Rational CoViD-19 Discussion Thread: Science vs. Politics

[babe]

One of the things that haunts my suspicious mind, is the possibility that the most deadly strain of Covid is a mutation from the original strain...…

This would be consistent with early claims that dissed the danger, from both the WHO and the CDC, and the Chinese government claims. But the fact is, I really just don't know anything about this pandemic.

Nothing at all.

I will have to put everything I think I know on the shelf and go get if possible the facts....

 

[babe]

Could you be more specific? I'm not sure which part you were questioning.

The Chinese authorities have a pretty good lock on information there, at least online. I get your humor in working the conspiracy theorist slander, but it was a good question. We are given stats sometimes, and then again, later, different stats when needed. We have satellite surveillance good enough to see people on the streets but we don't strut that stuff. But, largely, the stories we get in our news are staged reality plays du jour. First, it's mocking the whole outbreak as ridicuolous, then it's the worst plague in human history. First the CT nuts are worried about nothing, then it's "Trump killed mankind by not acting faster. Should've shut down the world on December 10, and not waited until March. The whole problem with being a damn liar is remembering what you said yesterday. I try to skate around that indictment by professing that I'm only postulating what the information may be.... pretty useless in promoting a political cause, but helpful for debunking those with political designs.

We have refrigerator cargo holds parked outside every hospital in SLC, and we've had a trumped-up claim of 34 deaths or so, so far. We aren't going to just work the dead through the normal way if they're literally contagious corpses. No way. Gotta freeze 'em, burn 'em.

I tend to disbelieve the stories about 15 M to 25 M dead in Wuhan, well..... like I disbelieve the official stats. I think nobody knows, either, about NYC. Sure we have news organizations centered there, but they are not credible institutions with respect to having a good track record for getting facts right when there's a socialist agenda opportunity at hand.

To mock an honest question like that only discredits your objective status.

Calling people with any kind of concern about globalists/socialists/statists/fascist out for "conspiracy theories" is absurd. The progressive movement has achieved large-scale gains with broad political tactics and massive public support. To postulate that there are people who want to achieve any little piece of the plan, who are working together with conscious purposes, is not anything but the common understanding of socialists and any other kind of human there may be.

Exploiting a health crisis for political gains is nothing new.

 

[babe]

Are they?

credible stories from Wuhan would require at least a few hundred thousand deaths, and a rush for urns for ashes from the crematoriums...… and some temporary emergency facilities to process them. credible stories because that's about the threshold for government denials and policies admitted by the government despite a huge benefit for understating the cases systematically.

NYC reports of the number of deaths may conflate other causes of death because of the policy, admitted by our government, of counting all deaths with Covid symptoms as Covid deaths, whether the dead presented with a gun shot in the head or a sniffle with a heart attack. But there are enough honest doctors with enough patients to make it out as true enough we have an epidemic on our hands.

So rather than mocking the concerns, I just believe the answer in both cases is some kind of "yes". Exaggerated by some, understated by some.

 

[babe]

"relying" on the Worldometer stats, in the USA, we have now tested 4.3 M people (1.2%) biased to outbreak areas rather than a uniform survey of Americans. We report 0.2% positive cases in the nation....850k total. We fear a large number of "asymptomatic" carriers out and about, that's why we think it good to do the isolation/social distance. Maybe as many as 95% of Covid infectives unknown/undetectable vaping out invisible covid globules to folks nearby. infective slime accumulating on every surface near where they stand.

Here's my attempt to unmask these irrational notions that are driving public policies.

