KCLarkin
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Posts posted by KCLarkin
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And please, please stop with the belief in "peer reviewed" journals. The Lancet and NEJM peer reviewed the crap they recently published on HCL and had to withdraw it within a couple of weeks. Nowadays, it seems that "peer review" is shorthand for a study that confirms to current orthodoxy.
Retracted lancet HCL study is a good example of why publishing in a peer-reviewed journal is valuable. Almost instantly, 150 doctors demanded the Lancet explain how it passed peer review and it was retracted. Sadly, Gato doesn't get the same scrutiny.
You do make a good point about selection bias, though. Everyone is trying to publish Covid studies, so they are mostly garbage.
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Orthopa was on the money months ago. For a while the message board DR's thought they knew better, but he turned out to be spot on.
Speaking as one of Orhopa's smuggest critics, 100,000 deaths and mass graves were proof enough for me that he was wrong.
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In light of your comments, how would you attempt to prove or support an argument for lockdowns? The economic costs have been staggering - trillions of dollars. The social costs have been terrible as well. And what for us - rich people in a rich country might count as inconvenience, is for poor people in poor countries devastating. A compelling must be made by those who argue for them.
Agreed, that much of the data is messy and inconsistent and as I previously pointed out, likely getting worse here in the USA. We should all be in favor of wanting it to be as clean and consistent as possible. In the absence of that, we either have to (a) ignore or (b) adjust it. In the case of China, I would argue that "ignore" is the right strategy. What's your suggestion?
James, I wouldn't start by attempting to prove anything. That is a sure way to introduce confirmation bias. I would read peer-reviewed journal articles. I would understand the real world is messy and there is an enormous amount of uncertainty. It is unethical to use deadly viruses in experiments, so we will never have high quality data.
But you miss my main point. The economic costs weren't caused by the lockdown. They were caused by an uncontrolled epidemic of a deadly disease. Countries that had uncontrolled epidemics and didn't have formal lockdowns are also facing staggering economic costs. Countries that controlled their epidemics (by luck or skill) minimized the economic costs.
Marten Bjellerup, chief economist at the debt office in Stockholm, said he thinks Sweden will fare “somewhat better” than others, but acknowledged “the difference is marginal.” -
And to be clear, given the staggering economic and social costs of the lockdowns, those arguing for them must demonstrate their worth, not the other way around.
It's not possible that you have your causation backwards?
Physdude makes an excellent point. Almost nobody is talking about Vietnam. A country with 90MM people and 0 Covid deaths.
Europe and the Americas failed to control the virus. And they paid the price with heavy lockdowns, deaths, and staggering economic and social costs.
How many times do I need to make the following point. I am NOT arguing FOR causation. Therefore I cannot have something "backwards". I am arguing that there is a LACK of [demonstrated] causation. Big difference.
I am not particularly familiar with Vietnam or the mitigation efforts they pursued. You might want to consider two more basic attributes, however:
1. Demographics - Vietnam has a much much younger population than all western countries; and
2. Weather - Hanoi is 21 degrees north vs NYC 41 degrees north
You know who else avoided Covid: Eritrea, Syria and Zimbabwe. These are barely functioning countries. I doubt there was much of a well coordinated lockdown strategy. It's something else.
Yup, I am willing to admit demographics and climate might impact death rates and transmission. Which is one of the many reasons why I think Gato’s analysis is pointless and stupid — he doesn’t control for any confounding factors. There is zero possibility of proving any evidence for or against lockdowns using his methodology.
I don’t trust China’s data. I also don’t trust Italy, Spain, NY, Or Florida. Reason #971 why Gato’s analysis is stupid. All the data is messy and inconsistent.
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And to be clear, given the staggering economic and social costs of the lockdowns, those arguing for them must demonstrate their worth, not the other way around.
It's not possible that you have your causation backwards?
Physdude makes an excellent point. Almost nobody is talking about Vietnam. A country with 90MM people and 0 Covid deaths.
Europe and the Americas failed to control the virus. And they paid the price with heavy lockdowns, deaths, and staggering economic and social costs.
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You mention Spain and Italy as now doing well and call out Sweden, ignoring the simple fact that Sweden's per capita Covid death rate is lower than Italy and Spain. I am sorry, but this is not a persuasive argument. The evidence simply does not support that argument that Lockdowns (or Social Mobility) are what's driving the level of Covid mortality.
