Objectively intelligent.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Viruses weaken as they age and mutate.

Huh?

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

I have heard from everywhere, there will be more waves/peaks. Ty/Icky, why isn’t Less right? We are just delaying aren’t we? Maybe there is value to delaying, but you don't seem to offer any way to quantify when that value goes away.

Of course there is value to delaying. Do you want all of your cases to happen in one month or would you prefer they be spread out more evenly over the year?

Lower peaks put less stress on the health care system and its supply chain. Delayed cases have better odds of improvements in treatment.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Because Less is right. But what Less is saying requires “acceptable death.”

Watch this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lze-rMYLf2E

Obviously Katz is right. Ty will cite how Yale disavowed what he said, via sophistry and creating straw men. Icky, honestly, genuinely, will argue “you first.”

I’m in. I’m going first. I see both need and opportunity and so I’m going to engage with the public and reopen and possibly catch this. If I’m the outlier, you can all laugh at my folly. What’s the alternative? Sit around and wait for testing and tracing in 2021?

Less is right. I only disagree with him in terms of slowing things down with social distancing as much as possible. Because, as McCain argued about global warming, why not?

There is no counter. That’s why you’re not hearing one. The best is Ty’s argument that if we’re too early, we could damage the economy even more. Okay. But how long does he suggest we wait? He won’t say. He doesn’t know.

Well, here’s a fact: One more month and tons of people and businesses are wrecked.

I should be on his side. We’re stacked for 6 months of dry carry. But I work with small businesspeople. A lot of them are fucked - permanently closed - if we go another 45 days.

So if I sound pissed, I am. I get the science. I don’t need somebody talking about what Gates said. Gates is fucking clueless. Some of the flat out dumbest shit on how to handle this is coming from tech people. They have no clue because this is not their world.

It’s hard to ascertain who’s dumber in this country: People protesting to open recklessly and without reasonable limitations, or people who are sure they know best. Both sound like fucking idiots at the moment.

There's nowhere in the world with herd immunity and still an open question as to whether and to what degree people who have recovered are immune. Until we know that herd immunity is possible, I don't think we should pick it as a strategy.

There are places in the world that have controlled (and in New Zealand perhaps eliminated) the spread of the virus with testing and tracing. That's the proven strategy. It should be the goal (too bad we completely fucked up the testing and don't have the capacity) until there is another option.

But really, we should just be listening to the epidemiologists, because none of us know what the fuck we are talking about.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

You all argue against your data points- but this is the real question- why not answer it?

I didn't see this before. We have been flattening the curve, and it has been working fairly well. The key is to keep the rate of transmission down, to keep hospitals from getting overwhelmed.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Huh?

He was reading Richard Epstein.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

Cuomo made a good point -- remain below an infection rate of R0.8 for a bit and we are good to start.

It's hard to find that data for different states. This looks good, but I can't tell how solid it is.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Huh?

https://www.popsci.com/story/health/...tates-changes/

https://www.hhmi.org/news/the-flu-vi...e-its-downfall

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/30...tion-just-yet/

A virus mutating toward greater lethality burns itself out.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

He was reading Richard Epstein.

Your arguments to what I wrote yesterday: Nihil dicit.

This doesn’t make you sound smart. It makes you sound Trumpian. Pissy.

We’re opening, cautiously, smartly, and no one cares about what Ty the Oracle thinks of it. And let’s be clear — you never really had anything to say anyway. You just wanted to parrot Gates and fight straw men. “I’m wise, and, and... Nevermind I have no set date for anything! I’m just going to say we need more testing before we can do anything... And nevermind the economic realities that don’t allow for such open ended lockdowns.”

Fuck outta here.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

But it's funny to watch people debate whether to open when that's not the question. The question is how and when and at least hear in Minnesota, we've begun. It's going to be slow and they're going to try to make it safe, but it is happening...

The appropriate time will differ based on local circumstances and public gathering spaces aren't going to open for a long time, but masks, hygiene, spacing and health monitoring (e.g. temperature checks) are going to be a regular things for awhile. My next haircut (overdue) will likely seem more like a visit to doctor, I'd guess.

Yup. But amazingly, some people think we should not even do that.

Newsflash: We’ve never really closed. We’ve been carefully open all along. If this reopening were so dangerous, we’d have already seen huge spikes around every grocery store, bodega, liquor shop, pizza joint, hardware store (Hone Depot is packed with people every day).

But we’re not. So the argument can be made the argument is largely already settled.

I think some people just want to fight. They want to play Cassandra, be the wise outlier who knew the herd was wrong. Be the science mind they’re not.

Gates is my favorite jackass in this bunch. If we were to wait for the testing he claims must be in place before opening (nevermind the testing wouldn’t do much unless you were testing everyone every few days, as everyone would be at risk of acquiring the virus every day he or she was out), we’d be on lockdown through September. Brilliant, Bill. Fucking brilliant. Thanks for that sage wisdom.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Yup. But amazingly, some people think we should not even do that.

