital, in many areas doing world leading research etc.
If the number of patients she saw, or the number of people that died, were off even just a little bit she would react; just like any competent doctor would. They would instantly start looking at what they are doing wrong/right to cause that discrepancy. They would have unexpected data not matching what's expected; and they would go looking for what the heck it is they are doing different to either cure or kill more people than any other hospital.
The dangerous thing here, about going looking for manipulation of this data, is that the data being uncertain and reported differently (and totalitarian regimes like China clearly manipulating their numbers) is that no matter what corrections are made to it you'll be able to weave that into some sort of validation of your theories. No matter what comes to light over these next couple of years you will make it fit into your narrative about patterns that only you could see. If the numbers goes down you'll talk about the evil politicians that somehow benefited from keeping you from going to the mall; and if they go up you'll perhaps talk about them masterminding that to hide their earlier manipulation the other way. I don't know how, but I bet that you'll find a way to make it fit what you think.
Just take a refresher read of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor, and realise that at the end of the day the most scary thing about how we as a collective are reacting to COVID-19 is that we are f*cking clueless about what we're doing.
Last thing I saw about the number of predicted total infected in a certain city at a certain future date was that the different models had anything from 28% to 77%. And that's the best we can do right now. Which. Is. F*cking. Scary.
svanstrom said: Paranoia and conspiracy theories will not be treated by statisticians, no matter how much they clean up the data.
The real problem right now is stuff like how to compare data from different countries working with different tools and criteria etc; and meanwhile you head straight to "they" and "I think" etc… Who the f*ck are the "they" you imagine having some sort of worldwide secret organisation built up to take control of and misrepresent the number of dead?
Most people can't even keep their own secrets for more than a few minutes, and yet there's somehow all kinds of worldwide groups of "theys" that in perfect secrecy is controlling aspects of your life? Like seriously, if these death counts were too much off every damn nurse and doctor working even just at the same hospital that treats people with COVID-19 would notice; and it'd be leaked to the news fast enough that they'd get flooded by emails and phone calls.
Oh, I completely agree with you regarding traditional conspiracy theories.
The problem here is that it isn't much of a traditional conspiracy theory. There aren't really many secrets, just fairly obvious collusion of misreporting and censoring/labeling to control a narrative for political purposes. It's done right out in the open.
Or, another way of putting it, 'conspiracy theory' lately has become more just an ad hominem attack to try and get the general population to help enforce the narrative control.
I would say, rather, spreading conspiracy theories has become a very common political tactic used by (mostly) the right to discredit their opponents.
svanstrom said: Paranoia and conspiracy theories will not be treated by statisticians, no matter how much they clean up the data.
The real problem right now is stuff like how to compare data from different countries working with different tools and criteria etc; and meanwhile you head straight to "they" and "I think" etc… Who the f*ck are the "they" you imagine having some sort of worldwide secret organisation built up to take control of and misrepresent the number of dead?
Most people can't even keep their own secrets for more than a few minutes, and yet there's somehow all kinds of worldwide groups of "theys" that in perfect secrecy is controlling aspects of your life? Like seriously, if these death counts were too much off every damn nurse and doctor working even just at the same hospital that treats people with COVID-19 would notice; and it'd be leaked to the news fast enough that they'd get flooded by emails and phone calls.
Oh, I completely agree with you regarding traditional conspiracy theories.
The problem here is that it isn't much of a traditional conspiracy theory. There aren't really many secrets, just fairly obvious collusion of misreporting and censoring/labeling to control a narrative for political purposes. It's done right out in the open.
Or, another way of putting it, 'conspiracy theory' lately has become more just an ad hominem attack to try and get the general population to help enforce the narrative control.
.... totalitarian regimes like China clearly manipulating their numbers)
...
Ok, got it.... But aren't you falling for the same thing you decry? That is: has there been any proof that for THAT conspiracy theory --- other than China brought the virus under control (and we didn't)?
