igor67

So was or was not the Santa Barbara antibody study released a couple of weeks ago headed up by Jonathan Ioannidis, science Joseph? The one that suggested 2-5% of Californians had already been effected. The same study that used highly non random samples of a test that has a false positive rate high enough to account for a majority of the detected 'infections'. A study that frankly violates a number of the methodological rules that Ioannidis himself has strongly argued need to be implemented in all medical studies for years. Different fields necessarily have rather distinct methodologies, and theoretical/ computational methods are pretty mainstream in a lot of them. Of course they require validation, but the vast majority of news stories I've seen began with some professional doing some level of analysis on some type of data.

Homer thanks for the book recommendation, its not an accident that like Piligucci the authors of Calling Bull*** are evolutionary biologists. 100+ years as a field in the crosshairs of parts of the public has sharpened our awareness of both the need and difficulty of public engagement.

Except that moving the goal posts as a fallacy applies to arguments. We are talking about policies that we explicitly enacted with imperfect information, so changes and adjustments should have been expected from the beginning, all of my co-workers were certainly expecting that back in early March. None of us were terribly surprised by first having to stay open, basically as daycare for essential workers, then closed for a few weeks to prepare for the possibility of distance learning, then doing distance learning, and finally distance learning for the rest of the year. If you prefer I could go over the the investment thread and wait for companies to announce earnings that don't match expectations and claim that all of those companies are moving the goalpost. I don't think most companies when they miss are deliberately trying to mislead or obscure ahead of time anymore than I think most of the public figures are trying to save face which is the connotation that comes with claiming someone is moving the goalposts.

Just for clarity I was not arguing for a death rate higher than 1%, SoCal is right that getting any kind of precision on that number is fraught with peril. I was specifically saying the 0.3% was implausibly low. 0.7% could be possible, but that level of specificity is going to require reliable testing and measurements as well as expertise in this type of calculation. There are a lot of complicating factors in pinning that down and would require a specialist. When it comes to goalposts for me anyways its driven by lessons from public service. I have sat through many public meetings over the years where I have seen incredibly impassioned pleas and accusations aired. The vast majority of the time those speeches makes all kinds of sense based on the facts the people cite. However education is riddled with private information that can't be shared in a public meeting, and time and time again that additional information significantly changes the picture. So I try to extend that when interpreting and evaluating public figures. On top of people's comments earlier in the thread about the information overload, I know this to be a common teaching problem and a communication problem for public bodies. So I see a communication strategy 'flatten the curve' that conveys a lot of truth and can be repeated to try and reach people. Mix that with a situation that had to evolve from the beginning, and applying the term 'moving the goalposts' seems to miss the mark. I can understand why a person would come to that, but I come back to that need to evolve as we learned more. It wasn't that long ago when it was plausible to think covid might effectively disappear and be seasonal (it still may dip) for example. That would have pretty radically altered how things could be handled. I have seen my own share of inconsistencies (a family member whose manufacturing job was considered essential? even though its basically a high end niche construction product), and I would not defend any of them on an individual basis. But in a fast moving situation at even a local level some of that is inevitable and at a state or national level it is going to happen even more. It is easy to get worked up about these things (my family member also got sick, but probably not covid) and but focusing just on them I don't consider a reliable way to judge a policy (it's like obsessing whether or not your #2 hitter is a good bunter). I hope that helps understand my angle.

There are some interesting portions of your post Chorizo. I disagree for the moment with any significant assertion that the death rate is below 1%. It may in fact be, but of the attempts I have seen at arguing that the numbers don't work out in funny ways. For example if You apply that 0.3% to New York City, and assume no uncounted cases you discover that 6.4 Million New Yorkers have contract Covid already. But New York City itself only has a population of 8.4 million. This is a problem on 3 fronts. 1) It is a ridiculously higher percentage than measure by antibody testing. 2) It is over 10% higher than the high estimate of what is needed for herd immunity. 3) And any undercounted deaths only push it closer to going over 100%. It's also been fairly clear to me that Walz has been trying to build the proper capacity to keep the outbreak permanently under control. Not necessarily zero, but having the testing capacity and supplies to keep the cases at an ongoing low level. 1) I am curious to better understand why Florida hasn't completely erupted, but its not like they are winning either. Iowa and a lot of other places are simpler to understand. Your hardest hit places all had a lot of international travel and were clearly seeded multiple times with infected people before we started to catch on. I think MN just got lucky not with avoiding any travelers carrying it, but we seemed to avoid the bad lottery ticket of a traveler who turned into a super spreader. I think our population distribution may make it possible for something like the Swedish approach to help. 2) I have not picked up the same vibe on the nursing home front, but it is unfortunately all too possible and disheartening. 3) I do happen to think that whether it is a combination of treatments or a heroic early vaccine keeping the rate of spread slow enough does have significant value. We might be able to push the actual mortality rate down substantially. Even that 1 doctors post about remdesiivr missed thinking about the importance of just reducing the length of the disease 3-5 days. That is actually a really big reduction in the strain on hospital resources whether beds people or PPE.

