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The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

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Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#191

Post by NateEag »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #144
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> And I am having serious misgivings about posting it, nonetheless, many people have expressed deep concerned, and I'm doing the same, only with actual data. There is no "actual data" in your comment above. There is a claim that you make that you have graphed some data, but no graphs and no data. Also, it doesn't take an epidemiologist to know that a non-epidemiologist should not play at epidemiology. The other post…

> There is no "actual data" in your comment above There is in http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#w which I said matches what I've found rather well. > The other poster doesn't have any responsibility to tell you "how to model the data better". Yes he does,

> There is in http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#w which I said matches what I've found rather well

There may be data there, but if I understand you correctly you did not have it when you made your first post.

It is therefore inadmissible evidence as to whether your first post was a reasonable thing to write.

> Yes he does,

If you have decided you want to be an epidemiologist, or at least to learn their skillset, whose responsibility is it to fulfill that desire?

I don't think there is a reasonable answer to that other than "mine."

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#192

Post by [deleted] »

gdubs wrote: post #155
andrepd wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've been graphing the exp curve As you can imagine, there's more to epidemiology than this. I'm a big fan of letting the qualified people do their work, while we do ours: shut up and do not spread misinformation. In fact, at the risk of being rude ill even go so far and say that it's quite arrogant to pretend to pontificate about this when your knowledge about this issue is 0, and also when one major problem in com…

I get that your comment is coming from a good place, because the threat of misinformation is real. But this is an “Appeal to Authority” argument. I’d rather have an informed discussion among smart people, even if they’re not experts in the specific field. I’d rather be able to weigh the input of many people. Especially in a case where the experts haven’t done a great job at communicating or understanding the severity…

[deleted]

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#193

Post by andrepd »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #144
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> And I am having serious misgivings about posting it, nonetheless, many people have expressed deep concerned, and I'm doing the same, only with actual data. There is no "actual data" in your comment above. There is a claim that you make that you have graphed some data, but no graphs and no data. Also, it doesn't take an epidemiologist to know that a non-epidemiologist should not play at epidemiology. The other post…

> There is no "actual data" in your comment above There is in http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#w which I said matches what I've found rather well. > The other poster doesn't have any responsibility to tell you "how to model the data better". Yes he does,

I don't need to be an aeronautic engineer to know that a person with no such background should not throw hunches about designing planes.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#194

Post by fragmede »

vinniejames wrote: post #23
simonh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is key. We really can't compare countries confirmed case numbers directly because they are operating very different testing programmes. Just look at Germany. More confirmed cases than the USA, but a quarter of the deaths. Germany also has 80% as many cases as Spain, but about 5% as many deaths. All that, without a severe lockdown. Clearly something completely different is going on there than in many other countr…

We could possibly clean up the numbers, assuming the death rate is predictable across regions. Take numbers from a region where testing is frequent, say the death rate is 2%. Then scale the numbers in a region with lack of testing to match the 2% death rate. Not perfect, as there are external factors like hospital capacity/quality and existing population health. However, it should give a closer approximation of total…

Each country has it's own date for when "testing came online", and it seems like starting from then might make things more comparable, despite differences in testing capacity and strategy. Another approach might be to on start looking at the data after the number of cases is > 100.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#195

Post by mynegation »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #180
mynegation wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until recently Ontario had very stringent testing pre-requisites: 2 or more symptoms, history or travel in the last 14 days. Even then, on average, only 2% of tested people tested positively for SARS-Cov-2. In my opinion that makes the notion of much more larger population having it and not noticing due to the lack of testing, at least at this stage, highly unlikely.

They should be doing some tests via random sampling anyways just to make sure.

Ideally, yes. But given the limited testing capability that is a politically hard thing to do. Even if 50-75% of cases are asymptomatic (and that is a very big if), that would mean that on average you have a number of asymptomatic people that is a factor of 1 to 3 of confirmed cases. While it would be great to isolate those people, at this point that is still not a huge number that means anything for the response.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#196

Post by fragmede »

magicsmoke wrote: post #110
nemo44x wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is underrated. This thing must have been spreading since November here. I know a person who back in January acquired something like pneumonia and a bad fever, went to the hospital for awhile and tests were negative for flu, etc. doctors just didn’t know what it was. The person has COPD however. But anecdotally I’ve noticed quite a few more colleagues over the last few months out sick “with the flu or som…

If COVID19 was spreading in the US since November then the US hospital system should have been overwhelmed by now with intensive care patients. The first infection in China was traced back to November and they were building hospitals by early February. The only places I've seen the first US infection being dated that early are conspiracies on Chinese social media that claim the origin of COVID19 to be the US instead…

"spreading in the US since November", and "there's a new, highly infectious respiratory disease since November" are two very different things.

