COVID-19 Thread

[FVBrewerFan]

So we can't trust science, we can't trust journalism....do you just go off your instincts?

 

I go off all three. Just because I don't trust the media, and increasingly don't trust scientists, doesn't mean I don't read what they have to say.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

So we can't trust science, we can't trust journalism....do you just go off your instincts?

 

He's not completely wrong. A lot of mainstream journalism is trash. I agree with what you are saying, but the distinction on what is "science" and "research" has also been blurred. If you haven't seen the documentary on Evergreen College I strongly encourage watching it. No reason to believe what happens in the film is an isolated event. Basically I'm just saying really nothing can be taken at face value anymore and that includes academia.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

I guess my way of thinking is - who would benefit if no one believed journalists or scientists? Food for thought.

 

Without getting too political, I think we are seeing some of the fallout from years of the dumbing down of America in this current situation.

[sveumrules]

So we can't trust science, we can't trust journalism....do you just go off your instincts?

 

I guess my way of thinking is - who would benefit if no one believed journalists or scientists? Food for thought.

 

I would say that if a hypothetical system were created wherein...A) it was so intentionally difficult to filter through the various sources of information to find out what is "true" or not, that...B) the end result was most people either disengaged completely or immediately sided with whichever source confirmed their pre-existing beliefs, then...C) that would stand to benefit the 1% of the 1% more than anyone else.

 

"We will know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

 

http://truthstreammedia.com/2015/01/13/cia-flashback-well-know-our-disinformation-program-is-complete-when-everything-the-american-public-believes-is-false/

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I guess my way of thinking is - who would benefit if no one believed journalists or scientists? Food for thought.

 

Without getting too political, I think we are seeing some of the fallout from years of the dumbing down of America in this current situation.

 

We're seeing the fallout from the demise of local journalism that nobody really understood the value of in the first place. "Why do I need the Podunk Times when CNN has everything." This is why.

[FVBrewerFan]

I guess my way of thinking is - who would benefit if no one believed journalists or scientists? Food for thought.

 

Without getting too political, I think we are seeing some of the fallout from years of the dumbing down of America in this current situation.

 

Indeed we are. Far too many people just ingest bits and pieces of what they see on Facebook, Yahoo news, whatever and don't question it. People don't ask questions anymore, and just go with the common knowledge of the day.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

I guess my way of thinking is - who would benefit if no one believed journalists or scientists? Food for thought.

 

Without getting too political, I think we are seeing some of the fallout from years of the dumbing down of America in this current situation.

 

Indeed we are. Far too many people just ingest bits and pieces of what they see on Facebook, Yahoo news, whatever and don't question it. People don't ask questions anymore, and just go with the common knowledge of the day.

 

It could be the times we live in, too. Naive, sheltered and non-researched opinions were always out there. Social media has given people a conduit to spread those opinions on a much larger scale.

[homer]

Instinct worked well when we were running around forests hunting and gathering. Now? Not so much.

[superfly]

It’s not a plague either. “Coronavirus” family includes flu,

 

This is not true. You might be thinking of the common cold viruses, which are in the same family as COVID and the SARS and MERS coronaviruses. The viruses that cause influenza are also RNA viruses but they are in different categories.

 

Even if that were the case, being the same family or not does not tell you which virus is a greater public health threat.

 

Please stop spreading disinformation.

 

I’m just comparing the two loosely as the CDC is sir. Don’t know what to tell you.

 

 

‭

[PeaveyFury]

It’s not a plague either. “Coronavirus” family includes flu,

 

This is not true. You might be thinking of the common cold viruses, which are in the same family as COVID and the SARS and MERS coronaviruses. The viruses that cause influenza are also RNA viruses but they are in different categories.

 

Even if that were the case, being the same family or not does not tell you which virus is a greater public health threat.

 

Please stop spreading disinformation.

 

I’m just comparing the two loosely as the CDC is sir. Don’t know what to tell you.

 

 

‭

 

If you read the source material linked in that tweet, you'll note that they're ONLY comparing current hospitalization rates.

 

Another key point from the material:

 

Mortality attributed to COVID-19 decreased compared to last week but remains significantly elevated and may increase as additional death certificates are counted.

[homer]

I would like to amend my earlier post...

 

Also, do not believe random twitter summaries of 42-page research documents.

[jerichoholicninja]

You can skip the media these days and go right to the source. Internet has all kinds of research papers available for free. Or you can watch full interviews with experts. Data is everywhere. Be your own media.