If we have say 0.2 %(1 in 500) persons known to have the virus, some dead.... some over with it, no doubt, and if 90% of the infected are presently undetected, we would have 1.8 % (1 in 55) people presently infective carriers prowling about spreading the disease. That's 6.5M people out there with the virus. If we do a million tests in three days, and come up with 80k new cases, if they were a random set correspondent to the whole of the US, that's a positive rate of 8%. That would mean in all the US, we have 29 M infective carriers. So of course, we have to realize that maybe 80% of the tests are going to symptomatic folks, and most of those tests are still negative (less than 20% positive) So I say the 90% undetected is just wrong. The virus is not that inconsequential, but it is also not spreading exponentially. I think it safe to say that our stats are falsified by maybe 10% to 20% positive covid cases, and that maybe the death reports are inflated due to other real causes of death that would have been deaths for cause, but even taking the stats as given, the number of infective carriers we're hiding from is less than 1 in 200 people, with each infective maybe capable of infecting a large number of people if in contact with them. So, somewhere between Panic and Denial we need to find some line of reason.

Hard to say how much of our stats are due to better testing, and discovery of positives versus the already ill patients coming in to the doctors. But with testing 300 k/d, we are still at 25K new cases per day, as we were on March 31 with sketchy testing. But obviously, we are catching some cases earlier through testing, and thus better able to treat them effectively. But my guess is we have maybe half the infective population "out there", which combined with people's general caution will mean a lower transmission factor than we had around March 15. I also think we still under reporting recovered cases by half the claimed stat. But we are clearly way over the worst of the danger already, and there is room to discuss how to get back to productive work. A lot of people can go back to work now.

Just keep ramping up the testing. antibody and antigen/PCR tests, a couple million a day. Test business work groups, and let them go to work. With social distancing precautions in place, with masks. Without Mass Transit.....or with social distancing and testing measures, say temp measurements with those nifty laser thingys.

 

[Harambe]

So here you disclose your professional expertise on the subject, and while I'm sure you understand your protocols, you missed the logic of my statement, which would be an "expertise" area few would really have unless you are either a mathematician or a test designer.

I'm not sure I'm fully qualified in either of the above, but I am aware there is an issue here.

You, and the State, presume that the test, if positive, is absolutely correct, and that a negative result is also definitive or dispositive of the case. There is nothing more to say, or think.

You make a great statists, but a poor philosopher, and a poor realist.

Philosophy needs to follow the science. Not the other way around. Live in the numbers, direct towards the management.

You seem to think fringe philosophy is where you start. This is not normal, or reasonable.

 

[babe]

Philosophy needs to follow the science. Not the other way around. Live in the numbers, direct towards the management.

You seem to think fringe philosophy is where you start. This is not normal, or reasonable.

While I appreciate your comments, in this specific and in general, it shows the difference which we often find compelling in our reasoning. What we assume sets the course all the way to our science and our management.

You, like many, consider science something above our initial hypothetical constructs, but it is not. Science is entirely our evidence, as we deign to construct the issue, followed by our results, as we deign to interpret, measure, or report them, and our conclusions never do get out of the gravitational sphere of our own intellect. Hence, science is determined by our philosophy, and there is no way we shall ever fully escape that fundamental limitation.

But I sympathize with your effort. It is a high and noble endeavor to establish something objective in guidance of our human proclivities. As my great Aunt Gretta told me, a man's reach should exceed his grasp.

Management, at it's worst, is the imposition of ideological imperatives upon our nation, state, or local governance.

I am guilty of trying out a variety of starting points at various times, and I enjoy trying to trace out where they lead......

Nobody should dispense with their reason in dealing with anything I say.

 

[olden_undercover]

While I appreciate your comments, in this specific and in general, it shows the difference which we often find compelling in our reasoning. What we assume sets the course all the way to our science and our management.

You, like many, consider science something above our initial hypothetical constructs, but it is not. Science is entirely our evidence, as we deign to construct the issue, followed by our results, as we deign to interpret, measure, or report them, and our conclusions never do get out of the gravitational sphere of our own intellect. Hence, science is determined by our philosophy, and there is no way we shall ever fully escape that fundamental limitation.

But I sympathize with your effort. It is a high and noble endeavor to establish something objective in guidance of our human proclivities. As my great Aunt Gretta told me, a man's reach should exceed his grasp.

