'Why Modeling the Spread of COVID-19 Is So Damn Hard' (ieee.org) 117
Slashdot reader the_newsbeagle writes: At the beginning of the pandemic, modelers pulled out everything they had to predict the spread of the virus. This article explains the three main types of models used: 1) compartmental models that sort people into categories of exposure and recovery, 2) data-driven models that often use neural networks to make predictions, and 3) agent-based models that are something like a Sim Pandemic.
"Researchers say they've learned a lot of lessons modeling this pandemic, lessons that will carry over to the next..." the article points out: Finally, researchers emphasize the need for agility. Jarad Niemi, an associate professor of statistics at Iowa State University who helps run the forecast hub used by the CDC, says software packages have made it easier to build models quickly, and the code-sharing site GitHub lets people share and compare their models. COVID-19 is giving modelers a chance to try out all their newest tools, says biologist Lauren Ancel Meyers, the head of the COVID-19 Modeling Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin. "The pace of innovation, the pace of development, is unlike ever before," she says. "There are new statistical methods, new kinds of data, new model structures."
"If we want to beat this virus," says Mikhail Prokopenko, a computer scientist at the University of Sydney, "we have to be as adaptive as it is."
"Researchers say they've learned a lot of lessons modeling this pandemic, lessons that will carry over to the next..." the article points out: Finally, researchers emphasize the need for agility. Jarad Niemi, an associate professor of statistics at Iowa State University who helps run the forecast hub used by the CDC, says software packages have made it easier to build models quickly, and the code-sharing site GitHub lets people share and compare their models. COVID-19 is giving modelers a chance to try out all their newest tools, says biologist Lauren Ancel Meyers, the head of the COVID-19 Modeling Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin. "The pace of innovation, the pace of development, is unlike ever before," she says. "There are new statistical methods, new kinds of data, new model structures."
"If we want to beat this virus," says Mikhail Prokopenko, a computer scientist at the University of Sydney, "we have to be as adaptive as it is."
Corruption... The real pandemic is politics. (Score:2, Insightful)
Can't get a straight answer
Like economic modeling, nobody accounts for the emotional human
Re:Corruption... The real pandemic is politics. (Score:5, Funny)
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This distinction is incredibly important for modeling.
Infection diagnosis should involve two types of laboratory tests to eliminate specificity errors.
A 'case' is a non-clinical term that can vary by jurisdiction, and a case does not need to be an active or contagious infection. Due to the prevalence of coronavirus antibodies from various prior cold-like infections, case assignment by antibody test is highly unreliable.
The potential result of substandard testing an
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Correction;
The modeler's emotions are at the core of most modern economic models.
Ok, yeah, I'll admit it, the modelers are human too...
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Not human, but human*s*. There is a spectrum of behavioral patterns; the proportions of population that exhibits these behavioral patterns are model parameters.
Models at best give you a *contingent* prediction, although calling it a "prediction" is a bit of a stretch: if these conditions hold then it's reasonable to expect such-and-so. But from a policy standpoint what is often most important isn't a model's predictions per se, but developing insight into how sensitive a situation is to each of its param
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You can not properly model the spread of a virus beyond really basic blob models because any attempt at accurate modelling will results in wildly varying results every time and the more they vary the more accurate they are. You are attempting to model chaos, the actual spread, will be tied to how resistant or not unknown people are and how those clusters will propagate. Hit a low resistance cluster of people and it will spread like a wild fire, hit a high resistance cluster and it dies right down but contin
The science of transmission seems mostly absent (Score:5, Insightful)
They try to fit their models of transmission to their retroactive models of population proximity and then fit variables till it somewhat corresponds to modelled infection numbers ... all incredibly haphazard.
So much supposition, so much under/overfitting, so few controlled experiments.
Re:The science of transmission seems mostly absent (Score:5, Interesting)
It's even more chaotic since they're finally figured out that the susceptibility of different people varies wildly, and not just from age or preexisting conditions.
How much vitamin D you have in your system, how much of various trace elements, what your blood type is, what other coronaviruses you've been exposed to, what your normal T cells can handle, et cetera, et cetera.
The good news is that it's starting to look like the population that has caught COVID so far is mostly the "very susceptible" cohort, and the ones who haven't caught it might be somewhat resistant - or, in many cases, naturally immune. They're just now getting around to quantifying how big (or small) those numbers are. We're not at herd immunity in the US yet - but we might be a lot closer than most people think.
