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Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

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Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#361
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with all statistical bullshitters, Taleb has smelled it back it April. Think of the man what you want, but whenever he is putting his reputation on the line and publicly accuses someone else of statistical ignorance, he turns out to be correct.

He embarrassed himself with Nate Silver, Stephen Pinker, and most other disputes I've ever seem him wage. Not to mention being notoriously moody on twitter, and cozying up to alt-right trolls. If you are just relying on the supposed credibility of Taleb, you are relying on nothing.

He didn’t really embarrass himself with Nate Silver. I’m not a big fan of Taleb personally, but his criticisms of Silver were sound.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to be cautious for any reason you want. But don't expect it of others if you can't provide evidence there is reason to be cautious.

We've got plenty of concrete evidence COVID infections can result in long-lasting chronic symptoms. That's sufficient reason to be cautious until we know the rate.

People have died of the common cold. Edge cases happen.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#363
post #351
post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to hospitalizations and fatality rates, people are talking past each other by only looking at part of the picture. The two main camps I see are: 1) Covid19 is far more deadly, look at all these excess deaths! 2) The IFR is low, about the same as the seasonal flu, so we really didn't need the lockdowns. Both are half true. Basically, we have decent herd immunity for existing viruses. Even with an identic…

But IFR are not identical. That part is simply lie. It is not just taking part each other. Seasonal flu has also much different spreading. You are spreading it for very short time and then you get clearly sick. Which makes limiting speed much easier.

Yeah, that was a bit lazy of me, but I was primarily making a point about why the two groups don't seem to be able to agree. That said the IFR does keep getting revised downwards, and last I remember it was still higher, but the same magnitude as seasonal flu.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's take John out of the discussion. On Oct 05 the WHO officially announced there were 750m cases worldwide. On that day their official fatality count was ~1m. This comes out to an IFR of 0.13% Do you have an issues with this statistic as well?

No rebuttals. Just downvotes. That'll teach you a lesson, right?? edit: Oh no! Someone downvoted this comment? Whatever will I do?!

Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? We're trying for something different here.

We've had to ask you about this before. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#365

The author, John Ioannidis, is a discredited researcher on Covid-19. He and his Stanford colleages are responsible for a terribly written antibody study done back in March on residents of Santa Clara County. The statistics in that paper were egregiously bad and seem cooked to meet foregone political conclusions. Some reporting: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/ioannidis... https://www.mercurynews.co…

Can you summarize the objections? I skimmed the BuzzFeed article and it is very long, filled with vague innuendo. I couldn’t find any argument on the merits. Similarly your post is an ad hominem, but you didn’t make any arguments based on merits.

No.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More or less disgusting than coughing and sneezing all over everyone around you?

My elbow hasn't complained so far.

You just dump snot and mucus into your own elbow? What, like, onto the skin or does it just soak into the clothes you're wearing? For someone throwing around the word "disgusting" you're not exactly an exemplar.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#367
post #347
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have details? A quick glance here shows low positive test rates in the countries that seem to be doing the best. Low positive test rates seem like adequate testing. https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing

Low positive rates are an indicator that a country is having to do more testing to locate their cases than a country with a similar amount of cases, but higher positive rates. Nothing more, nothing less. At best, it indicates that the country has a relatively low infection rate (which is why countries that are doing better have low positive test rates), at worst it's because they're testing the wrong people. Think ab…

I understand that low infection rates don't follow testing. But low infections rates _also_ means there are adequate tests for infections. What I was after was any kind detail about these countries being test constrained. Links, etc. Anything like that?

> The idea that the level of testing required depends on the size of the outbreak is nonsense created to continue the narrative that Western countries like the UK and US are still failing on testing and that's why we have so many cases well past the point it should've been put to bed. It made sense as a metric of testing aggressiveness in February when everyone was looking for cases linked to travel from China, since it tended to indicate how wide a net countries were casting when doing this, and a little bit back in March and April when many countries were only testing people with serious and obvious symptoms. Not so much these days.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#368
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with all statistical bullshitters, Taleb has smelled it back it April. Think of the man what you want, but whenever he is putting his reputation on the line and publicly accuses someone else of statistical ignorance, he turns out to be correct.

He embarrassed himself with Nate Silver, Stephen Pinker, and most other disputes I've ever seem him wage. Not to mention being notoriously moody on twitter, and cozying up to alt-right trolls. If you are just relying on the supposed credibility of Taleb, you are relying on nothing.

I haven't yet seen any serious attempt to dispel his attacks on Pinker, specifically the lack of statistical evidence concerning the "the world is getting more peaceful" thesis - can you point me towards anything substantive?

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which btw, these current death rates are with active measures in place. If we didn't have these measures then the trends set early on would be off the charts by now. Sweden contradicts this. > So if you take the worst flu season - which we count as a year - we're almost 5x that with covid and its not even a full year yet... The way we count COVID deaths is fundamentally different from how we count Flu deaths. It's…

Sweden doesn't contradict anything. Search for the news right now and you will see their cases are increasing and they're dealing with trying to control it. Really, the only hysteria there is, is from people like you projecting it. Wearing a mask and socially distancing is rational.

I'm not a big fan of the word hysteria (literally "condition of having a uterus"), but that said, the two are not mutually exclusive. Wearing a mask is rational, and there are also people acting irrationally out of fear (remember how hard it was to get toilet paper?).

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might find The Road to Serfdom interesting: http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files... There's a long tradition of the notion of collective responsibility in conservative thought. Even Hayek agreed with this. Stuff like Spooner and Rothbard is very much fringe and likely would have no audience if not for heavy promotion by Koch-like entities.

So you mean that all libertarians are "very much fringe" and "Kock-like entities"? Also, Hayek was not a collectivist. Maybe you should read The Road to Serfdom again, as he refers to "collective responsibility" in the localist sense of "collective", not in the sense of a government.

Libertarianism is very much a fringe ideology propped up by billionaires who find it useful to promote an ideology that justifies their refusal to give back to the society that made them rich.
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