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The Numbers Dont Work

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  • The Numbers Dont Work

    The numbers on the epidemic do not work. There are too few people dying (at least in most states) for this to be designated as an epidemic across the country.

    I just don't see justification of the fear and quarantines. Am I missing some critical concept that artificially keeps the deaths down?

    First it helps to note the obvious. The number of cases is nonsense – it has not methodology to get a representative sampling. The only tiny bit of help is that when the number of positives increases, the death rate decreases. I fear that the media will still hype on the number of positive test results. This merely means that more people were tested. The true benefit we may find is that there are enough positive cases to show that the majority of people are not affected -- that we can go back to normal.


    There are general problems with the number of positive tests:
    1. based on a PCR test which just says this person seems to have COVID-19 but could positive for non-COVID-19 people
    2. based on a PCR test which is inaccurate on positive and negative results
    3. is being geared toward people who are hospitalized rather than the broader community
    4. is often supplemented by the number of untested patients suspected of having COVID-19

    The quarantine
    1. has gone on for 2 or 3 weeks and should have led to infected people being in the hospital by now
    2. has been applied in all the States when only a few have had possible outbreak – New York and New Jersey. Is is the two states that drive the fears for all the other states? Someone mentioned that the main national new stations are in New York and always see the whole world suffering when it suffers.


    California and and many states (and counties in some worse states) have had super low casualties ascribed to
    https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID.../nCOV2019.aspx

    The up-to-date numbers are on
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_c..._United_States

    A look at three states show low percentages on across the population. New York (and New Jersey) may have something worse going on -- beyond COVID-19

    -+ Louisiana 4.66 Million – 582 deaths attributed to COVID-19
    0.012 percent of population – deaths attributed to COVID-19

    +- New York 8.623 Million – 4578 deaths attributed to COVID-19
    0.053 percent of population – deaths attributed to COVID-19

    +- California – 39.56 – 319 deaths attributed to COVID-19
    0.0008 percent of population

    The numbers in all states, except possibly New York and New Jersey, seem to indicate that we should go back to normal life -- or maybe just keep some basic precautions

    Californians may have been exposed early on and have hardly had any susceptibility to severe cases. California has a good number of foreign visitors and would have seen the effects early on.

  • #2
    Originally posted by mikewhitney View Post
    I just don't see justification of the fear and quarantines. Am I missing some critical concept that artificially keeps the deaths down?
    I suppose the argument would be that the deaths are down because of the quarantines, but there are obviously flaws in that sort of reasoning. It's like arguing that the magic rock I carry in my pocket keeps tigers away. How do I know it's working? Because I don't see any tigers around.
    Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
    But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
    Than a fool in the eyes of God


    From "Fools Gold" by Petra

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
      I suppose the argument would be that the deaths are down because of the quarantines, but there are obviously flaws in that sort of reasoning. It's like arguing that the magic rock I carry in my pocket keeps tigers away. How do I know it's working? Because I don't see any tigers around.
      Hopefully others will become aware of that. Meanwhile the Dems (and Republicans) are going wild in DC while trying to push for borrowing to pay people out of their debt, and they are pushing for their socialist atrocities. This sounds like a quarantine to keep people away from protesting the decisions of Congress.

      After governments kill the economy, they are offering radical marxist solutions to fix it. They are complaining about the numbers of deaths due to the President (I suppose referring only to NY and NJ) while proposing radical socialist medicine to use across the country. "Wow. We can sneak in our new agenda while the country is unable to fight back."
      Last edited by mikewhitney; 04-07-2020, 03:58 PM.