Re: The science of transmission seems mostly absen (Score:2, Informative)
"We're not at herd immunity in the US yet - but we might be a lot closer than most people think."
Herd immunity is not a strategy or a goal, it's the almost inevitable result if you do nothing.
It's like someone is falling from a plane and your plan is they hit the terminal velocity of a person without a chute. The theory is it will stop them from accelerating. You are correct, they stop accelerating mid-fall, and hit the ground in a splat. By doing nothing at all, you stopped the fall and avoided falling
Re: The science of transmission seems mostly absen (Score:4, Insightful)
Holy hell, Ivan. How long have you been waiting to put out that disinformation?
The U.S. is nowhere near "herd immunity". That would require, at a bare bones minimum, 50% of people to have been infected and recovered. With a population of roughly 331,500,000 people, that would mean almost 162 million people would need to be infected and recovered. Since the con artist has refused to endorse any form of contact tracing, and states are struggling as their workers are threatened [npr.org], and even threatening to subpoena people to trace the spread [nationalreview.com], not to mention hacks like you calling contact tracing a plot by Clinton and Soros [thenewamerican.com], we have no idea, none, how many people have been infected in this country. The only thing we do know is over 200,000 are dead, and even that number is low.
Some people are now pretending that we "didn't do anything,"
We didn't do anything. And by we I mean the federal government. The con artist was warned in January this would blow up if he didn't take swift and decisive action. Instead, for over two months he claimed it wasn't a big deal, it's only 15 people, we shut down the spread, and this would definitely be going away. Not to mention, his failure of a son-in-law stopped the roll out of a national plan [vanityfair.com] because it would help blue states as well as the con artist confiscating equipment purchased by states [businessinsider.com] since there was no national leadership. On top of which, the con artist regime completely and totally failed (which is the usual state for the con artist) to purchase ventilators at a previously agreed cost, but instead bought them at five times the cost [medscape.com], costing the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
identical to the one we've been using since February
And which plan is that? The do nothing plan? The lying plan? The "I didn't want to cause a panic [bloomberg.com]" plan? The "states are on their own [tumblr.com]" plan? The "this is all hysteria" plan? The "why didn't that other guy do something [9cache.com]" plan? The "know one knew this would happen [9cache.com]" plan? The "get rid of the experts" plan? The "I don't responsibility at all [9cache.com]" plan? Tell us what plan we've had since February when the con artist was ignoring everything so he could go golfing.
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"The U.S. is nowhere near "herd immunity". That would require, at a bare bones minimum, 50% of people to have been infected and recovered."
Oh, you're not up on the news, are you?
It turns out that a fairly large percentage of the population is basically immune already, either from exposure to other coronaviruses, or through a naturally strong T-cell system that stops COVID naturally. That's why so many were puzzled as to why Sweden's COVID rate is staying low, despite having less than ten percent of their po
Re: The science of transmission seems mostly absen (Score:4, Insightful)
Their post has multiple links and references supporting their position. Your's has some vague reference to 'news'.
Can you find even one expert who thinks we're near any kind of herd immunity? And no, Rand Paul doesn't count.
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You seem to be the guy who does not read news.
Swedens COVID rate is not low, it is absurd high.
https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
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one million dead is about the right amount to achieve herd immunity.
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Meanwhile, the US is showing definite signs of hitting at least the first stage of herd immunity a half a year early
"If You Think [10%] Is Herd Immunity, I Believe You're Alone In That"
Garbage In Garbage Out (Score:1)
As soon as laboratory diagnostics became available in the US, the apparent crisis dropped below epidemic threshold in nearly every State and has remained below that threshold since May. This suggests that early alarm for the general population - largely based on domestic 'case' assignment by non-laboratory diagnostic indicators and fatalities highly concentrated in elder care and skilled nursing facilities - may have resulted
Duh (Score:1)
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Poor and non-unified data collection (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite the huge and highly regulated medical system in the US, we did a terrible job of having carefully crafted reporting schemes, and that has made a lot of the data nearly useless. Combine that with (in this case) misplaced privacy rules, and there is no high quality data to analyze. Pour party politics on top of this and we are doing about as well as a medieval village during the plague.
