371–380 of 740 posts
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No leader wants to take drastic action for their nation when the number of deaths they can point to for justification is smaller than the number of deaths for the seasonal flu. If they save lives and prevent the disease from spreading, it looks like they over-reacted and unnecessarily tanked the economy.
The USA is going to be in terrible shape very soon, just look at this as of tonight: https://twitter.com/davidenrich/status/1239004689338970113
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No leader wants to take drastic action for their nation when the number of deaths they can point to for justification is smaller than the number of deaths for the seasonal flu. If they save lives and prevent the disease from spreading, it looks like they over-reacted and unnecessarily tanked the economy.
The USA is going to be in terrible shape very soon, just look at this as of tonight: https://twitter.com/davidenrich/status/1239004689338970113
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What the letter means is that if your country is not there yet, you might be DAYS away from widespread panic and total lock down. I gotta say this but I don't think we should put forward the position that total lockdown is an irrational position. Total lockdown seems fully rational, not a product of mere panic at all. Total lockdown worked in Wuhan. Absolute and complete isolation inherently results in exponential de…
> "you know that promises to the largest loss of life on US soil ever" From what I'm aware, if hospitals are able to handle the patients, it shouldn't be up to that level. And the "slow it down" plan is primarily about not overwhelming hospitals.
With an absolute best case CFR of 0.6%, that's near 2 Million dead. I struggle to think of a larger loss of life on US soil.
Assuming hospitals reach saturation fairly early, yielding a 5% CFR, and we're looking at 16.5 Million dead. That is... a lot. Like we have nothing here to compare that to. To put it into perspective, the US only lost 400 THOUSAND in WWII....
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There is really no excuse for this happening in Europe. There was ample warning and no, not just from China. The math was very clear by early/mid February. We have to face the truth that the quality of people we vote for government is not where it needs to be and that science has too long been discredited and ignored. Some of asia learned from SARS but that's it. Madrid was hosting marches, political rallies and socc…
Human beings do not intuitively understand exponential growth. It's just too fast for our primitive brains. In some sense, we are standing in the middle of the road, frozen like deer in the headlights. Science is supposed to mitigate the shortcomings of our natural intuitions and cognitive biases. The problem is that most people are not scientists. When a non-scientist is asked to trust a scientist, he or she is subj…
This layman has read that we intuitively think of numbers logarithmically, which makes him wonder if we human beings do, in fact, intuitively understand exponential growth.
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> As an Italian, I raise my eyebrows every time China is mentioned as an example for the successful containment of this virus. China dropped the ball for a full 10 days back when the disease was nicely contained to a small part of Wuhan, and then largely to Wuhan itself and Hubei - they didn't let the population know about the danger, so for quite some time no one was thinking about protecting themselves by wearing m…
I agree with the above comments that China is not a model to follow at all but the true sole responder for today's situation. From the number of people and the wide range of field and institutions signing this letter, I suspect a very strong CCP secret united action behind it to paint a good picture for CCP reputation. The most probably org that manipulated this letter is the so called "Chinese Students and Scholar O…
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The full danger was unknown in the initial stages. Provincial officials were downplaying it for various reasons, and until the very end of December it wasn't known to even transmit person-to-person. Once the threat was clear, the government of China acted much more alacrity and decisiveness than any Western country, which have had months of advance notice.
The local police imprisoned a doctor for speaking out about a fast-growing pneumonia disease. They didn't just ignore it, they actively quashed discussion of it
They did squash discussion of it.
Once the national government found out, they fired the local officials and lauded the doctor as a hero.
I've seen comments here trying to play down the message or discredit the signatories of this letter. Don't. Please take it seriously. This is not sensationalism. What the letter means is that if your country is not there yet, you might be DAYS away from widespread panic and total lock down. I'm writing this from Barcelona, Spain. This last Sunday, 6 days ago, I went on a walk with my girlfriend, had a nice lunch, too…
There is really no excuse for this happening in Europe. There was ample warning and no, not just from China. The math was very clear by early/mid February. We have to face the truth that the quality of people we vote for government is not where it needs to be and that science has too long been discredited and ignored. Some of asia learned from SARS but that's it. Madrid was hosting marches, political rallies and socc…
There are scandals in the sciences too. Peer review rings, studies that tend toward positive bias due to the pressure to publish, some studies being paid by big companies that favors their vested interests, etc.
"Flattening the Curve" is a deadly delusion https://medium.com/@joschabach/flattening-the-curve-is-a-dea... "Flatten the curve" scenario requires r0 to between 1.0 and a small number above 1.0, like 1.1. In other words, it's not happening, you either contain the virus or let it explode.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No leader wants to take drastic action for their nation when the number of deaths they can point to for justification is smaller than the number of deaths for the seasonal flu. If they save lives and prevent the disease from spreading, it looks like they over-reacted and unnecessarily tanked the economy.
The USA is going to be in terrible shape very soon, just look at this as of tonight: https://twitter.com/davidenrich/status/1239004689338970113
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or you could present them with the classic cognitive reflection question: A lake has one lily pad. Every day the number of lily pads doubles. After fifty days the lake is completely covered by lily pads. How many days did it take to cover half the lake with lily pads?
Is there some parable about getting too excited about exponential growth and taking the extrapolation game way too far?