Wuhan Killer Sneeze (thanks Tea)

[droid]

Im just gonna give a quick take on my view so the last couple of pages.

• AFAIK the FT excess death counts DOES take in to account lower than average deaths over the last year and corrects for many of the variables mentioned here.
• Ive seen 2 studies that say that the percentage of people dying FROM and not with the virus (in the UK) is between 86 - 95%.
• Sweden's deaths may be falling, but we've been through this. The increase in cases is not AFAIK accounted for solely by new testing, and other EU countries are also testing more, and of course, they have by far the worst deaths per capita of comparable countries with seemingly no tangible benefits.
• Vitamin D is probably a thing, but a study just came out that said they couldn't prove its effectiveness. I dont know of any evidence linking it strongly to infection rates in italy.
• The idea that the British govt should thanked for 'overriding' scientific advice that itself was already influenced by political concerns seems bizarre. The fact is that they had examples from all over the world and a wealth of data to draw from. The correct courses of action were clear even without any internal advice and they chose to prevaricate and delay in an act of (IMO) criminal negligence.
  

 

[luka]

Just proves science isn't real. I've enjoyed the free trains while this has been going on. They're quiet too.

 

[IdleRich]

... recording deaths-of, rather than -with

I've seen lots of people claim that countries are counting people dying "with rather than of" but it's mainly been made by people who have trouble spelling pretty much every word in that sentence and it's always been made without any evidence at all backing it up.
Also on Twitter I've seen people from US saying that US counts WRTO but UK does the other way round, I've seen UK make the opposite argument. In fact I've seen people from loads of countries asserting that the country they want to say has done better count it that way, but the country they want to insult does it the other way.
I'm not saying that this in itself makes the argument wrong, but (until now obviously) I have only seen it deployed as a kind of wishful thinking by people who are obviously idiots.

 

[IdleRich]

This idea of an early lockdown that suppressed the virus is from the realm of the fantastical, not least because SAGE were not especially keen at any point. Lockdown-fans should note that it was the government who sent us into lockdown, not the science; basically you owe Boris a big one.

This is bullshit. Almost every other country locked down before the UK. The science seemed to be telling every other country to lockdown. The idea that Johnson was somehow ahead of the curve is clearly fanciful. His lockdown was based on a kind of panicked response to public opinion and nothing more.

 

[IdleRich]

The excess deaths are some combination of:
a) COVID-ofs (=very few; almost all old)
b) COVID-withs dying early
c) COVID-withs dying mainly due to other things
d) COVID-withs dying late (having survived the mild winter)
e) COVID collateral: ppl being denied treatment
f) unknown (maybe we would have had an excess anyway!) -> Oxford point out that 85% of viral tests in the community are turning up 'unknown agents' rather than COVID, which appears to be unprecedented in the recent past.
g) spikes in known others

What you're missing out here is also the other deaths that didn't occur. Road accidents, accidents at work and so on were obviously greatly reduced during lockdown and so they work in the opposite way.
So suppose that in a given period there were 1,000 more deaths than normal, but usually in that period there would have been 100 road accident deaths and 50 deaths at work, then the true number of excess deaths that need to be allocated is in fact 1150.

b) COVID-withs dying early
c) COVID-withs dying mainly due to other things

The question is, would they have died anyway? You're arguing that if something had a serious condition and then got C19 and then died, it's not right to allocate to C19 because they were already seriously ill. But the fact that they are in the excess deaths means - by definition - that they would not have been expected to die -at that poimt - in the usual course of things. It seems perfectly reasonable to me to say that that was a death caused by C19.

In general C19 tends to hit people with an underlying health condition worse... buttthe small print here is that things that could count as an underlying condition include obesity (which in the US is like forty percent of people) and hypertension and "being old" and so on. Basically if you're making an argument that C19 only kills people in category X - except for all times when it kills people who aren't in X - then that's not really very reassuring if a closer examination of X reveals that it's most of the people in the country (or even world)

 

[IdleRich]

It's not demonstrably untrue that things would be worse without lockdown. UEA's comparative study of 14 European countries' responses indicated that lockdown made things worse, not better. Italy, Spain, Belgium locked down and they all did awfully.

