Standup Zone Forum
General => Random => Topic started by: Wetstuff on August 17, 2020, 07:01:49 AM
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https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/covid-19-end-of-american-era-wade-davis-1038206/
Jim
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A fascinating article with some mind-boggling statistics. Thanks for sharing.
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Why America Sucks articles are really popular. I'm sure the author will get a lot of praise for it.
He takes a hearty swipe at the usual suspects and in my opinion hits on: "the negative forces tearing apart a society are mitigated or even muted if there are other elements that reinforce social solidarity — religious faith, the strength and comfort of family, the pride of tradition, fidelity to the land, a spirit of place". Those are very powerful words.
Politics have replaced religion as dogma for the American Society. Staring in the 60s but gaining critical mass in the 80s and 90s with the backlash to neoliberalism and the thinking that the Government should have a hand in all things. Now we have the extremity of tribalism between political parties and their power grab. America for its faults was supposed to be a small government by the people - for the people and has morphed into by the politicians - for their friends (donors). Both parties are guilty of this, and the best of us would never enter the body politic, knowing how grotesque it is. Now with politics (and political causes) as religion, the common ground is hard to find.
Back to the comment though. In the same time frame starting in the 60s the family unit, and Judaeo/Christian ideals have been eroded. Despite their faults these are the under girding tenets of Western civilization and specifically the American Constitution. We have moved from reliance on family to reliance on government. Government has a place in nearly everyone's daily life. Thus 'politician' becomes an important job instead of a societal service, Biden has been at it for 47 years! What the fuck!?
Author also states a fact that the average father on average spends 20 minutes a day with his children. This comes dangerously close to stating that there is such a thing as gender roles! And I believe he is right. I'm not a psychologist, but school and mass shootings and the daily death toll in cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and NY statistically have a person in common. His name is Dad.
The degradation of math and science skills by Americans has shocked me recently. As we have become too easily swayed by the emotional argument - throwing the statistical argument out the window.
CV 19 being probably the best example of this. Knee jerk emotional policy setting, is going to cause significant issues short and long term. Even worse, a politician or even bureaucrat makes a policy decision the ability to say "I was wrong, lets go back" is missing. Science is messy, and CV has it so hyper politicized that the scientific process cannot play out in its normal fashion. I.e. if Stanford comes out with an IFR and it does not match the narrative or policy, it gets chastised by everyone or labeled wrong. Instead of peer review and discussion, it is immediately lost.
When the first world locks down the third world starves. Pay attention. We (as a planet) have fucked this up. Ask your friends who rely on manufacturing where shortages are showing up. We first world people might have to wait a month for a new freezer (outrageous!) in the 3rd world it means something different.
America will end up more like a European country eventually, moving to a more Socialistic society is the natural progression of Western Civilization. We will buck and champ at the reins but it will happen eventually.
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Interesting thoughts. But European countries are not becoming more socialistic, but less.
I think we assume that democracy is the end point of a process. But perhaps it is just an experiment that does not endure. The most powerful economy in the world within the next election cycle will be a dictatorship by a group of people. They will form alliances with other de facto dictatorships more easily than with the waning and divided democracies.
Democracies are failing to take action to stop climate change anyway, so soon mass migration and war provoked by climate change will challenge democratic balances. States of emergency will be declared, and war footings put in place. Trump will be long dead, but the fact that there was a small window of opportunity where the US could have led the world to a safer place, but Trump blew it all up instead, could change the course of human history forever. Who would have thought that one reality TV star could cause such worldwide chaos?
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Well.... I'll go out on a limb here. STOP HAVING KIDS! My wife and I made a decision to have no more than two kids. Replace only ourselves on this earth. I see young families with five or six kids. They just have no clue. Save the world. STOP HAVING KIDS. Unfortunately, it's the people who just lack education and are oblivious to the big picture. China has been trying to force this on their people for decades. In China the more kids you have the heavier you are taxed. The wealthy Chinese come to the US so they can have more kids. STOP HAVING KIDS!