James, the virus is driving the level of Covid mortality! Some guy who's taken an intro stats class doing crappy regression analysis without understanding anything about virology or epidemiology isn't going to be able to provide you any evidence.
But it is interesting that you and Gato are excluding China from your analysis.
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He didn't say causation, but you are the one who is implying that there is causation (more deaths -> harder lockdowns)...?
Yes, this is why I called Gato's analysis the stupidest thing posted on this thread!
Let's do this analysis for February.
U.S. -> 1 death, no lockdown
Canada -> 0 deaths, no lockdown
Wuhan -> Thousands of deaths*, lockdown.
Lockdowns are definitely correlated with deaths! But, I'm confident that Wuhan locked down BECAUSE of the outbreak.
* numbers made up
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With all due respect, I think you are (a) not accurately reading what he's arguing and (b) helping to prove my point.
No. I'm not too interested in what he is arguing because his methodology is terrible. Even his claim that lack of correlation means lack of causation is false.
Hmmm, seems that something else may be driving the different outcomes.
Yes, exactly. There are a gazillion confounding variables he hasn't controlled for. Which means he can't possibly know what, if any, role lockdowns play in suppressing spread. But he can use some bad stats to spin a narrative.
Edit to add: And the fact that I agree with parts of his narrative, doesn't make the methodology any better!
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I am pretty sure that there have been quite a number of stupider things posted on this thread. I would not discount what El Gato writes simply because you suspect he has an agenda. I would posit that almost every single person posting here has an agenda and is trying to convince others that their views are correct - even you, I dare say. In my opinion, he has been doing some very interesting work and as far as I can tell his analyses call into question many of the "common wisdom" assumptions made. In fact, you seem to acknowledge in your own words that lockdowns were "somewhat counter-productive", no?
The analysis, based on google mobility data (which shows actual behaviors) strongly calls into question the efficacy of social distancing.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ea9_fzOUMAER2ZT?format=jpg&name=large
Fair enough. But there is a good reason why every regression analysis comes with a "correlation is not causation" disclaimer. And this guy has violated this in a very blatant way.
But let me be explicit on my priors here:
Uncontrolled community spread causes lockdowns
Uncontrolled community spread decreases mobility
Uncontrolled community spread decreases economic activity
So he is looking at all these correlations backwards. Denmark doesn't have low infection rates despite high mobility. They have high mobility due to low infection rates.
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Yeah, thanks for cracking down on the hundreds of mob/protest gatherings to spread your disease.
Aren't they planning a large political rally tomorrow?
I think protesting police brutality and corruption and racism may be a cause worth taking risks for, but getting on stage to get some narcissistic supply may not rise to that level...
Arizona and Florida are starting to look bad. But has anyone taken a look at Oklahoma? They printed 450 cases which is a 74% increase over the previous all time high. Which was... the day before.
Of course! We all know the biggest protests in the U.S took place in Oklahoma/AZ/FL, not in places seeing decline like NY! CHAZ is contributing to cases in OK, FL, AZ too!
This fits neatly into my impervious political narrative of shunting blame onto leftist ANTIFA or Cuomo or whoever else away from my precious POTUS! And now we need a massive, maskless indoor rally to celebrate!
That's the point. If we aren't seeing increases where the protests took place, that calls into question the benefits of the enforced lockdowns, no?
The EU and rest of world would like to have a word with you. I know, lockdowns (after all the precaution was botched from January thru March) only work outside the U.S. for some reason...
The benefit of locking some states down over others may now fade away because some states went their own way and we have no rational federal/centralized leadership that could have led a coordinated response. It’s a hoax like the Flu anyway so it doesn’t matter.
Also so strange that it is surging in places like FL and AZ now when I was told this has been widespread since January. Maybe none of the millions who had it back in January made it to those states till now...
Actually, there appears to be no correlation between actual social isolation and covid deaths.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYJsd8iUcAEsSCS?format=jpg&name=medium
https://twitter.com/boriquagato/status/1264596818429505537
El Gato Malo has done some really interesting analysis that I would suggest people check out.
