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

natesilver.net

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

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do not remember the pictures from NYC? You believe they were not real? Sometimes I would love to see how corona would have ripped through your country and killed even more faster without any look down...

> You believe they were not real? This is a non-sequitur. It’s possible to believe Covid really did kill a lot of people and simultaneously believe that the lockdowns did not prevent enough deaths to be worth their negative effects.

You can argue like this and I would say:

I think it's valid and was one of the few indications we had.

Additionally to Italy.

It also correlates with the long and huge problem of ICU beds in germany

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

#302
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who sticks their neck out is at risk of losing their license or research grants. Sticks their neck out against whom? Against the Afro-Chinese/Euroamerican consortium that took kickbacks from the "medical companies" in order to keep the COVID theatre going? Those poor honest doctors around the world - if only they could speak up! If only one doctor would tell the truth!

Doctors depend on the free exchange of information to help their patients. It is one of the pathways that medicine advances. Covid was managed in a top down, hierarchical mode. Doctors who questioned it were threatened and punished by medical boards, some lost their licenses. Had a non-vaccine treatment for covid been discovered via clinical practice it would have destroyed the EUA for the covid vaccine, i.e. that's…

Like most conspiracy theories, you've managed to construct a hypothesis that is impossible to disprove.

My favorite part is how the western pharmaceutical companies were able to convince the CCP to suppress non-vaccine treatments. But that's as far as they could go. They weren't able to convince China to allow them to actually sell their vaccines there.

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

#303
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of this is over, and we are so, so fucked. I love doom more than the average person, by what I would say is a quite significant margin... but I don't see this at all. I've had covid at least twice, including some awful symptoms a month after recovery that had me convinced I had long covid as well... a few months later (now years) not so much. While I do know many people of who have lost loved ones from Covid,…

> A lot of people (not me) did believe there was going to be a return to normal post-covid, and the increasingly obvious impossibility of this is causing people to have tremendous mental health problems What is not normal in your opinion at this point? Covid still exists as another illness that goes around, but from my point of view everything else has been back to normal for quite a while.

I think the post you responded to is referring to non-covid stuff, like the economy still seems pretty weird, there are teacher and daycare worker shortages, and just service worker shortages in general, and there seems to be other weird stuff coming out of the era like a ton of shoplifting and a seeming pull-back by police forces.

It's unclear (to me) how real or unusual any of these things are, or whether they were caused by the pandemic or were already baked in somehow, but from an intuitive point of view, I do find myself frequently thinking "why isn't stuff working right?" more often than I think I was four years ago.

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

#304
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’m not a vaccine conspiracy theorist but just as a counterpoint, Pfizer and then J&J have been selling completely ineffective Sudafed PE for more than a decade.

Phenylephrine was approved in the 70s and classified as "Generally Recognized as Safe and Effective", which allowed companies to start selling it in pill form without going through the normal approval process as soon as Pseudoephedrine started requiring ID to purchase. Dozens of companies sold versions of this not just Pfizer and J&J.

This isn't in any way comparable, because thousands of doctors and dozens of medical groups have been pointing out that it's not effective for years. There was no effort to "silence" any of them, and no requirement to pay off or even convince regulators and law makers to do anything in order to get it approved. It just took time for the wheels of regulatory momentum to do anything about it.

If anything it shows what happens when a bad drug is approved or starts being sold. Thousands of doctors and dozens of reputable medical groups start speaking up--no global Pharma conspiracy can keep them from doing so.

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

#305
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> What about ten lives? One thousand? Ten thousand? Are 200,000 lives meaningful enough? Silver's regression model shows that for each 1% increase in the vote share for the blue candidate, the covid death rate in that state (statistically) would fall by 15.5 per million population. In areas where the blue candidate received 20% of the vote, and the red candidate received 80%, the model predicts 1,793 deaths per mil…

> It's because red ideologues got the vaccine in far lower numbers. Pretty sure it was something like 60% vs 70%. That doesn't seems like anywhere near different enough to explain those numbers.

