CA Governor Newsom Announces COVID-19 Modeling Website, Open-Source Tools For 'Citizen Scientists' (cbslocal.com) 89
Long-time Slashdot reader PCM2 shares a report from CBS News: Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday announced a new COVID-19 modeling website as well as new open-source tools designed to help California residents understand the data informing local health departments and empower what he called "citizen scientists." The governor introduced the new coronavirus modeling website [...] as a way for residents to see the raw data that is driving the decisions of state and county officials with full transparency.
The new website features three sections: a "Nowcast" section that provides the most current information on how fast COVID-19 is spreading in the state and by county; a "Forecasts" section that provides short-term COVID-19 forecasts in the state and by county; and a "Scenarios" section that projects the possible long-term impacts under different scenarios and responses to COVID-19, again for the whole state and by county. "We want to open up our site to 'netizen-tists' ... of citizen-scientists, people that are out there doing coding every single day," said Newsom. "We want to give them access through an open-source platform to all of the available data that we have, that I have, that our health professionals have, in a way that we don't believe has been done before anywhere in the United States. This is a deep dive for transparency and openness. This is a new resource that we are making available today."
The new website features three sections: a "Nowcast" section that provides the most current information on how fast COVID-19 is spreading in the state and by county; a "Forecasts" section that provides short-term COVID-19 forecasts in the state and by county; and a "Scenarios" section that projects the possible long-term impacts under different scenarios and responses to COVID-19, again for the whole state and by county. "We want to open up our site to 'netizen-tists' ... of citizen-scientists, people that are out there doing coding every single day," said Newsom. "We want to give them access through an open-source platform to all of the available data that we have, that I have, that our health professionals have, in a way that we don't believe has been done before anywhere in the United States. This is a deep dive for transparency and openness. This is a new resource that we are making available today."
Stupid site (Score:3)
Focuses on the average of a bunch of consistently-wrong Rt/infection forecast models. Leaves out graphs of things that you actually need to monitor how the infection is spreading (such as positive rates, hospitalizations, ICU cases, and deaths).
Lame.
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** - new hospitalizations, ICU cases, and deaths. Not cumulative. Also not "total number of people currently hospitalized" or similar.
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Link (Score:3)
TFA Link is broken.
Use this [ask8ball.net] one.
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You are overly optimistic. And used the wrong tense. " The needless hospital deaths due to lack of preparation is" in progress, "and lessons" are being learned, but in some places already forgotten.
Actually, many of the hospital deaths were part of the learning process. And we still don't understand COVID well enough to really treat it properly, but it's being worked on. It's also not clear that hospitals are being "beefed up" to be ready for the next problem...more like they're being overworked/starved
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Is that in Oregon?
Imagine, or.or.org.
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Cool story, bro.
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All models are wrong. They just have to be right enough to indicate the trend.
You would think with the number of people familiar with computer science that there would be someone here who actually understood how this works. But it's become a place white nationalist windbags and delusional halfwits who are so lacking in the capacity to think that they think showing off their ignorance is a demonstration of their great intellect.
Morons. Pathetic, vile, stupid, worthless morons. Most of you are just that. Cont
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THIS.
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First off, no. When you're dealing with exponential models, the median case is not the same thing as the average case.
Secondly, the average of many terrible models is in no way inherently correlated with the right answer.
The problem is that the models are just plain terrible in capturing the dynamics. Dig into any of them; I have, and lost a massive amount of respect for the field of epidemiology when I did. The sort of stuff that passes for science... it's the equivalent of a physicist assuming a spherical
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The problem with computer science people is they always assume trends continue indefinitely, like Moore's Law. Life ISN'T A FUCKING COMPUTER PROGRAM.
No, the problem is that people use the stereotype and say stupid shit like "...always assume..." instead of stating anything close to reality.
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Some so-called skeptics cannot be convinced (Score:2, Insightful)
You cannot force science on people who don't want to understand.
No matter how open or accurate the model is, people who just want to hear things that match their worldview is not going to believe what the model predicts.
Re:Some so-called skeptics cannot be convinced (Score:5, Interesting)
doesn't look like that is his goal; rather, he would like to tap into voluntary efforts by the qualified public by providing them with data. let's if it works out. personally I am skeptical mostly because I'm kind of skeptical of the ways this data is being collected. but I would like to be wrong here
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doesn't look like that is his goal; rather, he would like to tap into voluntary efforts by the qualified public by providing them with data. let's if it works out. personally I am skeptical mostly because I'm kind of skeptical of the ways this data is being collected. but I would like to be wrong here
Indeed, bad data equals invalid results.
Re: Real Covid Data (Score:1)
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Didn't the CDC just come out this week and say infections could be 25 times higher?
Could Be
Thanks for that, "info".
