Friday, April 10, 2020

EUROMOMO

A couple of weeks ago, commenter David Young was scathing of the threat of COVID-19. Look at the EUROMOMO web page, he said. 
"there is no evidence I could see that mortality is above the expected numbers over the last few weeks."
 and 
"Italy does show a spike the last few weeks but well below the peak in 2016-17."
Moreover, this is all backed up by impeccable analysis from Nic Lewis and we know how good he is. he has looked at the Diamond Princess which had only 8 deaths out of 700 cases, mostly old, and  without a single death in the 60-69 age bracket, he has shown the fatality rate is negligible.

Well, let's see how this stacks up a full 2 weeks later.

Week 14 in EUROMOMO is now out. Click for full size.

They've literally had to rescale their axes for multiple countries to keep the death numbers on the plot. Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and England are all at or above their highs from the cold 2016/17 spell. And this is after a few weeks of lockdown that has stopped the death rates from zooming up higher.


And as for the Diamond Princess, there are actually 12 deaths now from the 700 cases, including one in the 60-69 age range of 200 cases. An empirical fatality rate of 0.5%. According to David, Nic said the death rate was 0.11% for this age group, but what's a factor of 4 between friends?

I expect David will appear shortly and acknowledge that he was wrong and that Nic massively underestimated the death rate and that in fact mortality across much of Europe is at an extremely high level despite strong attempts to suppress the epidemic. I can see his flying pig coming in to land right now..

111 comments:

  1. https://www.euromomo.eu/slices/Maps-2020/MAP-2020-14.png

    Look before you leap? Nope! EuroMOMO even said their numbers lag from days to weeks, based on late reporting.




    ReplyDelete
  2. Can't even read ...
    https://www.euromomo.eu/bulletin_pdf/2020/2020_12_bulletin.pdf

    "Note concerning COVID-19 related mortality as part of the all-cause mortality figures
    reported by EuroMOMO

    Over the past few days and weeks, the EuroMOMO hub has received many questions about the
    weekly all-cause mortality data and the possible contribution of any COVID-19 related mortality. Some wonder why no increased mortality is observed in the reported mortality figures for the COVID-19 affected countries.
    The answer is that an increased mortality occurring primarily at subnational level or within smaller focal areas, and/or concentrated within smaller age groups, may not be immediately detected at the overall national level, and even more so in the pooled European-wide analysis, given the large total population denominator. Furthermore, there is always a few weeks of delay in death registration and reporting. Hence, the EuroMOMO mortality figures for the most recent weeks must be interpreted with some caution.
    Therefore, although increased mortality is currently not being observed in the EuroMOMO
    figures, this does not mean that increased mortality does not occur in some areas or in some age groups, including mortality related to COVID-19."

    That 1st sentence is in a red font even!

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  3. Bats not monkeys.
    China, not Africa.
    Not clear if due to exotic "bush meat", or due to other types of exposures. The first cases are not in the Wuhan "wet market".

    Still, I'd say he won the bet.

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/20/the-doomsday-strain

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  4. What I don't understand, when people make those claims:
    We see those much-higher-than-normal mortality rates, despite most countries having very hard measures in place to combat the pandemic, most countries even imposing stay-at-home-orders and the closing most of their economy.
    Even if some influenza season would have similar death-rates: Those numbers accumulated over multiple months and we did nothing special to combat it. With COVID-19 we see only a small percentage of the deaths yet that will occur eventually (let's see how those numbers will be at the end of the year and then compare) and then think about what those numbers would have been, if we just did nothing.

    It should be obvious for everyone, that this pandemic is not just like a little bit stronger influenza season. I can't remember (and I'm not that young) that we have to dig out mass graves as in New York, store bodys in ice skating rinks as in Spain or need to transport bodys away on trucks, because local cemeteries and crematories can't cope with the amount of dead people (and as one can't say enough: All this despite very draconian measures to combat the virus).

    The only country that did really get in under control, after having a substantive outbreak was South Korea. But South Korea can only be reached (practically) via flights, so they have it much easier, as they know at every time who enters the country or leaves it. On a continent like Europe, which is so interconnected between countries (just think about the millions of people that visited Italy, Austria, Switzerland during the intial spreading of the virus) that is not so easy and can't therefore be compared 1:1.But overall they did much better, especially because they ramped up testing much earlier and were able to track and trace infections and cut off spreading in most cases before it got out of hand.

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  5. James, given that there is a strong correlation between age and chance of death following infection (with older people much more likely to die) would it make a difference doing this modelling by age group? I wondered if Ro might actually be much higher than in the models, so that by now most of the population may have been exposed to the virus - but with highly selective age-dependent mortality. So the death rate might be expected to fall as older people (such as me) are eliminated early in the epidemic. Hardly comforting for us oldies but maybe a chink of light for the rest of the population?

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  6. There isn't a huge age-dependent chance of infection. Test results might seem to indicate that from places where only the ill are tested, such as Italy.

    Better to look at places with lots of testing. The highest rate of infection in South Korea is in the 20-29 age range. That's likely an artifact of the spreading in Shincheonji Church of Jesus.

    https://medium.com/@andreasbackhausab/coronavirus-why-its-so-deadly-in-italy-c4200a15a7bf

    https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*BYExL5OtkiMj2YiXbOd9PQ.png

    I don't understand the lower rates in the 0-9 range, other than perhaps a lack of testing??
    Or is there some faster response from the immune system??
    Or something stranger??

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  7. I think I hear something.

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  8. Yes Euromomonow shows death rates about as high as the 2016-17 flu season peak for the 24 countries. We will see if excess deaths exceed 120000.

    You of course are misrepresenting what I said about Ioannidis for example, I doubled his death rate so the new deaths are still consistent with that figure. Nic needs to amend his results.

    You really are cherry picking here and doing what you accuse me of doing.

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  9. Wasn't a flying pig.

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  10. There are some new testing results that are coming out. In one German town 15% had antibodies to the virus. The implied case fatality rate is about 0.4% which is quite a bit higher than Ioannidis’ numbers.

    There is a paper by a group out of Los Alamos estimating R0 medium of 5.7 based on Chinese data.

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  11. I don't get why people are looking at aggregated data across age groups to determine a mortality rate.

    Seems to me that the mortality rate in older people and younger people should be treated as more or less independent phenomena.

    Similarly, I don't get why people as solid as Ioannidis would try to extrapolate from an SES outlier group, that was subjected to all sorts of non-standard treatment conditions, and is about as far as you can get from a randomized sample (people in a cruise).

    I can only assume he has some solid explanation - because he's much smarter and more k knowledgeable than I am.

    Maybe someone here can explain it to me?

    Not surprised that Nic would do it, as even though he's also much smarter than I am, he has no expertise in epidemiology.

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  12. David -

    Let's hope that the orders of magnitude lower mortality rates described in this article are accurate.

    https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/best-case-scenario-for-coronavirus.html

    Otherwise we're screwed, because the current administration has been a total disaster with testing and contact tracing, and only with masivsly thorough testing and tracing will we get out of this mess otherwise.

    Although I suppose it is possible that states might get it together - the odds of this federal administration getting it together seem more like none than slim.

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  13. Joshua, Ioannidis did the obvious with a small but fully tested group. Thus uncertainty is high. It is true that age makes a huge difference as I said here earlier. Ioannidis also multiplied his fatality rate by a factor of 2 because of uncertainty. The only argument I've heard here or anywhere else among the alarmed is that cruise ship passangers are a lot healthier than the general population. No real evidence has been presented. Lewis at least broke it out by age cohorts even though his numbers will go up with the new deaths reports. Worldometer still shows it at 10 and that's the data Lewis used in his updated post. Once again lots of speculation.

    I tend to think we are already screwed. A Los Alamos paper claims the R0 is 5.9 and James here claims its also much higher than 2.4. James' model also shows that once lockdown ends, a second wave occurs and total deaths are not that much different. James cites a paper claiming that R is still above 1 in most European countries. We need to hope that the malaria drug works. Protecting vulnerable people is a good option. But the death toll is going to be worse than even the worst recent flu seasons but with a good selective isolation perhaps not hugely greater. You are aware that this flu season has been very mild in Europe up to March.

    It's fair to blame the CDC for the lack of early testing. They screwed up. It's unfair I think to blame the feds for poor public health departments in some states not doing a good enough job on contact tracing, etc. It appears for example that Washington state has done a good job.

    I do think Ioannidis' critique of the early science is correct. There were a lot of early reports that were wrong.

