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Coronavirus and Credibility

paulgraham.com

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Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#131

Post by lazyjones »

Lewton wrote: post #126
lazyjones wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll see how Sweden fares in the end. I'm not promoting their methods of dealing with the pandemic, but I believe the different health systems affect the outcome more. Italy has around 1/3 to 1/4 the hospital beds per capita of Austria, Germany, South Korea but more than Sweden and the USA.

Comparing Denmark vs Sweden, it looks like we're beginning to see the difference in outcome on the death toll and hospitalization rates. Denmarks death toll is stabilizing (or at the very least only growing linearly) and the amount of people in hospitals with covid-19 has been stable for a week [0] (and no not because the hospitals are packed) While Sweden is seemingly continuing the exponential trend in both over th…

It may be a bit early to say. Social distancing delays the infections. It's possible that it kills the virus, but unlikely, so people will be infected and possibly die later if they aren't immune already. Sweden is not able to stop infections at all, their health system is guaranteed to be overwhelmed, but survivors will most likely be immune and it will be over quickly, one way or another, when everyone has been exposed to the virus.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#132

Post by smolder »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #30
djaychela wrote: post #5

From what I'm reading, I think there are still a significant minority of people who think this isn't an issue. I've had to learn to just walk away from comments on a variety of media where comments such as 'psychosomatic', 'less dangerous than the flu that kills 50,000 each year', 'patented by the illuminati', 'caused by 5G masts', and so on. I ended up deleting my twitter account as I dared try to engage with one UK…

What's amusing to be is how anyone can look at the incompetence of governments across the world, and conclude they'd be capable of any kind of organized conspiracy against the general population.

The sorts of incentives for organized conspiracy would naturally be bigger than the incentives for competence in executing ordinary matters of government. However the rareness of uncovering organized conspiracies suggests they are rarely attempted more than it suggests some hypercompetent class of conspirators.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#133

Post by atomashpolskiy »

paulgb wrote: post #96
atomashpolskiy wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it literally is a strain of flu. And staying at home, sleeping and drinking a lot of water is exactly what the majority of people who contracted COVID are doing at the moment. Or do you believe that there are 1.3 million people in hospitals or cemeteries right now?

> Or do you believe that there are 1.3 million people in hospitals or cemeteries right now? No, but I believe that in contrast to the flu, there are millions of healthy people (rightly) staying home right now. Are you saying that the lockdowns are unwarranted?

I'm not in the position to make such statements, but there is quite a number of medical professionals, who say exactly this: massive lockdowns of general population aren't necessary.

As for me, I personally believe that the medicine is worse than the disease in this case. We can be quite certain at this point that there will be lots of casualties from the economical disruption, and whether the unconstrained virus could have caused more suffering is a question to be answered.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#135

Post by matwood »

redis_mlc wrote: post #118
nullc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just goes to show that people will continue to ignore an exponential trend until it eats their lunch personally . FWIW, totally aside from that, CDC numbers for the "flu" are actually a combined "flu and pneumonia", and according to the NHS in the UK-- which doesn't bin the same way-- no more than 1/3rds of those deaths are due to the flu. Other estimates have put the flu well under 10% of flu+pneumonia, though with…

> people will continue to ignore an exponential trend Every cold and flu grow exponentially. Not sure what the fixation of HN readers is on the work exponential. Although true, using it doesn't add anything to analysis of corona virus specifically. I'd rather talk about the false hope in ventilators, and the futility and destruction to our economy by lockdown.

> Although true, using it doesn't add anything to analysis of corona virus specifically.

For many layperson, this is their first experience when it really matters. My mom isn't sitting around thinking about exponential spread when she gets a cold.

> I'd rather talk about the false hope in ventilators

I agree. Something like 80% of the people who end up on a ventilator die. Of course those other 20% are happy one was available, but by the time ventilators are being discussed it's really too late. Prevention is key.

> futility and destruction to our economy by lockdown

Depends. The economy was going to be hit hard regardless. Even if nothing was ever forced closed, the number of people sick and the number of overwhelmed hospitals would have killed the economy. For example, even before there were any official lockdowns in the US, companies I work with were already stopping all travel (late February timeframe).

