Coronavirus - potential Black Swan?

[slawek]

 

Right so certain but not all cities in the USA shut schools for 4 weeks which had an impact.

However.. Spanish flu came and went in a series of waves everywhere.... with or without these relatively low key lockdowns in USA cities.

As does every flu every year. And plenty of other diseases.

Its not a mad hat theory, to suggest transmissible respitory infections don't come and go in waves goes against all available data.

I didn't say that "transmissible respitory infections don't come and go in waves".  When a new virus appears it goes through the population until the herd immunity is reached. If we try to control the outbreak this process could have many waves. Then the virus usually stays in the population and we have another small waves from time to time, which spread among children and people who didn't get immunity before. Those waves "top up" the herd immunity, which disappears due to old people with immunity dying and new children having no immunity. Some people can also lose immunity after some time. 

On top of that a virus can mutate and some and all people can lose the immunity. We can have another big outbreak of this new virus. Scientists suspect the second wave of the Spanish flu was caused by a new mutation.  

Some diseases like cold like e.g. cold are caused by many strands of the virus so we have no chance to obtain immunity against all of them during our lives.  We have almost constant waves going through the population. 

[Mikhail Liebenstein]

 

You could be onto something here. No alcohol and face coverings. 😊

Or younger population and no obesity!

[NobodyInParticular]

 

 

You are right that correlation is not causation, and that the causal pathways are (probably) distinct (from some perspectives, at least). 

They aren't probably distinct, they are distinct. If you can't grasp that then debate is pointless.

[NobodyInParticular]

 

There's lots of issues with that. 

Firstly its based on the premise that lockdown saved "500k people" . 

As people died it clearly didn't so subtract that figure off as a start. 

That's very poor logic. Just because no one died doesn't mean that some people who would otherwise die did not die. Your statement makes as much sense as saying seat belts are ineffective as some people still die in car crashes.

 

Next you have to look at the base case.

This is what epidemiologists do.

 

[captainb]

 

I didn't say that "transmissible respitory infections don't come and go in waves".  When a new virus appears it goes through the population until the herd immunity is reached. If we try to control the outbreak this process could have many waves. Then the virus usually stays in the population and we have another small waves from time to time, which spread among children and people who didn't get immunity before. Those waves "top up" the herd immunity, which disappears due to old people with immunity dying and new children having no immunity. Some people can also lose immunity after some time. 

On top of that a virus can mutate and some and all people can lose the immunity. We can have another big outbreak of this new virus. Scientists suspect the second wave of the Spanish flu was caused by a new mutation.  

Some diseases like cold like e.g. cold are caused by many strands of the virus so we have no chance to obtain immunity against all of them during our lives.  We have almost constant waves going through the population. 

Quite. Although often herd immunity is not reached in wave 1 but wave 2/3. Places in Brazil have 40% seroprevalence and didnt really have any controls-  not 80% so you could expect another wave to "top up" as you put it.

So getting back to the original point, if we accept that with no restrictions there will be a wave or several going through as immunity builds - rather than a mass explosion - what's the argument again that lockdown has saved 500k lives?

 

For "lockdown to have saved 500k" lives the following needs to be true:

1- it comes at no costs and has no deaths. Well that's obviously nonsense given the mounting death toll and ongoing waves 2,3,4 etc. etc.

2-doing nothing would cause 500k deaths. Highly debateable given the lack of comparisons globally where no or little action has been taken. The likes of Brazil, India, eastern europe, large chunks of africa, middle east, pakistan have all had varying degrees of little to no control .. and no mass explosion in deaths in a couple of months.

 

So what's the actual comparison?

Having lockdowns and continuing deaths spread across months / years until??? 

Or could there be a better solution.. of say accepting that the risk to under 65s is in line with other risks we all take each year, and over 65s or set conditions way higher. Why not offer as much support for over 65s to allow protection to build up elsewhere?

The "lockdown is worth it" brigade has to justify it immense cost on employment, health, wellbeing with this current death situation being so much better than "not lockdown"; not its saved everyone.

 

 

 

[captainb]

 

That's very poor logic. Just because no one died doesn't mean that some people who would otherwise die did not die. Your statement makes as much sense as saying seat belts are ineffective as some people still die in car crashes.

This is what epidemiologists do.

 

No. Your logic is off.

If we did nothing ye olde model predicted back in March there would be 500k deaths.

We did something, so we are at 60k deaths so far.

 

Doing something has not "saved 500k"... the max it could have theoretically saved is 500k being what they assumed was worst case, less the 60k who did die .. i.e 440k.

 

You then need to adjust for if that model given actual observed data was reasonable or not...

 

Your logic of saved 500k.. is like saying seatbelts will save 20k a year, as 20k people die without wearing them.. well they will reduce, but if next year everyone wears one and 10k people die. Seatbelts have saved 10k not 20k.

Edited October 9, 2020 by captainb

[NobodyInParticular]

 

This is the post of the thread. 

The one most full of pseudo-philosophical sophistry? yes.

