RichardGibbons

My theory is that it's because the Japanese are culturally socially distanced compared to most other cultures and are also happy to wear masks. Do you have any other theories, Investor20?

You've been proven wrong, and still won't acknowledge it. It's pretty clear that only data that supports your old arguments matter to you.

Really, it's just shameful, so embarrassing. I'm baffled that people would make such ridiculous arguments. If someone wants to defend Trump, why don't they actually make arguments that are at least somewhat credible? He's done some good stuff, so why on earth would they make stupid arguments that don't stand up at all? I mean, there's a reason that they support him, right? So why don't they talk about the good, solid reasons they have for supporting him rather than tossing out all this stuff that nobody with an ounce of brains would believe?

The video's amusing, but clearly propaganda. Both the CCP and Trump screwed up, and spinning it as entirely a USA problem is pretty ridiculous. The thing is, because of polarized politics in the USA, a significant number of Americans may support this propaganda. Putin certainly got his money's worth.

I'm pretty well always mucking around with something that interests me, but isn't actually profitable. Usually that activity can be used as a descriptor that satisfies people. e.g. when I was writing novels, I said I was a writer. Now that I'm playing around with reinforcement learning, I say that I'm working on machine learning. The question usually isn't phrased as "How do you make money?", and more like "What do you do?". So saying what I'm focusing on is an honest response. Also, as I get closer to 50, it's a bit more acceptable to say, "I'm semi-retired". Thus, the answer can depend on what sort of interaction or relationship I want with the other person.

I agree with this. In BC in particular, I think they are too slow in relaxing restrictions. It's quite clear now that the curve has flattened, and it's at the point where high-priority operations should start, and lower-risk non-essential services should open (with masks and distancing.) There is no hope in BC of successfully emulating New Zealand's strategy of attempting zero cases, so the optimal strategy is to slowly reopen, and see what happens. (It would be interesting knowing what epidemiologists' arguments against a gradual reopening starting tomorrow would be.)

The other interesting black swan thing that people aren't talking about is that the more people who get this, the higher the chance of the disease mutating in a noteworthy way. That could be good (mutating into something that is even more infectious, not deadly, but gives immunity for all variants) or bad (same as now, but more deadly).

Yeah, this is still stupidity and not common sense, as you were told a few days ago, a few days before that, a few days before that.... It is not possible to inflect a large part of society while keeping the at-risk population safe.

I swear, it'll be the most incomprehensible Presidential debate of all time.

This is a noteworthy data point that I didn't keep up on--I thought it was always 6, not 14. Thanks for the update, Spekulatius .

Assuming you didn't lie about the transcript, these are his exact words: "I see disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning." You're arguing that he didn't say that it might be a good idea to inject a disinfectant. He did say it. It's very clear, even if he later regretted saying it a few minutes later. I'm baffled why you wouldn't just say, "Oops I was wrong. He did say it, though he later backpedaled."

You ought to be ashamed. (Actually, it's even worse than that, because by lying about what he said, you're missing the main point. Look what he said--even with his correction. That's the guy you're supporting so passionately, the guy who said that stuff. And keeps saying that sort of stuff.) And why the heck would you throw away your credibility on this forum trying to defend that hill? You seemed kind of reasonable before deciding that this is what you wanted to argue.

Because that would be unfair. If I had to bold, I had to bold "by injection inside, or almost a cleaning" But then he clarified "It wouldn’t be through injection. " But then the overall statement was Trump was addressing the scientist. Trump turned to scientist and said " is there a way we can do something like that" It was a question to the scientst. People say, "He suggested injecting disinfectant", you quote the part where he suggested injecting disinfectant, but bold a bunch of stuff and exclude the part where he suggests injecting it, and then, when called on it, pretend that somehow the part you didn't bold becomes irrelevant if you add more words. Come on. Aren't you above such silly games? Wow.

Also yep. Biden will have a team around him that will be effective even as he struggles mentally, while Trump doesn't.

Yep.

No, this is horrible! The estimated IFR has been 0.65-1% since at least early March. 0.67%* is devastatingly high. If we want herd immunity (say 70% infected), that would be over 1.5M deaths in the U.S. Yeah, this. My best guess today based on what I've been reading is that it's below 0.5%. Like maybe 0.3%. The argument you need make, Cherzera, is that it's 0.5% at most, and we don't really care about the people who die because most of them were going to die in the near future anyway, while the people who die from the economic impact/shutting down society are more likely to be young. That's a pretty defensible position, I think.

The answer is that we know what it looks like when there are hundreds of thousands of cases--like NYC. If one's going to claim that hundreds of thousands of cases were in the USA with nobody noticing, you'd have to have those cases distributed mostly evenly across the country, which is quite implausible (because of density, how people arrive in the country, what subsequent outbreaks looked like, the low number of healthcare professionals who have got sick with it outside of places with a known outbreaks etc.) I think the back of the napkin math assumes roughly even distribution, and that doesn't seem to be at all how disease transmission actually works. So me, the balance of evidence by far suggests that the antibody tests are questionable (the math saying you can't accurately measure accurately if the false positive rate is at all close to the actual infection rate). But even if it weren't, I think it's quite difficult to extrapolate the results to the rest of the country. (It's also worth noting that Orthopa's argument wasn't simply that there were a bunch of cases that were about to cause an explosion because they were asymptomatic and about to become symptomatic. It was that there were already a bunch of cases that had happened, and it wasn't a big deal--implying that a bunch of people had recovered, and the system had handled them without even noticing. So for practical purposes, you'd have to push the timeframe back even farther than March.)

Bill Gates' State of the Pandemic essay. https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Pandemic-Innovation?WT.mc_id=20200423060000_Pandemic-Innovation_BG-EM_&WT.tsrc=BGEM Other than the obvious (the content), there are a couple things I find interesting. First, the language is simple to the extent that I find it distracting. Maybe it's written at something like a 3rd-4th grade reading level? I think he wants this to be accessible to everyone possible, even those with poor English skills. Second, the reference to opening churches isn't consistent with the rest of the essay, since there's negligible economic value to opening churches, and therefore it's pretty obvious that they should be among the last things open. Rather, I think he threw that in there so that the religious people have a better chance of supporting the approach he proposes.

This is quite a clever way of moving the goalposts. Nobody was disputing that the virus was spreading in the USA in March--or even in February. The thing everyone disagreed with was that there hundreds of thousands or millions of cases in March. So I guess this is admission you were wrong while trying to rewrite what you said and what the actual disagreement was about? (Like, good grief--why is it so hard for you to say that your speculation was wrong? It was a speculation, and speculations are often wrong. Why the heck would you allow a random speculation to bias you in such a huge way for everything that came afterward, rather than say, "Hey that speculation was wrong, but this is my view on what's happening now"? So brutal!)

Agreed it should've been January. It doesn't matter though--you can't stop COVID-19 from getting into care homes if a large segment of the population is infected. Your "best practices" would roughly be the same outcome as a bunch of COVID-19 patients running around care homes, coughing on people. (Yeah, I know you don't care....)

I find it remarkable that people have lived through two months of this, but, as new information has come in, have not updated their theories at all. Terrifying. But it does show nicely how someone like Trump can maintain popularity. Basically, a large segment of the population--including some doctors!--doesn't care at all about evidence except insofar as it supports what they want to believe.

+1. Note that "making decisions based on the most pertinent observations" basically means "enhancing models based on new information".

This is BS, CZ. People have tried closing down nursing homes. It doesn't work, particularly when the President prevents testing. Your repeated assertions that it would work are silly.

Yeah, models aren't perfect, but I don't really see an alternative. Is there one?