Posted on 04/07/2020 9:37:20 AM PDT by facedown
In A. A. Milne’s classic Winne-the-Pooh children’s tales, Eeyore, the old gray donkey, is perennially pessimistic and gloomy. He always expects the worst to happen.
Milne understood that Eeyore’s outbursts of depression could at first be salutatory but then become monotonous. The outlook of the pessimist (“if you think it’s bad now, just wait”) always enjoys advantages over both the realist (“so what, life goes on”) and the optimist (“oh, come on, it can’t be that bad”).
When the pessimist frequently errs in his gloomy prognostications, he can plead that they were intended to be didactic, if not therapeutic. Only by offering scarifying models can the glum epidemiologist and statesman sufficiently terrify the public and thereby allow policymakers to enact the necessary draconian shelter-in-place protocols. That strategy could apply to the recent near celebrity Neil Morris Ferguson, OBE FMedSci, the British epidemiologist and professor of mathematical biology at the Imperial College in London, whose “2 million” possible deaths terrified America into lockdown, just as his modeled “500,000” fatalities in Britain did the same in his own homeland.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
In one of my favorite Three Stooges episode, Curly backs into a cactus and ends up with dozens of needles sticking out of his behind. Moe grabs a pair of pliers and starts pulling them out, making Curly yelp. Larry, though, grabs a pair of scissors and starts snipping the needles off.
"Hey!" cries Moe, "you're leavin' the ends in!"
"So what?" Larry replies. "They don't show!"
The models were constructed based on the assumption that no measures would be taken to control the spread of Covid-19.
The biology of the virus is what drives the models, and why countries all over the world have instituted strict social distancing measures. A cold virus that causes over 5% mortality in people it infects cannot be taken lightly.
Remember the social distancing guidelines when the 2015 Ebola outbreak occurred? Oh, wait—they didn’t happen. Because Ebola is a bloodborne pathogen, not a respiratory virus, there was no need to implement any kind of control measures. So back then, some people panicked, and I posted all kinds of information on why there was no need to worry. And that outbreak was contained, and no one has paid any attention to subsequent outbreaks because there really is nothing to worry about.
Knowing a pathogen’s characteristics is the key to knowing what kind of response is necessary.
It isn’t entirely true that shutting down the economy was the wrong thing to do. It is a matter of perspective. If you are a Democrat, it was necessary to stop Donald Trump from saying things about how black unemployment was at its lowest point in history, along with all the other things he could point to as accomplishments in his illegitimate presidency. The virus came at a very auspicious time, saving our social safety net from being destroyed by full employment and excessive capitalism.
And remember the uproar over California’s gig economy law? You were hearing a lot about that before the shutdown, even from artists and actors put out of work by it. But they aren’t complaining now, because everyone is out of work
So it really worked out very well, a smashing success, and the longer it can be stretched out, the better for Joe Biden’s vice president.
I like to call it the Jor-El Syndrome.
Scientists who think they are all so freaking brilliant that ONLY BY LISTENING TO ME can you poor wretches possibly hope to save yourselves!
VDH makes another point which is worth hammering in - we know most of the early, i.e. Chinese, data were and remain crap. Even if the models were sound (that isn't a given) you're stuck trying to make policy based either on bad data or no data at all. And it isn't just politics, lives depend on it. So, is it better to be an alarmist or a Pollyanna, since you'll be criticized for both?
We're now - I hope - at the stage where a little hindsight is faced with a similar quandary: how much of the results we're actually seeing is the result of an overestimate and how much due to actions taken? Either way, count me in the Optimist column. We're not through this thing yet and there will be a lot of rebuilding but it's pretty certain that the worst-case estimates were wrong.
I take it he means "salutary."
VDH always a good read
Eeyore is my favorite literary character, second is not even close.
“Good morning, Pooh. If it is a good morning. Which I doubt”
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
— H. L. Mencken
This hobgoblin isn’t imaginary, but it could easily be argued it was exaggerated.
I liked The Addams Family. That little girl, who would say, “Just wait”.
Wednesday was her name.
“We’re now - I hope - at the stage where a little hindsight is faced with a similar quandary: how much of the results we’re actually seeing is the result of an overestimate and how much due to actions taken?”
Excellent and seldom-mentioned point.
Sounds like you’re for permanent lock down for any infectious respiratory disease and you like to make things up, e.g.5% mortality.
“The models were constructed based on the assumption that no measures would be taken to control the spread of Covid-19.”
Wrong. The 500K dead prediction would be the same. The area under the curve doesn’t change.
The charlatan who changed his death prediction changed it because he realized many more were infected than he initially factored in, therefore he had used too high a death rate.
Mean while as a basically ignorant optimist comparing apples to rutabagas, Rush is every day jumping the shark.
It’s embarrassing to listen to his mish mash
One of our sons was so soberly pessimistic as a preschooler that we called him Eeyore. Eventually, he hated that so he held his tongue regarding negative proclamations.
He will never be seen as an optimist, but he’s gained perspective.
VDH started with a promising premise, then buried it in an unwarranted avalanche of thirty-dollar words.
Eeyore’s best known saying is “Thanks for noticing”, where he is acknowledging someone having noted that he is present.
VDH does not appear content until the most erudite is reaching for the dictionary.
Yes. And this brings up the questions- did the dems have ANYTHING at all to do with either the release of the virus, or trying to make it worse, by hiding/hoarding supplies, trying to deny Malaria drugs to treat patients,(something they've already been caught doing) exc...?
Wake up America!
1,360,039 cases as of 08:15 AM EDT today.
75,973 deaths.
75,973/1,360,039 = 0.0559, or 5.59%.
I am not going to make up fictitious massive numbers of asymptomatic cases just to inflate the denominator to make the death rate look lower. There is no actual data (as in specific antibody titer measurements taken from a random sampling or even targeted sampling of the population) to support making ANY kind of assessment of asymptomatic cases.
Case fatality rates are only calculated from actual diagnosed cases, after the resolution of known cases. They are not based on guesstimates.
“Case fatality rates are only calculated from actual diagnosed cases...”
Case fatality now you say.
Your exact words I responded to were.
“A cold virus that causes over 5% mortality in people it infects cannot be taken lightly.”
No mention of case mortality, in fact quite the opposite in that you explicitly specified all infected.
You’re moving to goalposts or playing word games.
Why?
I have not said that the 5.5% number I calculated today is a case fatality rate. I explained what a case fatality rate is to make that point perfectly clear. Apparently, you missed that.
What I am calculating is a death rate, from the current cases and deaths. I cannot calculate a CFR because I do not know the disposition of all cases.
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