Tribalism comes for pandemic science • Hacker News Board

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#121

Post by matthewdgreen » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 10:20 PM UTC

salmon30salmon wrote: post #111

matthewdgreen wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nuts. Large portions of the response were absolutely in the hands of the Federal government, which failed catastrophically. These range from the elimination of our pandemic response team [0] to the early testing debacle, which resulted from bad tests distributed by CDC (and early failures to scale up private testing using Federal powers and expedited FDA approval) [1], to the lack of coordination between stat…

I totally agree with you, that the Federal response was pretty terrible. And I understand and am aware of the topics you provided. However, that does not change where we are today. It would have probably helped us get to "today" a lot earlier, and it would have probably saved many, many lives which were unfortunately lost. But my argument is how we respond _today_ to new information, and how the partisanship endemic…

I think that you’re very wrong that the lack of a coordinated response by the Federal government was only an issue “in the early days”. I think the ongoing lack of Federal action (and particular economic support) has more or less trapped us into a long-term poor and fragmented state-by-state “whack-a-mole” strategy. The fact that CFR has dropped a bit does not mean there won’t be major second waves that flow back and forth between the states: we may already be seeing those in some southern and western states. It’s not too late to fix this, but we won’t.

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#122

Post by thu2111 » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 10:23 PM UTC

throwawaysea wrote: post #113

sacred_numbers wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that you are making the same mistake that you are accusing healthcare workers and officials of making. You are assuming that these protests will "obviously" result in thousands more deaths because it feels that way to you. I believe that that's pretty unlikely, though, since there are probably fewer than a million protestors across the country. Many of the protestors are wearing masks and the protests being o…

> You are assuming that these protests will "obviously" result in thousands more deaths because it feels that way to you. I believe that that's pretty unlikely, though, since there are probably fewer than a million protestors across the country. Many of the protestors are wearing masks and the protests being outside reduces the risk of spreading the disease. I am not the one saying this. Trevor Bedford (Associate Pro…

can a society with two big groups holding such divergent values survive? Or is it inevitable that is splits apart?

There are historical examples in both directions, so arguably we don't know.

A society that didn't survive: Russia during the Bolsheviks. One group was so aggressive it took over completely.

A society that did come back from the brink: perhaps Britain during the 1970s?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent

Left / right conflict resulted in widespread strikes, three day weeks, an IMF bailout, power cuts, garbage piling up in streets, bodies going unburied, hyperinflation and so on. It was resolved after voters replaced the left wing government with a right wing one that radically reformed trade union laws and refocused policy on inflation control, but at the cost of a huge recession. The UK pivoted from quite far leftism to (for Britain) nearly libertarian government within the span of one or two elections; eventually Thatcher's libertarian policies led to riots and she was kicked out by her own party. After that both parties moved more towards each other, paving the way for many years of Blairite centrism.

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#123

Post by StanislavPetrov » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 10:31 PM UTC

lotu wrote: post #59

xiphias2 wrote: post #41

,,people should not be walking around with masks'' What Fauci was telling to people is not science. I was wearing my N100 masks when I had the chance, because I hadn't seen any evidence of masks making the coronavirus more infectious, but much evidence to the contrary. The whole anti-mask propaganda made it hard to me to trust scientific leaders, and even some papers at this point.

The anti-mask “propaganda” was obviously an only partially successful effort to preserve the supply of masks for first responders. If the CDC/WHO and came out and said everyone wear masks in the beginning of march the supply would have spiked harder and faster than it already did, likely resulting in more health care worker fatalities.

Successful or not they lied to the public openly about the benefits of wearing masks. Not only does this destroy whatever credibility they had with the public, but it also shields government and health officials who failed to stockpile enough masks for inevitable outbreaks and offshored our medical productive capacity to China from accountability (making it more likely we will face the same shortages during the next, inevitable crisis).

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#124

Post by guscost » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 10:35 PM UTC

Science as you know it is dead: https://guscost.com/2020/05/12/pandemic-woo/

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#125

Post by salmon30salmon » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 10:38 PM UTC

mthoms wrote: post #56

salmon30salmon wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happened again today, with Washington Post publishing an article based on a study that was submitted to Nature on March 22, 2020. They used this old data (2 months ago is old in this case) to claim that the lockdown saved millions upon millions of lives. To be that disingenuous can't be accidental, I am afraid. And I am normally a fan of WaPo

The data is indeed old but China began its lockdown on January 24th and South Korea a month later. Those countries seem to be the central focus of the study with regards to evaluating the effectiveness of the shutdown(s). I'm only a layperson but it doesn't seem too far-fetched that they could extrapolate from how those countries "flattened the curve" to come up with a ballpark estimate of global fatalities averted.…

IMO, it is pretty easy to see why an extrapolation is faulty. Let us look at two different reasons:

1. Density. China and South Korea are far more dense than most of the western world. Seoul has a density of 42,000 per square mile. New York City, the densest city in the US, has a density of 23,000 per square mile. The next top 10 most populous cities in the USA have an average density of 5,000 per square mile. Over half of South Koreans live in an urban environment, while less than 25% of Americans do. Density, and the number of interactions someone has in a day, is a major determining factor in the spread of any airborne virus.