I just got an idea for a T-shirt.
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Increasing population isn't really the problem it was supposed to be, and even if everyone has just replacement (2.2 kids) the population will peak at about 9 billion and then start declining. The latest IMHE model shows something much more like what the late Hans Rosling predicted. We are, however, consuming a lot more of the world's resources than can probably be supported. Global warming will make that a lot worse, convincing idiots that GMO food isn't going to poison them is the best hope for feeding the planet. Organic food is an ecological disaster, when we stop burning hydrocarbons we'll still need to use a lot of them to make fertilizer.
https://phys.org/news/2020-07-world-population-billion.html
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Increasing population isn't really the problem it was supposed to be, and even if everyone has just replacement (2.2 kids) the population will peak at about 9 billion and then start declining. The latest IMHE model shows something much more like what the late Hans Rosling predicted. We are, however, consuming a lot more of the world's resources than can probably be supported. Global warming will make that a lot worse, convincing idiots that GMO food isn't going to poison them is the best hope for feeding the planet. Organic food is an ecological disaster, when we stop burning hydrocarbons we'll still need to use a lot of them to make fertilizer.
https://phys.org/news/2020-07-world-population-billion.html
I beat this drum all the time. The carbon footprint for "organic" food is larger than that for GMO, there is just no way around that. Science is going to win (has won) the energy crisis, and can solve the food crisis. Long standing perceptions vis-a-vis nuclear power and GMOs are standing in the way.
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The most important element of the scientific method--the assumption that a hypothesis is wrong or at least incomplete--is also the PR weakness. The phrase "that's just a theory" is a handy dipshit indicator. Unfortunately, we are neck-deep in dipshits, and humans seem to be not smart enough to overcome that handicap.
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Hilarious- a US President calls for a boycott of a US firm, based in Akron, that employs thousands of US citizens.
You couldn't make this stuff up. Oh well, I'll buy Michelin anyway: Trump says that a load of his supporters work at Goodyear, and I wouldn't feel safe on the road using tyres made by people that dumb.
The Chinese government must be falling about laughing.
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So, Steve Bannon is a crook? Who'd have thunk it? :)
I wonder if the Trump supporters who were fleeced over this wall scheme see the link with Trump, or maybe they never knew who Bannon was anyway?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53853297
I dunno about the unravelling of America, but today's news events look like the unravelling of an administration to me. Surely even Trump supporters will realise when their president and his friends are ripping them off directly?
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Surely even Trump supporters will realise when their president and his friends are ripping them off directly?
It doesn’t seem to matter to Trumps’ supporters what he does, who he associates with, or the absolute erosion of any kind of democratic principles he presides over. He is their man and they are sticking by him.
I’ve often said that I really don’t believe Trump is the issue in the U.S. It’s all those that support him.
How anyone with any kind of moral code, some semblance of decency, or even the slightest bit of education could support him is beyond me. Seeing what is going on in the U.S. right now is like watching a giant implosion of sorts. It is really quite frightening to watch and I must say I take no pleasure in seeing it happen.
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Yes, Quickbeam - for some time there has been a theory that it is the cruelty of Trump that attracts his supporters, so they support him not *in spite* of his cruelty (as those of us who are horrified at his amoral behavior often suppose) but *because* of it:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/
Do you remember the 1976 movie The Omen? It is like Damien grew up and was elected POTUS :)
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The degradation of math and science skills by Americans has shocked me recently. As we have become too easily swayed by the emotional argument - throwing the statistical argument out the window.
CV 19 being probably the best example of this. Knee jerk emotional policy setting, is going to cause significant issues short and long term. Even worse, a politician or even bureaucrat makes a policy decision the ability to say "I was wrong, lets go back" is missing. Science is messy, and CV has it so hyper politicized that the scientific process cannot play out in its normal fashion. I.e. if Stanford comes out with an IFR and it does not match the narrative or policy, it gets chastised by everyone or labeled wrong. Instead of peer review and discussion, it is immediately lost.