Management, at it's worst, is the imposition of ideological imperatives upon our nation, state, or local governance.

I am guilty of trying out a variety of starting points at various times, and I enjoy trying to trace out where they lead......

Nobody should dispense with their reason in dealing with anything I say.

You and I disagree here and there, but this is one solid post, babe. I'm with you that base philosophy predicates the application of science, whether we like it or not. The irrepressible pollyanna in me does think somewhere down the road-- very, very far down the road-- it starts to turn into a chicken-before-the egg situation, and we can at least sometimes be more deliberate in prioritizing scientific knowledge/advancement over dogmatic persistence as a guiding principle. I wonder if we're anywhere close to that at this stage of human history. Current events suggest otherwise, don't they?

 

[babe]

I have just about decided this looks like the biggest con game in history.

Here's one item, in the USA stats per Worldometer, today. We are reporting a cumulative total of just under one million cases in this country, about 0.25% of our population. The same con artists site claims just under 120K "closed" cases, including 55k Covid deaths. 15 days ago, they reported just over 500K total cases. Cases don't last longer than that, on average. 15 days should be long enough for any diagnosed case to resolve itself, except for a few more serious cases. So they are grossly under reporting recovered patients, for the probable purpose of bolstering the supposed "Pandemic". The Pandemic is anemic, or it's extremely impacted by our mitigating efforts. Probably both.

Within a few days ago, our "Science" caught up with my early assertion, which I gleaned out of peer-reviewed literature regarding Corona Virus in general, and a look at the Covid virus EM image. Six weeks ago I was telling you folks that this virus is killed by UV light, Chlorine vapors or aerosols, and alcohol, as well as soap. Now in a recent Press Conference, the authorities are confirming my assertions, after doing some pretty fancy lab work inside drums with differing atmospheric additives. And, of course, I presume, isotopically labeled virus particles which if killed(broken up) would not be counted on the filter used to collected whole virus particles. With positive and negative controls and all. With a variety of exposure times as well. This kind of study is very solid and very convincing, answering almost every sort of question.

 

[Gameface]

"relying" on the Worldometer stats, in the USA, we have now tested 4.3 M people (1.2%) biased to outbreak areas rather than a uniform survey of Americans. We report 0.2% positive cases in the nation....850k total. We fear a large number of "asymptomatic" carriers out and about, that's why we think it good to do the isolation/social distance. Maybe as many as 95% of Covid infectives unknown/undetectable vaping out invisible covid globules to folks nearby. infective slime accumulating on every surface near where they stand.

Here's my attempt to unmask these irrational notions that are driving public policies.

If we have say 0.2 %(1 in 500) persons known to have the virus, some dead.... some over with it, no doubt, and if 90% of the infected are presently undetected, we would have 1.8 % (1 in 55) people presently infective carriers prowling about spreading the disease. That's 6.5M people out there with the virus. If we do a million tests in three days, and come up with 80k new cases, if they were a random set correspondent to the whole of the US, that's a positive rate of 8%. That would mean in all the US, we have 29 M infective carriers. So of course, we have to realize that maybe 80% of the tests are going to symptomatic folks, and most of those tests are still negative (less than 20% positive) So I say the 90% undetected is just wrong. The virus is not that inconsequential, but it is also not spreading exponentially. I think it safe to say that our stats are falsified by maybe 10% to 20% positive covid cases, and that maybe the death reports are inflated due to other real causes of death that would have been deaths for cause, but even taking the stats as given, the number of infective carriers we're hiding from is less than 1 in 200 people, with each infective maybe capable of infecting a large number of people if in contact with them. So, somewhere between Panic and Denial we need to find some line of reason.

Hard to say how much of our stats are due to better testing, and discovery of positives versus the already ill patients coming in to the doctors. But with testing 300 k/d, we are still at 25K new cases per day, as we were on March 31 with sketchy testing. But obviously, we are catching some cases earlier through testing, and thus better able to treat them effectively. But my guess is we have maybe half the infective population "out there", which combined with people's general caution will mean a lower transmission factor than we had around March 15. I also think we still under reporting recovered cases by half the claimed stat. But we are clearly way over the worst of the danger already, and there is room to discuss how to get back to productive work. A lot of people can go back to work now.