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    Replies
    1. > The only argument I've heard here or anywhere else among the alarmed is that cruise ship passangers are a lot healthier than the general population. No real evidence has been presented.

      They are SES outliers. SES has a huge influence on health outcomes. They are a non-random sample in the most obvious respects. They had a non-standard treatment condition. Thru could have been exposed to a non-representative strain.

      Delete
  14. Just came across this. Not peer reviewed yet.

    https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.05.20054361v1

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  15. With competent leadership, we could set up a testing and isolation system somewhat like Singapore's, Taiwan's or South Korea's. Phase this in as the lockdown phases out. Things wouldn't get all the way back to normal, but most things would. But with current leadership?

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  16. I expect David will appear shortly and acknowledge that he was wrong and that Nic massively underestimated the death rate and that in fact mortality across much of Europe is at an extremely high level despite strong attempts to suppress the epidemic.

    Sometimes you really do say the funniest things.

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  17. DY"I tend to think we are already screwed."
    Yea, back in November 2016.

    A guild to what we might be doing about cororavirus.

    The Hammer and the Dance.

    https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

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  18. "In one German town 15% had antibodies to the virus. The implied case fatality rate is about 0.4% ..."

    Is every case resolved by recovery or death? I'd guess not, but can't find specific information on this town. Seems unlikely based on German statistics. The peak of active cases in Germany was April 6th. South Korea's peak of active cases was a month ago, and the number of deaths has risen from 60 to 211.

    Prediction: people are going to continue to die, so the 'implied case fatality rate' will keep increasing for months into the future. Yet this 0.4% preliminary figure will live forever...

    Ventilators do save lives, people do get off them and (mostly) recover, but for many, half or more, they are just a way of delaying death. The time to die can be long.

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  19. Typo department: How did I get guild rather than guide?

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  20. I just checked the latest numbers. It looks like Sweden has dramatically peaked despite having only a few restrictions. They still have about 800 in serious or critical condition however. Will Sweden end up worse off than Norway or Denmark? That will tell us whether we started the worst Depression in history when smarter responses would have resulted in a lot damage. Even though its less definitive, it appears that the US has also peaked. I would just note that states without restrictions have vastly lower fatality rates than New York. Washington and California are puzzling as one might have expected much higher fatalities based on a very contageous virus.

    BTW, Diamond Princess is showing 11 fatalities, well below the doubling Ioannidis used to calculate his fatality rate or 0.25%.

    I still have seen no actual competing analyses or really any technical criticism of Ioannidis' calculations or for that matter Nic Lewis' even though Nic should update for the 11th death. His analysis used 10 fatalities. What I have seen is a lot of emotional venting, slandering people who are innocent of all charges, and tarring and feathering the favorite witches of many here. I would be interested in anyone can do better than this. If not that will be enough wasted time on models that seem based on largely unknown parameters and to be quite unskillful in general.

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  21. "I just checked the latest numbers. It looks like Sweden has dramatically peaked despite having only a few restrictions. They still have about 800 in serious or critical condition however. Will Sweden end up worse off than Norway or Denmark? That will tell us whether we started the worst Depression in history when smarter responses would have resulted in a lot damage. "

    They're already 'worse off' than Norway and Denmark..

    "..the worst Depression in history.." Hmmm...


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  22. David -

    It's a false choice to say there was a choice between government mandated distancing or economic harm. There were going to be enormous economic losses with no government mandated social distancing as well - perhaps even larger die to the higher deaths,ire serous illness, and higher rates of deaths and infected people .

    Do you not know that extrapolating from a outlier and a non-random sampling is poor science?

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  23. I think that someone wants others to review the little known works of different others. It is as if they have attached some deeply rooted emotional baggage to those little known works of different others or some such.

    Simple repetition does not work except as a tool for propaganda purposes.

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  24. David -

    Sortable:

    Cases per million – US ranks at about 200 of about 220 countries listed:

    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

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  25. Jut a couple of things to add:

    The US is a long way from peaking (a more precise term is "reach a plateau"). '

    Accountability for the failure in the US starts at the top of the administration. The buck stops there.

    You can't strip away resources and capability from the CDC then blame them for the consequences of that. As anybody who does laboratory sciences will tell you, you need four things to run a lab:

    • a group of researchers
    • enough time to develop collaborative relationships among the researchers
    • lab space and equipment
    • and above all a stable work environment and funding level.

    Once you strip away these capabilities, it shouldn't be surprising that you can't just restore this capability with the turn of a knob.

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  26. Hasn't effective finding for CDC actually increased over Trump's years in office? In what sense has he stripped away resources?
    https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/false-claim-about-cdcs-global-anti-pandemic-work/

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  27. It is clear that Trump wanted to cut the CDC, and badly.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/05/19/nearly-700-vacancies-at-cdc-because-of-trump-administration-hiring-freeze/

    Just because you have funding doesn't mean you have to hire.

    Even if you hire, you don't have to provide support or leadership.

    Accountability for the failure in the US starts at the top of the administration. The buck stops there.

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  28. So do you agree that CDC funding has actually increased during Trump's presidency?

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  29. Not because of Trump.

    Do you do agree that Trump was in charge, and denied there was a problem until the stock market crash?

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  30. This issue of blame is mostly a reflection of preexisting biases. No one can deny that this was an epic failure by the public health and epidemeology establishments. Ioannidis had a great paper on the massive failures. Chinese statements were usually wrong and WHO saluted and amplified the disinformation. I believe generally that US politicians were mostly reflecting what the experts were saying which turned out to be based on profound ignorance.

    Josh, There are an infin9tely large number of nuanced responses between total lockdown and doing nothing.

    Carrick. Well yes scientific research has been in trouble for at least a decade and many research groups have disbanded. There are deep structural reasons for this within science itself such as conversion of Universities to an entrepreneurial model of research. Then there is the growing realization that lots of “science’ is flawed or wrong. Industrial Research has suffered perhaps more than the public sector. It’s not a matter of top line funding levels.

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  31. There is a massive difference in country responses and outcomes. All of them had the same information - but very different leadership. Numerous fact-checkers are pointing out the documented errors in Trump's "interpretation" of WHO and expert opinion. Looks to me like top level of US only listened to what they wanted to believe because of complete distrust of science.

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  32. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Princess

    So similar numbers of passengers, maybe, with the Diamond Princess but more 50% more deaths...
    Wonder why Nic doesn't look at this ship.

    And what of all the other ships?

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  33. David Young: Well yes scientific research has been in trouble for at least a decade and many research groups have disbanded.

    I'm referring specifically to events that transpired during the Trump era. But nice prevarication .

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  34. David -

    > This issue of blame is mostly a reflection of preexisting biases

    That may be the first thing I've ever read in one of your comments that I agree with.

    But with the failure in testing, the pathetic level of contact tracing, the complete lack of accountability, the scapegoating, and the attempts by the federal government to foist testing onto the states, I see little hope of pulling out of this death spiral any time soon.

    You can't correct for problems if you won't admit they exist, and you spend all your time lying ("anyone who wants a test can get a test.") and spin doctoring for the sake of political expediency, and if your supporters don't demand accountability.

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  35. DY: This issue of blame is mostly a reflection of preexisting biases.

    Take that timber out of your eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother's eye.


    Didn't even need to read the scientific press. Looks bad.

    https://twitter.com/catecadell/status/1219937508235988993/photo/1

    Sell all your stocks, head for the hills kind of bad. If you understand ANYTHING about epidemics, this graph is screaming at you.

    South Korea responded. Taiwan responded. Singapore responded. Australia responded. New Zealand responded. Germany responded.


    Why didn't the USA or the UK or Russia respond? Is there a common weakness in these countries?





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  36. Here is another analysis like Nic Lewis' except based on Imperial College numbers. The results seem to show that mortality risk from being infected with COVID is about the same as "normal" annual risk of mortality pretty much for all age groups.

    https://medium.com/wintoncentre/how-much-normal-risk-does-covid-represent-4539118e1196

    It appears that no matter how you slice it, the "excess" mortality can't be more than 1 years' worth of normal mortality. That's still a big number of excess deaths of course if everyone is exposed, but's its not the end of the world either.

    BTW, Imperial College's numbers seem to confirm that actual fatality rates are much lower than WHO top line numbers as I said previously. Using these top line numbers as all the media are blaring in large letters is in my view irresponsible and is unnecessarily scaring people. But that's what yellow journalists have done throughout recorded history.

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  37. Carrick, Since you haven't been specific, I have no idea what you are talking about or whether these actions you refer to are justified or not. Generally, I agree with the idea that science and particularly academic science is vastly bloated and the product is often of low quality. Only those who have been hiding under a rock for the last 20 years can deny there is a huge problem. In fact, there is a growing concensus on the problem. No one is willing to do anything about it though.