There is steep competition, but this might be the stupidest thing* posted on this thread. You've heard "correlation != causation"? Ignoring the fairly week correlation, wouldn't the simplest explanation be that countries with the most deaths are likely to lockdown the hardest? The clear outliers on this chart are the countries who were hit hard and DID NOT lockdown (US, UK, Sweden).
IMHO, "lockdowns" are somewhat counter-productive because they lock people inside where the virus spread most easily. But closing bars, churches, meat-packing plants, and other indoor sources of super-spread, will definitely reduce the spread. Anyone who has read the contract tracing reports out of Asia knows how and where this virus spreads. Spoiler: it is not outside!
* Not saying you, James, are stupid for posting it. I think you raise reasonable points. But the original analysis is stupid. Seems similar to the catastrophic "7 countries study" by Ancel Keys. El Gato Mato seems to have a clear agenda and is trying to fit the data to his narrative.
** Edit to Add: IMHO, the obvious explanation for the recent spikes in the Southern states is weather. These states were spared early in the outbreak because weather kept them outdoors where the virus doesn't spread easily. As things heat up, they are spending more time in doors.
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No link between protests and outbreaks (yet):
Outdoors, masks, distancing seem to work.
But CV is sure to skyrocket once the Trump rallies begin.
Doubt the rallies will be big enough to matter, but indoors, no distancing, no masks, is 100% the conditions to create an outbreak. All you need to do is add some singing or chanting.
But again, this won’t be large enough to matter in the twilight zone, alternative facts, America first, science denying, cult that is America.
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No link between protests and outbreaks (yet):
Outdoors, masks, distancing seem to work.
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Well, back before everything become racist, the confederate flag was often viewed by people as a sign of southern pride. Synonymous with barbecues, whiskey, guns, and country music. Nothing more, nothing less. But again, this is before the dictators in the coastal cities decided they were unbridled endorsements of slavery and sought to both ban the flag, and ruin the lives of anyone who contested their idea of what the flagged represented.
Greg, I am sorry for calling you the r-word.
Here is a picture of some proud southerners enjoying their BBQ, whiskey, guns, and country music in the good old days of American greatness.
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The fake "wokeness" that has so embedded western culture has become unbearable. Everyone is righteous and everyone is sanctimonious and anyone who disagrees or even questions is evil and demonized.
Seriously, can we just stay on topic? I made a fairly simple argument that if everyone had overreacted in February/March, the economic and health impacts of Covid would be much smaller now. I'm not a leftist or a liberal or woke, but I am numerate. Maybe I am a bit slow, but when I look at Covid, I see a simple math problem. Rt > 1 is bad. Rt < 1, virus is contained and we get to live a fairly normal life. So what are the cheapest interventions that get you to Rt < 1?
Personally, I think lockdowns were crazy expensive and if Americans had acted a bit more like the Japanese, the economic impact wouldn't be so devastating. But instead, a large portion of the population chose not to take the disease seriously.
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I think everyone here knows I'm a fiscal conservative, but a liberal socialist when it comes to individual rights.
But I have to ask my liberal friends, are we going too far in some issues. Now they are banning "Gone With the Wind". What's next, "Forrest Gump?"
I knew GWTW was racist when I first saw it as a kid, same with Breakfast at Tiffany's, but are we going to outlaw all movies and books with racist connotations? We would then have to ban books like "To Kill a Mockingbird", which would serve the opposite purpose of the book's moral outrage at racism.
Banning confederate flags at Nascar...yes, I think that is very reasonable. But when you start skewing history and censoring information written in a historical context or period, you are actually moving closer to the direction of Nazi's than away.
And you are talking to a Indo-Canadian kid born in Canada, whose family is made up of Hindus, Punjabis, Blacks, Chinese, Vietnamese, Italian and English backgrounds! Cheers!
Parsad, let's keep this on topic! The official stance is that we are going to allow Greg to repeatedly call black people savages. I've expressed my moral outrage. Let's move on.
That is not what happened. No need to be a liar because you got called out. ERICOPOLY posted a CNN article covering protestors who were described as "angry". But what these people were doing fell into the category of assault, looting, arson, vandalism, and several other serious crimes and just in general, boorish behavior. I described them(the protesters doing these things) as savages. You turned it into a race thing. Surprise, surprise. I even pointed out to you, that it was ignorant to assume they were all black, because there were people of many races doing these things.
