[HN Gopher] Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't ma...
___________________________________________________________________
Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy
Author : sieste
Score : 180 points
Date : 2023-10-01 18:04 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.natesilver.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.natesilver.net)
| da39a3ee wrote:
| There should be scatter plots or other data visualizations in a
| post like this.
| wilg wrote:
| I'm excited to find out in 20 years what the deal was with Covid
| once everybody has forgotten all their political opinions.
| Aachen wrote:
| To me on an individual level, it feels like there isn't much
| unclear about covid if you know how to filter unlikely
| conspiracy theories and such. In what way do you see politics
| colouring the generally established information?
| iwonthecase wrote:
| Good luck, there's still academics debating about the 1977
| "Russian" flu [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu
| Aachen wrote:
| > The outbreak in northern China started in May 1977
|
| Coincidence? Do they have a climate conducive to these sorts
| of viruses combined with a large enough population to make it
| likely they get infected first or is this my selection bias
| in noticing when it says "started in China" versus any other
| country?
| pvg wrote:
| It would be odd vs any other country if any other country
| contained a quarter of the world population in 1977.
| philjohn wrote:
| Large population that lives very close to natural
| reservoirs for viruses.
|
| Spillover is a great book to read about zoonotic diseases.
| pierat wrote:
| [flagged]
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Republicans were frothing at the mouth over hydroxcloroquine
| or whatever that horse dewormer was.
|
| No, they weren't. The foaming was from the other side of the
| aisle, in a similar vein to your post. Hydroxychloroquine was
| investigated quite a bit[0], found wanting, and dropped.
|
| The horse dewormer story you're confusing it with; I think this
| was a Joe Rogan thing, where his doctor prescribed him the
| human form of Ivermectin, and he mentioned it, and the left-
| leaning media (even though, as usual, Joe Rogan is a left-
| leaning guy on almost every issue) sent the story round the
| world that he was taking horse dewormer, before the truth could
| get its boots on.
|
| As for masks - who knows? The largest metastudy in existence on
| the subject seems rather less sure than you about them[1].
| Maybe that metastudy is flawed, but it seems worth considering
| at least.
|
| > My dark thoughts: hmm, let as many republicans die from
| COVID. Maybe we can do better with govt with them killing
| themselves.
|
| I'm not sure what to say about this, except I hope you can
| stand down a little from your aggressive, hyper-partisan
| emotionalism. You cannot contribute anything if you're just
| regurgitating memorised emotional responses others have
| installed in you.
|
| [0] e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RECOVERY_Trial
|
| [1] https://www.cochrane.org/news/featured-review-physical-
| inter...
| hwillis wrote:
| > The foaming was from the other side of the aisle, in a
| similar vein to your post.
|
| That's a WILD thing to say. People are _still_ going crazy
| over ivermectin, an senators are still posting conspiracy
| theories about it:
| https://twitter.com/SenRonJohnson/status/1690009000857710592
|
| > The largest metastudy in existence on the subject seems
| rather less sure than you about them[1]. Maybe that metastudy
| is flawed
|
| From Cochrane themselves:
| https://www.cochrane.org/news/statement-physical-
| interventio...
|
| > For example, in the most heavily-weighted trial of
| interventions to promote community mask wearing, 42.3% of
| people in the intervention arm wore masks compared to 13.3%
| of those in the control arm.
|
| And the study _still_ found that they work, just not the 50%
| reduction they considered statistically significant. Small
| wonder given the above.
|
| > Joe Rogan is a left-leaning guy on almost every issue
|
| hilarious
| fabian2k wrote:
| There absolutely was an enormous amount of misinformation
| around Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. And as far as it
| was picked up politically, that was almost exclusively by
| Republicans.
|
| And Hydroxychloroquine was certainly dropped much later than
| it should have. It was added to studies in the control branch
| because people were expecting it to be the standard of care.
| There never was justification for that, but it was
| unreasonably hyped from the start.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Did you read the article? Death rates diverged only after
| vaccines became available. Which implies that vaccines work,
| and (many) Republicans were wrong to reject them, but pretty
| much all non-vaccine-related pandemic restrictions (pushed
| mostly by Democrats) were useless, and Republicans were right
| to reject them. Neither tribe was 100% right or wrong!
| mcguire wrote:
| Ok, so now I want to see the details of his first claim, " _Until
| vaccines became available, there was little difference in COVID
| death rates between blue states and red states._ "
| flashback2199 wrote:
| A regression analysis without one single graph _rolls eyes_
| Izkata wrote:
| For the downvoters, we even have a name for this: Anscombe's
| quartet.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet
|
| Always visualize your data.
| Amorymeltzer wrote:
| For those curious (as I was) what he's using, it looks like
| Stata:
| https://www.reed.edu/psychology/stata/analyses/parametric/Re...
| Aachen wrote:
| Was looking for a download, but there's precious little about
| that on the website. The closest I got were these remarks:
|
| > On all Reed lab computers, Stata is located in the
| Applications folder.
|
| > Stata can be found in the Applications folder of any school
| machine. On a PC, it is most likely located in Program Files.
|
| Does that imply it's neither open source nor even commercially
| available? Seems rather odd, surely it is either of those two
| mb7733 wrote:
| That isn't the home page for Stata, that is a page put up by
| Reed about where to find Stata on their computers. Go to
| stata.com
| ikjasdlk2234 wrote:
| Stata is fairly ubiquitous in statistical circles, especially
| those working in econometrics. While I preferred using Stata
| in academia, it is expensive and R is similar, just not as
| easy to use.