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Biggest problem (Score:1)
Waste of time (Score:1)
At this point, the disease is clinically over. All the graphs are showing that while the false positive PCR test results are exploding, the actual hospitalizations and deaths are hovering close to zero in the UK, France, Germany, Canada and elsewhere in Europe - the US will soon follow.
Exploding false positive cases: https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
No actual deaths: https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
The graphs clearly show that whatever people are doing with obsessive compulsive hand washing, masking
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Pants on fire. The number of deaths in most European countries, even here in Germany, has gone up, back to the June levels. You simply don't understand that infected people don't immediately drop dead after they have been tested, it takes several weeks.
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Two deaths in Germany yesterday. The cases have started going up weeks ago. The deaths remain close to zero. https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
The case numbers are mostly false positives and the people are not really sick at all. What you have is a Testdemic, not a pandemic, due to bad tests.
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The number of deaths is always low on the weekend. There have been 17 deaths on wednesday. This kind of numbers is what we previously had in June. France had 150 deaths on friday. The cases also started going up because everyone returning to Germany from abroad had the option of a free test so more asymptmatic cases were caught.
So yep; you are a liar. Or a covidiot. Maybe both.
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Dude, please don't stop taking your meds, or ask your mom to hand it to you each morning.
If you could be bothered to click the link - that finger next to your thumb, on the left mouse button, then you would see the nice graphs which are public information, not made by me.
Any rational person can see that the cases have been going up for weeks, with no corresponding rise in deaths a few weeks later.
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If you think that the only reason death counts go down over time with a new disease then you're a fucking idiot. Overnight, this has become the most studied disease on the planet, and doctors have been constantly trading and revising information on the best way to treat patients. Hospital capacity has increased— as hospitals reach capacity, the number of deaths will increase at a significantly greater rate per infected person because infected people are receiving inadequate care. There are many factor
S P R E A D S H E E T (Score:2)
I've been modeling since punchcards into 370 RJE. Covid was irresistible to model even back in January. One (or more!) lines per day, whatever calcs you wanted on the line (upward references) and copy down. Easy-peasy.
The problem is it always blows up (sometimes down). With whatever delay function, sooner or later it just goes. But that does not match the data of rising-to-peaks from a slow simmer. Something is very wrong with the bug (unlikely) or reporting (uncertain can be large enough).
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The trouble is with the tests. The tests are actually fine, but the results are used wrong.
The PCR test is a negative test: It Rules Covid Out.
If the result is negative, then you can be 100% sure that you are not infected. However, if the result is positive, then you are only 5% sure that you are infected. So on its own, it is not good to indicate sick people.
At this time, most people have some dead viral DNA fragments in their noses and the PCR test picks this up, causing an explosion in false po
Lots of false negatives (Score:1)
one word: asshats (Score:1)
The models fail to predict massive, coordinated, secret, and well-funded efforts to continue spreading the damn thing on purpose.
Cubic models (Score:2)
The OP left out Cubic Models, created with the Excel curve-fitting function. Very useful.
Even a perfect model would fail on COVID (Score:2)
The reasons are both complex and extremely simple, but all tied to this: fatally flawed data - by design. No conspiracy theory is involved required.
The Chinese government front-loaded this thing with their not only incompetent, but deliberately wrong data. This stuff was pumped through WHO where their non-doctor puppet pushed it out to the world as seemingly neutral and reliable info.
Governments all over the world then produced bad data. In many countries this was from sheer incompetence, understandably - m
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The most harmful projection ever made (Score:2)
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My understanding is worse - it was based of a researcher's Daughter's science fair experiment.
Then - no other scientist in the world spoke up that should have spoken up and said - this is shit.
Then in spite of scientific facts showing that Hydroxychloroquine works, they pan it because Trump said it might work. How idiotic.
U.S. Spread Was Simple to Model (Score:2)
Public Policy is not Science (Score:1)
Pandemic: The Game (Score:1)
Up to 4 players. And it is 12 years old!
Fun for the whole family!
Crazy thing about the game unlike other games, it teaches players to COOPERATE rather than compete against each other. Players fight the game engine. Either all Players win, or the Pandemic does.
A failed model is a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
That the purpose of the model, of any model, really, is not to show off how smart we are, but rather, to expose gaps in knowledge?
