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Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

natesilver.net

101–110 of 341 posts

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#101
post #2

This is all fine, but the focus on deaths is sort of missing the larger societal problem. The COVID devastation is also about long COVID, and even people who had COVID but either recovered “fully” or never displayed symptoms. None of this is over, and we are so, so fucked. edit: Which is to say: The Great Barrington Declaration was wrong directionally as well. We really needed to optimize to eliminate COVID as much a…

> The COVID devastation is also about long COVID, and even people who had COVID but either recovered “fully” or never displayed symptoms. None of this is over, and we are so, so fucked

You're right by way of the literature available to evaluate this claim. (Even jobs numbers are starting to note that some amount of the worker shortage is likely related to long COVID) Most of the "oh i got it [a few times] and i'm fine" posts are ignoring the long tail risks here.

Unfortunately, it will take 5-20 years for many of the worst long tail consequences of mass spread of sars-cov-2 to become imminently clear. (Enjoy access to your medical specialists while you can! There's not enough slack in the system for doubled-or-worse hazard ratios for most serious conditions, lol!) Decision makers broadly prioritized public dining over prudence. For this choice, we get at least an entire generation picking up sars-cov-2, likely yearly, and our reward will be a horrifying number of early deaths and disability.

This tragedy is so senseless and so avoidable. Zero COVID was and still is the rational strategy; "Let-er-rip" (and the GBD by extension) is anything but rational.

Poz rates in NY state have been sitting near 60ish percent, don't forget your well fitted respirator, usps is doing another round of free test distribution (RATs but better than nothing), and good luck out there. solidarity.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#102
post #11

I'm excited to find out in 20 years what the deal was with Covid once everybody has forgotten all their political opinions.

To me on an individual level, it feels like there isn't much unclear about covid if you know how to filter unlikely conspiracy theories and such. In what way do you see politics colouring the generally established information?

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#103
post #91

For those curious (as I was) what he's using, it looks like Stata: https://www.reed.edu/psychology/stata/analyses/parametric/Re...

Was looking for a download, but there's precious little about that on the website. The closest I got were these remarks: > On all Reed lab computers, Stata is located in the Applications folder. > Stata can be found in the Applications folder of any school machine. On a PC, it is most likely located in Program Files. Does that imply it's neither open source nor even commercially available? Seems rather odd, surely it…

Stata is fairly ubiquitous in statistical circles, especially those working in econometrics. While I preferred using Stata in academia, it is expensive and R is similar, just not as easy to use.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve never heard someone use the word arbitrary to mean anything other than “a random choice”, or even “a poorly thought-out choice”. That's shocking, I use it to mean "the result of a judgement or decision" about a dozen times a day, such as "it's not random, it's arbitrary". I had no clue people had an alternative definition for it. I'm even more surprised that otherwise ostensibly-educated people have no clue ab…

Can you find any recent dictionary with your definition, or modern printed example of the word used in this way? Etymonline cites a 1640s dictionary with the present-day definition: https://www.etymonline.com/word/arbitrary

[deleted]

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#106
post #91

For those curious (as I was) what he's using, it looks like Stata: https://www.reed.edu/psychology/stata/analyses/parametric/Re...

Was looking for a download, but there's precious little about that on the website. The closest I got were these remarks: > On all Reed lab computers, Stata is located in the Applications folder. > Stata can be found in the Applications folder of any school machine. On a PC, it is most likely located in Program Files. Does that imply it's neither open source nor even commercially available? Seems rather odd, surely it…

As noted in other replies, this isn’t the Stata homepage, but rather an academic page about the use of the program. Apologies for the confusion, I chose it because it has images that neatly match what Silver shows.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#107
post #25

I really don't trust any of the numbers on covid. A vaccine for a dangerous illness that can affect billions of people is a very big payday. There's lots of money to spread around to politicians, corrupt scientists, and corrupt media. I'd like to see a real scientific debate with adversarial inquiry so we could know if numbers are being fudged and which ones they are. I trust science, but not greed driven capitalists…

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have been approved by the national health agencies of dozens of countries, and China has approved a very similar home grown mRNA Covid vaccine. No amount of money in the world could pay to do that and keep it secret.

I don't know about the order/process elsewhere, by the time they were up for the approval process in the US there really wasn't another option simply because of the outcry after so many people had taken it, if it wasn't approved.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#108
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, even lockdowns weren't lockdowns. There were endless people who had to work, just to keep water, power, food flowing. And those people needed transportation. And past 2 weeks, transportation means parts for vehicles, maintenance, gas, oil, and food means transportation and food processors and.... It was a good idea at the time, but doomed to fail.

Agreed. There's a lot of animals that can catch and spread covid [0]: > many if not most mammalian ACE-2 receptors are susceptible > the virus has gone from humans to the animals and back again to human > found signs of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in significant percentages of six urban wildlife species > found signs of the pathogen infecting 17 percent of New York City sewer rats tested > Exposure could also occur…

I'm not too worried about a random sick deer in the middle of some forest infecting a whole bunch of humans. The worry with animals is that they could mutate the virus into something much more nasty. Especially in factory farm settings where animals aren't properly cared for and are packed in like sardines while covered in shit and open sores, and where workers who are also treated terribly could end up getting exposed.

Lockdowns could do a lot to reduce spread and protect people from infection in large population centers, but certain areas are basically breeding grounds for disease and even before covid they were a risk for things like antibiotic resistant bacteria. Ignoring them was always going to be a problem.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#109
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I come from, “good ideas doomed to fail” are called “bad ideas”

I recall clearly, at the time, the first two weeks of lockdown. No one, anywhere, had a clue wtf was going on, except that some new virus was spreading like wildfire, that it spread before symptoms appeared, and it seemed like Italy had a crazy high death rate. Blaming people with the knowledge of hindsight is just plain wrong. Later lockdowns? Now that's a different conversation.

Quebecs lockdowns continued for 2 years and were far more draconian than the rest of North America.

As far as I understand this was mostly a factor of our public hospital systems being absolutely over capacity and the government doing whatever it could to keep up.

Needless to say I’ve since moved away to a region with a more functional health care system and that allows families to gather together as desired.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#110
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I come from, “good ideas doomed to fail” are called “bad ideas”

I recall clearly, at the time, the first two weeks of lockdown. No one, anywhere, had a clue wtf was going on, except that some new virus was spreading like wildfire, that it spread before symptoms appeared, and it seemed like Italy had a crazy high death rate. Blaming people with the knowledge of hindsight is just plain wrong. Later lockdowns? Now that's a different conversation.

Yeah, before we had any idea what we were dealing with anything but a lockdown would have been madness.
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