| Amorymeltzer wrote:
| As noted in other replies, this isn't the Stata homepage, but
| rather an academic page about the use of the program.
| Apologies for the confusion, I chose it because it has images
| that neatly match what Silver shows.
| rcbdev wrote:
| I don't know about other countries but in Austria nurses were
| highly incentivized to report deaths immediately following a
| vaccination or weeks after an infection has passed as a covid
| death in the sense of national statistics.
|
| I would not be surprised if this "nudging" of on the ground
| reports over the course of the pandemic has rendered the data
| around covid deaths unreliable.
| notjoemama wrote:
| "Until vaccines became available, there was little difference in
| COVID death rates between blue states and red states. After
| vaccines became available, there were clear differences, with red
| states having higher death rates, almost certainly as a result of
| lower vaccine uptake among Republicans."
|
| These are the claims he makes and arguably the data shows these
| to be true. The rest looks like whining where he objects to
| failures like "ice cream causes drowning" then eventually comes
| around to show the most applicable categorical statement is
| "states with higher vaccination rates had lower death rates.
| Sure. There's a political divide that causes differences in
| behavior and outcomes. I don't know. I spent the time reading but
| I can't find any value in that post. Seems like venting to me.
| [deleted]
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| I have to nitpick Nate Silver on a tangential point here
| (emphasis mine)
|
| > The more complications you introduce into an analysis, the more
| confounding variables that you attempt to control for, the more
| you expand researcher degrees of freedom -- in other words,
| decision points by the analyst about how to run the numbers.
|
| > _I don't think it's quite right to say these decisions are
| arbitrary_. Ideally they'll reflect a statistician's judgment,
| experience and familiarity with the subject matter.
|
| But, according to the sentence immediately following the one I
| highlighted, it absolutely _is_ quite right to say those
| decisions are arbitrary!
|
| They are _arbitrary_ inasmuch as they are _arbitrated_ by the
| statistician 's educated judgement and experience. That these
| decisions are _arbitrary_ does not intrinsically strip away their
| value. Rather, it subordinates their value to the presumed
| ability of their arbiter -- in this case the statistician, whom
| we presuppose is well trained and capable.
|
| I feel that in common parlance the word "arbitrary" is undergoing
| the opposite process of the term "literally". Where one word is
| losing its meaning by arbitrarily narrowing it down too much, the
| other is literally losing its meaning by making it too broad. It
| figuratively grinds my gears.
| burkaman wrote:
| I don't think the word "arbitrary" is currently undergoing any
| change, it hasn't been used the way you use it in like 400+
| years.
| diogenes4 wrote:
| Wait, so what does arbitrary mean to you if not "the result
| of a judgement or choice"? Is it just a synonym for random to
| you?
| staticfloat wrote:
| Yes, that's what it means for me. I've never heard someone
| use the word arbitrary to mean anything other than "a
| random choice", or even "a poorly thought-out choice".
|
| My professors in grad school explicitly discouraged use of
| that word anywhere in technical writing, as they felt it
| would immediately give the reader the impression that the
| actions taken in the research were not thought through.
| Example: "This new technique enables arbitrary
| manipulations of data" should instead be replaced by
| something like "this technique enables a wide range of
| manipulations of data".
| diogenes4 wrote:
| > I've never heard someone use the word arbitrary to mean
| anything other than "a random choice", or even "a poorly
| thought-out choice".
|
| That's shocking, I use it to mean "the result of a
| judgement or decision" about a dozen times a day, such as
| "it's not random, it's arbitrary". I had no clue people
| had an alternative definition for it. I'm even more
| surprised that otherwise ostensibly-educated people have
| no clue about the traditional definition.
| burkaman wrote:
| Can you find any recent dictionary with your definition,
| or modern printed example of the word used in this way?
|
| Etymonline cites a 1640s dictionary with the present-day
| definition: https://www.etymonline.com/word/arbitrary
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Arbitrary can be used in a legal sense to mean "up to a
| judge's discretion". But this is a term of art, not an
| obscure use of the word. Maybe you are responding to a
| lawyer.
| diogenes4 wrote:
| > Can you find any recent dictionary with your
| definition, or modern printed example of the word used in
| this way?
|
| sure, https://www.wordnik.com/words/arbitrary: "Based on
| or subject to individual judgment or preference." is the
| second definition. You clearly didn't even bother
| googling.
| [deleted]
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I'm not convinced by the argument in your second
| paragraph. It actually makes it seem like arbitrary means
| exactly "based on judgment or choice" if it can be
| replaced so easily with "a wide range of". How was the
| "wide range" chosen, if not arbitrarily?
| umanwizard wrote:
| For me, _arbitrary_ means something like "not constrained
| by rules; able to be chosen at will". An arbitrary choice
| doesn't have to be "random" in the strict sense of being
| chosen by nondeterminstic chance, although people often use
| "random" to mean something similar to "arbitrary" in
| colloquial speech.
|
| It can have good or bad connotations: "Emacs's
| configurability means you can extend it in arbitrary ways"
| is good; "Russia is known for arbitrary detention of
| political dissidents" is bad.
| yashap wrote:
| The first dictionary result when Googling says:
|
| > arbitrary (adjective)
|
| > based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any
| reason or system.