Re:Some so-called skeptics cannot be convinced (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, Ten Times [slashdot.org] Higher
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The actual experts have admitted, even asserted, that they didn't know all along. That journalists have preferred to print other stories says more about journalists and their readership than about the experts. Most people want certainty, even at the cost of being deluded.
OTOH, note that I, not an expert in the field, and devoting only part of my attention to it, was able to find on the web real experts saying that they didn't know. It's even in the CDC site. That people keep reporting certainty as if th
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Scientists, and any normal citizen who possesses even the smallest modicum of intelligence, understand that uncertainty is a major aspect of any scientific modeling; thus, the best that can be hoped for is that a floor and a ceiling are established, that eventually converge as our understanding improves.
Are you implying that most "normal citizens" don't possess even the smallest modicum of intelligence? Because that's what your conceptual capabilities seem to imply.
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We know this [cdc.gov]. You want to use the fact that we don't know more as an excuse to do nothing, but that's still making "ridiculous projections" based upon something that, even wor
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We don't? [cdc.gov]
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"The numbers are confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases as reported by U.S. states." Yes, I think that there are exactly 2,374,282 Covid-19 reported cases and exactly 1
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I think OMBad is trying to not say that he thinks the numbers should be whole, but more like the error bars on those numbers are large enough that using any projections from those numbers is statistically foolish.
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What do you presume the error bars to be on confirmed cases compiled from reports made by various states and their subdivisions? Do you question projections made from yearly deaths due to automobile accidents due to mere allegations of large error bars? Deaths from heart attacks, cancer, suicide,
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You do realize that those known numbers do actually have statistical error associated with them...right? As an example, each state has slightly different criteria as well as some localities let alone at the discretion of the hospital administrator so yeah....there are error bars associated with each "concrete" number.
Your example of death due to automotive accidents far more black-n-white than the deaths due to COVID. A better comparison would be deaths from automobile accidents due to falling asleep at the
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Yes, now answer my question
Which is why I included more medical examples as well.
No, you can't. I've had more college level and post-graduate classes in calculus, differential equations, and particularly
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LOL
Ya, I guess so.
Re:Some so-called skeptics cannot be convinced (Score:5, Informative)
Modeling absolutely *is* science, although it can also be just mathematics. It is particularly useful in generating research questions -- things you ought to look for.
People always assume that the purpose of a model is to predict the future. That's not always true. The potential of modeling for predicting the future depends on the problem domain. Years ago I was involved in a project to model Eastern Equine Encephalitis, a mosquito-borne disease. Now what people would like to have is some kind of tool that predicts a EEE outbreak a few months in advance, but it quickly became obvious that was impossible. The model was mainly sensitive to mosquito abundance, which depends on future rainfall and temperature. This makes modeling essentially useless *in this application* for predicting what will happen more a couple weeks in the future.
That didn't mean that the model couldn't predict the *present*. "Predicting the present" sounds weird, until you realize that the world is so big and complex you aren't really on top of what is happening in the present. If there were swarms of infected mosquitoes flying around, you wouldn't necessarily know about it until cases show up. A model can tell you you'd better get out and start testing mosquito samples because there's a high probability of finding something *right now*.
Modeling COVID-19 is more like modeling mosquito-borne disease than, say, modeling flows in a aerodynamic simulation. The important parameters that govern the future are inherently unknowable. You don't know whether politicians will close or open things. You don't know how well the public will comply with guidelines or emergency orders, for example.
Models can provide useful input into rational decision making, but only if you use them right. They're not crystal balls, they don't predict *a* future, they predict a *range* of *contingent* futures.
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Fauci said back in early April that if proper mitigation efforts were done, it would be closer to 60k rather than 100k or 200k. Compared to most countries, the US has done very little mitigation efforts. The mask thing was already explained, you can google it... its fairly simple to understand.
As the GP said, you have a pretty poor understanding of science. Science: Where even things like "gravity" are questioned and tested till it is proven wrong.
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You mean grownups like Fauci who said that 60,000 were going to die?
Strong argument, man. Even stronger ability to selectively choose a very narrow set of factors while disregarding a much broader, more obvious set of factors.
Are you training to become a politician?
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No not just a bunch of assumptions -- what you're calling "assumptions" are more properly thought of as parameters.
That may be how *you* would do it, but that's not how scientists use models. Y and Z a parameters, and they run the model for a range of values of each.
Again, you are assuming models are supposed to be
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I've been working in modeling all my life (not biological modeling, but something simpler).
There you go. Complexity is the distinguishing factor in disease modeling, which means you use those models a different way.
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As someone who did multi-variable modelling for about ten years, I would hardly call any of it science. Just my $.02, but if you could point out where I'm incorrect, I'd love to hear it. We used confidence factors on nearly all of the variables...if you know something is going to occur for certain, it's easy...if it occurs randomly, or at unpredictable times you can use Monte Carlo analysis. But, you do often have to make assumptions, and these need to be called out in the event that your assumptions or
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You cannot force science on people who don't want to understand.