Fine. Eric, let's keep this on topic. But Greg, let's not pretend that you didn't explicitly mention "southern whites" in your post just to make clear which protesters you thought were savages.
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I think everyone here knows I'm a fiscal conservative, but a liberal socialist when it comes to individual rights.
But I have to ask my liberal friends, are we going too far in some issues. Now they are banning "Gone With the Wind". What's next, "Forrest Gump?"
I knew GWTW was racist when I first saw it as a kid, same with Breakfast at Tiffany's, but are we going to outlaw all movies and books with racist connotations? We would then have to ban books like "To Kill a Mockingbird", which would serve the opposite purpose of the book's moral outrage at racism.
Banning confederate flags at Nascar...yes, I think that is very reasonable. But when you start skewing history and censoring information written in a historical context or period, you are actually moving closer to the direction of Nazi's than away.
And you are talking to a Indo-Canadian kid born in Canada, whose family is made up of Hindus, Punjabis, Blacks, Chinese, Vietnamese, Italian and English backgrounds! Cheers!
Parsad, let's keep this on topic! The official stance is that we are going to allow Greg to repeatedly call black people savages. I've expressed my moral outrage. Let's move on.
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Unfortunately Greg - you are feeling the Bitter Hostility of the LEFT.
Sadly, I think you are correct. I am an evangelical Christian and a lifelong member of the Conservative Party of Canada. And in the U.S., I would be considered left wing. Bitterly LEFT.
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So what do you think the alternative would have been instead of an initial lockdown? We didn't have enough tests. We didn't have enough PPE. If you stop flights from the infected countries you're considered a "racist".
Well, I'd suggest the lack of PPE and tests was largely incompetence.
But, in retrospect you could have:
- 14 day quarantine for anyone entering the country
- max gathering size of 10 people
- mandatory masks indoors and on transit
- curbside pickup
- takeout only for restaurants
- isolation / quarantine for known cases
- paid sick leave
- physical distancing
- work from home
- enhanced infection control at hospitals, retirement homes, and LTC
- closed churches
- manhatten project to ramp-up PPE production, testing, and contract tracing
This would be expensive and invasive, but much less expensive than full lockdowns. But again, the real problem is that a large portion of the population didn't take this seriously. That is a communication problem.
And this isn't just retrospective and it isn't political, I criticized De Blasio / Cuomo in this thread in March when they set the max gathering size at 500. In Ontario, we let everyone go to the U.S. on spring break even though it was clear there was a major outbreak down south. Our premier encouraged everyone to enjoy their vacations. And many of them brought Covid back overwhelming our semi-competent contract tracing efforts. I coached a hockey team and I told my team that anyone who went on spring break wouldn't be allowed to attend team events for 14 days. How many lives and jobs would have been saved it our premier had said the same thing?
I agree with many of your proposals. However, hindsight is 20/20 and I don't know how much the public would have backed leadership.
For instance, if the government would have forcefully stopped church services, would the government then be paying for that (churches rely on people for tithes and fundraising)? People would be up in arms about a "separation of church and state" then about government funding churches.
Let's be clear. Obama didn't help the lack of PPE:
I agree. Closing churches wasn't/isn't politically viable especially at the start of this epidemic. But they are an ideal venue for spreading the disease, so I included them. But honestly, you only needed to do two or three things very early on in the epidemic to make a dramatic difference.
So Gregmal is correct, the failures were political. But not in the delusional way he imagines. Politicians worldwide (and across political lines) refused to take aggressive action early when this disease could still be contained. So they were forced to use lockdowns once the spread was out-of-control.
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Regarding PPE, I have a contrarian view. Slow the spread of the virus and you reduce the need for PPE and ventilators. Instead of surging ventilator production and hospital capacity and chasing miracle cures, we should have focused on prevention. This is just a pet theory, but in Canada, I suspect the death rate would be lower if we had allocated more PPE to LTC homes rather than hospitals.
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So what do you think the alternative would have been instead of an initial lockdown? We didn't have enough tests. We didn't have enough PPE. If you stop flights from the infected countries you're considered a "racist".
Well, I'd suggest the lack of PPE and tests was largely incompetence.