|
| > ex: "his mealtimes were entirely arbitrary"
|
| Natural language is imprecise, so there are many
| definitions, but that fits with how I interpret the word. I
| wouldn't think of something like "the well researched
| opinion of an expert", which certainly is the result of a
| judgement, as being "arbitrary".
| scubbo wrote:
| Seconding, here, that I've almost-always heard
| arbitrary/arbitrarily to mean (slightly differently than
| the sibling commenter) "able to be chosen freely, without
| any loss of generality"; though, yes, I have also heard
| your usage of "by personal judgement, disregarding
| established rules or convention".
| todd8 wrote:
| Here are a few observations.
|
| From the CDC [1], 2020 total covid deaths by state: West Virginia
| 1318, Florida 21546, Maine 344, Vermont 134.
|
| The corresponding April 2020 census populations [2] for these
| four states are: West Virginia 1793716, Florida 21538187, Maine
| 1362359, Vermont 643077.
|
| Thus, before the vaccines for covid were available the deaths per
| 100,000 persons for these four states are: West Virginia 73,
| Florida 100, Vermont 21, Maine 25.
|
| Someone should probably check my math, but it looks like voting
| for Trump causes over three times as many deaths even before
| vaccinations were available. In other words, the analysis in the
| original article may be affected by unaccounted for confounding
| factors. For example, COPD is a significant medical risk factor
| for serious covid complications according to the CDC. COPD
| affects over 13.6% of the population of West Virginia (the worst
| rate in the country) but affects only 5.9% of the population of
| Vermont [3].
|
| Personally, I chose to get vaccinated and boosted at the earliest
| possible dates. I also caught covid during the initial big wave
| of omicron cases in my state.
|
| [1] https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/99750
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
|
| [3] https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/copd-
| tr...
| phkahler wrote:
| >> This wasn't intended as any sort of super-duper hot take, and
| I pared the post down to avoid having too much of an attack
| surface.
|
| It is intended to shame Republicans. What other possible reason
| is there to tie death rates to political party? So yes it was a
| hot take. You planted a lightning rod. Making something like
| vaccination a political issue does everyone a disservice.
| RIMR wrote:
| Yeah, let's not make this political. /s
| mjmsmith wrote:
| It certainly did a disservice to the people who died because
| their politics convinced them that the vaccine was worse than
| the disease.
| autoexec wrote:
| The idea that nobody should ever point that fact out seems
| crazy to me. We should be using this as an example when
| teaching critical thinking skills to kids in schools so that
| they know not to let political ideology and lies manipulate
| them into the grave.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It was a hard thing to broach at the time without people frothing
| at the mouth about how I must be anti vaccine or something:
|
| Has there been any attempt to calculate the cost-benefit of all
| the various measures and how extreme we should go with them?
|
| I'm guessing it's hard to quantify and compare. A lot of things
| like general depression, isolation, kids missing half a year of
| school, etc. can't really be evaluated against people dying. And
| on its surface it seems obvious: uh, people dying is much worse
| than any of those things.
|
| But if I said that everything we did was to save one life, people
| probably would generally agree it wasn't worth it (obviously so:
| people don't seem too interested in preventing all kinds of
| deaths at all costs). What about ten lives? One thousand? Ten
| thousand? There's some subjective level where it starts to feel
| obvious to more and more of us, until a majority of us agree.
|
| But do we have any general sense what that number is? How do we
| decide how much to care? It might seem ghoulish to decide how
| many dollars is worth a life, but we do it every day.
|
| With the data we have now, I imagine we can somewhat quantify
| this given enough sample jurisdictions with different rules?
| "Masking saves x lives per 1000." "Closing schools saves y lives
| per 1000" etc. And perhaps then we're able to decide "is x lives
| worth the qualitative harm done?" Probably. "What about y?" Maybe
| not.
| fhcuvuvuc wrote:
| It doesn't matter. You can't have these conversations without
| being censored anymore.
|
| My works HR department got sick of having people use "logic"
| and "evidence" to argue against their policies. After kicking a
| few people out the door and generally saying you can't talk
| about this at work anymore, nobody talks about it.
| fwungy wrote:
| I really don't trust any of the numbers on covid. A vaccine for a
| dangerous illness that can affect billions of people is a very
| big payday. There's lots of money to spread around to
| politicians, corrupt scientists, and corrupt media.
|
| I'd like to see a real scientific debate with adversarial inquiry
| so we could know if numbers are being fudged and which ones they
| are.
|
| I trust science, but not greed driven capitalists corporations.
| Having a measure of distrust for pharmaceutical companies given
| their historical record is prudent.
| sarchertech wrote:
| The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have been approved by the
| national health agencies of dozens of countries, and China has
| approved a very similar home grown mRNA Covid vaccine.
|
| No amount of money in the world could pay to do that and keep
| it secret.
| Izkata wrote:
| I don't know about the order/process elsewhere, by the time
| they were up for the approval process in the US there really
| wasn't another option simply because of the outcry after so
| many people had taken it, if it wasn't approved.
| sarchertech wrote:
| As a counterpoint to that, 20 million people took the
| Johnson and Johnson vaccine under the emergency
| authorization, but the FDA didn't approve it.
|
| Also buying the emergency approval process in the first
| place would have required an epically massive conspiracy.
| fwungy wrote:
| Corrupt government officials get a commission on big
| contracts. It happens all the time. Why do you think people
| spend so much campaigning for low paying political offices?