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  38. PhilS, Fouci last week said very clearly that every time he recommended actions to Trump, he agreed and took those actions. The media is trying hard to drive a wedge between Trump, Fauci, and Birx. It's phoney like most of what the media puts out on this disease.

    The media is actively hiding February statements by experts like Fauci that this would not be a big problem and also DeBlasiio's tiotally blase attitude, actively encouraging New Yorkers to attend mass events, go out to eat, and be normal.

    Generally, politicians across the board have been reflecting expert opinion.

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  39. David Young - you are not addressing the issue that every country had same information.

    "The media is actively hiding February statements by experts like Fauci that this would not be a big problem"

    Care to back that up with links and examples? Have you read full transcript of Fauci on Feb 29th, or just the bits that Fox like quoting? WHO advice to governments is public record. Other governments heeded it; yours didnt. I frankly think China's handling was terrible, and WHO only slightly better. But that doesnt get US top-level administration off the hook; as far as I can see, their response was guided by worries about the Nov election and effects on the sharemarket rather than protecting the American people.

    I dont think you can compare predictions of what would happen without radical intervention to numbers of what actually happened once interventions were in place. NY is improving because of drastic shutdown, not herd immunity. With emergencies systems overwhelmed as it is, do you really believe that continuing with BAU was an option?

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  40. Phil:

    DY: This issue of blame is mostly a reflection of preexisting biases.

    Take that timber out of your eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother's eye.


    As former Libertarian science-denier and Cato Institute Vice-President Jerry Taylor says, "Ideology = Motivated Cognition". The beam in David Young's eye is his own anti-collectivist ideology. He has a preexisting bias against "liberals", i.e. anyone who acknowledges a rationale for democratically chosen collective action. He rejects "alarmist" scientific findings about climate change, the current pandemic, or what have you, for fear they'll lead to public policies to address the threat. He thinks his best hope for defeating "strong" mitigation measures against climate change or COVID-19, is to cast doubt on alarming scientific findings. Possessing above-average verbal ability, but not comprehending how scientific training and peer discipline work to neutralize cognitive biases, and confirming that "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge", DY believes himself competent to dispute the consensus of genuine experts. He evinces all the signs of the Dunning-Kruger effect, and is defensive about both his manifest incompetence and his non-scientific motives. If enough reality-based commenters lose patience with him here, he may go away, although he'll undoubtedly pop up somewhere else in the blogosphere.

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  41. David -

    > "The media is actively hiding February statements by experts like Fauci that this would not be a big problem"

    That's pretty funny. Typically you're of the sort who criticizes such an appeal to experts as a fallacy. Trump has no particular tendency towards relying on those "experts" of the sort you reference except to provide rhetorical cover as you try here. Look at his reaction to the advice of public health "experts" during the ebola outbreak. Look at his attitude about scientific "experts" on a whole slew of issues. Trump often talks about how he trusts his "instincts" over the advice of "experts" and has made it clear he relies in this "instincts" in this health crisis.
    His many statements about COVID-19 that were in direct contrast to the views ofamy experts is obvious period that he doesn't just follow the advice of "experts" to pick policy options.

    I have no idea what other administration would have done what better - but there is a long list of consequential errors by this administration.

    Appeals to authority or saying "They did it too" don't make any of those errors go away.

    Trump simultaneously claims ultimate authority even as he says he has no responsibility. And sycophants and toadies line up to defend his government even though those same people have a long history of saying that government shouldn't be trusted and that politicians are only in it for their own self interest.

    Just look at the series of blatant lies about testing. The ridiculous dog and pony show, where Trump fluffed and was fluffed by a bobblehead lineup of CEOs promising all those millions and millions of tests that would be rolled out into Walmart and Target parking lots near you. The tracking websites where you could sign up. The promises that "Anyone who wants a test can get a test."

    His lies and the testing failures are the fault of any "expert" or the mayor of NYC.

    On again, as long as those who might vote for Trump continue to sycophantically justify his administration's failures, he will never have a treason to correct for the errors.

    Comprehensive testing and contact tracing and quarantining are absolutely key going forward to minimize the economic damage of this pandemic. His administration must do better.

    Move beyond your own ideological blinders. Provide an example for other Trump apologists.

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    Replies
    1. But hey. I just heard the Prez. suing his task force conference and he said thst today he did a "lotta calling" with people who made "very strong statements" so I guess everything's going to work out after all? I feel so much better.

      Delete
  42. David Young

    That study you linked to actually says this:

    "So, roughly speaking, we might say that getting COVID-19 is like packing a year’s worth of risk into a week or two. Which is why it’s important to spread out the infections to avoid the NHS being overwhelmed."


    so it's not:"t appears that no matter how you slice it, the "excess" mortality can't be more than 1 years' worth of normal mortality."

    Also they say this:

    " I should also say that this analysis only applies to the general public. Those who may be exposed to a high viral load, such as health care workers, may have substantially more risk than their ‘normal’ year’s worth, shown by the tragic deaths in Italy, UK and elsewhere."

    So it's not what you suggest.
    that seems to be a common pattern for you.


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  43. What I see here from Nathan, Josh, Phil and others is classic obfuscation. You can't contradict the main points made so you focus on small caveats or irrelevancies. They you read my mind on politics and smear me from the comfort of your anonymity. You then provide really long rants which when spot checked look like interpretations and not facts. What fantastic contributions to knowledge. You guys are hopeless and not providing anything new or interesting.

    Just an example, Nathan misrepresents what I said. I meant that no matter how you slice the mortality estimates that's what you get. All those I've quoted here and myself have assumed the health care system was not overwhelmed. So Nathan what you said is irrelevant. Then he focuses on a small caveat that doesn't change the big picture.

    On that matter, it appears that in the US anyway there is huge excess hospital capacity and even in New York, Javitz center and the UNS Comfort are almost empty. My brother's hospital system is half empty because people are delaying elective contact with the health care system. The whole focus on ICU beds is a read herring as Tim can convert any bed into an ICU bed with a few pieces of equipment. The situation is different in Italy, whose government system is often stressed and very underfunded. Generally in the US there has been no documented shortages of key resources.

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  44. "What I see here from Nathan, Josh, Phil and others is classic obfuscation. You can't contradict the main points made so you focus on small caveats or irrelevancies. "

    no, David, it is simply that you are not capable of a serious discussion because you can't acknowledge when you are wrong. You made a claim about a 'study' and I looked at it, and you were misinterpreting what they said.

    This is the key aspect of James' original post. And is likely why he has so far ignored your commentary.

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  45. "The results seem to show that mortality risk from being infected with COVID is about the same as "normal" annual risk of mortality pretty much for all age groups."

    Do you think it's ok to be twice as likely to die?

    The risk accumulates, so they have a 'normal' risk, plus a 'normal' risk from Covid.
    Also this is based on mortality rates from sometime in March. You can see from the MOMO results that at present mortality is running higher, with the Z-score in countries badly affected by COVID19 running highest.
    This is pretty much what is expected.


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  46. David Young : "... the "excess" mortality can't be more than 1 years' worth of normal mortality."

    Study he is referring to: "Those who may be exposed to a high viral load, such as health care workers, may have substantially more risk than their ‘normal’ year’s worth, shown by the tragic deaths in Italy, UK and elsewhere."

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  47. "Also, as Triggle points out, there will be substantial overlap in these two groups — many people who die of COVID would have died anyway within a short period — and so these risks cannot be simply added, and it does not simply double the risk of people who get infected. "

    ok, so the risk isn't doubled...

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  48. Stop ducking, David.


    Grow a pair of balls and respond to the issues I raised. You offered lame apologies for this administration's lies and failures. This is a life and death situation. There is real danger unless people like you are willing to hold your dear leader accountable.

    Stop deflecting.

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  49. Your meme is manufactured Joshua.

    1. Fauci says Trump acted immediately on his and Birx's recommendations. They were pretty much in lockstep. Do you blame Fauci and Birx then for failure to act sooner? After all politicians should take the advice of the "experts" as we hear endlessly. That's what Trump did.

    2. Even DeBlasio (who was very wrong) was just amplifying what his public health commissioner was saying. DeBlasio could have acted in New York anytime and his failure to do so caused New York and New Jersey to account for half of all US fatalities so far.

    The real failure was China, WHO, and some of the early science.

    The "people will die" meme is a tired canard of people who can't balance competing harms or goods because that would require control over one's emotions.