That a poorly fitting model is an opportunity for scientific discovery? That when Kepler couldn't fit Brahe's measurements with circular orbits, he didn't just throw up his hands and say "Orbit models are all junk" but he kept at it and came up with Kepler's Laws, that were later incorporated by Newton into his Laws of Gravitation and Mechanics? That when that model wasn't predicting the orbit of Uranus to high accuracy, a search found Neptune?
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Re:A failed model is a good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, real life tests are always better, but if people lives are on the line, running computer simulations first is a good idea.
The problem is not people running simulations. The problem is that they then publicise these simulations based on unverified models and act as if this is a reasonable prediction. The idea of "herd immunity" as a way of solving Covid-19 came from early modelling work which was missing the idea of asymptomatic carriers as well as the idea the idea of "long covid" which mean that people who survive can still have a big problem.
In areas like advertising you can put out a wrong model, see what it does and learn from it. Moving the "big data" people from advertising to medicine without some adult supervision easily ends up killing thousands of people.
Re:A failed model is a good thing (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A failed model is a good thing (Score:4, Informative)
I think that is more of a problem with pop-reporting, pundits, and politicians. The actual papers tend to be pretty explicit about the limits of their findings, but then laymen get ahold of the results and over apply them.
The epidemiologists have not just been publishing papers. They also turn up on TV and all over the news [thetimes.co.uk] and then later have to say "oops I fucked up" [bbc.co.uk] (though without apologising or even properly admitting they were wrong). If you look at the the UK's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) they were full of epidemiologists and were explicitly overriding the WHO advice until March when they suddenly realised they had messed up completely. They just modelled the disease and guessed when and how it would come over to the UK and missed the fact it was in the country already. They even stopped people testing inside the country because their (flu based) model said it was better to test travellers who had symptoms. It was only when one of them finally ran a model adding asymptomatic transmission that they suddenly panicked and locked the whole country down.
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There is a difference between the process of science with its publications, and the final product of science in educational books. The problem is not the scientists, the problem is if people take the fresh models without understanding how science works.
In Germ
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What part of ALL-CAPS don't you understand? :-)
Re: A failed model is a good thing (Score:1)
For example, I looked at the IHME modeling code (https://ihmeuw-msca.github.io/CurveFit/) a few months ago back when it was what all the cool kids were listening to. And I was very disappointed to discover that, at the time, they were just fit
Re: A failed model is a good thing (Score:1)
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They assume "derp he is a scientist so he must know what he is talking about". The COVID "models" have been more than pathetic. They should not be published.
Whereas we assume you're not a scientist. And it's obvious you don't know what you're talking about.
What's your alternative to science? Tealeaves? Tarot cards? Just let nature take it's course?
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What's your alternative to science? Tealeaves? Tarot cards? Just let nature take it's course?
Different science. Public health experts instead of "big data" frauds. Infection control experts instead of tobacco apologists. Learn from actual experience when the actual experience ("evidence") doesn't match the models. The most fundamental thing is understanding that one clear counterexample makes a theory invalid. It's a subtle part of science in that often you can adjust your theory and take into account new evidence but when you get something fundamental, like evidence of long term effects in CO
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They assume "derp he is a scientist so he must know what he is talking about". The COVID "models" have been more than pathetic. They should not be published.
Whereas we assume you're not a scientist. And it's obvious you don't know what you're talking about.
What's your alternative to science? Tealeaves? Tarot cards? Just let nature take it's course?
I understand that Jeff Goldblum played a fictional scientist in Jurassic Park, but one would have thought we would have learned something about the unpredictable chaos of Life.
And yeah, sometimes we do have to let nature take it's course. As if you have a choice at times, human. Man vs. Nature? Yeah, we already know who wins that. Plenty of life will continue on this planet long after we pathetic humans are gone.
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I understand that Jeff Goldblum played a fictional scientist in Jurassic Park, but one would have thought we would have learned something about the unpredictable chaos of Life.
Ironically, he was making predictions.
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I understand that Jeff Goldblum played a fictional scientist in Jurassic Park, but one would have thought we would have learned something about the unpredictable chaos of Life.
Ironically, he was making predictions.
"Life, finds a way."
Sounds pretty affirming. And he was correct.
You want to know what the most expensive statement in human history is, was, or will likely ever be?
I told you so.
