Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#281

Post by elgenie » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:36 AM UTC

stanfordkid wrote: post #269

As we do serological testing, it is being revealed that the death rate was even lower than previously imagined -- potentially by a factor of 50x [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01095-0 Most places (outside of super dense metros) actually don't need quarantine at all. Maybe for people working in eldercare. With these new statistics the risk of death for those <65 is about the same as the normal ris…

That preprint [1] is a great example of how far ahead of the skis you can get with motivated reasoning, bad math, and no peer review.

They recruited people over Facebook at a time that California's COVID tests were backlogged (with ads not presented in the paper, with links to signup that could, anecdotally, be shared out); in that situation, avoiding selection bias towards people that were sick with something previously and want to know about potential immunity would be rather tough. (Per WTO protocol, they asked about symptoms in their sample but poof for some reason that data isn't in the paper).

They got a 1.5% positive rate in their sample with 50 individuals testing positive. They then immediately applied demographic weighing to move that raw number to around 3%. Only then did they contemplate the false positive rate, taking the data of the manufacturer and 30 samples as a point estimate to figure out a 95% CI of positives around that 3%.

That's a no-no for correctly propagating uncertainty. The statistically legitimate way to do that would've been to generate the 95% confidence interval for belief about the test's false positive rate and carry that forward in the demographic reweighing. That basic math would've avoided the frankly laughable result that a randomly selected person in Santa Clara county could have a 5% chance of having had COVID-19 while in the same county people seeing a doctor and getting tests through their doctor are only around 10% positive for COVID-19 [2].

Another critique: [3]

[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v... [2] https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#te... [3] https://medium.com/@balajis/peer-review-of-covid-19-antibody...

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#282

Post by kfrzcode » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:38 AM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #260

kfrzcode wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who do we trust, when everyone is pointing fingers at each other?

Ah, I skimmed your comment history. I'm opting out of this conversation. I think we disagree too much to find common ground here.

Unfortunate for me. :( I'm sincerely uncertain. I'm probably closer to the middle of the Bell-curve of smarts than the majority of this board, which is why it's the only community I try to engage with.

I don't know how to filter the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, when it comes to the online fire-hose of (what seems to be) an increasingly loud amount of ignorance, vitriol, panic-porn, condescension and misinformation.

I sincerely ask "who do we trust, and why," because I'm simply exhausted. Maybe HN has a solution that's not overly taxing on my mental energy? Do we vet every single argument, by every news outlet or institutional press release? Do we all become epidemiologists? Am I missing a fundamental life-skill?

Maybe another commentor can help placate my (certainly over-inflated) discomfort of existing in the modern info-sphere.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#283

Post by downerending » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:39 AM UTC

bsder wrote: post #265

downerending wrote: post #24

It's worth noting that there is a lot of discussion in serious circles (including here on HN) about the balance between too much and not enough with respect to quarantine, lockdown, etc., both in terms of where we are now and what we should do in the near future. I see little reason to doubt that all involved are trying to minimize general death and misery, even if they may disagree radically about how to do that. It…

> It's worth noting that there is a lot of discussion in serious circles (including here on HN) about the balance between too much and not enough with respect to quarantine, lockdown, etc., both in terms of where we are now and what we should do in the near future. The problem is that the "followers" in the "Reopen All The Things(tm)" camp is ASSUMING that you get immunity once you get Covid-19. We do not have inform…

The awful truth, I suspect, is that immunity will be for a limited duration, like the common cold. However, the people who are most likely to die from the virus will mostly die in the first round. Those who live through it will be far more likely to experience it as a rather unpleasant flu. And perhaps life will go on like that.

Pure speculation, of course.

But, we've never succeeded at a vaccination for a corona virus, and it's far from clear that we'll have one soon for this one. It could be that this will play out no matter what we do.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#284

Post by camgunz » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:40 AM UTC

duchenne wrote: post #155

I guess it is easy to dismiss the message from ordinary people, since they do not express themselves as well as the professional speakers we are used to listen to. If instead of saying "I want a haircut.", they would say like Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." would they be taken more seriously? In the movie versio…

> People should be able to take a calculated risk.

That is not at all what we're talking about here. People should not be able to take a calculated risk with the lives of others. Let me tell you why it's not like driving: the NHTSA reports 102 car fatalities a day in 2016. NYC just got under 500 COVID deaths a day. One city. 5x the fatalities. Compared to a country of 300 million people.

This is, by far, the most outrageous, insanely reckless thing I have ever read on HN. I beg you to please, stop doing this. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of lives maybe are at stake.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#285

Post by downerending » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:42 AM UTC

SerLava wrote: post #154

nopriorarrests wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Wait, are you talking about the people who want to send everyone back to work now This is an argument made in a bad faith. You can't send "everyone to work now", if you are not running a gulag. People who are financially secure can stay at home till 2021, nobody can force them to go to work, this is obvious. It's a question of being able to make a personal decision between staying at home or going to work.

