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Coronavirus and Credibility

paulgraham.com

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Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#421

Post by nickthemagicman »

dekhn wrote: post #400

I'm a biologist and I have no trouble saying with a straight face that, as of yet, COVID-19's true health impact has been lower than that of a bad year of flu. I don't care about TV commenters- by the metric of # of deaths (not potential number of deaths, or total cost to the medical system, or impact on economy), COVID-19 has been less than a bad year of flu. This isn't to say COVID-19 isn't bad, or doesn't have the…

Completely agree. The data backs you up as far as infections/fatalities.

The rational data is: under 60 with no pre-existing conditions..you're basically immune.

This whole thing appears to be a massive fear campaign.

But if you bring up ANYTHING counter to the prevailing narrative, you're viciously attacked by people. VICIOUSLY. Like you're some sort of murdering child killer.

No one is interested in discussion or thinking about this. They just repeat the narrative.

The people I've discussed this with... it's all mantric repetitions of 'flatten the curve' of 'social distancing saves lives' and people have not looked at the data or anything to back this up!

I feel like the average person could be told to wear a dog cone to 'stop covid' and we would have a population of people walking around with dog cones around their necks.

It's actually disappointing and embarrassing.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#422

Post by jcadam »

mapgrep wrote: post #341
9HZZRfNlpR wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an American and far from Trumps target audience but the CNN is bad as Fox. I have them both on TV. It truly is a kettle and pot situation, I believe so many Americans have grown so deeply into either culture that unfortunately you can't comprehend it anymore.

Every single journalist in the video Paul Graham linked was on Fox News/Fox Business.

The video appears that it was put together by the folks at The Daily Show. You really think they went looking for clips from the "other side?"

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#423

Post by itronitron »

2bitencryption wrote: post #396

One thing I've had trouble reconciling is the fact that the CDC estimates 24k-63k deaths from the flu this flu season[0] We just passed 10k from covid-19. Only last week a "low" estimation of covid deaths this year was 200k. So it seems the expectation is there will be many, many more, and we're just at the start of all this. On the other hand, it also seems this week like the infamous curve is beginning to flatten,…

The low 200k fatality estimate probably factors in the that the curve is flattening.

The current estimate is that 300k people are infected in the US. If the number of people infected by Covid-19 doubles every week, then in 10 weeks there will be 300 million infected in the US. Assuming 1% mortality puts you at 3 million dead.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#424

Post by adjkant »

2bitencryption wrote: post #396

One thing I've had trouble reconciling is the fact that the CDC estimates 24k-63k deaths from the flu this flu season[0] We just passed 10k from covid-19. Only last week a "low" estimation of covid deaths this year was 200k. So it seems the expectation is there will be many, many more, and we're just at the start of all this. On the other hand, it also seems this week like the infamous curve is beginning to flatten,…

The thing missing here is that you're looking at deaths without looking at number of cases of each. The flu causes the number of deaths it does because it infects tens of millions of people a year[0]. The death rate is an order of magnitude lower than with COVID-19 across every single age bracket. [2]

So when people say things like:

> "I'm not worried about getting this illness"

They are likely not considering that even the younger are taking as much as a 1% risk of their life, which is incredibly high. Depending on factors like the load on the medical community at the time and others, it can get as high as 5% or more quite easily as we have seen around the world. Currently using only napkin math from the numbers here[1], the death rate is currently at just under 4% over all age groups in the US.

Additionally, it is not considering the danger they are putting others in by getting it. With the flu at a death rate of 0.2% or lower, causing deaths by infecting people is a very small risk. Passing it to one person here significantly ups the chances of you causing someone else to die.

Finally, flu deaths almost exclusively happen in the immunocompromised and elderly, while COVID-19 affects younger people a LOT more.[2]

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/keyfacts.htm

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-c...

[2] https://i.insider.com/5e81f6460c2a6261b1771b05?width=600&for...