But, in retrospect you could have:
- 14 day quarantine for anyone entering the country
- max gathering size of 10 people
- mandatory masks indoors and on transit
- curbside pickup
- takeout only for restaurants
- isolation / quarantine for known cases
- paid sick leave
- physical distancing
- work from home
- enhanced infection control at hospitals, retirement homes, and LTC
- closed churches
- manhatten project to ramp-up PPE production, testing, and contract tracing
This would be expensive and invasive, but much less expensive than full lockdowns. But again, the real problem is that a large portion of the population didn't take this seriously. That is a communication problem.
And this isn't just retrospective and it isn't political, I criticized De Blasio / Cuomo in this thread in March when they set the max gathering size at 500. In Ontario, we let everyone go to the U.S. on spring break even though it was clear there was a major outbreak down south. Our premier encouraged everyone to enjoy their vacations. And many of them brought Covid back overwhelming our semi-competent contract tracing efforts. I coached a hockey team and I told my team that anyone who went on spring break wouldn't be allowed to attend team events for 14 days. How many lives and jobs would have been saved it our premier had said the same thing?
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Yes! Everyone who isn't hiding under a table in their basement is part of the problem....LOL. Just like how the word "savage" being used to describe violent, looting protesters(many times over, documented in the media as being of a variety of skin colors, even whites!) is racist and in need of issuing an apology! You really hit the nail on the head KCLarkin. Please let me know what other words you commander from Mariam Webster and throw in your big, blue, liberal bucket of racist words. Jeez, it never ends.
Greg, I don't need a thesaurus to know you are a racist.
But just so are fully aware of how racist this word is:
"'This word is our N-word': Indigenous teacher asks Urban Planet to drop racial slur"
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/offensive-term-remove-urban-planet-1.5305540
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Trump today announced that "'if we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases'
Ontario is an interesting counter-example to this theory. After the virus peaked in mid-April, the correlation between increased testing and cases disappeared. If anything, there appears to be an inverse correlation. Optimistically, this could indicate that test-trace-isolate is working in Ontario:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EapBTWcXYAMM-re?format=jpg&name=small
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If the government couldn't magically create money, would you guys be in favor of a shut down then?
So, your options would be 1) keep the economy open to (hopefully) avoid a depression 2) shut down and probably have a depression
Lockdowns were required due to incompetence. As Sweden shows, the economy is impacted by the virus whether you lockdown or not. The best way to reduce the economic impact is to take the virus seriously in the early stages. Lockdowns are a blunt, destructive force. They are the "break glass in case of emergency" option.
Orthopa, Gregmal, Cubsfan, Trump, De Blasio, and the rest of the "it's just a flu crowd" are a big part of this problem. If everyone had overreacted in February, none of this would have happened. Now the US is in the worst possible spot, they acted just enough to destroy the economy but not enough to contain the virus.
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Not trying to put a spin on anything just providing data points that show that the transmissibility of the virus may be far less potent than what many originally thought.
Seems to be a very high correlation between countries that believe this and deaths/million.
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Why not open up everything then? We can all wear masks and use hand sanitizer just like the protesters and it would be safe!
I won't engage in your bad faith arguments. I never said masks and hand sanitizer make mass protests safe.
Ok, back to good faith argument --
I remember you saying that millions potentially dying of COVID is horrible.
These protests, while intended for a good cause, surely increases the chance of more people dying due to COVID.
So how do you weigh the balance?
In general, is this how the left in the US weigh things? (based on my observations)
Systematic racism > Public health > Economy and freedom
Let's leave the politics out for a second. What is the impact of the mass protests on the spread of Covid. From what I'm seeing, the protesters are:
- wearing masks
- outside
- making an effort to maintain distance
This makes the risk of spread low-to-moderate. This is different than what we saw in the Ozarks or Trinity Bellwoods (Toronto) where party-goers were making no effort to reduce spread.
But I am still scared this will cause a spike:
- police/military are not masked and aren't making an effort to maintain distance
- mass detentions/arrests make masks/distancing impossible
- transit to/from protests
- military transit and housing
This will prolong the economic and health impacts of the pandemic. This is a big problem in several U.S. states that are already failing to control the pandemic.
This is especially tragic because COVID will hurt people of color the most.
Coronavirus
in General Discussion
Posted
You posted his work on this thread. I (and several others) pointed out the obvious flaws. So I consider it vetted. No need to discuss further.