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#136

Post by Lewton »

lazyjones wrote: post #131
Lewton wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing Denmark vs Sweden, it looks like we're beginning to see the difference in outcome on the death toll and hospitalization rates. Denmarks death toll is stabilizing (or at the very least only growing linearly) and the amount of people in hospitals with covid-19 has been stable for a week [0] (and no not because the hospitals are packed) While Sweden is seemingly continuing the exponential trend in both over th…

It may be a bit early to say. Social distancing delays the infections. It's possible that it kills the virus, but unlikely, so people will be infected and possibly die later if they aren't immune already. Sweden is not able to stop infections at all, their health system is guaranteed to be overwhelmed, but survivors will most likely be immune and it will be over quickly, one way or another, when everyone has been exp…

Do you think they’ll have the stomach to continue with the plan once their hospitals are overwhelmed? I’m extremely skeptical they won’t eventually have to lock down harder than Denmark

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#137

Post by atomashpolskiy »

nullc wrote: post #114
atomashpolskiy wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it literally is a strain of flu. And staying at home, sleeping and drinking a lot of water is exactly what the majority of people who contracted COVID are doing at the moment. Or do you believe that there are 1.3 million people in hospitals or cemeteries right now?

> But it literally is a strain of flu. No, it literally is not. The flu is caused by influenza. Covid19 is caused by sars-cov-2, a relative of SARS-CoV which caused SARS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr... ). It is also a (more distant) relative of HCoV-OC43 which is one of the many viruses that cause the cold. The problems that influenza and sars-cov-2 cause for us are pretty different:…

I was saying that this is yet another virus strain that causes flu-like illness, i.e. cold with fever, etc. Leave your pedantry for someone else.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#138

Post by smolder »

notahacker wrote: post #95
TechBro8615 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's amusing to be is how anyone can look at the incompetence of governments across the world, and conclude they'd be capable of any kind of organized conspiracy against the general population.

Yep. Actual conspiracies are comparatively banal, and often more to do with covering up incompetence than establishing new world orders with incredible technological advances. To bring up famous examples from the not too distant past, the same administration supposedly capable of secretly planting demolition charges in busy NYC offices without anyone noticing apparently saw it as too risky to secretly plant chemical…

Not in order to give credibility to the idea, but I do think it would be easier for a group of conspirators based in the US to pull off secret demolition charges than for them to plant weapons in a foreign country unnoticed.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#139

Post by Kaiyou »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #30
djaychela wrote: post #5

From what I'm reading, I think there are still a significant minority of people who think this isn't an issue. I've had to learn to just walk away from comments on a variety of media where comments such as 'psychosomatic', 'less dangerous than the flu that kills 50,000 each year', 'patented by the illuminati', 'caused by 5G masts', and so on. I ended up deleting my twitter account as I dared try to engage with one UK…

What's amusing to be is how anyone can look at the incompetence of governments across the world, and conclude they'd be capable of any kind of organized conspiracy against the general population.

It's always about benefits. Incompetence doesn't cost government benefits, so nobody cares. However, if there are benefits to be had by organizing a conspiracy against whomever, you can bet your money that this will be done. Nobody cares for "the greater good" or whatever. It's always about personal benefits.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#140

Post by taipan100 »

jpxw wrote: post #57
gadders wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that rubbish? It was created by a team just as credible as that at Imperial College.

The Oxford study is based on blatantly, and easily demonstrably, bad data. For example it relies on only 1 out of every 1000 infections needing hospitalisation. This is not supported by any current evidence. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/coronavirus-infections-oxfor...

To call the Oxford study "utter rubbish" is foolish.

Your "example" of bad data is the only quoted data in that article and it doesn't even mean anything since the implicit assumption of the Gupta model is that we do not know how many asymptomatic cases of COVID exist (even WIRED concede this point). Testing in Italy is insufficient to tell us this. 1 in 1000 infections requiring hospitalisation could be a realistic number if a high percentage of infections are asymptomatic.

> we just won’t know the true proportion of people who have contracted the disease without showing any symptoms, but it is likely a much lower number than the Oxford study assumes.

Epidemiology is not done by "it is likely much lower than the study assumes" since that is pure guess work without the tests.

What the Oxford study offers is a strong argument that antibody testing is vitally important and nobody is doing it.

As I say this is a very long way from utter rubbish.

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