Newsflash: We’ve never really closed. We’ve been carefully open all along. If this reopening were so dangerous, we’d have already seen huge spikes around every grocery store, bodega, liquor shop, pizza joint, hardware store (Hone Depot is packed with people every day).

But we’re not. So the argument can be made the argument is largely already settled.

I think some people just want to fight. They want to play Cassandra, be the wise outlier who knew the herd was wrong. Be the science mind they’re not.

Gates is my favorite jackass in this bunch. If we were to wait for the testing he claims must be in place before opening (nevermind the testing wouldn’t do much unless you were testing everyone every few days, as everyone would be at risk of acquiring the virus every day he or she was out), we’d be on lockdown through September. Brilliant, Bill. Fucking brilliant. Thanks for that sage wisdom.

Really, the problem is the lack of leadership from the White House. Then discourse that makes the news is dominated from someone who cannot be trusted to take things seriously. Instead of a clear, national strategy, benchmarks, the ability to track progress and trustworthy communication of how we get through this, we get chaos, misinformation and armed "protesters."

Here in Minnesota, the governor is trying to get out the kinds of communications we need, but even locally it's hard not to get drowned out by the nonsense. Something like 100k jobs are allowed to restart today (hard to say how many actually will), as long as safety measures (health screening, spacing, etc) are followed.

Also, we shouldn't be waiting on testing. That is a fuck of the scale we can't yet comprehend. I don't know if it's bigger than the mistake of doing essentially no health screening of passengers arriving in this country in the middle of an infectious disease outbreak, but they're both pretty bad.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

https://www.popsci.com/story/health/...tates-changes/

https://www.hhmi.org/news/the-flu-vi...e-its-downfall

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/30...tion-just-yet/

A virus mutating toward greater lethality burns itself out.

You have three articles, one by what appears to be a health reporter discussing mutation in general, one that looks like an abstract of a longer article on Flu rather than coronavirus, and one by a political scientist who still says the opposite of what you are saying.

While I don't have the kind of deep understanding of the science someone ought to have to get too deeply into this, I have worked with people trying to develop anti-virals in the AIDS context for the last quarter century and some of them are working on this one. I understand a lot of viruses, particularly AIDs virus and similar viruses, don't mutate the way flu does, and flu mutation regularly produces very dangerous strains. I'm also told cvd19 is a relatively stable virus, in some ways similar to AIDS, and that only two forms of it have been identified so far and both seem to have very similar replication.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Your arguments to what I wrote yesterday: Nihil dicit.

This doesn’t make you sound smart. It makes you sound Trumpian. Pissy.

We’re opening, cautiously, smartly, and no one cares about what Ty the Oracle thinks of it. And let’s be clear — you never really had anything to say anyway. You just wanted to parrot Gates and fight straw men. “I’m wise, and, and... Nevermind I have no set date for anything! I’m just going to say we need more testing before we can do anything... And nevermind the economic realities that don’t allow for such open ended lockdowns.”

Fuck outta here.

Richard Epstein said what you just said, jackass.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Richard Epstein said what you just said, jackass.

I’ve not read what Epstein said.

I’m only working with what you’ve said: Nothing.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I’ve not read what Epstein said.

I’m only working with what you’ve said: Nothing.

You really do need to read the Epstein interview, for the comedy if not the science: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and...administration

The single most ridiculed paragraph is probably this one, where he explains why its better to trust a lawyer than an epidemiologist on his various theories (including the idea that the virus will weaken over time - he then goes on to use AIDs as an example, despite that just not being at all accurate):

And you’re not an epidemiologist, correct?

No, I’m trained in all of these things. I’ve done a lot of work in these particular areas. And one of the things that is most annoying about this debate is you see all sorts of people putting up expertise on these subjects, but they won’t let anybody question their particular judgment. One of the things you get as a lawyer is a skill of cross-examination. I spent an enormous amount of time over my career teaching medical people about some of this stuff, and their great strengths are procedures and diagnoses in the cases. Their great weakness is understanding general-equilibrium theory.

And Epstein's meltdown toward the end is just wonderful.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

You really do need to read the Epstein interview, for the comedy if not the science: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and...administration

The single most ridiculed paragraph is probably this one, where he explains why its better to trust a lawyer than an epidemiologist on his various theories (including the idea that the virus will weaken over time - he then goes on to use AIDs as an example, despite that just not being at all accurate):



And Epstein's meltdown toward the end is just wonderful.

I’ll watch it. I love cringeworthy shit.

I sincerely can’t recall where I first heard or read that viruses tend to weaken as they age and mutate. I went looking for sources and found articles in which Covid-19 wasn’t the focus, but epidemiologists and doctors stated that they tend to weaken as they age and mutate. The ones I cited weren’t ideal, but they were at least dealing with Covid-19.

But even if I don’t have sufficient proof for that, it’s still sensible to delay acquisition of the virus to ease possible drain on medical facilities, and to wear a mask to avoid getting blasted with a much larger viral load. Anything that decreases the amount ingested is a help.