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  50. Nathan, It's really sad that you are so focused on falsehoods. I did not misrepresent anything. I summarized in a single sentence a lengthy article in a necessarily imprecise way. That summary is essentially correct. The fact that it takes you 4 rambling comments to present the falsehood is telling.

    Likewise, I accurately in previous comments characterized the European mortality site's results as of the time of the comment. I accurately summarized Ioannidis and Lewis too. Stop the falsehoods. Ioannidis' result is so far as I can tell still accurate.

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  51. "The real failure was China, WHO, and some of the early science."

    Given every Government in the world was given the same information from China, WHO, and 'early science' I think it is fair to assign blame to Govts where a country has had a poor outcome.
    Governments that acted quickly have clearly had a better health outcome.
    Blaming China for a virus is weird, they didn't make it.
    Wet markets also exist in every third world country. They exist because they don't have refrigeration; it's safer to get freshly slaughtered animals. So blaming wet markets also misses the point as they're preventing other diseases from poorly stored meat.



    "The "people will die" meme is a tired canard of people who can't balance competing harms or goods because that would require control over one's emotions."

    So how many Cost Benefit Analyses have you looked at? Last I looked they all supported locked down of varying degrees.
    It's also weird to imply people are not controlling their emotions.

    What it looks like you're doing is making numerous claims, getting shown to be wrong, then accuse others of all sorts of nonsense to avoid admitting mistake... A lot like the current US President.

    ReplyDelete
  52. Trump lied, repeatedly, about the testing. He's still doing it. Pence has lied about it also. They repeatedly said amounts of testing would be available that never became available. Why don't you address that?


    The simple fact is that the testing, and contact tracing are crucial for minimizing the economic impact, and this administration has failed, miserably, on that account, lied about it, and failed to correct for the problems. Why don't you address that?

    > 1. Fauci says Trump acted immediately on his and Birx's recommendations.

    Fauci said that when he got to talk to Trump about social distsmcing he acted on the recomrndations. But Trump spent weeks ignoring and downlpaying the threat before seeking their recommendations. He completely mischsracterized the threat ("its like the flu," "It's less fatal than the flu," "it will go 15 to 0- paraphrasing) in direct contrast to what experts were saying at the time. Fauci and Birx didn't say that ignorant crap. He pulled it out of his ass. He told the public crap about a pandemic threat.

    > Do you blame Fauci and Birx then for failure to act sooner?

    Of course, if they didn't recommend he act sooner. Plenty of people were recommending that he do so, and saying that his characterizations of the threat were wrong. Plenty.

    > After all politicians should take the advice of the "experts" as we hear endlessly. That's what Trump did.

    We know for a fact that there were plenty of experts saying that his characterizations were wrong and ignorant. We know that Fauci said that when he first recommended social distancing to Trump, Trump took his advice. We don't know if he would have recommended earlier action if he had had the chance to do so. We don't know if Trump took his other advice.

    > DeBlasio could have acted in New York anytime and his failure to do so caused New York and New Jersey to account for half of all US fatalities so far.

    Why do you not realize that others' failure to act sooner is in no way a justification for the failures of the federal government of Trump's failures or Trump's lies? Can't you get past "But they did it too" logic?


    > The real failure was China, WHO, and some of the early science.

    Jesus. You really can't, can you? And none of their failures justifues the most significant failures - with the testing and the contact tracing, failures that are still ongoing and about which they've been lying for months and continue to lie. Why are you so willing to accept that?

    ReplyDelete
  53. Here David -

    I'm sure you'll take Roger's views seriously, right?

    https://rogerpielkejr.com/2020/04/15/did-the-trump-administration-delay-the-who-emergency-declaration/amp

    ReplyDelete
  54. As my small contribution to public health, I found this video that is much more balanced and rational than the emotional venting of OMBS (Orange Man Bad Syndrome) we see here. It illustrates how complex this issue really is and how its virtually impossible to come up with an optimal strategy given our absence of reliable data. Watch it as you sip a glass of fine wine and relax. You will feel better, more humble, and less grumpy.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK0Wtjh3HVA

    Why would I credit you Josh (who is ignorant of the matter), ther yellow jouralists or even Pielke over Fauci and Birx who appear to be serious and honest scientists and were there every day in all the deliberations? You have zero evidence that Fauci and Trump were not on the same page throughout this thing.

    ReplyDelete
  55. David -

    Consider that criticizing the failures of our dear leader is not the same thing as your OMBS...

    Once again, the point is that the failures of this administration w/r/t testing and contact tracing cannot logically be attributed to the WHO or China. As to whether they can be attributed to the CDC, obviously that's another matter. But the CDC is a part of the Trump administration's approach and his claims of absolute authority and no responsibility is obviously the height of self-serving political expediency.

    But even regardless of who's responsible for the critical failures with the testing, no one but Trump and Pence can conceivably be responsible for Trump's and Pence's lies over the last month or so.

    It's truly sad that you can't bring yourself to acknowledge that, and instead need to blame other people or attack the people who point out their failures.


    It's interesting that you're so incapable of accepting that Trump is fallible. Some people think a strict father model helps explain how conservatives relate to their leaders. Who knows, maybe that does apply in this case?

    ReplyDelete
  56. Josh, You are demonstrating why no one takes you seriously. All politicians make statements that are not fully accurate. It's not extremely relevant at the moment and the fact that you focus on it shows how childish you are. The policy of Trump was fully in line with his experts' opinion and that's vastly vastly more important than your ignorant recitation of yellow journalism "facts." You know Jonathan Karl from the White House press corps has a new book in which he acknowledges that the media have become like an opposition party and that it is hurting their credibility. CDC screwed up and they acknowledged it unlike nurse ratchet who coined a phrase while denying any errors that is relevant here. "At this point what difference does it make?"

    Why can't you acknowledge these obvious facts??

    ReplyDelete
  57. David -

    > All politicians make statements that are not fully accurate.

    Not fully accurate? That's funny. Was it a joke? You're really describing his flat out lies as just statements that are "not fully accurate?"

    And why would you excuse incompetence from politicians? Do you typically do that? I doubt it. I really am surprised at the extent to which you're a Trump toady. It's remarkable even if commonplace.

    His lies were in this situation is consequential. For example, he claimed that "If you want a test you can get a test." If you have a problem where testing is unavailable, and the lack of testing inhibits our ability to identify and track infections, and as a consequence it worsens the economic impact of the lockdowns, that's a problem.

    I'm not talking about the "not fully accurate" type of statements like about crowd sizes. I'm talking about lies that are about denying responsibility for a critical component of our response to a pandemic. If the shortcomings aren't acknowledged, and if a leader isn't held accountable for his failures by his supporters, there's no incentive for a politician whose primary focus is on his political status, to correct for the errors.

    > It's not extremely relevant at the moment and the fact that you focus on it shows how childish you are.

    What? His lies about the testing aren't "extremely relevant?" Truly amazing.

    > The policy of Trump was fully in line with his experts' opinion ...

    The policy of lying about the testing is "fully in line with his expert' opinion?" What are you talking about?

    > You know Jonathan Karl from the White House press corps has a new book in which he acknowledges that the media have become like an opposition party and that it is hurting their credibility.

    I think that is true to a certain extent. It is also totally irrelevant to what I'm discussing. Perhaps you could put aside your sense of grievances and actually discuss the topic I'm discussing?

    > CDC screwed up and they acknowledged it unlike nurse ratchet who coined a phrase while denying any errors that is relevant here. "At this point what difference does it make?"

    You think it makes no difference that he has lied about that status of the testing? Really? That's remarkable.

    ReplyDelete
  58. It's really amazing to see a "conservative" (one, I assume, with libertarian sympathies) be such a complete apologist for government incompetence and the abuse of governmental power.

    Sometimes I have to give libertarians credit for ideological consistency, even if sometimes I think that their consistency is in support of negative outcomes in balance. But the cult of trump sycophants includes many libertarian types. It just goes to show how when someone leverages hate to garner support, as Trump does with hatred towards liberals, identity-aggression can have a powerful allure even for those who have other strong ideological loyalties.

    It's hard to describe how pathetic it is to see such toadyism on proud display. The man lies about critical matters and you'll twist yourself into a pretzel to avoid dealing with it.

    That line about all politicians making inaccurate statements was a true classic. Have a good night, David. I give up. You'll obviously defend Trump no matter what.

    ReplyDelete
  59. Two lengthy content free rants is not a contribution and is not persuasive Josh. Everyone acknowledges Trump's limitations especially his big mouth which he should control more effectively. Adults can get past that and look at more serious issues of policy. Why can't you?