| They can be quite lucrative investments. There are NDAs and
| other threats to shutdown whistleblowers.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Think about how many people were involved in the approvals
| across the entire globe? Most of the approvals processes
| were conducted in public by career scientists and doctors.
| There were tens of thousands of people involved that would
| have to look the other way.
|
| Any company that's capable of pulling off a global
| operation like that with absolutely zero exposure, is
| already running the world and doesn't need to bother with
| piddly $40 billion scams.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| What does adversarial inquiry look like?
| fwungy wrote:
| A debate in real time between qualified adversaries. Treat
| these things like you're making a major investment. Make both
| sides answer hard questions from each other.
|
| For example have RFK and Fauci put together teams of MDs and
| PhDs to debate in a live event.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| "live" debate selects far less for truth and far more for
| "skill at debating" which is nearly orthogonal to being
| correct.
|
| That is not to say that live debate has no place, or is
| worthless. I'm just not sure I'd come even close to
| agreeing that it's the ideal way to come to the truth.
| danny_codes wrote:
| Occam's Razer man. Covid is super infectious, so it infected
| everyone. This is not that complicated.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| I think the funny thing is that Nate can be a flippant twit on
| Twitter but has totally fallen for it in critiques of him.
| Essentially this article is "a bunch of people baselessly
| speculated about an assertion I made, so I'm going to spend lots
| of time proving something they don't care about"
| onthecanposting wrote:
| Typical narcissist. I'll always think of Nate Silver as the
| bedraggled man with a mid-range stare on election night 2016.
| Silver's utility is limited to knowing what the establishment
| talking points are.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| Considering the incredibly close vote margins that carried
| 2016, Nate had one of the most accurate models of
| interpreting poll data available.
| galkk wrote:
| Or he got lucky, as next time he wasn't even close in his
| predictions
| ramblenode wrote:
| What should he have done differently to improve his analysis?
| MauranKilom wrote:
| As a bystander this seems accurate, but at the end of the
| article Nate himself states that he has little hope that it
| will convince people on Twitter/X. It's more about credibility
| to his own readership, I suppose.
| onthecanposting wrote:
| I think he's writing to convince himself more than his
| readers, if he has any.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| Look him up, he has readers.
| abirch wrote:
| Getting in an argument (vs disagreement) in real life is
| worthless. Getting into an argument on the Internet has even
| less value.
|
| Personally I think this was an easy article for him to write
| because he already had the data and he wants more subscribers
| (please take this take as neutral opinion and not a dis to
| Silver)
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| It's worthless if your goal is to influence your direct
| opposition. It's not worthless if your goal is to influence
| the curious on-lookers.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Yep, always good to keep in mind that the audience for
| public discussion is not the small number of people
| you're discussing with, but the large number of people
| reading the discussion.
| stu2b50 wrote:
| That depends on what the goal is. It's worthless if you're
| trying to convince the other side. But in many cases,
| you're actually trying to convince the _audience_ , and
| certainly for something like a blogpost here, I'd argue
| that it is not only the case, but successful, since at
| minimum we know it got posted to hackernews and has
| traction.
| brianpan wrote:
| "Bunch of people" doesn't seem like a good characterization
| considering he's at least partially responding to Martin
| Kulldorff, a professor of medicine and biostatistician at
| Harvard and a co-author of the GBD.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| This is all fine, but the focus on deaths is sort of missing the
| larger societal problem. The COVID devastation is also about long
| COVID, and even people who had COVID but either recovered "fully"
| or never displayed symptoms. None of this is over, and we are so,
| so fucked.
|
| edit: Which is to say: The Great Barrington Declaration was wrong
| directionally as well. We really needed to optimize to eliminate
| COVID as much as possible to have a hope of a return to
| normality. Death is not the only issue with COVID. Too fucking
| late now, but anyone who supported that is a quack and should
| have been stripped of their license.
| [deleted]
| cm2012 wrote:
| Good news then that long covid is probably not a real issue
| jsnell wrote:
| Eliminating Covid stopped being an option roughly around
| January 2020. The partial elimination you seem to be implying
| with "as much as possible" was never an option. It was always
| all or nothing.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Even NZ gave up on our island defence once Omicron got in.
| We'd managed to stave off widespread Delta, but Omicron was
| far more transmissible, but also, far less lethal, and its
| arrival and spread came just after we started vaccinating.
|
| So by then the cost/benefit analysis made it clear that
| reopening, while bringing more sickness, would ultimately
| cost less than not.
|
| The isolation caused some havoc in our economy that we're
| still recovering from, but large amounts of excess deaths
| brings its own economic impacts that would likely have been
| far worse.
| dehrmann wrote:
| and China tried really, _really_ hard to eliminate it over
| the next 3 years. They couldn 't.
| noirbot wrote:
| I haven't read the specifics of the GBD, but isn't some of the
| "it was clearly quackery" confounded by:
|
| 1. In 2020 especially, and even now, the specifics of long
| covid and other side effects, as compared to other downsides of
| lockdowns on mental health/delayed treatments are hard to
| predict? We don't have the counterfactual of what would have
| been the 3-5-10 year implications of a multi-year lockdown.