      Comment


      • #4
        Are there any conspiracy theories you two don't believe???
        "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
        "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
        "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Starlight View Post
          Are there any conspiracy theories you two don't believe???
          You are calling the California government website a conspiracy? It is too easy to call something a conspiracy theory when you do have a logical argument against the facts. This is an aspect of mind control. Are you really a scientist? Are you able to explain the numbers?
          Last edited by mikewhitney; 04-07-2020, 04:55 PM.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Dimbulb View Post
            Are there any conspiracy theories you two don't believe???
            What conspiracy theory did I espouse?
            Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
            But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
            Than a fool in the eyes of God


            From "Fools Gold" by Petra

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by mikewhitney View Post
              The numbers on the epidemic do not work. There are too few people dying (at least in most states) for this to be designated as an epidemic across the country.

              I just don't see justification of the fear and quarantines. Am I missing some critical concept that artificially keeps the deaths down?

              First it helps to note the obvious. The number of cases is nonsense – it has not methodology to get a representative sampling. The only tiny bit of help is that when the number of positives increases, the death rate decreases. I fear that the media will still hype on the number of positive test results. This merely means that more people were tested. The true benefit we may find is that there are enough positive cases to show that the majority of people are not affected -- that we can go back to normal.


              There are general problems with the number of positive tests:
              1. based on a PCR test which just says this person seems to have COVID-19 but could positive for non-COVID-19 people
              2. based on a PCR test which is inaccurate on positive and negative results
              3. is being geared toward people who are hospitalized rather than the broader community
              4. is often supplemented by the number of untested patients suspected of having COVID-19

              The quarantine
              1. has gone on for 2 or 3 weeks and should have led to infected people being in the hospital by now
              2. has been applied in all the States when only a few have had possible outbreak – New York and New Jersey. Is is the two states that drive the fears for all the other states? Someone mentioned that the main national new stations are in New York and always see the whole world suffering when it suffers.


              California and and many states (and counties in some worse states) have had super low casualties ascribed to
              https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID.../nCOV2019.aspx

              The up-to-date numbers are on
              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_c..._United_States

              A look at three states show low percentages on across the population. New York (and New Jersey) may have something worse going on -- beyond COVID-19

              -+ Louisiana 4.66 Million – 582 deaths attributed to COVID-19
              0.012 percent of population – deaths attributed to COVID-19

              +- New York 8.623 Million – 4578 deaths attributed to COVID-19
              0.053 percent of population – deaths attributed to COVID-19

              +- California – 39.56 – 319 deaths attributed to COVID-19
              0.0008 percent of population

              The numbers in all states, except possibly New York and New Jersey, seem to indicate that we should go back to normal life -- or maybe just keep some basic precautions

              Californians may have been exposed early on and have hardly had any susceptibility to severe cases. California has a good number of foreign visitors and would have seen the effects early on.
              Sigh.

              California has not had 'super low' casualties. The mortality in california is 2.5%. Louisiana is 3.5%, New York is 4%. New York is doing lots of testing.

              The goal is to avoid exponential spread of the disease. When the spread has gone exponential, you can't control it, real mortality is 1% at best, for california, at 50% catching it, that is 200,000 deaths. For the US total is 1.5 million deaths. So you have to keep it from spreading exponentially.

              1) asymptomatic people carry the disease and can spread it. So you can't just ask sick people to stay home.

              2) we don't have enough tests to test everybody, so we don't know who is carrying the virus.

              3) the virus is very contagious and typically 2 to 3 people get it for every one that has it.

              4) to stop exponential spread other than with isolation, you must act very EARLY and aggressively. We are way past that.

              5) The reality has been you can't stop it period without isolation. The only places that have it under control have done lots of generalized testing and extreme social distancing.

              These five reasons are why we are doing what we doing. Otherwise you end up with new york, or Italy, or spain. Once the number of serious and ICU cases exceed hospital capacity, mortality goes way up. as we see in other countries. you keep mortality down by making sure hospitals can handle the really sick patient load.

              The US as a whole is still experiencing exponential growth. Many of the states you mention are adding 10% to their case count per day. 10% per day is a doubling every week. that is exponential growth. Doubling every week starting a 17,000 cases like california means a little less than half the state (17,000,000 people) is infected in just 10 weeks, and somewhere between 150 and 300,000 of them die.