    And your diagnosis of my politics is wrong. This is true childish projection on your part of your own biases.

    ReplyDelete
  60. > Everyone acknowledges Trump's limitations especially his big mouth which he should control more effectively.

    Yet you can't even acknowledge the significance of the lies he tells in his daily PR campaign rallues during the course of a pandemic. Instead you fool yourself by shifting the accountability for his administration's failures, and his lies about them, onto other people.

    No one else is responsible for the "Anyone who wants a test can get a test." type lies, and no one else can make him be responsible for correcting for those lies and failures they cover up, except the voting public who might vote for him. His whole focus is on voters like you, David. He won't correct for his lies and his administration's substantive failures unless people like you stop making excuses for him and acknowledge the problems. Focusing on insignificant side isseus by saying things like "I wish he'd tweet less." won't get it done.

    Stop allowing your political biases to influence your analysis so strongly. Of course no one can eliminate such "motivated reasoning" entirely, but if you actually try you can do far better than what you're doing now.

    ReplyDelete
  61. Josh, Go to hell. Why would I care what an anonymous internet presence with no qualifications says about my reasoning? Do you realize how arrogant and condescending you are to people you have never met? You lied here about my political beliefs which you know nothing about.

    Since you have contributed nothing here that teaches me anything I'm not going to respond to your political rants here anymore.

    ReplyDelete
  62. David -

    > You lied here about my political beliefs which you know nothing about.

    Here's what I said:

    > It's really amazing to see a "conservative" (one, I assume, with libertarian sympathies)

    I've seen enough about your political beliefs to know that you're a "conservative." I said I presume you have libertarian sympathies which isn't a "lie" unless I don't presume thst you have libertarian sympathies. My presumption may well be wrong but thst doesn't make it a "lie."

    > Why would I care what an anonymous internet presence with no qualifications says about my reasoning?

    There's no reason why you should care what I say. But hopefully you should about the ways in which what you say is instructive about your reasoning.

    You've continuously made avoided dealing with the consequential lies coming from Trump, and the consequential failures of his administration.

    These aren't really debatable. His lies are quite evident and indisputable. Now you may want to minimize his lies as not being fully accurate, but doing so is an abundantly transparent display of an unwillingness to consider a lying politician accountable for his failures. What could explain that behavior on your part other than "motivate reasoning?". Well, I certainly can't think of any.

    The ineptness of the testing in this country is likely costing lives, and many serious illnesses. It undoubtedly is having a serous economic impact, as opening up the economy is clearly contingent on a robust testing program - particularly since the number of positive infections is so high.

    But Trump lies and obfuscates. He lies about the availability of the testing. I note that with all your comments to me (even as you tell me you don't care about my opinions), you have steadfastly avoided that topic.

    His administration, his vice-president, and he, have repeatedly made inaccurate statements about the rate at which testing would be made available. As to whether that was "lying" is hard to prove, but it was plainly obvious that what they said about the availability of testing in that task force press conference where they told about the vast roll out of tests in Target and Walmart parking lots was spin and intended to deflect responsibility. Such inaccuracy and spin is par for the course in normalppolitics in all sides, but it is inexcusable in a situation such as a pandemic. Yet you continue to make excuses for it.

    Even today, instead of assuming responsibility for making sure there's sufficient testing, Trump is trying to foist off the responsibility to others in a transparent attempt to avoid being accountable. This is a key failure.wirh vast economic and health consequences. And still, you hand wave to vague and irrelevant criticism but avoid dealing with his administration's consequential lies and failures.

    What makes his political pandering to avoid accountability even more aggregious is that even as he asserts he has absolute authority, he refuses to be accountable, accept responsibility, or even tell the truth.

    And yet people who should be demanding accountability from their political representatives try to shield them from responsibility by crafting an elaborate matrix of excuses and deflections.

    No, the CDC isn't responsible for his lies. No, the WHO isn't responsible for his lies. No, China isn't responsible for his lies. Trump is responsible for his lies.


    ReplyDelete
  63. No doubt, the CDC shares responsibility for the vast testing inadequacies and failures, but this is all happening under his watch, and he is avoiding accountability for what is happening under his watch, hiding beneath a sycophantic cloak being held up by people who just can't accept that he is actually fallible and failing.

    It's really remarkable to see such fealty even in the face of a mortal threat to so many.

    Telling me to go to hell (for openly expressing my opinions to you) won't make me stop informing you of the transparentlyn "motivated ressoning" you've been displaying, David.

    I'm going to keep doing it. And I have to say your repeated responses make it quite clear that your implied not caring, is as transparently oblivious as your defenses of Trump are.o doubt, the CDC shares responsibility for the vast testing inadequacies and failures, but this is all happening under his watch, and he is avoiding accountability for what is happening under his watch, hiding beneath a sycophantic cloak being held up by people who just can't accept that he is actually fallible and failing.

    It's really remarkable to see such fealty even in the face of a mortal threat to so many.

    Telling me to go to hell (for openly expressing my opinions to you) won't make me stop informing you of the transparentlyn "motivated ressoning" you've been displaying, David.

    I'm going to keep doing it. And I have to say your repeated responses make it quite clear that your implied not caring, is as transparently oblivious as your defenses of Trump are.

    ReplyDelete
  64. Meanwhile, in the real world, there are now at least 3 instances of random antibody testing. One in Santa Clara County California found the actual number of infections to be 50-85 times higher than the official number of cases. Assuming this applies to the entire state their official case fatality rate is ~3.5%. The "real" case fatality rate would be 0.04% to 0.07%. Admittedly a similar study in Germany came up with 0.37% but that's near the medium for Ioannidis' estimate too.

    This is well below Ioannidis' central estimate based on Diamond Princess data and would imply that to reach herd immunity in the US would imply about 120K to 210K deaths due to COVID19. There are about 2900K deaths in the US every year.

    I suppose James and Phil and all the other anonymous alarmed hysterics will come along like a herd of flying pigs and acknowledge that the best experts have been right about this from the beginning and that the top line official statistics are needlessly alarming and scaring people. Maybe they will admit to having political motives too.

    ReplyDelete
  65. Josh, You are an arrogant and condescending elitist. People like you are why populism is coming to power in the West. I didn't read your comments because I don't care what you say or think. It just makes me more determined to defeat the managerial state that Woodrow Wilson wanted to substitute for the Constitution and that Eisenhower warned about.

    ReplyDelete
  66. > I didn't read your comments because I don't care what you say or think.

    I can think of two possibilities. The first is thst you're lying and can't bring yourself to admit you read the comment for some peculiar reason. I think that's probable becsause you obviously read the previous comments even as you claimed you didn't care about what I had to say.

    I have to say it's pretty amusing that you first said you wouldn't further resoimd to my comments, but did so anyway (couldn't help yourself, could you?) and now you say that you aren't going to read my comments.

    The second is that you didn't read them because you don't want to confront how I'm pointing out the clear bias in how you're reasoning.

    What intersting is thst both possibilities see completely in line with the original post - which outlines the difficult you have in holding yourself accountable for the arguments you make.

    Given how you've displayed an unwillingness to confront the consequential lies of Trump and the consequential failures of his administration, thst explanation has some likelihood because it would be displaying a consistent behavior in your part.

    I still go with the first one, but I could be wrong. I was wrong once before, although I could be wrong about that.

    ReplyDelete
  67. David -

    Is there any resin to believe thst the Santa Clara selling is in any way nationally representative. The median income in Santa Clara is like 4x the national average. Thwee is also a low % of minorities.

    I know they weighted the samples, but I'm not sure if they did that to make the sample representative for Santa Clara, or if they did so to adjust to make the samole representative more broadly. I rsrhe don't thar, actually. So that wouldn't really affect the infection rate so much, oriba ky, but certainly it would affect their estimatedoetsliry rate, doncha think?

    ReplyDelete
  68. ...mortality rate....

    ReplyDelete
  69. If the mortality rate is so low, why so many special situations developing, such as mass graves and overloaded hospitals.
    Does David think this is an incredibly infectious disease with very low mortality?
    Doesn't a high infection rate also demand social distancing?

    Also, if the mortality was so low, can he explain the Italian or Spanish situation?

    Looks like he simply believes the studies he wants to believe and disregards the rest (apologies to Paul Simon)

    ReplyDelete
  70. I think the real point, is that no one knows.
    It is certainly higher than Influenza... And we won't know for years.

    ReplyDelete
  71. I hope Boeing goes bankrupt, 737 + nobody will flies anymore. What will the World do with all its vast excess of aeroplanes now?