|
| 2. Does the general directionality of that change in a world
| where it's obvious that global lockdown/elimination of covid
| wasn't feasible because there isn't some global government to
| impose it? As long as a large enough population wasn't going
| along with the elimination strategy, it makes it less viable
| and more costly for everyone else. If the "2 week lockdown and
| it all goes away" had happened, then absolutely that would have
| been right. If all of, say, Europe doesn't lock down and
| everywhere else _does_ , then how long of a lockdown do you
| need in order to have it do anything, and at that length, what
| other major problems emerge?
|
| At least personally, the point I somewhat gave up on
| elimination was when the first variants started emerging from
| South Africa and Europe. It seems like that's generally borne
| out too - I'd be curious what the infection/long covid rates in
| the more successfully locked down countries like New Zealand or
| Japan are at this point.
| munch117 wrote:
| The west did not go for a strategy of elimination through
| lockdown. Rather, the strategy was to delay the spread,
| initially only so that the health care system could keep up,
| and later in the hope that vaccines would arrive in time to
| curb the brunt of it - as they did.
|
| The GBD is easy to find and a short read
| (https://gbdeclaration.org/), it does not refer to any
| elimination strategy - instead it discusses the costs of
| "Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is
| available".
|
| I don't see any quackery in the GBD. (Which is not to say
| that they were right.)
| bbarnett wrote:
| The problem is, even lockdowns weren't lockdowns.
|
| There were endless people who had to work, just to keep
| water, power, food flowing. And those people needed
| transportation.
|
| And past 2 weeks, transportation means parts for vehicles,
| maintenance, gas, oil, and food means transportation and food
| processors and....
|
| It was a good idea at the time, but doomed to fail.
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| Where I come from, "good ideas doomed to fail" are called
| "bad ideas"
| bbarnett wrote:
| I recall clearly, at the time, the first two weeks of
| lockdown. No one, anywhere, had a clue wtf was going on,
| except that some new virus was spreading like wildfire,
| that it spread before symptoms appeared, and it seemed
| like Italy had a crazy high death rate.
|
| Blaming people with the knowledge of hindsight is just
| plain wrong.
|
| Later lockdowns? Now that's a different conversation.
| charrondev wrote:
| Quebecs lockdowns continued for 2 years and were far more
| draconian than the rest of North America.
|
| As far as I understand this was mostly a factor of our
| public hospital systems being absolutely over capacity
| and the government doing whatever it could to keep up.
|
| Needless to say I've since moved away to a region with a
| more functional health care system and that allows
| families to gather together as desired.
| autoexec wrote:
| Yeah, before we had any idea what we were dealing with
| anything but a lockdown would have been madness.
| mikem170 wrote:
| Agreed. There's a lot of animals that can catch and spread
| covid [0]:
|
| > many if not most mammalian ACE-2 receptors are
| susceptible
|
| > the virus has gone from humans to the animals and back
| again to human
|
| > found signs of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in
| significant percentages of six urban wildlife species
|
| > found signs of the pathogen infecting 17 percent of New
| York City sewer rats tested
|
| > Exposure could also occur following interactions with
| pets such as cats and dogs
|
| Lockdowns were never going to be able to eliminate the
| virus.
|
| [0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/how-
| so-ma...
| autoexec wrote:
| I'm not too worried about a random sick deer in the
| middle of some forest infecting a whole bunch of humans.
| The worry with animals is that they could mutate the
| virus into something much more nasty. Especially in
| factory farm settings where animals aren't properly cared
| for and are packed in like sardines while covered in shit
| and open sores, and where workers who are also treated
| terribly could end up getting exposed.
|
| Lockdowns could do a lot to reduce spread and protect
| people from infection in large population centers, but
| certain areas are basically breeding grounds for disease
| and even before covid they were a risk for things like
| antibiotic resistant bacteria. Ignoring them was always
| going to be a problem.
| glenstein wrote:
| >This is all fine, but the focus on deaths is sort of missing
| the larger societal problem. The COVID devastation is also
| about long COVID, and even people who had COVID but either
| recovered "fully" or never displayed symptoms.
|
| And to your point, it is about everyone else who couldn't get
| the care they needed because COVID overwhelmed our
| infrastructure.
| CiteXieAlAlyEtc wrote:
| > The COVID devastation is also about long COVID, and even
| people who had COVID but either recovered "fully" or never
| displayed symptoms. None of this is over, and we are so, so
| fucked
|
| You're right by way of the literature available to evaluate
| this claim. (Even jobs numbers are starting to note that some
| amount of the worker shortage is likely related to long COVID)
| Most of the "oh i got it [a few times] and i'm fine" posts are
| ignoring the long tail risks here.
|
| Unfortunately, it will take 5-20 years for many of the worst
| long tail consequences of mass spread of sars-cov-2 to become
| imminently clear. (Enjoy access to your medical specialists
| while you can! There's not enough slack in the system for
| doubled-or-worse hazard ratios for most serious conditions,
| lol!) Decision makers broadly prioritized public dining over
| prudence. For this choice, we get at least an entire generation
| picking up sars-cov-2, likely yearly, and our reward will be a
| horrifying number of early deaths and disability.
|
| This tragedy is so senseless and so avoidable. Zero COVID was
| and still is the rational strategy; "Let-er-rip" (and the GBD
| by extension) is anything but rational.
|
| Poz rates in NY state have been sitting near 60ish percent,
| don't forget your well fitted respirator, usps is doing another
| round of free test distribution (RATs but better than nothing),
| and good luck out there. solidarity.