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You want to know what the most expensive statement in human history is, was, or will likely ever be?
I told you so.
That's the most useless statement, annoying, and it's free, it doesn't cost anything.
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You want to know what the most expensive statement in human history is, was, or will likely ever be?
I told you so.
That's the most useless statement, annoying, and it's free, it doesn't cost anything.
Conspiracy theorists making predictions throughout time usually do sound like they're making useless, annoying statements...right up until human ignorance does that predictable thing, and turn them into fucking historians.
I hear they get double points when ignorance doubles down and repeats the worst of history. Popular these days. Must be rackin' 'em up.
Re: A failed model is a good thing (Score:3)
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The thing that distinguishes conspiracy theories from actual theories is evidence.
Right.
And when the worst of those horrific events comes along and takes human lives as evidence, you hear four fucking words.
Dunno about you, but there is no price tag, that defines my loved ones.
Re: A failed model is a good thing (Score:2)
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The models are 100% accurate portrayals of the assumptions underlying the model. If the model projection does not match reality that would indicate that the underlying assumptions are incorrect or insufficient.
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Re:Answer (Score:5, Insightful)
BECAUSE REAL LIFE IS NOT LIKE A COMPUTER PROGRAM. Once you tech assholes figure that out, your life will be much better.
Because modeling human behavior is hard. Even if you can model the virus perfectly.
You could tell Koreans and Americans the exact same thing. Wear masks and stay at home. The virus doesn't change, but the human response will be completely different...
400 dead in Korea, 200,000 dead in America. [worldometers.info]
Re:Answer (Score:5, Insightful)
It would have helped if they were told to from the start, like in South Korea.
The South Koreans would still have more readily adopted masks, but the mixed messages from western governments who's knee jerk reaction is always to lie didn't help. The "little white lie" about mask effectiveness to protect mask availability was a fucking huge mistake. It was a huge loss of credibility for western governments.
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It would have helped if they were told to from the start, like in South Korea.
The South Koreans would still have more readily adopted masks, but the mixed messages from western governments who's knee jerk reaction is always to lie didn't help. The "little white lie" about mask effectiveness to protect mask availability was a fucking huge mistake. It was a huge loss of credibility for western governments.
Strongly agree. They really shot themselves in the foot doing that.
So yes, you would need to not only add mask availability to your modeling. But also willingness of the population to wear them. And a whole bunch of other things. That's what makes it so hard to predict. People can be so unpredictable. And seemingly small differences can be easily magnified.
What if Trump had come down on the side of mask wearing much sooner? Even if he had of been more neutral about it, people could have decided based on e
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Donald Trump is irrelevant, he just reads his supporters well and articulates their beliefs.
Trump had access to all the top experts. He knew their beliefs were wrong and did nothing but encourage them anyway. Their votes are more important than their lives to him.
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I don't think anybody who refuses to wear a mask, in late September, is doing it because of mixed/bad messaging in March; that's just an excuse. The message has been clear since April. If they didn't have some other reason to refuse, that wouldn't do it.
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Especially that there was no real mask shortage as we now know: simple hand sewn (self made) masks from cotton or linen are much more effective than the typical "paper masks".
Re:Answer (Score:4, Informative)
The "little white lie" about mask effectiveness to protect mask availability was a fucking huge mistake.
There was no white lie in the guidance given to the world. There was a lack of knowledge. Scientists including epidemiologists from the WHO have not lied. In fact the original recommendation was very clear, and their current guidance on protecting mask availability has remained unchanged since January.
WHO in Jan: Leave medical masks to medical professionals as they need them the most. We have no information for or against the use of non-medical face coverings. ... and they proceed to list the results of the studies they commissioned.
WHO in Apr: Leave medical masks to medical professionals as they need them the most. We have commissioned studies on the efficacy on non-medical face coverings.
WHO in Jun: Leave medical masks to medical professionals as they need them the most. If you have a surplus of medical masks then use them in groups. If you can't then use a cloth mask made of
If I tell you I don't know something, go and find out something, and then proceed to tell you I know know something based on my efforts, at no point was I telling a lie.
Now as to if the WHO's guidelines were turned from logical scientific backed truth into lies distilled by governments or media (is that what you meant above?), that we can agree on was definitely a resounding yes.