Yes, they did have a resurgence. So now they are testing over a million people a day in the hotspot and following up with contact tracing -- so even their hotspot would be considered "ready to open" here in the U.S. But then here, in the U.S. the virus is just a hoax, no worse than the flu. /s
svanstrom said: Soooo… here's the thing, that whole "the other ones are crazy, but I'm not"-approach is what they all have.
Just to lighten the mood a bit...
But, again, is the stuff I'm talking about even secret or controversial? The models were WAY, WAY off. A huge percentage of deaths were due to shifting Covid-19 infections into the worst possible places (in our most highly dense population centers). We've shut down the economies, which will likely kill MANY millions of people around the world due to the economic impacts. We did have less-severe options which could have better balanced that.
We don't even have to start with any conspiracies, I'm just talking realities of the situation. Do I think governors stuffed those Covid patients into nursing homes to kill off the old people there? No, but I think they were so freaked out, they probably did it because they feared the hospitals being overrun.
What I do think borders on conspiracy, is that governments tend to be power-hungry, and will take advantage of situations go gobble up a bit more power (cf. post 9/11, shooter phones, etc.). In the USA, there is also political gain to be made from some economic instability, outside of the typical power-grab.
Was it purposeful, calculated? I doubt it. But, it probably made it easier to eventually embrace the over-reaction model instead of what seemed to be the Trump-path. I mean, if you doubt that, just look at the reaction to hydroxychloroquine.
svanstrom said: Right now there are many uncertainties when it comes to most things about this virus, and you simply must accept that that's it; people are doing their best to react to information that is as good as it can get at the moment. There's no "they" with perfect information trying to control your life because of some sort of (secret) agenda about manipulating all people. ... Last thing I saw about the number of predicted total infected in a certain city at a certain future date was that the different models had anything from 28% to 77%. And that's the best we can do right now. Which. Is. F*cking. Scary.
I'm not sure that they are, which is kind of the point. While I get that when things are unknown, you do have to prepare for the worst (though balanced with the implications!), what I've mostly seen, seems more like take the worst of everything and just run with it. That's what happens when you run off emotion, fear, panic, etc. I would hope the officials in charge of such things would do a bit better than that.
And, by 'they' let me give you some examples. When the testing was ramped up, it was obvious we'd see a spike in 'infections' but they didn't get reported in that context. They got reported as 'USA fails'. Who were 'they' in that situation? Had to be a lot of people who ***SHOULD*** have known better. Were they just that stupid? Did they do it on purpose? I don't know, you tell me.
As for scary, here's what I'm scared of...
GeorgeBMac said: I would say, rather, spreading conspiracy theories has become a very common political tactic used by (mostly) the right to discredit their opponents.
Possibly, though I've never tried to measure. Also, keep in mind there is quite a bit of range between far-left / left and right / far-right. I think both sides are probably guilty of lumping them too closely together. I do see a lot of more right-wing conspiracy theories that I also think are pretty wacky. But, that doesn't have much bearing on the more middle to moderate right-wing views.
And, I haven't thought this totally though... but I think part of the distinction probably comes from who is more in control of the media/information. The 'underdog' is probably going to go more 'conspiracy theory' both in position and being accused, while the 'upper hand' is going to go more propaganda/censorship in technique and being accused. There is probably a mixture of truth and overstatement all around.
Comments
Yes....
https://denver.cbslocal.com/2020/05/14/coronavirus-montezuma-county-coroner-alcohol-poisoning-covid-death/
and...
I've run across more, but didn't make note of them when I did.
And, I thought (was it in these here forums?) that I was being told I couldn't possibly have had Covid-19 (in late-January, early February), because the first case wasn't until January in Washington state? If I remember right, I was accused of being a nut-job conspiracy-theorist because, well, the news.
I'm not sure those charts are trying to show that. I think they are just using the CDC data, but has indicated the potential issues elsewhere.
The main point of those graphs is to give a more accurate perspective on how this is progressing (which the media isn't doing).
And again, why should we *assume* this won't act like other directly-related viruses?
https://academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiaa161/5815743
Also, in some other historic cases, there was no significant 2nd wave, no vaccines developed/needed, etc.... we can hope that repeats!