Density also has implications for transit use, which in NYC was shown to be a large source of transmission.

2. Demographics. Italy, the United States and Sweden all have very different demographics and cultures. In Italy, many people live in multi-generational housing, and nursing home usage is far lower than the United States. The average age of Italy is also higher. Sweden is more like the US in terms of nursing homes, but still lower. As the older folks are far more likely to die from this, or even have detectable infections, the way each country manages their aging population will have a huge impact on mortality.

For example, people going about their day like normal, and then returning to their shared home with their Grandma would put Grandma at a much higher risk of infection. That is the Italy scenario. In the United States, where the old either live independently or in a group home, their vectors are much more limited. Test and trace everyone going to and working at a nursing home. It should also be noted that the areas if NYC most heavily hit are also more multi-generational than the rest of the city and country.

So see, you can't take one nation and extrapolate it out to the world. That is a faulty model and those who championed it should know better.

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#126

Post by DennisAleynikov » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 10:42 PM UTC

Avicebron wrote: post #120

dekhn wrote: post #40

There are times I'm glad I left health science/biology/medicine as a field and it's interesting to watch people slowly realize just how badly structured the entire human health field is organized (from academic research to research hospitals to profit hospitals to world health organizations) and how all the incentives are messed up. The closer you get in biology to human health, the more ego, tribalism, and assholery…

I will second this as I am currently working in the biotech field. The amount of short sighted thinking and opportunism from small start ups to the most massive CMO's in the world is staggering. My take is that the whole field is extremely underfunded and that breeds levels of competition and short term profit seeking, but that's probably a biased opinion. I'm sure if the field had the level of VC support that tradit…

that's tragic. it seems the funnels of money that exist can't get anywhere meaningful without aggressive fundraising and being first to some buzzword

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#127

Post by josephby » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 10:43 PM UTC

“Yuval Levin is director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute, editor of National Affairs, and a senior editor of The New Atlantis.” Useful context before the click.

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#128

Post by cma » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #7

salmon30salmon wrote: post #2

This is so very disheartening. I will speak only for the United States, as I am not familiar enough with other countries to comment. Not only is this impacting nearly every single person in the country, it is ruining the financial situation of over 40m people, primarily concentrated within the most financially vulnerable. This is because leaders on the left and right have refused to respond to new data, and are worki…

In fairness, the right has been pretty consistent about tailoring the response according to risk—i.e., those who are at risk should isolate and everyone else should resume work. They happened to be right in this regard. The left has also made exceptions in their “lockdown everything” policy, specifically with regard to their own protests (and the response of pandemic experts is a particularly interesting case study o…

No country has successfully done isolation of vulnerable, while there are many countries that have successfully eradicated or at least brought it to extremely low levels.

With cheaper testing, pooled testing protocols, etc. we could potentially test every household in the US every couple of weeks for less than we spend on auto insurance.

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#129

Post by vorpalhex » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 10:46 PM UTC

guscost wrote: post #124

Science as you know it is dead: https://guscost.com/2020/05/12/pandemic-woo/

That was a really poor read. Anxiety from lockdown is going to kill more people than coronavirus?

Like, I'm not exactly an ardent supporter of lockdown but it's clear we've saved many lives by keeping hospitalizations minimal. Even if that estimate is below what initial models suggested, it's inept to suggest it was useless.

Likewise you fail to actually link to any stats to support claims about increased suicide rates or deaths from heart attacks, while linking to a 404 as a source for New York state supposedly hiding pushing covid cases into nursing homes.

Science has issues but this is trending towards baseless tabloid journalism instead of a serious introspection of methodological flaws.

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#130

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 10:46 PM UTC

ardy42 wrote: post #106

salmon30salmon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But before you go to war, the leaders listen to a diversity of opinions. Could diplomacy work? Could sanctions? What about an alliance prior to war? Could we use covert methods? The problem here is that we waged war without having that discussion. We went straight to the Generals (in our case, epidemiologists) without getting the opinion of the diplomats, allies, covert ops (economists, labor groups, civil rights gro…

> But before you go to war, the leaders listen to a diversity of opinions. Could diplomacy work? Could sanctions? What about an alliance prior to war? Could we use covert methods? The problem here is that we waged war without having that discussion. We went straight to the Generals (in our case, epidemiologists) without getting the opinion of the diplomats, allies, covert ops (economists, labor groups, civil rights g…

> When a country is attacked, does its leadership typically first consult with its economists to determine if resistance is cost effective vs. just letting the enemy take territory or kill citizens with little opposition?

Yes, countries very often let the enemy take territory or kill citizens because resistance wouldn't be cost effective. All countries of course try to project the image that they wouldn't, that their territory and the lives of their citizens are priceless. But border skirmishes happen all the time and the vast majority of them don't lead to war.