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That's overly simplistic, there are other factors that may be contributing to the disparity eg previous exposure to similar viruses: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
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That's overly simplistic, there are other factors that may be contributing to the disparity eg previous exposure to similar viruses: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
Of course it was overly simplistic. It was just an example, and a reply to a known troll.
Previous exposure to a similar virus was a big part of it. But I don't think in the way you seem to be suggesting. Not the individual immune response from previously being exposed to similar viruses. But the fact the country/society were previously hit with SARS.
I think the biggest difference was that South Korea was prepared. They had systems already in place to deal with such a virus. Having already faced SARS befor
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it already starts there - wearing masks by population at large is at least controversial and may amount to psychological action rather than anything else.
Next
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Keeping distance, washing you hands and stay home when you are sick are ones that have the biggest effects.
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Keeping distance, washing you hands and stay home when you are sick are ones that have the biggest effects.
These are the things which protect you in normal circumstances with normal spreaders. However SARS-COV-2 is a bit weird and it seems that super-spreaders are really important to the spread of the disease. The average normal spreader only spreads to between 1 and 2 people without precautions and 0.5 and 1 people with some precautions. The rest of the R0 value (something between 2 and 5 R0 points) seems to be made up of super spreaders and masks seem to be really important in these circumstances. Unfortun
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wearing masks by population at large is at least controversial and may amount to psychological action rather than anything else.
It's controversial among people who can't read and understand scientific papers. If that's you, I'm sorry for you.
Masks work because they keep sick people from spitting on you as you speak. [youtube.com] That isn't controversial.
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It's controversial among people who can't read and understand scientific papers. If that's you, I'm sorry for you.
It takes just common everyday sense to understand that masks work and help stop the spread, you don't have to do a deep dive on the scientific analysis. I am surrounded by nutters that believe wearing masks cause health problems and is a restriction on their freedumb.
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Re:Answer (Score:5, Informative)
Remind me - did South Korea have governors who forced nursing homes to take in covid-positive patients even when there were none in the home yet?
https://gothamist.com/news/ful... [gothamist.com]
Those nursing homes contributed thousands of deaths.
https://www.nytimes.com/intera... [nytimes.com]
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Remind me - did South Korea have governors who forced nursing homes to take in covid-positive patients even when there were none in the home yet?
Well they had religious nutters doing their best to try and spread it. [google.com]
Swings and roundabouts.
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Those nursing homes contributed thousands of deaths.
Thousands sounds like a big number but only until you compare it a number in the several hundred thousands. Don't distill a complex series of gross fuckups and mismanagement onto a single issue by a couple of governors. That's nothing more than dishonest blame shifting bullshit
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Indeed but to my main point: 160000 then died outside nursing homes which doesn't make the fuckup any smaller and still reinforces the fact that stupid governors were none the less a minority contributor to stupid policy.
Also many people died in nursing homes the world over which weren't being used as field hospitals, so the total number of 40k is still not reflective entirely of governor's actions.
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And let's not forget that we were expecting millions of deaths in the US alone as we watched corpses pile up in Wuhan. What we got was a case fatality rate around 2%, and even that might be overinflated. Didn't Dr. Brix say that up to 75% of the reported fatalities could be misattributed?
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Thousands sounds like a big number but only until you compare it a number in the several hundred thousands.
People aged 70 and above account for about 70% of COVID deaths in the US. There have been ~77,000 COVID deaths in long term care facilities in the US, [nytimes.com] almost 40% of the US total. It's a big number.
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It was nearly half of all deaths caused by nursing homes in two states - both run by Democrats. Cuomo tried to hide it in various ways.
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My county of 48,000 people has had 20 Covid deaths - all people over 80, and 15 of those from one nursing home. So putting Wuflu patients in nursing homes was a supremely bad idea.
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BECAUSE REAL LIFE IS NOT LIKE A COMPUTER PROGRAM. Once you tech assholes figure that out, your life will be much better.
Because modeling human behavior is hard. Even if you can model the virus perfectly. You could tell Koreans and Americans the exact same thing. Wear masks and stay at home. The virus doesn't change, but the human response will be completely different... 400 dead in Korea, 200,000 dead in America. [worldometers.info]
Your first mistake, was believing those statistics were even remotely accurate.
Greed behaves differently depending on regulation.
(I heard they transported a body to the ER last night missing a head. Cause of death? Oh, COVID for fuckin' sure.)