People are great at amazingly stupid levels of optimism, and they see patterns that don't exist.
10 years from now we will probably have some new developments that we can't even imagine today, but we will also still be stuck with the same problems that "everyone" was sure would be solved decades ago. We won't all be commuting in self-flying cars, have immune systems boosted by nano-robots, solar powered 3D-printers magically creating anything, nor will we have our brains directly linked to computers; all of which some people at one point thought they knew were just a decade away.
Which is why we can't just trust what we think feels right when there's proper science available to us to give us actual facts. Like how we look at the approaches in medicine rather than some giga-this-and-that of the computers available to them, and we turn to actual statisticians (as in plural, we look to the community of them, not just that one crackpot that twists numbers to agree with what we want to "prove") to interpret numbers without the bias/stupid added by any layman with a "theory" and a twitter account.
But, in some ways, we're going to have to walk things back a bit based on what we're learning... especially in medicine. A lot of what we're learning actually shows the ancients knew more about health than your average doctor today. We don't necessarily need nano-robots to boost the immune system, but more things like proper nutrition, sleep, mushrooms (good immune modulators), etc.
For example, some of the data sure seems to be shaping up to show the role vitamin D (and more importantly, deficiency) played in how hard Covid-19 hit people. Or, possibly the opposite, neglected the negative impacts of some of our go-to solutions.
re: statisticians and twitter accounts - Ok, so who (plural) do we trust then? When it becomes obvious that the data sources the media is using are wrong or worse, where do we go to get better looks at the data, or even better data?
You don't go running to some crackpot with a twitter account for some higher truth when the data simply isn't available yet. It will take years before all reported data has been correlated and cleaned and whatnot, by trained researchers; and while that happens the data might swing back and forth and be hard to interpret. That's just the way it is rn.
The real problem right now is stuff like how to compare data from different countries working with different tools and criteria etc; and meanwhile you head straight to "they" and "I think" etc… Who the f*ck are the "they" you imagine having some sort of worldwide secret organisation built up to take control of and misrepresent the number of dead?
Most people can't even keep their own secrets for more than a few minutes, and yet there's somehow all kinds of worldwide groups of "theys" that in perfect secrecy is controlling aspects of your life? Like seriously, if these death counts were too much off every damn nurse and doctor working even just at the same hospital that treats people with COVID-19 would notice; and it'd be leaked to the news fast enough that they'd get flooded by emails and phone calls.
Spreading doubt and confusion is an effective propaganda tool when the facts are against you.
The problem here is that it isn't much of a traditional conspiracy theory. There aren't really many secrets, just fairly obvious collusion of misreporting and censoring/labeling to control a narrative for political purposes. It's done right out in the open.
Or, another way of putting it, 'conspiracy theory' lately has become more just an ad hominem attack to try and get the general population to help enforce the narrative control.
What facts would those be? The Imperial College Model?
In your case it's of course way less something from a comic book, but there's still that whole thing with a "they"; and somehow those people are in complete secrecy manipulating numbers on a global scale so expertly that worldwide experts are falling for it, yet you have that special level of clarity that you can see the patterns that no one else can see?
You can sort of see where I was going with that, right? It's just not in any way shape or form any type of reasonable that every single person with insight is in on some conspiracy (and everyone managing to keep it quiet) to control these numbers; and if you (or I, or anyone) in a situation like that sees patterns that no one else is able to see, then it's actually quite reasonable to doubt those patterns that we think we see, right? It's reasonable that we either simply are wrong, or that we, colloquially speaking, have caught a case of being batshit crazy; right?
Personally, even though I'm qualifiedly "damn smart", and to a certain degree work with information and patterns, I stay waaaay far away from certain areas of maths (in the widest possible sense of the word) simply because it is very unintuitive; so without more specialised knowledge I would end up making predictions that aren't true. I would see patterns that aren't there. (For a fairly basic example of "unintuitive math" you can take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem, and its implications for cryptography.)