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#425

Post by atomashpolskiy »

Symmetry wrote: post #237
nullc wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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:…

Interestingly there's a variant that attacks dogs that's a bit more severe and people have actually developed a vaccine for that variant. Well, it might also be that it's a lot easier, regulations wise, to develop a vaccine for dogs than for humans. It works great but your dog has to have a booster every year or two to keep full immunity.

A vaccine has already been developed for cats. It turned out vaccinated cats suffer greater from the nCov due to increased reaction from the immune system.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#426

Post by AlexandrB »

nickff wrote: post #405
rahidz wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stage four requires admitting guilt, it should be "We've always known we should've done something about it, but (opposing political party) didn't let us!"

That back-and-forth is between two bureaucrats, who are talking about how to obstruct politicians. One of the core premises of "Yes Minister" is that the bureaucracy holds the real power in government, somewhat similar to the idea of a 'deep state', though the show existed long before that phrase was coined.

This seems to undermine the point at the end of the GP comment:

> Remember that Yes Minister is a manual for politicians, not a comedy.

It seems like the deep state was (more) right on this one and the politicians are/were the ones trying to downplay the danger and generally mislead.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#427

Post by dekhn »

akiselev wrote: post #417
dekhn wrote: post #400

I'm a biologist and I have no trouble saying with a straight face that, as of yet, COVID-19's true health impact has been lower than that of a bad year of flu. I don't care about TV commenters- by the metric of # of deaths (not potential number of deaths, or total cost to the medical system, or impact on economy), COVID-19 has been less than a bad year of flu. This isn't to say COVID-19 isn't bad, or doesn't have the…

When's the last time the annual flu caused upwards of 50-80% ICU occupancy rates in several countries simultaneously? That's the difference between biology and medicine.

But given the severity and high death rate of flu, shouldn't it also have that high level of hospitalization, or perhaps covid shouldn't have such a high rate?

It's unclear at this team what purpose super-intensive hospitalization for covid serves. That's something we're only going to understand in time.

(note, I did my training at a hospital medical center and my biology work was health-oriented).

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#428

Post by standardUser »

rayuela wrote: post #295
smsm42 wrote: post #235

I agree that we have huge amount of talking heads around with zero skin in the game and zero consequences when they are wrong, but I disagree covid-19 pandemics changed anything. There are literally dozens of politicians who have been disastrously wrong and gave advice in public which is diametrically opposite to what should have been, and suffered absolutely no consequences. And everybody's reaction to this is as tr…

Totally agree with this. This is something you can clearly see in Trump's approval rating, which just reached the highest levels of his entire tenure [1]. Things are only getting more polarizing, but the really scary thing is that this admin's approval rating climbs the worse things get and it is worrying to see this incentive structure :(

There has been a lot written on this in the last week. The consensus is that Trump has received a historically tiny increase in approval rating when compared to other presidents in moments of crisis, and that this bump has all but disappeared already. Trump's post inauguration "bump" was similarly brief and mild.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#429

Post by daveguy »

dekhn wrote: post #400

I'm a biologist and I have no trouble saying with a straight face that, as of yet, COVID-19's true health impact has been lower than that of a bad year of flu. I don't care about TV commenters- by the metric of # of deaths (not potential number of deaths, or total cost to the medical system, or impact on economy), COVID-19 has been less than a bad year of flu. This isn't to say COVID-19 isn't bad, or doesn't have the…

You may be a biologist, but you are definitely not an epidemiologist.

It is at least 10x more lethal and much more contagious. We will bear the brunt of it in the US because we didn't take it seriously for so long. The only reason we aren't at 2,000+ deaths per day in the US is because now we are taking it seriously. That death rate sustained for a typical flu season (4 months) would be 240,000 deaths. This is serious. If we never took it seriously the death toll would be well over a million. And that is just in the US. Downplaying the severity of it will get people killed.

Yes we should take flu more seriously. But that doesn't make this not so bad.

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