 

But which data is actual? You can find data to suit your views, the information is so vast, there is just no way of knowing which data is factual, which data is agenda driven and which data is nonsense.

 

This is so the truth.

 

There's a great interview with Pete Townshend of The Who (well, just about all of his interviews are great) and he was asked about Greta and climate change. He's very much a lefty, progressive, whatever you want to call it and a big proponent of efforts to fight climate change but he says (and I'm paraphrasing) "She says just look at the science. I want to see the science. But I can't just go to google and type in show me the science and get all the same science. You get a wide variety of science. How am I supposed to know what is the right science?"

 

I agree with trust your instinct when confronted with conflicting information but my instinct and your instinct and the guy in the corner's instinct are very likely to all be different. Of course it's easy to just fall back on politics as the reason a person thinks or feels a way about something but that's just a lazy way out and then we end putting everyone into one of two boxes when the majority of people truly would fit into neither. And so we wind up in a country like we are now where anyone who disagrees with me is an idiot who's just parroting the talking points of the political party I don't like.

[FVBrewerFan]

Instinct worked well when we were running around forests hunting and gathering. Now? Not so much.

 

Well, I'll use science then. Here's what a Nobel-winning scientist had to say yesterday:

 

"I think the policy of herd immunity is the right policy. I think Britain was on exactly the right track before they were fed wrong numbers. And they made a huge mistake. I see the standout winners as Germany and Sweden. They didn't practice too much lockdown and they got enough people sick to get some herd immunity," Levitt explained.

 

"There is no doubt in my mind, that when we come to look back on this, the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor."

 

 

Michael Levitt is currently on staff at Stanford. Boiling down his reasoning, the experts who came up with the models made the wrong assumption that the R value would remain constant. It doesn't, it goes down.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Instinct worked well when we were running around forests hunting and gathering. Now? Not so much.

 

Well, I'll use science then. Here's what a Nobel-winning scientist had to say yesterday:

 

"I think the policy of herd immunity is the right policy. I think Britain was on exactly the right track before they were fed wrong numbers. And they made a huge mistake. I see the standout winners as Germany and Sweden. They didn't practice too much lockdown and they got enough people sick to get some herd immunity," Levitt explained.

 

"There is no doubt in my mind, that when we come to look back on this, the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor."

 

 

Michael Levitt is currently on staff at Stanford. Boiling down his reasoning, the experts who came up with the models made the wrong assumption that the R value would remain constant. It doesn't, it goes down.

 

And now we're seeing a refusal to acknowledge the mistake and instead just doubling down on the policy. I can't help but notice that "flatten the curve" and been all but replaced by "abundance of caution." The mistake is fine and I won't fault anyone for the initial month of closures that were the best decision in the absence of information. I do find flaws with what's happened since then.

[homer]

Data is data. We used stats all the time on this board. Guy goes 3 for 4 in game 1 he is hitting .750 on the year. That is not up for debate. It is a fact. Now if you tell me that based on that one game this rookie is better than Hank Aaron well that's where the issue lies. Academics within the same field disagree on how to interpret data all the time. If you think one source is sketchy then try another one. The lazy thing to do is not do anything. Going off instinct is going to just push you into your bubble even more.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Again, I encourage watching of the Evergreen College doc. There were entirely made up "studies," intentionally fabricated and submitted for the sole purpose of confirming the bias of the peer reviewers. I don't believe this part is in the documentary, but it involved the same people. Basically they approved the papers they wanted to. The pranksters received an award for one in which they copied and pasted parts of Mein Kampf. Data is data and I'm agreeing with your point about the lazy thing and that you need to do your own legwork, but there was a time where an academic paper was a gold standard and it isn't anymore.

[homer]

Instinct worked well when we were running around forests hunting and gathering. Now? Not so much.

 

Well, I'll use science then. Here's what a Nobel-winning scientist had to say yesterday:

 

"I think the policy of herd immunity is the right policy. I think Britain was on exactly the right track before they were fed wrong numbers. And they made a huge mistake. I see the standout winners as Germany and Sweden. They didn't practice too much lockdown and they got enough people sick to get some herd immunity," Levitt explained.

 

"There is no doubt in my mind, that when we come to look back on this, the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor."

 

 

Michael Levitt is currently on staff at Stanford. Boiling down his reasoning, the experts who came up with the models made the wrong assumption that the R value would remain constant. It doesn't, it goes down.