              Those are the numbers that tell the story and that we have to act on.

              You stop that scenario from happening by seriously reducing the rate of spread. You reduce or stop the spread by stopping physical interactions between people.

              Once we have a real test and enough tests we can control the spread by knowing who has it and quarantining them. But that is a long way off.
              Last edited by oxmixmudd; 04-07-2020, 05:29 PM.
              My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. James 2:1

              If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not  bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless James 1:26

              This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; James 1:19

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by mikewhitney View Post
                You are calling the California government website a conspiracy? It is too easy to call something a conspiracy theory when you do have a logical argument against the facts. This is an aspect of mind control. Are you really a scientist? Are you able to explain the numbers?
                The explanation for your numbers is they are the wrong numbers from which to derive a conclusion. Much like trying to figure out how fast you are going by measuring the diameter of your wheel but not measuring the RPMs it is spinning. The size of your wheel in isolation of its rotation rate will not tell you your velocity. See my post above.
                Last edited by oxmixmudd; 04-07-2020, 05:33 PM.
                My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. James 2:1

                If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not  bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless James 1:26

                This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; James 1:19

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                  I suppose the argument would be that the deaths are down because of the quarantines, but there are obviously flaws in that sort of reasoning. It's like arguing that the magic rock I carry in my pocket keeps tigers away. How do I know it's working? Because I don't see any tigers around.
                  I think the flaw is in your reasoning; yes, definitely.

                  About 50% of those who are ill enough to need a ventilator, are gubbed. Unfortunately, many who might be saved, don’t get as far as the ICU, because the units are full. The bottleneck is in the health care system; the distancing is to reduce pressure on the heath and other services, not really to save the punters.
                  “I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.” ― Oscar Wilde
                  “And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence” ― Bertrand Russell
                  “not all there” - you know who you are

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
                    The explanation for your numbers is they are the wrong numbers from which to derive a conclusion. Much like trying to figure out how fast you are going by measuring the diameter of your wheel but not measuring the RPMs it is spinning. The size of your wheel in isolation of its rotation rate will not tell you your velocity. See my post above.
                    You have to hand-wave a lot of stuff away to make your point seem logical.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by firstfloor View Post
                      I think the flaw is in your reasoning; yes, definitely.

                      About 50% of those who are ill enough to need a ventilator, are gubbed. Unfortunately, many who might be saved, don’t get as far as the ICU, because the units are full. The bottleneck is in the health care system; the distancing is to reduce pressure on the heath and other services, not really to save the punters.
                      California is loaning away ventilators. That is how bad the severe case load has been in California. We should have more people in normal life so that we can load the hospitals a bit more -- so we don't unnecessarily slowdown the economy further and kill more people.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by mikewhitney View Post
                        You have to hand-wave a lot of stuff away to make your point seem logical.
                        Exactly what is oxmixmudd hand-waving away?

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
                          Sigh.

                          California has not had 'super low' casualties. The mortality in california is 2.5%. Louisiana is 3.5%, New York is 4%. New York is doing lots of testing.

                          The goal is to avoid exponential spread of the disease. When the spread has gone exponential, you can't control it, real mortality is 1% at best, for california, at 50% catching it, that is 200,000 deaths. For the US total is 1.5 million deaths. So you have to keep it from spreading exponentially.

                          1) asymptomatic people carry the disease and can spread it. So you can't just ask sick people to stay home.

                          2) we don't have enough tests to test everybody, so we don't know who is carrying the virus.

                          3) the virus is very contagious and typically 2 to 3 people get it for every one that has it.

                          4) to stop exponential spread other than with isolation, you must act very EARLY and aggressively. We are way past that.

                          5) The reality has been you can't stop it period without isolation. The only places that have it under control have done lots of generalized testing and extreme social distancing.