| amluto wrote:
| > Zero COVID was and still is the rational strategy
|
| How? The vaccines are mediocre at best and are nowhere near
| good enough to get R < 1 (except maybe in a population where
| most people already had COVID, and that's a big maybe). Masks
| might be effective enough if everyone wears a good one
| correctly, but good luck -- even if you convinced people,
| people like eating indoors. And seeing each other's faces,
| etc. And the antigen tests are not terrible sensitive.
| brazzy wrote:
| >This tragedy is so senseless and so avoidable. Zero COVID
| was and still is the rational strategy
|
| That statement is beyond ridiculous. Zero COVID was a pipe
| dream (as in: flat out impossible to achieve by any
| realistically implementable policy) by the time Omicron
| appeared, which really means: by the time it was spreading in
| Africa and India.
| nradov wrote:
| That is misinformation. The risk of "long COVID" has been
| widely overstated.
|
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjebm-2023-112338
|
| Most any serious viral infection can potentially cause post-
| viral syndrome, but there is nothing particularly dangerous
| about SARS-CoV-2. And there is no realistic possibility of
| eliminating that virus. There is no sterilizing vaccine. It is
| now endemic worldwide through humans and multiple animal
| species. It's time to move on.
|
| The notion of punishing people for exercising their freedom of
| expression is horrifying. That is unacceptable in a modern
| liberal society.
| YeezyMode wrote:
| It isn't misinformation. Here is a study that basically
| rebuts every implication of the study you linked: https://twi
| tter.com/VirusesImmunity/status/17063329657922727...
|
| Another link questioning the process behind the entire study
| itself: https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-
| to-an-ana...
| blueskies89 wrote:
| [flagged]
| lr4444lr wrote:
| You have to stack long COVID against the long term mental
| health and social effects of lockdown, including but not
| limited to the atrocious loss of learning in school children,
| domestic abuse situations that spiraled, and an already
| alarming teen mental health problem that Jonathan Haidt has
| been documenting for about a decade.
|
| Lockdowns did make sense initially, especially during the
| dominance of the Wuhan strain. But some countries like Taiwan
| and SK with experience dealing with respiratory virus pandemics
| opened up way sooner, smartly, and did not suffer tremendously
| for it.
| walnutclosefarm wrote:
| > The COVID devastation is also about long COVID, and even
| people who had COVID but either recovered "fully" or never
| displayed symptoms. None of this is over, and we are so, so
| fucked.
|
| SARS-CoV-2 is certainly with us to stay, so in that sense it's
| not over. But beyond that, I don't see how "we are so, so
| fucked" as you say. Covid is no doubt taking a small nibble out
| of life expectency, and yes there is some long Covid still
| taking its own nibble out of productivity and life satisfaction
| ... but it's not that big a part of the big picture. Covid is
| killing less than half as many people in the US at this point
| as lung cancer, and those deaths are overwhelmingly amongst the
| elderly. I don't want to be overtly callous, but knocking a few
| years of life off people well into retirement is hardly going
| to bring the country to its knees. There are essentially no
| Covid deaths among people under age 18, and among the working
| age population, cases requiring hospitalization or leading to
| long term debilitization are rare.
|
| Those who suffer, of course, suffer. We shouldn't be
| unsupportive of them in their trials. But Covid as a public
| health crisis is largely over.
| gadders wrote:
| You seem to have lived through a different pandemic than the
| rest of the world.
|
| It's hard to say the GBD was wrong when Sweden didn't lock down
| and they weren't exactly seeing bodies pile up in the street.
|
| Covid is now here to stay, ranking somewhere in severity
| between the common cold, flu or pneumonia.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| > Covid is now here to stay, ranking somewhere in severity
| between the common cold, flu or pneumonia.
|
| I know it's ideologically motivated, but it's surprising
| people just bold-faced lie about the impact of COVID, when
| the stats are there for everyone to see. In the US, COVID is
| on track to kill ~200K people this year:
|
| https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker
|
| The cold and flu will not kill anywhere near this number,
| pneumonia is a consequence of respiratory illness, not a
| disease in itself, and before COVID, this would be considered
| an absolutely insane amount of deaths.
| pragmar wrote:
| > COVID is on track to kill ~200K people this year
|
| Where are you seeing this? I'm eyeballing cumulative deaths
| in the linked data tracker, it's about 50k through
| September 23.[1]
|
| [1]: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-
| tracker/#trends_totaldeaths...
| sokoloff wrote:
| Is that tracking deaths _from_ COVID or deaths _with_
| COVID? I have doubts that the numbers are not overstated
| (by how much, I 'm not sure).
|
| Looking at CDC data for excess deaths from Jan through July
| 2023*, excess deaths have averaged around 1.7%. Deaths
| reported as being due to COVID are running at 2.7%.
|
| Annualizing and turning the data back to excess deaths,
| that means of the ~200K people that "COVID is on track to
| kill", only about 53.4K total excess deaths are expected,
| projecting from Jan-Jul, or projecting mid-Jan-Jul, excess
| would be only 31.5K.
|
| Perhaps COVID is _saving_ 146K-169K lives and then killing
| 200K this year?
|
| * This is to avoid the recent data incompleteness. If I
| include more recent data records, my argument becomes
| stronger, not weaker. Setting aside the first two weeks in
| January, the average drops to 1.0% excess deaths overall.
| sieste wrote:
| The death from/with covid distinction is only relevant
| here if there is a systematic difference in over/under
| reporting of covid deaths between red and blue states. If
| it's a constant bias regardless of state, it would not
| change the conclusion of the article. And it could only
| change the conclusion of the article directionally if
| covid deaths in red states are significantly overreported
| compared to blue states.