 

 

Plenty of scientists disagree with Levitt. He thinks you can get herd immunity at 30% infection rate. I've seen some epidemiologists say you need 60 - 70%. He could absolutely be right but I'm not going to hitch my wagon to one guy even if he won a Nobel. Levitt also believes in global warming. I'm guessing there are plenty of skeptics that still don't believe in it simply because one Nobel winner does.

[igor67]

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.

[owbc]

Again, I encourage watching of the Evergreen College doc. There were entirely made up "studies," intentionally fabricated and submitted for the sole purpose of confirming the bias of the peer reviewers. I don't believe this part is in the documentary, but it involved the same people. Basically they approved the papers they wanted to. The pranksters received an award for one in which they copied and pasted parts of Mein Kampf. Data is data and I'm agreeing with your point about the lazy thing and that you need to do your own legwork, but there was a time where an academic paper was a gold standard and it isn't anymore.

 

As a scientist who writes academic papers, I would never, ever believe anyone who cites a single academic paper as evidence for an argument that goes against common knowledge in the field. I do think provocative and creative ideas are a good thing and often a ton of good science comes out of people debunking bad science.

 

Ultimately people just need to listen to the top experts. If I see a controversial paper in my field my immediate reaction is to ask several top experts in that area what they think about it. Which is exactly what good journalists do. And the best experts will acknowledge where the gaps are in the science and be open about where their personal opinion differs from established ideas.

[igor67]

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.

[FVBrewerFan]

Instinct worked well when we were running around forests hunting and gathering. Now? Not so much.

 

Well, I'll use science then. Here's what a Nobel-winning scientist had to say yesterday:

 

"I think the policy of herd immunity is the right policy. I think Britain was on exactly the right track before they were fed wrong numbers. And they made a huge mistake. I see the standout winners as Germany and Sweden. They didn't practice too much lockdown and they got enough people sick to get some herd immunity," Levitt explained.

 

"There is no doubt in my mind, that when we come to look back on this, the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor."

 

 

Michael Levitt is currently on staff at Stanford. Boiling down his reasoning, the experts who came up with the models made the wrong assumption that the R value would remain constant. It doesn't, it goes down.

 

 

Plenty of scientists disagree with Levitt. He thinks you can get herd immunity at 30% infection rate. I've seen some epidemiologists say you need 60 - 70%. He could absolutely be right but I'm not going to hitch my wagon to one guy even if he won a Nobel. Levitt also believes in global warming. I'm guessing there are plenty of skeptics that still don't believe in it simply because one Nobel winner does.

 

Exactly my point. There are plenty of experts who disagree with Levitt, plenty who disagree with Fauci. Others in between, still others have even different views. So science differs all the time. That's when we use our reason, instinct, call it what you will to form an opinion.

[igor67]

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.

[PeaveyFury]

And much lower than that unless this J Crew employee is a senior citizen holding down this job for extra income or because they love the fashion.

 

If they're a typical Facebook user, their friends list is likely made up of a combination of friends, parents, aunts & uncles, family friends, neighbors, coworkers, possibly grandparents, etc. Many of them may be older, many may have conditions like diabetes, are cancer survivors, etc. Shouldn't be too difficult for anyone to find a sampling of them that is in the 40-60% of people that have one of the risk factors associated with the more serious manifestation of the disease, regardless of your own age.

[LouisEly]

I'm not 100% sure that some "experts" don't have agendas as well.

 

Our media has let our nation down, plain and simple. I see no end in sight.

Oh, some "experts" do have agendas. Andrew Wakefield is one of the worst human beings on the planet, and his fraudulent "research" and an all-to-eager-to-get-the-scoop media has resulted in death and an almost eradicated disease being brought on thousands of people.

 

As someone whose job it is to draw conclusions from data, I can tell you that rarely does one single piece of data ever tell you the whole story. You have to learn to synthesize multiple sources of data and then ask yourself what makes sense.

[reillymcshane]

As someone whose job it is to draw conclusions from data, I can tell you that rarely does one single piece of data ever tell you the whole story. You have to learn to synthesize multiple sources of data and then ask yourself what makes sense.

Unfortunately, many people's multiple sources of data are a post from their crazy aunt on Facebook, an online story put together by a foreign bot, a video by a hyper partisan personality, and a dislike for anything they perceive as being supported by the 'other' side.

 

It is so sad.