                          These five reasons are why we are doing what we doing. Otherwise you end up with new york, or Italy, or spain. Once the number of serious and ICU cases exceed hospital capacity, mortality goes way up. as we see in other countries. you keep mortality down by making sure hospitals can handle the really sick patient load.

                          The US as a whole is still experiencing exponential growth. Many of the states you mention are adding 10% to their case count per day. 10% per day is a doubling every week. that is exponential growth. Doubling every week starting a 17,000 cases like california means a little less than half the state (17,000,000 people) is infected in just 10 weeks, and somewhere between 150 and 300,000 of them die.

                          Those are the numbers that tell the story and that we have to act on.

                          You stop that scenario from happening by seriously reducing the rate of spread. You reduce or stop the spread by stopping physical interactions between people.

                          Once we have a real test and enough tests we can control the spread by knowing who has it and quarantining them. But that is a long way off.

                          The deaths would have been in the thousands in California from among those infected. The real numbers tell the story. You are taking New York numbers and throwing them at California and hoping it will stick. The numbers simply do not work out like you say. California would have to have ten thousand people dying every day in the next week to catch up. If they were sick, they would have gotten to the worst of it by now. If they have not been exposed, we could expose people to a bit more of it. But your modeling numbers just have no plausibility. Why are you falling for this so strongly? Is this the disaster you just hoped would come on the world? I don't understand your view here.
                          Last edited by mikewhitney; 04-07-2020, 05:50 PM.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by mikewhitney View Post
                            The numbers on the epidemic do not work. There are too few people dying (at least in most states) for this to be designated as an epidemic across the country.

                            I just don't see justification of the fear and quarantines. Am I missing some critical concept that artificially keeps the deaths down?

                            First it helps to note the obvious. The number of cases is nonsense – it has not methodology to get a representative sampling. The only tiny bit of help is that when the number of positives increases, the death rate decreases. I fear that the media will still hype on the number of positive test results. This merely means that more people were tested. The true benefit we may find is that there are enough positive cases to show that the majority of people are not affected -- that we can go back to normal.


                            There are general problems with the number of positive tests:
                            1. based on a PCR test which just says this person seems to have COVID-19 but could positive for non-COVID-19 people
                            2. based on a PCR test which is inaccurate on positive and negative results
                            3. is being geared toward people who are hospitalized rather than the broader community
                            4. is often supplemented by the number of untested patients suspected of having COVID-19

                            The quarantine
                            1. has gone on for 2 or 3 weeks and should have led to infected people being in the hospital by now
                            2. has been applied in all the States when only a few have had possible outbreak – New York and New Jersey. Is is the two states that drive the fears for all the other states? Someone mentioned that the main national new stations are in New York and always see the whole world suffering when it suffers.


                            California and and many states (and counties in some worse states) have had super low casualties ascribed to
                            https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID.../nCOV2019.aspx

                            The up-to-date numbers are on
                            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_c..._United_States

                            A look at three states show low percentages on across the population. New York (and New Jersey) may have something worse going on -- beyond COVID-19

                            -+ Louisiana 4.66 Million – 582 deaths attributed to COVID-19
                            0.012 percent of population – deaths attributed to COVID-19

                            +- New York 8.623 Million – 4578 deaths attributed to COVID-19
                            0.053 percent of population – deaths attributed to COVID-19

                            +- California – 39.56 – 319 deaths attributed to COVID-19
                            0.0008 percent of population

                            The numbers in all states, except possibly New York and New Jersey, seem to indicate that we should go back to normal life -- or maybe just keep some basic precautions

                            Californians may have been exposed early on and have hardly had any susceptibility to severe cases. California has a good number of foreign visitors and would have seen the effects early on.
                            Yes, you are missing something important. First of all, social distancing is helping. Current thinking is that less of an exposure may be the difference between a mild case and an acute case. Second, the death rate for those who have contracted the disease is extremely high so far.