The same article also does the regression on vaccination rates. The data is as clear as it gets.

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

#306
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"live" debate selects far less for truth and far more for "skill at debating" which is nearly orthogonal to being correct. That is not to say that live debate has no place, or is worthless. I'm just not sure I'd come even close to agreeing that it's the ideal way to come to the truth.

Every Ph.D. goes through oral qualifications. An expert should be able to articulate and defend their views on the subject at hand in a live question format.

And yet, there is a reason that Orals are not what is used to give the final assessment and grant the degree. Like I said, has a place, but not the ideal way to reach the truth. Orals serve a purpose, but that purpose is most definitely not "determine the truth, as best as we are capable, of a particular question". Also, I don't really agree that Orals are particularly similar to a "debate" at all. For one thing, there usually aren't two "positions".

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

#307
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

N-95 masks work to keep you from catching the virus and cloth or paper masks (somewhat) prevented you from spreading the virus. Ideally everyone would have worn N-95 masks but the US had four problems: 1) The US didn’t have enough N-95 masks. In Asia where masks in public were more common people used masks from their home supply. I think some segments of the population were resentful that the US didn’t have access to…

5) A not insignificant part of the population heard and understood that masks protect others and said "why should I suffer to protect them?" I observed this sentiment in particular about return to school, and not just about masks. A sizable portion of the population would seemingly do anything to avoid accidentally helping someone else.

Yeah 5) was a real eye opener for me. A lot of conservative thought revolves around the idea that government shouldn't provide services that family, faith, and friends can provide, but when it came right down to it voluntary mask wearing was out because of exactly what you said.

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

#308
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every Ph.D. goes through oral qualifications. An expert should be able to articulate and defend their views on the subject at hand in a live question format.

And yet, there is a reason that Orals are not what is used to give the final assessment and grant the degree. Like I said, has a place, but not the ideal way to reach the truth. Orals serve a purpose, but that purpose is most definitely not "determine the truth, as best as we are capable, of a particular question". Also, I don't really agree that Orals are particularly similar to a "debate" at all. For one thing, the…

A true leader takes hard questions and answers them live. Watch some footage of Steve Jobs taking hard questions (yes, I know Steve Jobs had some real issues, because we have to mention that, but I cite him because he is one of the great leaders in the tech space).

When Fauci went in front of the media and dodged and weaved he didn't build trust, he made people question.

If you're ever in a situation where a leader is dodging hard questions that's a big tell. Take note of it.

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

#309
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not a vaccine conspiracy theorist but just as a counterpoint, Pfizer and then J&J have been selling completely ineffective Sudafed PE for more than a decade.

Phenylephrine was approved in the 70s and classified as "Generally Recognized as Safe and Effective", which allowed companies to start selling it in pill form without going through the normal approval process as soon as Pseudoephedrine started requiring ID to purchase. Dozens of companies sold versions of this not just Pfizer and J&J. This isn't in any way comparable, because thousands of doctors and dozens of medica…

Sure, I agree with all of that.

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

#310

I was a good US citizen and used what little influence I had among my social circle to encourage others to follow the COVID protection measures. And I adore Nate Silver. So, pardon me if I confess that all I read in this article was: Blah blah blah 'I mostly agree with ... an October 2020 anti-lockdown statement signed by a large number of scientists and medical professionals. “Those who are not vulnerable should imm…

The measures that seem like they should have worked, but people claim they didn't are: - masks: clearly they worked for the medical professionals that were treating patients during the first waves, as they were directly exposed and didn't get sick, why didn't they work for the population at large? Did we not wear them correctly, consistently? - schools: It seems obvious that schools could be a huge vector of transmis…

“People” didn’t have any consensus on whether masks work. And let’s not forget the way media and governments flip-flopped on the issue.
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