I don't know anyone that credibly believes it was in the US in November. We did, however, that something was amiss that early, and if the US had a pandemic response team who's job was to see something like this coming, we could have been getting testing ready since then.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#197

Post by mynegation »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #190
mynegation wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you on almost all points, but testing does help to stop the disease. They are not a cure but an ability to test infected and recovered people en masse would help immensely to (a) isolate contagious people as soon as possible (b) confirm that the virus is cleared and the person can go back to the productive work with at least some assurance of immunity.

Let me try to put that another way: Tests are information. I think we have enough information to try to err on the side of "Let's just assume everyone is a danger. Let's just globally reduce our cavalier, casual exposure to germs as a matter of course." To me, it's crazy to insist we need to keep testing and we need to know who has it to protect people. Social distancing and good hygiene are effective whether the per…

Good idea in theory, not so much in practice, especially over longer periods of time. First, people are fallible and many of them who don’t know if they have it or not, may not take it seriously. Having a positive test (even if asymptomatic right now) would put them in a different mindset. The ability of quickly confirm recovery would put the people in critical roles back to their occupation. Medical professionals, police, truck drivers, water treatment plant workers, utility workers are all going to get sick in droves and it is not going to be pretty.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#198

Post by DoreenMichele »

mynegation wrote: post #197
DoreenMichele wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me try to put that another way: Tests are information. I think we have enough information to try to err on the side of "Let's just assume everyone is a danger. Let's just globally reduce our cavalier, casual exposure to germs as a matter of course." To me, it's crazy to insist we need to keep testing and we need to know who has it to protect people. Social distancing and good hygiene are effective whether the per…

Good idea in theory, not so much in practice, especially over longer periods of time. First, people are fallible and many of them who don’t know if they have it or not, may not take it seriously. Having a positive test (even if asymptomatic right now) would put them in a different mindset. The ability of quickly confirm recovery would put the people in critical roles back to their occupation. Medical professionals, p…

not so much in practice, especially over longer periods of time.

Everything I've read suggests that older, densely populated cultures pretty universally have adopted bowing over shaking hands, eat spicier foods, etc.

My belief is that over longer periods of time, cultural change is a much more reliable and effective means to combat disease.

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#199

Post by cunac »

DennisP wrote: post #75
cowsandmilk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the USA curve is fearsomely steep This analysis is difficult because it is related to testing capacity. We all know testing capacity was limited early on. It remains limited, but is growing. The faster capacity grows, the steeper the curve will be. Want to have a less steep curve? Lower the amount of testing. In another comment, you claim looking at the curves leaves out politics completely, but it doesn't. Any pol…

The death curve is also quite steep. Seven days ago we were at 57 total deaths, now it's 276. Daily deaths has gone from eight people seven days ago to 49. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ Here's a good article on estimating current number of cases from number of deaths: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...

not to downplay any death but there are roughly 100 deaths/day from car accidents and similar number is also from gun-related just to have some perspective. Unfortunate/scary thing is that the virus has the potential to eclipse those numbers by 10x easily

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#200

Post by andrepd »

gdubs wrote: post #155
andrepd wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've been graphing the exp curve As you can imagine, there's more to epidemiology than this. I'm a big fan of letting the qualified people do their work, while we do ours: shut up and do not spread misinformation. In fact, at the risk of being rude ill even go so far and say that it's quite arrogant to pretend to pontificate about this when your knowledge about this issue is 0, and also when one major problem in com…

I get that your comment is coming from a good place, because the threat of misinformation is real. But this is an “Appeal to Authority” argument. I’d rather have an informed discussion among smart people, even if they’re not experts in the specific field. I’d rather be able to weigh the input of many people. Especially in a case where the experts haven’t done a great job at communicating or understanding the severity…

>I’d rather have an informed discussion among smart people

Yes, but that's the thing isn't it? We're not informed, and fitting ke^x to data doesn't make us informed.

This reeks of Dunning-Kruger. I get that the intention is good, but we have to have some humility and not go all "hold on! I'll save the day!"

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