    ReplyDelete
  72. David -

    It's pretty funny that you have sworn off responding to my comments here, but then write comments attacking me (complete with pet names) over at climate etc. So you won't respond directly in conversation with me, but still you respond to my comments elsewhere? What explains such behavior?

    I am in permanent moderation over at Judith's - many of my comments don't get through. So I'll respond to you here since I'm reasonably sure you'll read my response here (in spite of your claims otherwise).

    David –

    We lack the testing capacity needed to get the economy back to functioning at a reasonable level.

    Trump says that anyone who wants a test can get a test. In other words, he’s saying that current testing capacity is just fine. And so people think it’s just fine to just open the economy again.

    Trump says that our testing is the best in the world, and that other leaders are calling him, amazed at how successful we’ve been with the testing:

    –snip–

    An average of 146,000 people per day have been tested for the coronavirus nationally so far this month, according to the COVID Tracking Project, which on Friday reported 3.6 million total tests across the country. To reopen the United States by mid-May, the number of daily tests performed between now and then should be 500,000 to 700,000, according to the Harvard estimates.

    That level of testing is necessary to identify the majority of people who are infected and isolate them from people who are healthy, according to the researchers. About 20 percent of those tested so far were positive for the virus, a rate that the researchers say is too high.

    “If you have a very high positive rate, it means that there are probably a good number of people out there who have the disease who you haven’t tested,” said Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. “You want to drive the positive rate down, because the fundamental element of keeping our economy open is making sure you’re identifying as many infected people as possible and isolating them.”
    The researchers said that expanded testing could reduce the rate to 10 percent, which is the maximum rate recommended by the World Health Organization. In Germany, that number is 7 percent, and in South Korea, it is closer to 3 percent.

    –snip–

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/17/us/coronavirus-testing-states.html

    We are at 20%. We currently have a shortage of the equipment to reach the needed level of testing. We have no real plans for contact tracing. It is virtually non-existent at this point in many parts of the country. We lack the infrastructure for thorough contact tracing.

    Trump is lying about all of this. That he’s lying, in itself, isn’t rally the most important thing. It’s that his lying has real consequences. It encourages complacency about life and death issues. That’s a high price to pay for a president pursuing political expediency so he can get reelected. Presidents have always done that, but here the stakes are high. It’s only when people who might consider voting for Trump make it clear that they find such political expediency unacceptable that this will change. The consequences of the failures of testing in this country are real.

    Meanwhile, we can hope that public health functionaries and state and municipal governments will get it together well-enough to address the failures of the federal government that Trump is lying about. I guess that’s more likely than it is that potential Trump supporters will end this absurd fealty and faithfulness to dear leader.

    ReplyDelete
  73. If you are really interested Nathan, this scientific analysis from Oxford explores reasons for Italy’s numbers.

    https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/

    They also have some good perspectives from previous epidemics like swine flu where IFR values declined a factor of 5 over time. That’s a common pattern with epidemics. They suggest it will be true with Covid19 too.

    There is a growing body of evidence from Iceland for example that IFR rates are comparable to the flu. Everyone agrees that for young healthy people under 40 the IFR is really really low. It gradually increases with age.

    ReplyDelete
  74. David -

    > There is a growing body of evidence from Iceland for example that IFR rates are comparable to the flu.

    Don't cherry pick.

    It's 2.96 in Germany - which is noted for keeping it down. Anyone who cherry-picks IFR, or who thinks we have enough data to really know, is fooling the easiest person to fool.

    https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/

    ReplyDelete
  75. David -

    Oh, and as for the Santa Clara study:

    https://medium.com/@balajis/peer-review-of-covid-19-antibody-seroprevalence-in-santa-clara-county-california-1f6382258c25

    Anyone who doesn't fully account for the false positives and false negatives when trying to confirm their biases from these studies is fooling themselves. And anyone who tries to extrapolate from non-random and non-representative sampling (as you did in the thread over at Judith's by directly extrapolating from Santa Clara to calculate numbers for the whole of California - an obviously invalid thing to do) is fooling the easiest person to fool.

    Who's the easiest person to fool, David?

    As I've posted elsewhere:

    If you are looking to find something that happens 1 case in 1000, Assume you always find it when it is there. Assume that your false negative rate is 1%. Then in 1000 cases you find 1 true positive and 10 false positives, so the probability that you have a true positive given a positive test is <10 %

    ReplyDelete
  76. Nathan -

    Here's what I don't get about these estimations of massively more infections than the identified infections. Granted, there must be more with the high rates of asymptomatic infections, but along with more of those we'd also have many more cases of pneumonia or other illnesses associated with the disease prior to when the testing started. Additionally, I'd think there would be many more deaths. Where was the spike in mortality, cases of pneumonia, etc., prior to the onset of widespread testing and prior to the mandated shelter in place orders (but which were not identified as being caused by COVID-19)?

    Presumably, these spikes would have occurred on top of the typical morbidity rates associated with the flu? I have yet to read of any surveys to detect a signal in prevalence of pneumonia prior to testing and shutdowns.

    ReplyDelete
  77. That's an interesting study, David.
    However, it doesn't support your notion that we are over-reacting to COVID-19.
    The mortality rate will still be much higher than Swine Flu, even with rigorous social distancing. And recall the social distancing was enacted to prevent 'unnecessary' deaths due to an overloaded health system

    It's a far more dangerous disease.

    ReplyDelete
  78. Well Nathan, there is "smart selective" isolation of those who are most vulnerable and then there is paniced total shutdown.

    1. Everyone agrees including Imperial College that the IFR rate for those under 40 who are healthy is very very small. I've seen estimates as low as 0.02%. For those under 20, its an order of magnitude smaller still.
    2. It's mostly those who are already seriously ill and would probably die in a year or two who are dying early "with" covid19. True cause of death is always tricky.
    3. In only a few places (like Italy whose health care system was on life support anyway) has the medical system been under stress. In most of the US for example, the medical system still has massive idle capacity. Because people who need care are avoiding the system, hospitals are often half empty. Some are closing and laying off staff.
    4. As an example, in Oklahoma where my brother runs hospitals, they have peaked and modeling is predicting a total of 359 deaths. There are over 5500 empty hospital beds and modeling says they will need about 300 at the maximum. Okla has somewhere in the vicinity of 4 million people. It makes no sense for them to forced into a total shutdown.
    5. How many people are dying because they are too scared to seek medical attention? In the UK there was a report in the Times that half of all excess mortality the last couple weeks was not due to covid. They speculated that it was people either unable or unwilling to go out to get medications, or too scared to seek needed medical services.

    In short there is growing evidence that shutdown is costing lives already. The Katz link I posted above as a public health service to Josh is a very thoughtful look at how to minimize total harm in this situation. It is with nuanced strategies such as protecting those who are vulnerable while allowing everyone else to go out and develop herd immunity.

    There will be significant excess mortality. The question is how to minimize total harm to society. What we are currently doing is based on really childish thought processes, e.g., Cuomo saying that if he could save one life, everything would be justified.

    ReplyDelete
  79. "Well Nathan, there is "smart selective" isolation of those who are most vulnerable and then there is paniced total shutdown."

    Too much emotional language David... panicked? smart?
    I understand you think the 'total' shutdown is unnecessary, but this is simply an opinion.

    "Italy whose health care system was on life support anyway" - It's one of the best in the world.

    You are promoting no shutdown for economic and political reasons. And you're entitled to your opinion, but to claim that every Govt (and it is pretty much every Govt) is being hysterical is ridiculous. You are closer to hysteria than anyone else here.
    The evidence we have is that this disease is more risky/higher fatality than Swine Flu. People are taking it seriously, that's all.

    ReplyDelete
  80. Well my concerns are shared by a lot of professioals such as Ioannidis and his collaborators and Katz. You should really watch the Katz video if you want to come up to speed on the science. Your opinions would more informed if you did.

    ReplyDelete
  81. How is Sweden doing?

    13/4/20 DY: "It looks like Sweden has dramatically peaked despite having only a few restrictions."

    Reported deaths seem to have a weekly pattern in Sweden. Not sure as to why, but seems likely to be not a feature of the real death pattern.

    Science makes predictions about what will happen. What will happen in Sweden?

    What say you, DY?