That Stanford study wasn't discarded. The study concluded that Covid has an IFR somewhere between 1/5 of the flu and 4 times the flu. That is a huge range. It is info that gets added to the larger dialogue which is now heavily weighted towards the actual death toll which is certainly a more reliable metric.
Covid is on track to have more US fatalities in one year than the flu has had in the past 10 years combined. Even so, those who wish to cherry pick data are still using fragments of headlines and using flu comparisons to support their seemingly unswayable position. When it becomes socially acceptable (and it has) to distort facts to meet a camp based world view then that distortion becomes common.
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That was just an example, mostly in relation to the response to it. The Imperial College study was the doomsday study, and it was garbage from a technical assumptions standpoint, but it was held in much higher regard.
I just looked here: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html
From the CDC the estimated flu deaths between 2010 and 2019 is 337k, so, you may be (close to) right. There are a lot of excess deaths that are currently unaccounted for which will likely be attributed to CV over the next 60 days. This is obvious to my eye because ICU census is dropping like a stone nationwide, and yet the newly reported daily deaths have remained steady. You can't have high daily deaths without high daily ICU census, so the current 1,200 deaths a day or whatever it is is more than 60% deaths a month ago being laundered.
As the data becomes correctly dated in the dashboards, the epidemiologic curves for pretty much every Country and state tracks Farrs law almost perfectly. Legislation of human nature has a long history of failure, but our hubris knows no bounds.
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As the data becomes correctly dated in the dashboards, the epidemiologic curves for pretty much every Country and state tracks Farrs law almost perfectly. Legislation of human nature has a long history of failure, but our hubris knows no bounds.
A great example of how fragments of intelligent sounding information and selective data are twisted today to suit a viewpoint.
Farrs law. Here is an article from March 10 of this year. It's title is, Why Are We Ignoring Farr’s Law of Epidemics? Coronavirus Should be Gone by This Summer.
I have pasted the article below. It is a terrific read.
Worldwide, there have been about 3,400 coronavirus deaths, out of about 100,000 identified cases.
Flu, by comparison, generally contributes to 646,000 deaths annually.
China, of course, is the origin of the virus and still accounts for over 80 percent of cases and deaths.
But its cases peaked and began declining more than a month ago, according to data presented by the Canadian epidemiologist who spearheaded the World Health Organization’s coronavirus mission to China.
Fewer than 200 new cases are now reported daily, down from a peak of 4,000 in February.
Subsequent countries will follow this same pattern, in what’s called Farr’s Law of Epidemics.
Farr’s Law of Epidemics states that epidemics tend to rise and fall in a roughly symmetrical pattern or bell-shaped curve. The flu season operates under the same curve. It rises is fall and descends in spring. That also has something to do with the weather.
More Good News
This month, the Northern Hemisphere, which includes the countries with the most cases, starts heating up.
Almost all respiratory viruses hate warm and moist weather.
That’s why flu dies out in America every year by May at the latest and probably why Latin America has reported only 25 coronavirus cases. The Philippines where it’s hot and humid has no confirmed cases of coronavirus.
Traveling the World
https://medium.com/@davidpkirkpatrick/why-are-we-ignoring-farrs-law-of-epidemics-coronavirus-should-be-gone-by-summer-7782f3622c3a
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Short read. That didn't exactly pan out, did it.
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Short read. That didn't exactly pan out, did it.
Farrs law describes the shape of the curve, it is just that viruses follow roughly the same rate down and up. SARS, Spanish Flu, CV, and others all follow it. The true shape of the curve can only be vetted once the death totals have worked their way through the bureaucratic snake. There are too many variables in "cases". Using case load for an "opening" metric is criminal, but every government body is doing that. We are on the runout of the curve, despite "exploding, spiking, or virus pockets". Deaths properly attributed and properly dated tell the actual story.