Just keep ramping up the testing. antibody and antigen/PCR tests, a couple million a day. Test business work groups, and let them go to work. With social distancing precautions in place, with masks. Without Mass Transit.....or with social distancing and testing measures, say temp measurements with those nifty laser thingys.

You could have made a perfectly rational point about the actual infection rate vs the serious cases and deaths, but then you decided to start talking about "falsified stats." To be clear "falsified stats" are stats that have been intentionally changed to provide false results. You could have continued making a rational argument if you had talked about incorrect stats, misleading stats, inaccurate stats, or even flawed stats. But instead you decided to go off about falsified stats. For ****s sake man, seriously, I know you're old as ****, but grow up!

 

[Gameface]

I have just about decided this looks like the biggest con game in history.

Here's one item, in the USA stats per Worldometer, today. We are reporting a cumulative total of just under one million cases in this country, about 0.25% of our population. The same con artists site claims just under 120K "closed" cases, including 55k Covid deaths. 15 days ago, they reported just over 500K total cases. Cases don't last longer than that, on average. 15 days should be long enough for any diagnosed case to resolve itself, except for a few more serious cases. So they are grossly under reporting recovered patients, for the probable purpose of bolstering the supposed "Pandemic". The Pandemic is anemic, or it's extremely impacted by our mitigating efforts. Probably both.

Within a few days ago, our "Science" caught up with my early assertion, which I gleaned out of peer-reviewed literature regarding Corona Virus in general, and a look at the Covid virus EM image. Six weeks ago I was telling you folks that this virus is killed by UV light, Chlorine vapors or aerosols, and alcohol, as well as soap. Now in a recent Press Conference, the authorities are confirming my assertions, after doing some pretty fancy lab work inside drums with differing atmospheric additives. And, of course, I presume, isotopically labeled virus particles which if killed(broken up) would not be counted on the filter used to collected whole virus particles. With positive and negative controls and all. With a variety of exposure times as well. This kind of study is very solid and very convincing, answering almost every sort of question.

To be recovered they have to actually test negative. Oh wait, no, this is a big con job. Carry on you stable genius, you.

 

[babe]

You could have made a perfectly rational point about the actual infection rate vs the serious cases and deaths, but then you decided to start talking about "falsified stats." To be clear "falsified stats" are stats that have been intentionally changed to provide false results. You could have continued making a rational argument if you had talked about incorrect stats, misleading stats, inaccurate stats, or even flawed stats. But instead you decided to go off about falsified stats. For ****s sake man, seriously, I know you're old as ****, but grow up!

I find this observation actually solid. Thank you for the contribution.

If I am not alone in my rush to impose my judgments of motives on actual science, it is still less than worthy as a logical method.

 

[babe]

To be recovered they have to actually test negative. Oh wait, no, this is a big con job. Carry on you stable genius, you.

Actually, to be recovered requires no objective test. It only requires the medical or biological fact of a patient for whatever reason, to have overcome the virus and to have cleared the pathogen.

similarly, to "be a con job" in a case like this, requires some motivated media, some snake oil salesman, or some political exploitation.... some kind of effort for whatever reason we may have, to make use of the crisis, which we all know, is an imperative for some ideological proponents of some political or sociological transformation of our ways of life.

People suspicious of some kind of "con job" are often correct on that fact, whether they know anything in particular about it or not. I mean, it's hard to go wrong even if ignorant of the facts, that someone is "conspiring" with other, similarly motivated activists, to make use of anything for political purposes. Such efforts are, indeed, practically universal truths of human nature. Almost every child is subjected to parents who have some unstated purposes in life, some higher designs or hopes, for their children.... which, if openly professed, would generate some obstinate backlash from the little rebels.