111–120 of 462 posts
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What is panic and why do you think this is a panic? If anything, the lack of concern by policy makers and the public has turned this into a catastrophe. If they had “panicked” three months ago, we wouldn’t be in this situation now.
Unfortunately, if we had panicked 3 months ago and prevented all of this, we'd never know it. People would just look and say, "see it was no big deal, we panicked for nothing".
Firstly, there is 10 weeks of evidence on what other countries have done to avoid transmission. Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, China, and Japan all show a variety of strategies and have some successes under their belts. Sure, it’s messy social data, and they have systematic differences from other countries, but it’s real data about what is working. Ioannidis says: “If we assume that case fatality rate among individual…
Ioannidis continues to push this evidence-based approach, but I have not yet seen an adequate response to critics such as Nassim Taleb or Yaneer Bar-Yam. They argue that one doesn't need raw evidence to act if the statistical evidence shows that the risks are catastrophic. They published a paper on January 26th which lays out arguments for why conventional risk management approaches are inadequate in these situations…
> I have not yet seen an adequate response to critics such as Nassim Taleb or Yaneer Bar-Yam. Is that even necessary? Taleb's school argues that empiricism has fundamental shortcomings because it must be "incomplete" in a world of imperfect (read: statistical) evidence. I agree it's a big problem, one that we are not likely to solve. But they go on to say "therefore, we must apply the precautionary principle to XYZ"…
The UK was using a model that said after suppression it would just immediately rise, as if other measures wouldn’t be taken to hold it down.
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Sure he recommends researching vaccines faster, giving people flu vaccines since the flu is more serious than Covid, admitting fewer Covid patients into hospital care, and doing more research so that we're better prepared next time when something actually serious happens. Or if this is serious, doing more research so that the data is the most accurate possible. I think calling that doing nothing is pretty generous. S…
he seems to advocate individual hygiene and avoiding the public when sick, which also btw seems to be the response that countries like Japan, Taiwan and Singapore have taken, where complete lockdowns or closures have largely been avoided. Together with tracing they seem to have handled the situation just fine.
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> “If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths.” Why would we use the Diamond Princess CFR instead of China's, or Italy's, or South Korea's? Where does the idea of 1% come fro…
>Why would we use the Diamond Princess CFR instead of China's, or Italy's, or South Korea's? because everyone on the diamond princess was tested. So we know for sure how many cases we are dealing within the sample. ~0.3 and ~0.9% are also not optimistic guesses but the current numbers for Germany and SK. Italy sits at 9%. So the situation is either that Italy is vastly underestimating cases, or Germany and South Kore…
I can't see the slightest basis for such an assumption. This an extremely infectious, quickly spreading disease. 30% of the US population seem like a more likely estimate.
SK has a 1.3% fatality rate at the end but that was with a functioning health case system. If even 1% of the US population get infect, the health system won't be function and you'll have a higher fatality rate.
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Other countries managed to abolish feudalism without quite so many mass executions or consequent authoritarian strongmen plunging their continents into devastating series of wars.
... often just because rulers were so scared by the French experience, that they caved at the first demand for better forms of government. In a similar way, a lot of worker rights gained in the XX century were introduced only because elites were utterly scared by the Soviet experience. Sometimes it helps to have a reference, so to speak.
Is this paper basically saying China and Italy's troubles with COVID-19 "ain't no big deal", and that New York and Washington are not struggling? >"Leaving the well-known and highly lethal SARS and MERS coronaviruses aside, other coronaviruses probably have infected millions of people and have killed thousands" This is not cited, and seems like potentially exaggerated non-evidence based information.
Completely different worlds. New York is in some serious trouble. No one is going to even remember Washington has an outbreak in a week's time - it's probably already past peak new cases.
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Well, consider if we reacted late January when he wrote that article it would have been very cheap to contain...
Then the immediate question is, the next time we react early and it turns out we overreacted, is that something you're going to register as well? In particular in authoritarian countries like China which actually have a history of vast overreaction based on a 'security-first' mindset. Ioannidis actually points to one other example in the article. There are several corona strains already in circulation with fatality r…
I am worried there is a fine line between 'realism' and a backlash against care for the elderly and chronically ill. When people realise that their earnings have been slashed, they have been burdened with years of increased taxes, the economy has plunged, and swathes of businesses have gone bust, for the sake of people who were going to die soon anyway... Realism is good. But it is easy to 'evidence' biased anti-vuln…
>I am worried there is a fine line between 'realism' and a backlash against care for the elderly and chronically ill. I guarantee you that if we don't target our lockdowns on the at-risk population (elderly being the most numerous in that group), whatever backlash there is will be worse when the general population realizes they aren't at any significant personal risk.
With 15-20% of confirmed cases needing intensive care and symptoms developing at roughly the same rate, it becomes a perfect storm. So deaths may begin with only the elderly or immune compromised, it likely won't stop there as the younger folks need care they can't get. Perhaps they survive anyway, but an unknown number with permanent lung damage and lower quality of life.
General population may come to any number of realizations. The underlying reality may never become entirely clear to any of us. Y2K probably could have been much worse. Yet the media coverage around the aftermath gave the impression it was no big thing.
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> I have not yet seen an adequate response to critics such as Nassim Taleb or Yaneer Bar-Yam. Is that even necessary? Taleb's school argues that empiricism has fundamental shortcomings because it must be "incomplete" in a world of imperfect (read: statistical) evidence. I agree it's a big problem, one that we are not likely to solve. But they go on to say "therefore, we must apply the precautionary principle to XYZ"…
Taleb's point is that high uncertainties which can result in catastrophic loss are worth of spending money to protect against. In our present case, the real nonsense is US allocating funds for a 1.5 trillion dollar plane, but totally avoiding investing in the response of pandemics... before it can be too late. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-long-will-it-ta... "science can meet the challenges, but there…