Do you mean "demontrably true" here?

 

[IdleRich]

And it's already clear that the general fallout from putting the country into an induced coma will dwarf the effects of COVID in its gravity.

I don't think that's clear at all. That's what we're debating. That's a very big claim that you can't just slip in like that. For starters it's not even well defined... what do you mean by "fallout"? If lockdown saved lives (which seems to be the huge scientific consensus) then we're
on to a discussion of whether jobs lost, companies bankrupted and so on are worse than the lives that would have been lost - the comparison needs a metric for calculating the value of a life vs economic damage etc and I don't think we're gonna be able to agree on such a measure. But without one the word "fallout" in this sentence is meaningless.
I mean, let's suppose that we could allocate a value to economic damage (some kind of amalgamation of damage - companies destroyed, people bankrupted, growth decreased etc) which went on a scale from one to ten with ten worst then we could start saying something like, er, imagine the following scenarios

a) Lockdown saved one life and did damage number 10 on the Biscuts Scale - that looks bad
b) Say it saved 10,000 lives and did damage 7... better but hard to compare
c) It saved a million lives and did Biscuits damage 4.... hmmm

Seeing as no-one will be able to agree on the number of lives saved, or to properly evaluate the Biscuits number we're on to a loser... and seeing as, even if we could, there would be no agreement on which was the right number of saved lives to match to a given economic damage number, it's just never gonna work.
So it's definitely very very far from clear.

 

[IdleRich]

Another thing about deaths being over or under counted... I have not seen any evidence in any country that there has been political pressure from above to overcount deaths. What would be the incentive for that? However we have seen in Florida and other places a definite politicising of death counts and attempts for politicians to wrest control from doctors as to what counts as a C19 death.
In short - we KNOW that there have been political attempts to dishonestly reduce the death count but we don't know that the opposite is occurring. We've seen it happening in a few places, not everywhere, but it seems more than likely to me that if all the cheating we know about it is in one direction, it's pretty reasonable to assume that the cheating we don't know about is also in that direction.
Politicians have an incentive to play down the number of deaths, my conclusion is that the number of deaths is being played down.

 

[Mr. Tea]

The "dying of/dying with" distinction strikes me as pretty fatuous, considering that the pandemic literally doubled the death rate in England at the height of the outbreak (or perhaps I should say "the first outbreak").

And as I've said already, even if some of those victims were very old and infirm and didn't have long to live anyway, there is a world of difference between peacefully slipping away while surrounded by loved ones, and drowning in your own snot with only masked strangers for company. Bare death statistics take no account of the fact that there are good deaths and bad ones.

 

[chava]

there is a world of difference between peacefully slipping away while surrounded by loved ones, and drowning in your own snot with only masked strangers for company. Bare death statistics take no account of the fact that there are good deaths and bad ones.

Part of the reason why Sweden don't put the elderly in ICUs. They let them die at the retirement homes, but as cynical as that might be - perhaps a more dignified death.

I believe the survival rate for Covid19 ICU patients was 20% in NY (and 50% in the UK), compared to 80% in Sweden.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Just proves science isn't real.

Yes yes, we know, you've said this every other day since March.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I don't think that's clear at all. That's what we're debating. That's a very big claim that you can't just slip in like that. For starters it's not even well defined... what do you mean by "fallout"? If lockdown saved lives (which seems to be the huge scientific consensus) then we're
on to a discussion of whether jobs lost, companies bankrupted and so on are worse than the lives that would have been lost - the comparison needs a metric for calculating the value of a life vs economic damage etc and I don't think we're gonna be able to agree on such a measure. But without one the word "fallout" in this sentence is meaningless.