No matter how open or accurate the model is, people who just want to hear things that match their worldview is not going to believe what the model predicts.
LOL, SO Glad you understand.
Do explain how this virus is so terrible that I can't go to a store, church, do things that people normally do in a country and yet I can riot, protest, do those things to destroy a country and that's just fine? "Scientists" said that was ok. Clearly it's scientifically unsound. So is Lincoln county allowing black people to go around without masks, unless Lincoln county thinks that black lives don't matter. A group that has been hit hard statistically.
Moving on, explain the origi
This is great news for slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
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But does it harness the power of sunspots to produce cognitive radiation?
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My model in more comprehensive than yours and therefore the superior one, I predict negative 8 billion (considering probability of zombie resurrection) to 8 billion people will die.
Re:This is great news for slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is great news for slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
Too true. As it happens, I used my expertise and contacts in the Amazon jungle to develop an herbal remedy that prevents coronavirus infections. My company is called Central Amazon Scientific Healing, but you can just abbreviate that on the checks y'all will be wanting to send.
Don't fall for his snake oil and cheap knockoffs. Just send bitcoin directly to my Scientific Central Amazon Medicine company instead. Prevents and cures.
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Edumacation (Score:3)
It would help if kids would get proper scientific education. When I was in middle school we went through the history of the scientific method, and recreated some basic, famous science experiments to see exactly how it worked.
My son's new science textbook doesn't mention the scientific method *at all* No history, no theory, nothing. It's all about collecting data and making observations, but nothing about the theory on how or why you do it. It's insane. I asked his teacher about it and she said the scientifi
This is great news for scientists. (Score:2)
I'm not worried about slashdot. I'm more worried about the assumption behind "crowd wisdom" and "citizen scientists". A walk through YT comments yesterday would call into question the general public's capacity to being more than what's shown.
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Everyone here is a world-class virolligist, as well as an expert on public health policy.
Being an armchair lawyer just isn't enough to pay the bills in these tough economic times, so you gotta do what you gotta do. Becoming a world-class expert overnight in a field we've never studied was the only thing that made sense for most of us.
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Everyone here is a world-class virolligist, as well as an expert on public health policy. You guys should sort this mess in record time.
They have to switch gears from being a constitutional scholar or computer language expert, etc.
LOL
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On November 3, vote for all politicians who advocate the Swedish strategy.
Get more info [blogspot.com] about this issue.
I don't think there are any people from Sweden or Japan running.
Can we please not make "nowcast" a word? (Score:2)
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SHHHHHH. Adults are talking.
Ah, Models (Score:3, Interesting)
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a half assed effort to inform 4 months too late (Score:3)
good job
does the site explain why protesting for freedom causes covid, but protesting against freedoms is safe?
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Are you asking why protests in which participants mostly wear masks result in much fewer COVID infections than protests in which participants are not wearing masks, and shouting vehemently about it?
This is not the site for such conversations. Go to reddit, and tell them that /. sent to you ask what's known as ELI5. Or better yet, in your case, ELI3.
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Buzzwords (Score:3)
We want to open up our site to 'netizen-tists' ... of citizen-scientists, people that are out there doing coding every single day
Something tells me Gavin doesn't know what coding is. Can't quite put my finger on it.
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Gavin doesn't know what coding is
Normies all think writing software is magic. They cant understand the thousands of hours of labor it took to make a push button (when you include library providers).
Convenience until Inconvenient. (Score:2)
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Like it did in Florida?
Florida and Alabama need this (Score:2)
Florida has a map [sun-sentinel.com] showing hospital bed usage across the state. Many places are near or at 100% utilization.
The governor of Texas yesterday halted the state's reopening [cbsnews.com] due to the surging number of cases. In fact, Texas has twice as many people i
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But isn't near and just under 100% utilization a GOOD thing?
Sure, considering that hospitals are an incubation pot for further COVID infections.
Oh, but wait, no hospital is ever designed to be operating at 100% utilization, and nor do hospital administrators plan budgets or profit forecasts based on the assumption that 100% utilization is even desired.
Excellent (Score:2)
Maybe the citizen scientists can figure out how the virus knows what you are protesting.
Why it is so lethal if you drive around the capitol building in your own car, but so harmless if you throng in the streets, for example. Burning scientific questions!
Certified death certificates (Score:2)
is the only measure of COVID deaths that offer the least fudged or manipulated results. The CDC has a website where they publish such data and the results may surprise you. Check "Table 1" on the following CDC website:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/... [cdc.gov]
Notice that it points out what most people, except the media, have already noticed. Namely, that MOST of the COVID deaths are in the group of people 55 yrs old and older. Below 55 most who die do so because of underlying medical conditions.
During the w