Right now there are many uncertainties when it comes to most things about this virus, and you simply must accept that that's it; people are doing their best to react to information that is as good as it can get at the moment. There's no "they" with perfect information trying to control your life because of some sort of (secret) agenda about manipulating all people.
Just to loop back to some actual information about this virus…
About once a week I in a social setting meet a doctor that's spent a great deal of time with COVID-19 patients at a major hospital; and we're talking a teaching hospital, in many areas doing world leading research etc.
If the number of patients she saw, or the number of people that died, were off even just a little bit she would react; just like any competent doctor would. They would instantly start looking at what they are doing wrong/right to cause that discrepancy. They would have unexpected data not matching what's expected; and they would go looking for what the heck it is they are doing different to either cure or kill more people than any other hospital.
The dangerous thing here, about going looking for manipulation of this data, is that the data being uncertain and reported differently (and totalitarian regimes like China clearly manipulating their numbers) is that no matter what corrections are made to it you'll be able to weave that into some sort of validation of your theories. No matter what comes to light over these next couple of years you will make it fit into your narrative about patterns that only you could see. If the numbers goes down you'll talk about the evil politicians that somehow benefited from keeping you from going to the mall; and if they go up you'll perhaps talk about them masterminding that to hide their earlier manipulation the other way. I don't know how, but I bet that you'll find a way to make it fit what you think.
Just take a refresher read of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor, and realise that at the end of the day the most scary thing about how we as a collective are reacting to COVID-19 is that we are f*cking clueless about what we're doing.
Last thing I saw about the number of predicted total infected in a certain city at a certain future date was that the different models had anything from 28% to 77%. And that's the best we can do right now. Which. Is. F*cking. Scary.
I would say, rather, spreading conspiracy theories has become a very common political tactic used by (mostly) the right to discredit their opponents.
But, again, is the stuff I'm talking about even secret or controversial? The models were WAY, WAY off. A huge percentage of deaths were due to shifting Covid-19 infections into the worst possible places (in our most highly dense population centers). We've shut down the economies, which will likely kill MANY millions of people around the world due to the economic impacts. We did have less-severe options which could have better balanced that.
We don't even have to start with any conspiracies, I'm just talking realities of the situation. Do I think governors stuffed those Covid patients into nursing homes to kill off the old people there? No, but I think they were so freaked out, they probably did it because they feared the hospitals being overrun.
What I do think borders on conspiracy, is that governments tend to be power-hungry, and will take advantage of situations go gobble up a bit more power (cf. post 9/11, shooter phones, etc.). In the USA, there is also political gain to be made from some economic instability, outside of the typical power-grab.
Was it purposeful, calculated? I doubt it. But, it probably made it easier to eventually embrace the over-reaction model instead of what seemed to be the Trump-path. I mean, if you doubt that, just look at the reaction to hydroxychloroquine.
I'm not sure that they are, which is kind of the point. While I get that when things are unknown, you do have to prepare for the worst (though balanced with the implications!), what I've mostly seen, seems more like take the worst of everything and just run with it. That's what happens when you run off emotion, fear, panic, etc. I would hope the officials in charge of such things would do a bit better than that.
And, by 'they' let me give you some examples. When the testing was ramped up, it was obvious we'd see a spike in 'infections' but they didn't get reported in that context. They got reported as 'USA fails'. Who were 'they' in that situation? Had to be a lot of people who ***SHOULD*** have known better. Were they just that stupid? Did they do it on purpose? I don't know, you tell me.
As for scary, here's what I'm scared of...
Possibly, though I've never tried to measure.
Also, keep in mind there is quite a bit of range between far-left / left and right / far-right. I think both sides are probably guilty of lumping them too closely together. I do see a lot of more right-wing conspiracy theories that I also think are pretty wacky. But, that doesn't have much bearing on the more middle to moderate right-wing views.
And, I haven't thought this totally though... but I think part of the distinction probably comes from who is more in control of the media/information. The 'underdog' is probably going to go more 'conspiracy theory' both in position and being accused, while the 'upper hand' is going to go more propaganda/censorship in technique and being accused. There is probably a mixture of truth and overstatement all around.