                            Mark Twain once famously said (falsely attributing it to Benjamin Disraeli then British PM): "There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies and statistics". I see Meme's and posts that tout the "survival rate" of Covid-19 to be around the 98% mark...or even better. This is a statistic, and...it's a lie...or at least it's currently wrong and misleading. There's no way to accurately calculate the survival rate at this time because this "survival rate" is factoring in ALL cases including those still fighting the virus, versus only the deaths. We don't know how many of those who have it will recover or die...it's like Schrodinger's Cat, you don't know the state of the cat until it's over and you open the box (or at least without a sniff test...). What we DO KNOW is, (according to Worldometers) as of today, April 7, 2020 @ 7 pm CDT, here in the US, there has been 34,464 cases that have resolved themselves...either they lived and got over the virus and are no longer in danger, or they died. Of those 34,464 cases, 12,790 have died. That's an actual survival rate of resolved cases of around 63%. Hopefully more and more of the active cases will survive and this rate will go up, but we don't know that right now. That's why this virus is considered so dangerous. As of this writing, in cases that are considered resolved, it killed 37% of the people who got it.
                            So, this IS a serious pandemic even if the current number of deaths isn't what the seasonal flu deaths have been the current death rate is FAR higher
                            "What has the Church gained if it is popular, but there is no conviction, no repentance, no power?" - A.W. Tozer

                            "... there are two parties in Washington, the stupid party and the evil party, who occasionally get together and do something both stupid and evil, and this is called bipartisanship." - Everett Dirksen

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Littlejoe View Post
                              Yes, you are missing something important. First of all, social distancing is helping. Current thinking is that less of an exposure may be the difference between a mild case and an acute case. Second, the death rate for those who have contracted the disease is extremely high so far.

                              Mark Twain once famously said (falsely attributing it to Benjamin Disraeli then British PM): "There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies and statistics". I see Meme's and posts that tout the "survival rate" of Covid-19 to be around the 98% mark...or even better. This is a statistic, and...it's a lie...or at least it's currently wrong and misleading. There's no way to accurately calculate the survival rate at this time because this "survival rate" is factoring in ALL cases including those still fighting the virus, versus only the deaths. We don't know how many of those who have it will recover or die...it's like Schrodinger's Cat, you don't know the state of the cat until it's over and you open the box (or at least without a sniff test...). What we DO KNOW is, (according to Worldometers) as of today, April 7, 2020 @ 7 pm CDT, here in the US, there has been 34,464 cases that have resolved themselves...either they lived and got over the virus and are no longer in danger, or they died. Of those 34,464 cases, 12,790 have died. That's an actual survival rate of resolved cases of around 63%. Hopefully more and more of the active cases will survive and this rate will go up, but we don't know that right now. That's why this virus is considered so dangerous. As of this writing, in cases that are considered resolved, it killed 37% of the people who got it.
                              So, this IS a serious pandemic even if the current number of deaths isn't what the seasonal flu deaths have been the current death rate is FAR higher
                              I still don't get it. They cannot say the numbers are going to be high despite the social distancing.

                              Like I said before, people that were confined in their homes would be getting deathly sick if such a devasting virus were in effect in California. Most other states have number of deaths below 1000. Most are far lower. We should be going into normal life based on these numbers. There is no way that these numbers should multiply by a factor of 10 in a week, since everyone is isolated. The only way to properly expose people (i.e., if we want to stay in the end-of-world models) is to promote more normal life -- protect the most vulnerable. If the virus is going to thrive despite what we have done, then it does not help to stay isolated further.

                              Don't let panic drive you to seek comfort in models that propose a sudden million of deaths. We simply cannot afford to gamble our livelihood, our lives, on such panic-driven models. The numbers don't work. If they don't work, they don't work.

                              These are not real science numbers ... the numbers are based on the London College. Many scientists and medical doctors are not convinced by the London College model.

                              Comment

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