| sokoloff wrote:
| GP was claiming COVID was on track to kill ~200K in the
| US this year *
|
| If that's the case, it seems reasonable to compare that
| claim to the total excess deaths in the country. Nothing
| to do with red or blue states.
|
| * - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37729830
| FuckButtons wrote:
| The statistics are that Covid is much worse than seasonal flu
| and that's after vaccination. To say otherwise is to ignore
| reality.
| autoexec wrote:
| people have been desperate to paint Covid as no worse than
| the flu from the beginning of the pandemic, and it seems
| like no amount of time or facts will stop them.
| leksak wrote:
| I think the severity of long Covid might be more debilitating
| as it is my understanding that the long-term consequences of
| pneumonia is not as long lasting. I've not known of people
| that have had to change their whole way of life, and possibly
| their career, because of pneumonia or flu but have met a few
| that have had to do so as a consequence of long Covid.
| gadders wrote:
| Apart from having taste or smell affected, I don't know
| anyone with "long COVID".
| kenjackson wrote:
| I know a few people who are impacted by it. But they all,
| if I recall correctly, have confounding factors. For
| example, I know two people with MS where Covid has
| completely wrecked havoc -- and a year or so later are
| still largely devastated.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| There's also the fact that for a lot of people, COVID
| isolation meant a precipitous decline in physical and
| social activity that lasted for _years_.
|
| We know this stuff can fuck you up pretty bad both
| mentally and physically. Depressive symptoms and a steep
| decline in physical fitness is very much the expected
| outcome from that.
| zdragnar wrote:
| My brother has it. Persistently elevated heart rate and
| breathing issues, to the point that walking up a flight
| of stairs would leave him winded when he was suffering
| the worst. I believe he's gotten a bit better since, but
| not fully recovered.
|
| His resting heart rate is up 20bpm, and it can take 10-15
| minutes after exerting himself for it to return to that
| new normal. He's almost certainly at risk for a stroke
| due to whatever caused the change, and it left him more
| susceptible to being sick- he's gotten COVID 3 times
| despite the vaccines, while the rest of his family has
| only had it once or twice, on top of the usual flu and
| colds going around that his kids bring home from school.
|
| Edit: noting the sibling comment, he also had no
| confounding factors, aside from being slightly
| overweight. Even our elderly parents have gotten COVID
| with no lingering symptoms.
| gadders wrote:
| I'm not saying it doesn't exist, I'm saying it's a lot,
| lot rarer than the COVID alarmists seem to think.
|
| People also get post viral fatigue from other virii.
| jonstewart wrote:
| To be clear, you're saying it's a lot, lot rarer than
| Covid alarmists think... because you don't personally
| know anyone with it?
| ggm wrote:
| Yes. That's how anecdata works. If enough people observe
| they don't know anyone either with or post long covid, it
| starts to move significance. I've known two people with
| ME over 50 years and it doesn't alter my sense of their
| personal anguish or its economic and wider health
| consequences.
|
| I have no doubt long covid exists and will need
| significant funding in research and targeted health care.
| It won't need as much as, or return as much as the spend
| on paediatrics or obstetrics, per capita.
| jonstewart wrote:
| I've never known anyone to justify an argument explicitly
| using anecdata unironically. Amazing, no notes.
| gadders wrote:
| It's not the scientific method but if something is very
| common, and I have several hundred friends, relatives and
| work colleagues of various backgrounds and states of
| health then I should have heard of someone experiencing
| it, no?
|
| I've seen no evidence on this thread that proves it's
| super-common so apart from funding my own research
| project, what do you suggest?
| zdragnar wrote:
| Well, of the ten people I know who have gotten COVID, one
| has long COVID. That makes my anecdatum a 10% rate of
| people developing long COVID.
|
| Given the number of people who have been infected, that's
| a very large number of people with potentially permanent
| side effects.
| zackees wrote:
| [dead]
| ahh wrote:
| Psychosomatic illnesses are in fact quite serious, but they
| require psychological treatment, not lockdowns of society.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| The incidence of heart attack and stroke increases
| significantly after COVID infection, so please spare us
| your appeal to "psychosomatic illnesses":
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8321431/
|
| (I should get bonus points for this being a Swedish study
| as well, since every COVID denier loves to wave around
| their flag.)
| gadders wrote:
| "Results: Patients with post-COVID syndrome scored lower
| for emotional stability, equanimity, positive mood, and
| self-control. Extraversion, emotional stability, and
| openness correlated negatively with anxiety and
| depression levels. Conscientiousness correlated
| negatively with anxiety."
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8870488/#:~:
| tex....
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-03-31/sweden-
| cov...
| umanwizard wrote:
| > None of this is over, and we are so, so fucked.
|
| Some fraction of us are fucked, but surely not "we" as a whole.
| The vast majority of people I know have had Covid (many
| multiple times), and the vast majority are now perfectly fine.
|
| > We really needed to optimize to eliminate COVID as much as
| possible
|
| This was already impossible by Feb. 2020 when it was spreading
| like wildfire in China, Iran, and Italy.
|
| > to have a hope of a return to normality.
|
| We have already returned to normality, so reality doesn't back
| up your assertion.