Also, it's worth noting that a lot of very prominent and vocal right-wing anti-lockdowners, who are keen to point out the human cost of the suppression of economic activity, haven't been quite so vocal about two other major causes of impoverishment: a decade of grinding, pointless, punitive austerity, and Brexit.

 

[luka]

Yes yes, we know, you've said this every other day since March.

Ok fair enough. for me though, where I would find my fun, is in probing mixed biscuits about what his motivations are. Not saying that's a superior kind of fun. It's just different. I can see with you and Rich there's a pleasure involved in trying to find weaknesses in reasoning and so on. It's a different kind of game. Counter stats with counter stats, facts with alternative facts.

I look at it and think, why is biscuits committed to this position? How does it link with his support for the Bell Curve theory? What kind of person is he and how did he end up there?

 

[luka]

What model of the world is he working from? What I find a bit deflating about biscuits is that he thinks "everything you have been told is a lie." Which is cool, that's like The Matrix. But he doesn't have an exciting conspiracy theory behind it. There's no intelligent machines harvesting our bio-energy. There's no cabal of bloodsuckers. There's no simulation. There's nothing fun holding it up. It's just human lies and error and incompetence.

 

[Mr. Tea]

There's no intelligent machines harvesting our bio-energy. There's no cabal of bloodsuckers. There's no simulation. There's nothing fun holding it up. It's just human lies and error and incompetence.

Well that's the ultimate horror, isn't it? The idea that the world is both malignant and boring.

 

[luka]

Yeah, terrible. Doesn't bear thinking about.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Another thing about deaths being over or under counted... I have not seen any evidence in any country that there has been political pressure from above to overcount deaths. What would be the incentive for that? However we have seen in Florida and other places a definite politicising of death counts and attempts for politicians to wrest control from doctors as to what counts as a C19 death.
In short - we KNOW that there have been political attempts to dishonestly reduce the death count but we don't know that the opposite is occurring. We've seen it happening in a few places, not everywhere, but it seems more than likely to me that if all the cheating we know about it is in one direction, it's pretty reasonable to assume that the cheating know about is also in that direction.
Politicians have an incentive to play down the number of deaths, my conclusion is that the number of deaths is being played down.

Lewis has been banging away on FB and Twitter for months that the death count is being deliberately inflated, because he thinks it's in the government's interest to cause panic and make us all think it's done a far worse job of protecting us than it has.

I don't think Lewis knows much about governments, to be honest.

 

[luka]

again that's a position I think needs to be supported with a strong conspiracy theory. Otherwise, as you say, it makes no sense. You need an ulterior motive. The so-called virus has to be acting as cover for something else.

 

[IdleRich]

I look at it and think, why is biscuits committed to this position? How does it link with his support for the Bell Curve theory? What kind of person is he and how did he end up there?

I have been wondering about this - the first bit at least. Cos the position seems to be based on taking the most unlikely end of every minor bit and then constructing a huge, staggeringly unlikely edifice out of it which is just about conceivable but which I don't think anyone could really think is right. So, yeah I do wonder why.
It's a bit like Trump supporters who say he was joking when he said drink bleach, and he was right when he said the virus would go down to zero (cos it will at some point, just cos it went up first doesn't make him wrong), and with the impeachment all of those unrelated witnesses suddenly lied about him etc etc there are countless things like that where there is a credulity stretching argument for Trump to be correct. But for Trump to be a good president you need to accept countless million to one arguments. And it makes no sense.... BUT it can easily be explained cos Trump fans HAVE to support Trump, they're in too deep, if they admit the awful truth then their world view will collapse.
But yeah what's the reason here? In a sense it's a bigger and deeper question... but in another sense I don't need to know, I just need to convince myself it's not correct. . and yet the why does nag at me.

 

[luka]

it's a reason i like to have this array of specimens on dissensus. just one or two of each type so they can be studied and contemplated and dissected.