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Your first mistake, was believing those statistics were even remotely accurate.
Yes sure thing. It's just as possible Korea had the 200,000 dead and nobody has noticed yet. And America only had 400. All the missing people might have been abducted by aliens.
Did you think about what you wrote?
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Your first mistake, was believing those statistics were even remotely accurate.
Yes sure thing. It's just as possible Korea had the 200,000 dead and nobody has noticed yet. And America only had 400. All the missing people might have been abducted by aliens. Did you think about what you wrote?
Yes, I did. My headless example was sadly not far off from what we are hearing more and more with regards to reporting. Cancer and COVID? COVID death. Heart disease and COVID? COVID death. The flu and COVID? COVID death. Put greed as a motivator (hospitals are most likely maximizing Federal reimbursements with only one disease right now), and that spells disaster for accurate statistics.
Or did you honestly believe that no country is lying about this? Or would have plenty of motivation to after others
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Korea's numbers only seem far fetched to you, because America failed so miserably to get the basic things right. Well Korea didn't.
I suppose you don't believe Japan either at only 1,500. These countries were prepared. They took action. The people did what they were told. Of course they would get a completely different outcome.
You aren't being slightly credible if you think America is 1,000 times overcounting and Korea is 1,000 times undercounting.
Clearly America is orders of magnitude worse.
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Korea's numbers only seem far fetched to you, because America failed so miserably to get the basic things right. Well Korea didn't. I suppose you don't believe Japan either at only 1,500. These countries were prepared. They took action. The people did what they were told. Of course they would get a completely different outcome.
You aren't being slightly credible if you think America is 1,000 times overcounting and Korea is 1,000 times undercounting. Clearly America is orders of magnitude worse.
And my comment wasn't denying that. I'm challenging the accuracy. Of all of it.
No one has a clue as to the real numbers. America's is off. China's is utter bullshit. Japan? Korea? Perhaps they did the wise thing and not publish data that could be used against their own country in just about every aspect. You want to know what 21st Century Biological Warfare really looks like? AncestryDNA + NOVELVIRUSGOV-21 + Greed + Corruption = Targeted, Weaponized Viral Attacks against your worst enemy. THAT is
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And my comment wasn't denying that. I'm challenging the accuracy. Of all of it.
No one has a clue as to the real numbers. America's is off. China's is utter bullshit. Japan? Korea? Perhaps they did the wise thing and not publish data that could be used against their own country in just about every aspect.
People act as if, just because there are small inconsistencies these numbers can't be trusted at all. The thing is that we actually know that the inconsistencies are small because we can measure and calculate them. For example, a small proportion of deaths are caused by people who had an unknown brain cancer but then die whilst having COVID-19. This slightly increases the COVID-19 numbers and we can't easily detect it and check properly because COVID-19 infects the brain and so post-mortems including the
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...In the end, what you do is properly check a few specific cases with detailed study and post-mortems and make 100% sure you understand what's going on. As long as what you find largely (95% of cases) agrees with the stated cause of death then the effect of people being wrong won't change the meaning of the statistics.
Yes, I do not doubt that we will eventually find enough medical personnel, perhaps sometime in 2021, to go back and properly check. Yes, we will eventually get there in the end. The question is what happens when we do find a significant difference due to other factors you're not taking into account?
As I said, with many industries down or severely limited in operation still, insurance revenues have likely waned for the sick and dying. And hospitals are likely finding the maximum reimbursement rates at the
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Sure, real life tests are always better, but if people lives are on the line, running computer simulations first is a good idea.
The nazis didn't run computer simulations when researching hypothermia, they simply froze people to death. And these data are still used today because they are the best we have. But today, in civilized countries, we don't like killing people, so we run computer programs instead.
In the case of the pandemic, we don't model the spread just for fun. These computer models are the basis
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BECAUSE REAL LIFE IS NOT LIKE A COMPUTER PROGRAM. Once you tech assholes figure that out, your life will be much better.
Incorrect. The problem is that tech geniuses are wasting their time trying to create Artificial Intelligence, when what these models need is Artificial Stupidity.
It's impossible to construct an accurate model if your assumption is that people are rational actors in that model. Instead we have the social disease called social networking, spreading stupid ideas like a wetware virus through a vulnerable segment of the population.