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| > None of this is over, and we are so, so fucked.
|
| I love doom more than the average person, by what I would say
| is a quite significant margin... but I don't see this at all.
|
| I've had covid at least twice, including some awful symptoms a
| month after recovery that had me convinced I had long covid as
| well... a few months later (now years) not so much.
|
| While I do know many people of who have lost loved ones from
| Covid, I don't know anyone, or know anyone who knows anyone who
| has any serious "long-covid" symptoms.
|
| To be clear, I'm not doubting that long-covid exists. But I'm
| very skeptical, based on my own observations, that "we are so,
| so fucked" and _covid_ of all things is the source of that
| "fucking". Personally I think a lot of the post-covid
| strangeness is because, for a variety of other reasons (not the
| least of which is rapidly progressing climate change), people
| are under tremendous stress and at the same time can't quite
| articulate what that stress is, nor find relief from it.
|
| A lot of people (not me) did believe there was going to be a
| return to normal post-covid, and the increasingly obvious
| impossibility of this is causing people to have tremendous
| mental health problems. But long-covid itself being the source
| is something that I just don't see anywhere.
|
| And, as I said, I'm not afraid of being labeled a "doomer", so
| if you have some good sources to read up on, I'm all ears (er,
| eyes).
| mb7733 wrote:
| > A lot of people (not me) did believe there was going to be
| a return to normal post-covid, and the increasingly obvious
| impossibility of this is causing people to have tremendous
| mental health problems
|
| What is not normal in your opinion at this point? Covid still
| exists as another illness that goes around, but from my point
| of view everything else has been back to normal for quite a
| while.
| jrumbut wrote:
| I don't know enough to comment on long Covid, but I think an
| element of it is that for a long time we've denied that
| sometimes illnesses require substantial recovery time.
|
| I remember reading a lot of old stories as a kid where
| someone would get the flu or a generic fever and take
| multiple months to recover. Industrial society made that
| economically infeasible but our biology didn't change.
|
| I don't think it should be surprising to anyone that having a
| massive population of a virus in your lungs and elsewhere has
| long term effects.
| scubbo wrote:
| > I don't know anyone, or know anyone who knows anyone who
| has any serious "long-covid" symptoms.
|
| You are fortunate. I know several who have those symptoms
| (ranging in age from my own - mid-30's - to my parents' -
| early 60's), and have had several friends relate their own
| observations of loved-ones. If Long Covid isn't real, there's
| an astonishingly-coincidental prevalence of fatigue and
| impaired cognition from some other source, which is
| correlated with those who (from my own observations) took
| less precautions regarding Covid and/or who caught it more
| often.
|
| I recognize the irony of responding to your anecdata with my
| own. No, I don't have any hard data to provide - though given
| the partisanship observed in the reporting of COVID _itself_,
| I have somewhat lost faith in the availability of trustworthy
| data about public health.
| Racing0461 wrote:
| [flagged]
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| [flagged]
| postmodest wrote:
| Yeah, we should vote for the other party to punish the--what?
| That's their platform? Oh.
|
| Posts like this, which blame only the Democrats by name, are
| practically agitprop.
| umanwizard wrote:
| The person you're replying to didn't suggest voting for
| Republicans; that's just something you invented because of
| the uniquely American habit of assuming politics is a zero-
| sum game with exactly two players.
|
| I hate the state of our political system so much...
| uoaei wrote:
| The real fuckery is the system-wide insistence that there's
| only two sides to every debate and that the line between
| the two parties defines the terms of the debate.
| cptskippy wrote:
| What has the Republican party done exactly to support OSHA
| protections or worker benefits? Nothing? Oh so perhaps it
| isn't about the party but about how our politicians are
| bought and sold by business interests.
|
| Please stop trying to make something partisan that isn't.
| kingds wrote:
| in what ways have we not already returned to normality?
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| I think we've returned to a new, more callous form of
| reality, where mass injury, illness, and death are
| normalized, and any real concern for public health or
| intervention, including that which was considered entirely
| rational before COVID, is now greeted as impossible or
| insanity.
| [deleted]
| iwonthecase wrote:
| Well flu vaccination rates are down from pre-covid levels,
| I'd guess more antivax sentiment's also impacting other
| common vaccines.
| autoexec wrote:
| This madness is impacting even vaccination rates for rabies
| in pets! https://time.com/5538926/dogs-vaccines-
| antivaxxers/
| cptskippy wrote:
| I think it very much depends on where you live. Rural America
| returned to normal a long time ago. Many cities, like San
| Francisco and Atlanta, have not and are still feeling the
| effects to varying degrees.
| loeg wrote:
| Urban American returned to normal a few months later than
| Rural America, but we're talking like, April 2022. SF is
| still suffering from some dynamics that started during
| COVID but it's not like there are still lockdowns or
| compulsory masking or anything like that.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > we're talking like, April 2022
|
| Masks were mandated on the subway in New York until
| September 2022. I'd consider this to not be "normality".
| umvi wrote:
| > None of this is over, and we are so, so fucked.
|
| In what sense? I'm in a deep red state, and I haven't noticed
| much "devastation" in my community due to COVID. Seems like you
| can work yourself up about anything. Doomscroll enough Type 2
| diabetes articles and you'll convince yourself that COVID is
| the absolute least of USA's public health problems compared to
| the complications resulting from that.
| autoexec wrote:
| Why not both? COVID outcomes tend to be worse for diabetics
| and COVID infection increases the risk of developing diabetes
| as well.
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