Nonsense on Stilts by Massimo Piliguci is probably the single best source I can think of to point a non-scientist towards that provides a lot of insight into how to separate out garbage from more reliable (not not infallible) authority. Unfortunately the quacks have gotten more sophisticated over time, so it can be challenging even with good tools. Sorry if my book recommendations have gotten excessive, but as someone best described as a science generalist between my teaching experience and a very eclectic mix of publications my real specialty is educating students in how to think about and use science as future citizens.

That is a rather non standard usage of the word instinct. Most would call that process judgement.

Looking at his webpage, I suspect others will be more than capable of completing his research, or someone else is already doing similar work and likely to complete it without a horrible delay. I could be wrong about that, but his background does not appear to be super unique in 2020. Twenty years ago he'd look like a pioneer.

The problem with that approach is that there are millions of practicing scientists, so even among very well settled ideas it is possible to find some dissenter. That should in no reasonable way mean we fallback to anything called instinct. This is also to my recollection mentioned by Otto in his book. The tendency of journalists to 'present both sides' creates an illusion of equality. And it works insidiously because of the bias that most people have particularly in the US with cute little sayings like 'there are two sides to every argument' and the odd dependence on only 2 political parties. There are ways to help sort out who to believe.

In regards to the Evergreen college documentary I have not seen it, but it is a much bigger issue for pure humanities disciplines and what Post modernism has done to their intellectual rigor. Scientists are not immune by any stretch, but those issues were recognized 25 years ago by Allen Sokal among others. Shawn Otto also does a really nice job in the War on Science in talking about the role this philosophy has had in corroding public trust (it is one of many causes). Nobel's are useful for carrying some quick level of scientific credibility, but there is a long list of Nobel laureate's whose late careers border on the comical to embarrassing. Making a big breakthrough often involves a pretty big willingness to take risks, or even perhaps a desire to get back to the high from making a stunning break through. But with high risk comes a lot of failure. Physicists can also suffer from the 'physicssplainer' problem. Michio Kaku trying to do evolutionary biology is a good example of this.

I go away for an hour... Typically the way people use the word science a better term would be settled science. Research on the other hand is always messy and a key step in getting to the settled science part. turborickey's lament however is spot on, the amount of actual expertise it takes to efficiently analyze current research and form reasonable opinions is formidable. Even most people with a science degree are going to struggle to do so outside of their degree area. So we all need expert opinion, its not fundamentally different from trusting your mechanic. I can spot check some things, but even with the internet verifying every recommendation would be crazy time consuming. However trusting expert opinion should not be mistaken for blind faith. There are ways to try and test those opinions. For example I have been thinking about Sweden's success with a different methodology. There are probably some valid ideas in there, but I strongly suspect that some key cultural and geographic features gave their method a chance in Sweden, but it would have never worked in the US. A big one for example is the fact of multiple infection centers from the beginning, whereas they have mostly just had to worry about Stockholm. It helps to separate the questions being asked. The scientific question is what method or methods best slow/ stop the spread of this virus? The political/policy questions all involve how to implement those methods and to what extent and cost. Keeping the second category out of the first can make it easier to actually figure out the best strategy. Regrettably we maybe headed towards a long term conflating of the 2 categories for no particularly good reason.

What is disturbingly true about your comment, is that their inability to see the other angle is a perfect demonstration of how not free those people are. Classical ideas on education understood a key aim of education was to create a free or liberated person. Whether you choose to look at Plato's allegory of the Cave or read Thucydides reporting on the war between Athens and Sparta. These problems have been around a very long time. The idea that freedom meant being educated as much as any particular right was a huge part of what the American experiment was really about. Freedom as I can do whatever I want is more traceable to a minority of poor early Scottish immigrants. How the Scots invented the Modern World reveals this rather well as it outlines how important Scots were in that Enlightenment period. Regrettably the early Scottish immigrants missed the metaphorical boat (and all the money the Scots made) because they caught the early boat to America.

The excess death method suggests that the US probably has done a better job of counting than some of the European countries. The hardest hit parts of Italy and Spain ended up with enough excess deaths beyond what is normal and what was attributed to Covid that they could have had as many as double or even in some cases triple the reported number. The most recent US numbers from Yale put that excess number at 1.5 times. How much of that were unreported Covid deaths vs. other spill over affects like people with other conditions avoiding hospitals, or not being able to get normal care will take a long time to sort out precisely. For comparison finalized flu numbers take the CDC about 2 years to prepare. Ballpark, we are hitting 6 figure deaths soon with any plausible way of adding in the undercounted.

So your willing to volunteer at a packing plant then? For the good of the economy?

Given the importance of the food supply we should probably re-institute the draft to replace the sick workers on the line. With so many other things shut down and less physical demands of the job there would be little reason for exemptions even.

Yet oddly enough asthma does not appear to be a risk factor anymore. Initially it appears to have been included because they were thinking of covid as a respiratory disease. The data from China and earlier US cases points towards asthma being neutral and possibly even beneficial. Combined with all of the other weird symptoms there seems to have been some substantial rethinking of the disease. Interestingly though collectively the various symptoms are not completely unheard of if you look across all coronoviruses including some prominent animal strains.

