Tribalism comes for pandemic science • Hacker News Board

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#131

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

salmon30salmon wrote: post #116

_opc6 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The safest possible solution would be for the super wealthy pay to keep the population fed and housed while we wait for a vaccine or improved treatments. Otherwise, the virus will continue to propagate, the poor will have to risk their lives and the virus will inevitably reach the rich and their families in a later wave anyway as was the case with the 1918 flu. Addendum: I posted this fully understanding how unpopula…

I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not, but I will assume it is not. It is not this simple. You can't, in our current system, shift wealth that readily and quickly. Even if you could, how would you approach possibly selling this in a democracy? And assuming it was feasible, and we could get popular support for it, how would it be implemented? Rationing cards? Government ran food stores? This is NOT the Spanish Flu.…

One way would be to have a monthly payment similar to Trump's $1200 [stimulus check] every month. The government can later recoup that through more equitable tax policies on the ultra wealthy and massive corporations.

This has been proposed by legitimate legislators. https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1270000771132731397

As for your claim to a lack of a second wave, I'll have to defer to the experts on that. I'm looking at a historical case for a worse case scenario which I think is prudent to consider.

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#132

Post by guscost » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 10:50 PM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #129

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 rat…

You skipped over a lot, and we will see about the rest. I can’t prove most of it right now, but it is what I think. In fairness it is perhaps way too cynical for your taste, so if you prefer a serious introspection, try this: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2020/05/science-without-v...

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#133

Post by throwaway894345 » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 10:54 PM UTC

cma wrote: post #128

throwaway894345 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This requires a citation. It's intuitively far easier to quarantine 1% of the population than 90+%.

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#134

Post by vorpalhex » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 10:57 PM UTC

bsder wrote: post #100

throwaway894345 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The US never went into an actual lockdown in most places. "Lockdown" is New York where R0 is 0.75. "Lockdown" is not California or Texas where R0 basically sits at 1.0. R0 of 0.75 after the last 3 months would basically mean Covid cases in the single digits basically everywhere in the US. But, no, we can't actually get people's attention before we start piling body bags in the streets. The people in the US who are "O…

Do you have a source for your R0 values? As far as I know there have been no per-state R0s released, though current estimates put ~20% at antibody positive [^1] in New York meanwhile Texas has a very low infection rate in comparison.

This likely has much more to do with relative densities than lockdown strategy. Texas is low density, and it was necessary to have looser restrictions in many areas due to distance to essentials like groceries. And indeed for Texas this seems to have been a fine call.

And Texas still has a declining rate of new cases despite continuing to reopen, and we have been in a decline for over 30 days despite bars and restaurants being open.

The complaints against mask wearing have primarily been against legal mandates. I wear a mask but I don't support fining or jailing Americans if they choose not to, especially since they are likely to be old, poor or a minority.

I don't believe anyone has been piling bodybags in the streets, though it's an excellent scaremongering claim. Remember lockdown was planned for a few weeks to flatten hospitalization rate - which it did.

[^1]:https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-numerical-language-of-covid...

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#135

Post by ColanR » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 10:59 PM UTC

ardy42 wrote: post #63

ColanR wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tailoring the response to pre-existing policy preferences Well, that's true of the left as well. A "bottom-up government economic intervention" fits nicely with existing left wing ideas.

> Well, that's true of the left as well. A "bottom-up government economic intervention" fits nicely with existing left wing ideas. That's true, but the different political ideologies are better at handling different kinds of problems. Public health emergencies like this one are the kind of thing that benefits from a properly-resourced, centrally coordinated response; a solution that happens to lean left.

Each side would of course argue that its own methods for handling each kind of problem is superior.

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#136

Post by salmon30salmon » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 11:00 PM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #121

salmon30salmon wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We are arguing over two different things. I am arguing the direct response to the virus. How the lockdowns were implemented, where and for who. I agree that the federal response was bad all over, and now it is most obvious in the lack of financial assistance to both individuals and states.

Please keep in mind also, that for states that are not in (NY, NJ, CA, MI, LA) there hasn't been a _first wave_. We need to keep that in mind before we point to states like FL and GA as having a 2nd wave. Their waves were largely curtailed by the stay-home orders in place. We need to either admit we want these orders to last until there is a vaccine, or increase our threshold for acceptable case levels.

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#137

Post by marcell » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 11:06 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #88

JPKab wrote: post #24

Question: Has anyone here changed their mind about COVID19 in a major way as the data has become more complete? Just wondering. I have sensed in myself tribalistic tendencies of not changing my mind when the data changes. I'm trying hard to look at myself and recognize it and experiment with different thoughts. I find myself bouncing between thinking we have overreacted to then thinking that my perception of an overr…

Yes, but early. I changed my mind from thinking it was "just the flu - I'm going to get it, but probably won't be able to tell it apart from a cold" to "this is probably a big deal that I really don't want to get" in late February. Haven't found any information to make me change my mind since, even as public opinion has yo-yo'd. The critical information for me was data on hospitalization rates, along with some math o…

> now best estimates are a 1-1.25% IFR

Just FYI, the CDC gives their best estimate at 0.26% IFR. (source: https://reason.com/2020/05/24/the-cdcs-new-best-estimate-imp... , note that 0.26% adds in the estimated 35% asymptomatic population)

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#138

Post by cma » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 11:08 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #133

cma wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This requires a citation. It's intuitively far easier to quarantine 1% of the population than 90+%.

I mean isolation of vulnerable while letting infections elsewhere raise to saturation. No (non-micro state) country has gotten close to saturation/herd immunity yet.

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#139

Post by PeterisP » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 11:08 PM UTC

robocat wrote: post #110

pjc50 wrote: post #17

The people who said that lockdown needed to be limited in length because people couldn't take it for long were right. Unfortunately, due to not understanding exponentials, many advocated for starting the lockdown later : hence the UK's delayed lockdown and therefore highest death toll in Europe. The people advocating for "herd immunity" never addressed the death rate; a death rate of even 0.5% in the UK would be thre…

> 0.5% of the country infected Your own numbers show this is totally incorrect: death rate 0.5% times 40k deaths, means infected is 8 million (or more precisely the count was that number some weeks ago as deaths take time to happen). this has been an obvious calculation from the start and I am not the only person trying to correct the misuse of the confirmed infected count (287k) for your conclusion. Honest question:…

It's a misstatement that's not needed to make the point - if we assume 8 million infected, that's far too few to talk about herd immunity; and achieving herd immunity would involve many times more deaths than the current (already very sad) number.

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#140

Post by salmon30salmon » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 11:08 PM UTC

tw000001 wrote: post #9

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…

>This is because leaders on the left and right have refused to respond to new data, and are working with the same plans set in March. As the article somewhat loosely implies, the problem is that all new data becomes suspect when all of our institutions are openly politicized. You think these biases only exist with respect to COVID? The marginalized right (consider the viceral response you're about to have to reading…

I had no visceral response to what you said :)

I agree, groupthink is a natural artifact of groups. If there are more liberal people in a group, their groupthink will be more liberal. Couple this with confirmation bias and we have a problem. Couple _that_ with the fact that there are actors, both from a profit motive and for other motives, that are attempting to exacerbate and increase that divide, and we have an even larger problem.