I have to admit I don't read any news articles on this anymore, I just look at a couple of state data tables (ICU and deaths) once or twice a week and compare to a SARS e-curve. The COVID news reports are grotesquely incompetent, politically slanted, or overly emotional.
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SUP Leave,
There is no one curve for Covid. This is a human event where human action has proven to determine outcome. Farrs law is entirely inapplicable to the US curve, the India Curve, or the Brazil Curve and would be a poor fit for the rest of the world. (chart below)
The US, through absent leadership, misinformation, and data parsing is responsible for our abysmal performance. We already passed France in deaths per million citizens and we will soon pass Italy, the UK, and Spain. Those countries had initially been considered to have had the hardest initial hits from Covid but have taken the appropriate steps. (chart 2 below).
Furthermore, this is an ongoing event and all expectations are that Covid will spike again in the fall. As they have always been, the ranges given in these estimates are shaped by human choices and behaviors. The overall curve has not yet been established but there is no element of this that resembles Farrs. That is simply obfuscation. (chart 3 from the IMHE below).
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Hi Admin
Sure there will be a curve, just not until it is over and data is reconciled. This probably happens in some universities after 2021.
The Daily new confirmed curve is simply a reporting curve. Meaning that as deaths get attributed to CV they get reported to CDC and show up here. Only some states report date of death so you get artificially inflated back end numbers. This graph checks out in that regard. Again, these will have to be correctly dated to show the picture.
The confirmed per million, also has only one way to go (unless we reconcile some book keeping). I would guess it will plateau by mid-Sep, somewhere south of Italy, but just barely. US has a few states higher than Italy but rest of country varies. You also have to remember that our reporting “with or from” is about 35/65 split respectively. Other countries could easily do different. I have a friend who is actively fighting their grandma’s death certificate. Grandma was 90+, fell and broke her hip and died in hospital the way many people do and she was coded as C19 death (she did test positive, but was asymptomatic).
The Daily deaths chart is the one I have been talking about. Once the dates are properly attributed you will see a double hump matching SARS or MERS, just google a couple. I am not up on embedding stuff.
We are pregnant with the idea that we are “squashing or getting control of, or managing” this virus, and thereby saving lives. It’s a nice thought, but it is as if all other ways of dying do not exist. So yes, human interaction has an effect on CV, but focusing only on one health outcome for a huge diverse country is a horrible mistake. Back in the beginning Beasho was pointing out ( and I was echoing) that there was less all-cause deaths due to the shutdown (accidental deaths mostly), but that has reversed -badly. The predictions of deaths due to timely diagnoses (cancer), and despair (suicide) are going to increase (are already there in the excess death charts). I will not be surprised to see Orange Man getting the blame for too heavy of lock downs and closing schools as this data comes to life. He should receive this blame, by letting political epidemiologists run the show and utilizing a broader consortium of experts steering towards a more risk rational approach.
We have known the “who” of this disease for a long time. The average age of death from Covid is 80+, the average age of death for Americans is 80-. The average age of death from cancer or despair is something like 75 (my math). Take 100 people dying of CV and 50 people dying from these other cases. The years of life lost are 50 years, and 250 years respectively. Does a year of life have value?
I just saw an article today that in Hong Kong they have a verified reinfection of CV. Just like every other corona virus (cold) you can get another round of the same thing as the virus mutates. Thus, the vaccine efficiency will be reduced as we are chasing the tail of the snake.
Lockdowns should never be used again - a massive health and economic mistake.
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Italy is adding .03 deaths per Million a day now. They have effectively minimized the issue. France, GB and Spain are showing similar numbers. The US is adding 3.1 deaths per million each day. Our death rate is 155 times the death rate of Italy at the moment. Even if the US death rate were to dramatically reduce (not projected on the IMHE model above) we would pass all of those countries in the upcoming months. That is the result of action vs denial.