    ReplyDelete
  82. The safety of Boeing employees, their dependents, and visitors to our sites remains a top priority. We are taking all necessary steps to protect our employees and the communities where they work and live. Boeing’s Chief Medical Officer and our International Health Services team are continuously tracking health conditions using the guidance of the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We continue to adapt and evolve its emergency management procedures to address the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

    ReplyDelete
  83. EuroMOMO Week 15 Update ...
    https://www.euromomo.eu/bulletin_pdf/2020/2020_15_bulletin.pdf
    "Additional note this week: Due to the recent Easter period there may have been some further delay in registration of deaths in the countries, hence making the interpretation of this week’s mortality estimates a bit more uncertain than is usually the case."

    Duly noted!

    Expect SE to go DEEP BLUE in Week 16 (or 17) ...
    https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49790902053_229591f63e_b.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  84. Exactly one month ago (2020-03-19 or day 57) the US finally begins to wake up from Trumpkin's self imposed delusional denial. Exactly ONE month ago ...
    https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49791515241_934636ff4a_b.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  85. Since I'm in moderation over at Judith's, I thought I'd repost here, David's comments from there, and my response. First me...

    Joshua | April 18, 2020 at 10:58 pm |
    David –

    In that Boston study, they recruited people who were out walking on the street, in a hotspot (Chelsea).

    That isn’t random and representative sampling. Not even close.

    dpy6629 | April 19, 2020 at 12:32 pm |
    All scientific studies have limitations Josh. It’s the accumulated evidence that is important. I mentioned 4 studies that tend to indicate vastly wider infection rates than the laughably biased numbers you see in all the media.

    And these yellow journalism practices do immense harm by scaring people. There is some evidence in Britain that people are delaying needed medical care and non-covid related mortality is spiking.

    Joshua | April 19, 2020 at 12:43 pm |
    Your comment is awaiting moderation.
    David –

    > All scientific studies have limitations Josh

    Precisely. Thst is why you should look at their limitations before you extrapolate as you have done.

    Especially when your extrapolation serve to confirm your ideological predispositions.

    Once again, you shouldn’t try to extrapolate from non-random and non-representative sampling. Especially when you’re doing so to confirm your ideological predisposition.

    You are the easiest person to fool.

    Is that so hard to understand?

    ---------

    So David calls people names of they point out the limitations in the Santa Clara study, and then says "all studies have limitations" when the limitations of the Boston study are pointed out.

    ReplyDelete
  86. James -

    Just give the word and I'll stop this silly interaction with David.

    ReplyDelete
  87. Here David -

    Have fun with Andrew Gelman's take on the Santa Clara study. Lol.

    https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/04/19/fatal-flaws-in-stanford-study-of-coronavirus-prevalence/

    > think the authors of the above-linked paper owe us all an apology. We wasted time and effort discussing this paper whose main selling point was some numbers that were essentially the product of a statistical error.

    I’m serious about the apology. Everyone makes mistakes. I don’t think they authors need to apologize just because they screwed up. I think they need to apologize because these were avoidable screw-ups. They’re the kind of screw-ups that happen if you want to leap out with an exciting finding and you don’t look too carefully at what you might have done wrong.

    +++++++++++

    Ouch!

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  88. Josh, You need to stop cherry picking things that are so weak and stick to real science.

    "I’m not saying that the claims in the above-linked paper are wrong. Maybe the test they are using really does have a 100% specificity rate and maybe the prevalence in Santa Clara county really was 4.2%. It’s possible. The problem with the paper is that (a) it doesn’t make this reasoning clear, and (b) their uncertainty statements are not consistent with the information they themselves present."

    I trust Ioannidis and his numerous collaborators vastly more than a statistician with a blog who seems to shoot from the hip on lots of topics. Ioannidis is a serious scientist who doesn't do half baked blogs.

    I really don't know why you continue to argue this weak case. There are by now many sources of data that tend to confirm that infection rates are vastly higher than the official reports.

    You are on permanent moderation by Curry because you tried to mansplain to her that her reasoning was motivated and bad and then tried to tell her how to correct her reasoning. All this from an anonymous internet commenter with NO visible expertise in science. It was arrogant and condescending then and it looks arrogant and condescending when you do it to me now.

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  89. "Idahoans is a serious scientist who doesn't do half baked blogs."

    Which implies that you are not serious, not a scientist and you do post on so-called half baked blogs.

    Is Ioannidis your 2020 toy model? I do think so. The so-called modeling dumpster diver does it again, except they now accept shit-for-brains epidemiological models.

    Nope, no irony there at all.

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  90. David -

    Thanks for reading my comments. You can't imagine my shock that you did so (do you not realize how easily you get played?)

    It's interesting that you have nothing to say about criticisms of the methodology of studies where the results fit your political preferences, and nothing to say about your invalid extrapolation from studies to justify your political preferences, but get so hot and bothered when I point out your motivated reasoning.

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  91. I just wanted to add another reference because it places the current panic in context. Ioannidis is once again one of the authors. The evidence is really getting pretty conclusive that alarmism was always unjustified and that the initial science was terrible. Perhaps the resident alarmists will admit error, but I doubt it.

    "Overall, this further strengthens the notion that for healthy non-elderly people [< 65 years of age], the risk of dying from COVID-19 this season has been infinitesimally small. This is in stark contrast with many news stories that focus on the demise of young people and the panic and horror that these widely reverberated stories are causing."

    https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.05.20054361v1.full.pdf

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  92. "This is in stark contrast with many news stories that focus on the demise of young people and the panic and horror that these widely reverberated stories are causing."

    Except for the fact that we were always warned about the disproportionate effects on the elderly and that most MSM reports have dealt with old folks homes.

    Very bad rhetoric a strawperson and cherry picking to boot coming from Dr. Bad Combover, et. al., or as Trumpkin, aka Small Hands, would say a 'so called' bigly yuge nothingburger, aka whataboutism.

    Could you please raise your game above the prenatal level? I seriously don't think so. /:

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  93. David Young

    ""there is no evidence I could see that mortality is above the expected numbers over the last few weeks."

    Is shown to be wrong, refuses to admit...
    Later

    "Perhaps the resident alarmists will admit error, but I doubt it."

    Is this deliberate irony?

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  94. Nathan, You are just fabricating this. What I said was completely accurate at the time. A little honesty would cause you to be taken more seriously.

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  95. Let's see here Sargent calls very imminent experts (with many collaborators) names ... because he is so much more of an expert. :-) Then he says absolutely nothing that is relevant and offers no evidence. And why is this not detracting from the information content here? Childish.

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  96. There are now 14 known COVID-19 deaths from the Diamond Princess. Ring ... ring ... ring ... calling Nic Lewis for an 2020-04-15 update. One death occurred in AU on 2020-03-01 and 13 were in JP. The JHU time series fully supports the 14 COVID-19 deaths.

    I'll have some interesting graphs for SE come close-of-business of Friday. And the US, especially the US, also COB Friday.

    BTW, someone here needs their diapers changed, like a month ago even. :)

    Current 31-day rolling death toll now stands at 164,010 lost souls. 200K per 31-day rolling average is not out of the question (~2.4M on a per annum basis).

    But ... Don't Panic! So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

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  97. Sargent, You have nothing that furthers the science or this discussion. Ioannidis accounted for future deaths by doubling his IFR final number. Nic's numbers need to be multiplied by 1.4.
    All this is so stupid and irrelevant because by now there is tons of evidence that IFR's are vastly overstated and infections understated (by orders of magnitude) in official statistics. Children focus on largely irrelevant issues to tar and feather their favorite witches. Adults look for the best scientists and don't panic.

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  98. OK David

    "Nathan, You are just fabricating this. What I said was completely accurate at the time. A little honesty would cause you to be taken more seriously."

    Yep you are either just trolling or are a bot.

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  99. "Adults look for the best scientists and don't panic."

    Meanwhile, 247 mountains of scientific evidence to the contrary, nonstop every day, right wingnut stooge Small Hands sycophant spews shit wherever they go.

    People, wherever you are, whatever you are doing, please don't listen to a LIAR that goes by the screen name of David Young!

    Yup, diaper chance necessary. IMHO

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  100. I'm going to terminate my responses here to the climate NCO of concensus enforcement. Content free ad hominem rants are a waste of everyone's time. It's obvious to anyone reading this post who has presented voluminous scientific facts and data and who is unable to present even a single fact or piece of data.

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  101. People, we are all, right now, in the very middle of a global health crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    David Young wants you all to DIE by NOT listening to the world's health experts and organizations on best practices during this global pandemic crisis.

    Please listen to the real experts, stay home and stay safe.

    PS: I may not be around much longer due to COVID-19.

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  102. I’m sorry to Hear you are ill. I suspected that was the case based on the emotional hatred expressed in your comments. Hope you recover.