Given the magnitude of the issue I don't have issues with all sectors getting some type of support, as massive bankruptcies don't really help anyone. Investors do need to actually be willing to accept risk as part of that equation, but we are seeing this now with the meat packing that WI looks like it will be in a little better shape than other locations because they have a higher number of smaller shops that can actually process some of the meat that is in danger of going to waste. Having policy that balances some of the benefits of large corporations with the risks would be cool. AT&T and their history is a cool look on a positive role a regulated monopoly can have. Short version before being broken up they gave away more technology and the markets to go with it then Bill gates could ever hope to in multiple lifetimes. Because they invented the computer chip, and launched the first telecom satellite and just gave them away. The Idea Factory by Jon Gertner details it very well.

As much as I agree with the reserve, people suddenly saving that much would have a big drag on the economy. Japan eventually ran into this after the 80's, and their cultural bias towards saving has held their economy back ever since (big simplification). It is of course very amusing for all of us who lived through the 80's and can remember when Japan was 'going to take over everything'.

My students are reasonably well engaged, and we are going to plausibly covered most of the material I would have done anyway, but a lot of what I'm seeing is propped up by everything being open book so outside of my strongest students I have relatively little confidence that the retention will be anywhere close to what I would normally have. It's worse because if I could still do my normal pedagogy this would have been a fantastic time to really get them to see why they have to work so hard to become science literate.

As a reminder in humility, I should have known better and checked the source, but the WHO 'statement' everyone is commenting on was a stupid tweet. As we are all aware twitter is capable of making arguments about as subtle as a baseball bat upside the head. They realized the individuals mistake and then post a clarification, indicating they were just trying indicate we can't possibly have data yet on the level of immunity, so it would be premature to assume blanket 100% protection if you have recovered. I think collectively there is a decent picture overall of how things are being weighed, however just like with the draft the decision makers have access to way more data (even if it is incomplete) and are also trying to think about a bunch of things we haven't thought about. For example it is very clear to me that for those hung up on Flatten the Curve that this was a marketing/ communication strategy. You can't possibly educate people on all of the details up front. It is similar to teaching about atomic structure. Most of you have a pretty simple picture of what atoms look like (probably very much like the opening from Big Bang theory). Not only is that model wrong, it is actively misleading at higher levels, and crucially it was never actually proposed as a scientific idea. It is a teaching tool that get folks through high school chemistry with some understanding. I know that building a 'story' of what has happened is one way we try to make sense of things, but try to leave room in that story for people trying to grapple both with an unprecedented situation and access to a lot of inside information.

I share the hope that there is a permanent decline in driving. On the K-12 side though we are getting our noses rubbed in the digital divide and I don't see that changing. Also online teaching is acceptable if your goal is to hand out pieces of paper, but real education requires something more. I hope we think about how to be more local, not purely for environmental or business reasons. Also a little bit of survival. I used to joke on occasion with my students that the only thing being the dominant species on the planet meant was that we were a great big ecological niche waiting to be exploited. It is less funny now.

I think there is a solid case there, but this is where it only makes someone else crazy that they can do .... just as safe. Economically I think there is a pretty good case that they would warrant a high priority on being a group that tends not to fall into a safety net. Lots are independent contractors or run a business of 1, they aren't sitting on big piles of cash they can lean on. And people could really use the service.

For lack of an elegant term opened up low risk jobs today assuming their employers had a plan for social distancing. Still working on getting a full testing plan ready to go. I think the best use of local control is to be able to way local risk vs. reward in different areas. There are so many different possible variations on business practices that accurately judging risk for all of them is doomed to failure. So I'm not inclined to think I could reliably judge who should get opened first, but I do like stages. Make sure there is no resurge before moving forward to another step.

Not in the derogatory sense, but strategically Rodgers has always been a game manager. He really goes out of his way to avoid risky throws. I was thinking about this when they were analyzing Cepheus getting drafted. A big guy who isn't going to get separation, but fights for the ball really well. I doubt he sees the ball much at all. On the other hand Farve would have feed him the ball all the time on 3rd downs.

Thurston we don't have cold vaccine's primarily because there are too many different types of viruses. Realistically it would be more accurate to classify it into 7 or 8 different diseases all of which mutate somewhat rapidly enough to complicate vaccine development. The flu all belongs in the same category, but the way it reproduces means it can evolve by mixing and matching gene like Mr. Potato Head not just normal mutation. So the vaccines only apply to the flu on a short term basis. It is fair to say our knowledge of the virus is very limited, it is also true in some sense that we do not have evidence about immunity and this virus. But we do have a lot of experience with disease and our immune system both of which indicate that some helpful level of immunity will develop in most people who get the disease. If it helps try and remember if you know anybody who had chickenpox twice? I've met a couple over the years, and frankly it sounds similar to the cases above where the person had a very very mild case the first time around, obviously didn't mount a full immune response and then caught it a second time.