>People who are financially secure can stay at home till 2021, nobody can force them to go to work, this is obvious. >It's a question of being able to make a personal decision between staying at home or going to work. Double speak. You mean rich people can decide to quarantine until 2021, and poor people can decide between work followed by exposure and possible death, or homelessness followed by exposure and possible…

By the standards of the HN crowd, I'm not rich at all. But, I'm fortunate in that I can stay at home, working some, eating rice and beans, for the rest of my life. And maybe I will.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#286

Post by a1369209993 » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:43 AM UTC

SamWhited wrote: post #241

oldsklgdfth wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America, corporations are people. Citizens United v. FEC

This doesn't mean what you think it means. Not all rights that attach to people attach to corporations. The bill of rights doesn't uniformly apply to corporations, and different rights may or may not attach under certain circumstances.

More importantly, the government declaring something doesn't make true. See anything from the entire Soviet Union to the various attempts to legislate that π = 3.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#287

Post by bagacrap » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:45 AM UTC

camgunz wrote: post #284

duchenne wrote: post #155

I guess it is easy to dismiss the message from ordinary people, since they do not express themselves as well as the professional speakers we are used to listen to. If instead of saying "I want a haircut.", they would say like Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." would they be taken more seriously? In the movie versio…

> People should be able to take a calculated risk. That is not at all what we're talking about here. People should not be able to take a calculated risk with the lives of others . Let me tell you why it's not like driving: the NHTSA reports 102 car fatalities a day in 2016. NYC just got under 500 COVID deaths a day. One city. 5x the fatalities. Compared to a country of 300 million people. This is, by far , the most o…

you realize when someone dies in a car accident that they may have otherwise lived another 40 or 80 years, whereas with covid they probably had two months.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#288

Post by modzu » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:51 AM UTC

bagacrap wrote: post #287

camgunz wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People should be able to take a calculated risk. That is not at all what we're talking about here. People should not be able to take a calculated risk with the lives of others . Let me tell you why it's not like driving: the NHTSA reports 102 car fatalities a day in 2016. NYC just got under 500 COVID deaths a day. One city. 5x the fatalities. Compared to a country of 300 million people. This is, by far , the most o…

you realize when someone dies in a car accident that they may have otherwise lived another 40 or 80 years, whereas with covid they probably had two months.

so it's a hard topic nobody wants to think about genuinely but isn't there truth to it? the nursigng homes that are being ravaged the most -- people are there for end of life care. by definition. they are generally under a policy of do not recussitate. thats very different than any hn readers experience (nobody here is commenting as a nursing home patient). this is not to say their lives dont matter but the context does

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#289

Post by elicash » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:53 AM UTC

NullPrefix wrote: post #262

elicash wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never understood this argument. Let's take a cause I disagree with. I'm pro-equality, but still think Christian Mingle shouldn't be forced to match up same-sex couples. Because I disagree with their values, of course, I'd never use their website. OF COURSE conservative Christians should be allowed to have a website that aligns with their values. Not only don't I think this website should be outlawed -- I also don't t…

>I'm pro-equality Stopped reading right there as that is a big enough indicator that you're sitting on a high horse.

That's unfortunate! If you would have read on, you would have found that I described the other side of a debate as simply having a different set of values, having legitimate views, and that everyone should be respected.

I view the term the same way I view "pro-choice" and "pro-life." Both terms frame the sides in favorable light, are how people self-identify, and so I use both of them (even the one that's in a category I don't fall into).

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#290

Post by kfrzcode » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 4:54 AM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #259

kfrzcode wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What feelings did you feel in October 2001?

Not much, I was a child. I think it would be sort of a waste of time to compare 9/11 to Covid with regards to government overreach. Off the bat, the threat is of a completely different nature, we understand the threat in a completely different way, the threat is taking place within our borders and, of course, globally. The measures are not broad, relatively. They are explicitly intended to be short term. They are bei…

You'll have to excuse my skepticism. My government has a pretty poor history when it comes to the interests of its people, having sent yet another generation of its children to war on the other side of the planet based on false statements...I'm jaded, I'm biased and I'm most likely ignorant-as-fuck.

Please, forgive my doubt. It's seeded in deep levels of trauma. I even bought into the whole "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" meme, thinking I was clever.

> measures are not broad

I would call trillions of dollars of stimulus injections and virtual lockdowns quite broad. However my point is more that while a panicked, fearful public is distracted with the News of the Day, governmental agencies, lobbyists and others will play. "You never want to let a serious crisis go to waste."

To be fair there are many on the 'net who are die-hard and staunchly rooted in the anti-governmental camp. I'm rational and seeking discourse to expand my knowledge and evolve a complex, multi-faceted worldview; many others are not.