    By all means trust the best scientists. WHO are partly to blame for your illness. They lied about human to human spread allowing the virus to spread all over the world. WHO is led by an Ethiopian communist who was sponsored for the job by the Chinese communist party.

    Ioannidis is really top notch and quite humble. He is apolitical also. It’s a little disconcerting to see him slandered by angry old men.

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  103. EuroMOMO week 16 is out (new website format, can't find PDF's anymore) ...
    https://www.euromomo.eu/bulletins/2020-16/
    "Note on interpretation of data: The number of deaths shown for the three most recent weeks should be interpreted with caution, as adjustments for delayed registrations may be imprecise. Furthermore, results of pooled analyses may vary depending on countries included in the weekly analyses. Pooled analyses are adjusted for variation between the included countries and for differences in the local delay in reporting."

    Duly Noted! What that disclaimer means is that their current numbers can only go UP (unless spread out over more weeks then currently shown)! Unless you believe in Zombies and the Undead! Which would appear to be the position of only one individual here named David Young. :(

    https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
    https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/#z-scores-by-country
    https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/#map-of-z-scores

    SE just missed being DEEP BLUE (for Week 15, Week 16 is currently at Low Excess). Same warning below last 3-weeks of maps, "Must be interpreted with caution as adjustments for delayed registrations may be imprecise." So areas under those curves can only go UP!

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  104. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  105. 2nd try ...

    Is The Bay Area’s ‘Unprecedented’ Lockdown The First Of Many?
    https://khn.org/news/is-the-bay-areas-unprecedented-lockdown-the-first-of-many/

    "Life came to a grinding halt for millions of San Francisco Bay Area residents as the most stringent isolation orders in the country took effect Tuesday.

    To stem the spread of the new coronavirus, roughly 7 million people in seven counties were instructed to “shelter in place” and were prohibited from leaving their homes except for “essential” activities such as purchasing food, medicine and other necessities. Most businesses closed, with the exception of grocery stores, pharmacies, restaurants (for takeout and delivery only), hospitals, gas stations, banks and a handful of others.
    .
    .
    .
    The Bay Area orders, which affect San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Marin, Alameda, Contra Costa and Santa Cruz counties, have sown confusion, in part because cities, counties and states across the country are creating different, sometimes conflicting rules for their residents. Just one day before the shelter-in-place orders were announced, Gov. Gavin Newsom called on all California residents 65 and older to stay home, then expanded his orders after the Bay Area news broke.

    On Tuesday, Sonoma, San Benito and Monterey counties joined the Bay Area counties in ordering their residents to stay at home."

    That seven county lockdown was issued on March 16, 2020 and in force starting the very next day ... 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 = 18 days later then the issuance of said lockdown order.

    As to the study itself, noone have any idea of what it might mean given the changing conditions on the ground during that timeframe. The study itself is bog dead boring and can make no claims as to herd immunity or lockdowns, as those haven't either happened yet (~70% of population for herd immunity to begin to have any real effects) or have been allowed to run unimpeded anywhere in the world to date (everyone has had lockdowns either voluntary or involuntary). In other words a GIGO study.

    Everyone already knows the confirmed numbers are low, we've known this from the very beginning, it is a very trivial observation and some (at least I) consider it a form of non sequitur, as in d'oh no sher shitlock!

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  106. BTW, Serologic test results are in for Miami-Dade county. For Josh the teenager's benefit they tried to do a random sample. Implied IFR is 0.13-0.23%. That translates to 390K to 690K mortality in the US if we did nothing. Ferguson says that 2/3 of these would die within a year normally. So excess mortality os 130K-230K. "Normal" mortality i the US is about 2.9 million per annum. Even doubling these numbers for additional future deaths in Miami-Dade we get 10% to 20% excess mortality. Still a large number but not worth causing the worst depression in history.

    BTW, for the Ioannidis bashing NCO and other science bashers here, it is looking like Ioannidis was right in early March.

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  107. Just to take a victory lap for the science challenged here, serologic test results are in for Miami Dade. They tried to do a random sample. Implied IFR is 0.13% to 0.23%. That translates into 290K to 690K deaths in the US assuming virtually everyone is infected. According to Ferguson from Imperial, 2/3 of those would die within a year form their underlying serious illnesses. That's 130K to 230K excess mortality over a year. "Normal" mortality in the US is roughly 2.8 - 2.9 million per annum. Let's multiply by 2 to account for future deaths in Miami Dade from past infections. That gets us to 10% - 20% excess mortality. Not a small number but no where near the leading causes of death, cancer and heart disease. Not worth causing the worst depression in history.

    For the climate NCO, evidence is now strong that Ioannidis was right in early March and indeed vastly closer than virtually any other scientist. You should apologize to him for your slander.

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  108. David Young opines: Content free ad hominem rants are a waste of everyone's time.

    Once again Mr. Young plays the victim card, but exposes his pseudo-skepticism by using an incorrect definition of ad hominem. It would be the argumentum ad hominem to dismiss his ideas just because they're his, rather than on their merits. That's not what's happening on this thread: indeed, his ideas have long since been examined and found meritless, yet here he is rebunking them again. That naturally raises questions about his motivation. His lengthy Internet comment history provides abundant evidence that he is motivated by political ideology. Even if our theories about why he relentlessly trolls climate-science blogs with specious nonsense are incorrect, however, our increasingly peevish responses aren't ad hominem. It's simply that we're tired of repeating the same verified facts and ineluctable logic, to no avail.

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  109. For the sake of posterity, some of David Young's false claims (made unintentionally or intentionally) should be cleared up:

    Re:
    "Just to take a victory lap for the science challenged here, serologic test results are in for Miami Dade. They tried to do a random sample. Implied IFR is 0.13% to 0.23%."

    No, this really isn't going to be "a victory lap", David.

    The Miami-Dade results were inaccurate, and its authors later needed to reduce their seroprevalence estimate, thereby increasing any IFR inferred from their results. Moreover, seroprevalence-based IFR tended to be >= 0.5% and fairly close to 1% (sometimes going over 1% and sometimes going under), contrary to what David and Ioannidis said:
    https://archive.is/u8LVb#selection-21529.0-21633.52

    Re:
    "According to Ferguson from Imperial, 2/3 of those would die within a year form their underlying serious illnesses."

    You distorted what Ferguson said. He instead stated he didn't know of the number, and guessed that it could be as high as 2/3:
    https://archive.is/RvDuP#selection-20611.0-20623.121

    Subsequent research showed that COVID-19 substantially increases mortality, even among middle-aged people:
    https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v3

    Re:
    "Not a small number but no where near the leading causes of death, cancer and heart disease."

    As pointed out by the epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz (who's co-authored research on the IFR of SARS-CoV-2), COVID-19 became roughly the third leading cause of death in the US, following heart disease and cancer, but larger than accidents:
    https://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1288353041515556865

    Re:
    "For the climate NCO, evidence is now strong that Ioannidis was right in early March and indeed vastly closer than virtually any other scientist."

    Actually, Ioannidis was shown to be persistently wrong on this topic. For example, he predicted less than 40,000 US COVID-19 deaths. We're at about 177,000 now and still increasing (that 177,000 is an under-estimate, if one looks at excess deaths):
    http://archive.is/dT97F#selection-2211.202-2219.279

    His work on IFR has been repeatedly criticized for using non-representative samples that conveniently skew IFR lower (ex: blood donors), being non-systematic, etc. He seemingly uses motivate reasoning to reach his pre-determined conclusion of a low IFR and lower risk from COVID-19, even when his claims conflict with the evidence. He's thus basically shredded his reputation among many informed and competent experts.

    Examples of criticisms of Ioannidis' COVID-19 claims, including a couple from me:
    https://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1283232023402868737
    https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/931538
    https://twitter.com/AVG_Joseph96/status/1262820843802984449
    https://hildabastian.net/index.php/91
    https://academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiaa429/5872489
    https://twitter.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/1272361132527955968
    https://twitter.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/1271093944605122561

    And as I've explained to you before, David, Ioannidis does not agree with you on climate science. So your reference to "the climate NCO" is mis-placed:

    "Many fields lack the high reproducibility standards that are already used in fields such as air pollution and climate change. [...] It is a scandal that the response of governments to climate change and pollution has not been more decisive."
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5933781/

    Finally, the parallel to climate science actually goes against you: you incorrectly downplay human-caused climate change in order to avoid policies you dislike, just as you incorrectly downplated COVID-19 in order to avoid policies you dislike (like lockdowns). So you're basically engaged in motivated reasoning and appeal to consequences.

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