Edited October 9, 2020 by NobodyInParticular

[NobodyInParticular]

 

You are correct, he has always got everything correct in his whole career 100% guaranteed. 

I think we should elect to the highest position in the land 

No one gets everything correct. On COVID, he seemed to be spot on.

 

I have a PhD and have supervised many PhD students over the years and I can tell you, you would be surprised by their abilities.

I wouldn't trust them to make me a cup of tea or fetch me a bag of chips. Almost all of them have no real ability. The PhD is really just a conveyor belt system. Get on an the start, slave away, cling on to the end, and bull shlt your way through the viva. There you go, another Dr.

Many of my friends have PhDs. Some of them are very practical and can bake excellent cakes as well as have an ability to fetch bags of chips. Some of them run large companies or research institutes very effectively. Two run tech companies. You would be very aware of the work of some of them if I started naming them and their achievements. And I don't think I live in a bubble where all the people I know with PhDs are brilliant.

You seem to either have had poor students or have an oddly low opinion of people.

I dropped off the PhD track because I was doing it part-time whilst working and got married.

[slawek]

 

Quite. Although often herd immunity is not reached in wave 1 but wave 2/3. Places in Brazil have 40% seroprevalence and didnt really have any controls-  not 80% so you could expect another wave to "top up" as you put it.

So getting back to the original point, if we accept that with no restrictions there will be a wave or several going through as immunity builds - rather than a mass explosion - what's the argument again that lockdown has saved 500k lives?

 

For "lockdown to have saved 500k" lives the following needs to be true:

1- it comes at no costs and has no deaths. Well that's obviously nonsense given the mounting death toll and ongoing waves 2,3,4 etc. etc.

2-doing nothing would cause 500k deaths. Highly debateable given the lack of comparisons globally where no or little action has been taken. The likes of Brazil, India, eastern europe, large chunks of africa, middle east, pakistan have all had varying degrees of little to no control .. and no mass explosion in deaths in a couple of months.

 

So what's the actual comparison?

Having lockdowns and continuing deaths spread across months / years until??? 

Or could there be a better solution.. of say accepting that the risk to under 65s is in line with other risks we all take each year, and over 65s or set conditions way higher. Why not offer as much support for over 65s to allow protection to build up elsewhere?

The "lockdown is worth it" brigade has to justify it immense cost on employment, health, wellbeing with this current death situation being so much better than "not lockdown"; not its saved everyone.

 

 

 

The lockdown indirectly, buys time for a vaccine/treatment to be available.  It also saves some lives directly as it spreads the impact of the outbreak on the health system but this is a secondary effect. 

Shielding 65+ it is a possible strategy. But it comes at a price too, 100k deaths among under 65 to reach the herd immunity. 

The question is what we value more 500k lives of 65+ or 100k under 65+ (mostly 50-65). A tough choice. 

[Clarky Cat]

 

Places in Brazil have 40% seroprevalence and didnt really have any controls

If places in Brazil have 40% seroprevalence,  this would correlate to 325,000 deaths here given our peak seroprevalence was 7%. 

[pig]

 

I think we know the answer:

 

You are seriously one sick puppy lol

Just think, some malignant proto-fascist spent time creating that image 

[captainb]

 

If places in Brazil have 40% seroprevalence,  this would correlate to 325,000 deaths here given our peak seroprevalence was 7%. 

8.2% in August - and doesnt include those who apparently may have lost enough for a postive result since March/April.

Interesting that nowhere with any size of comparable population, has got anywhere near that death count... Somewhere surely? 

[Clarky Cat]

 

8.2% in August - and doesnt include those who apparently may have lost enough for a postive result since March/April.

Interesting that nowhere with any size of comparable population, has got anywhere near that death count... Somewhere surely? 

Has a single country anywhere allowed uncontrolled spread with an aged population structure similar to the UK? That would be the comparison to make.

[Peter Hun]

24 minutes ago, captainb said:

8.2% in August - and doesnt include those who apparently may have lost enough for a postive result since March/April.

Its 6% now.

For reference, the detailed weekly reports are here 

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-covid-19-surveillance-reports

Overall population weighted national estimates for working age adults using the RCGP, SEU and NHSBT collections during weeks 25-33 are shown in Table 8. RCGP and NHSBT prevalence estimates using the NHSBT and RCGP collections were very similar, at approximately 6%. Estimates using the SEU collection were slightly lower, although sample sizes were also lower, and confidence intervals were overlapping. Estimates were slightly higher using the Abbott assay than the EuroImmun assay on comparable samples

 

[robmatic]

 

Has a single country anywhere allowed uncontrolled spread with an aged population structure similar to the UK? That would be the comparison to make.

Italy let it go for a while in Lombardy before they realised what was happening. For some reason they were reluctant to try it on the whole country.

Mexico seems to be one of the shining examples for letting it go country-wide, although not generally comparable with the UK in terms of age profile, and they've had 1,400 health workers die from covid. Imagine that happening to the NHS.

[DiggerUK]

Here we are on the 200th day of the great  farce and we find that 24,337,590 uk citizens have been tested for covid. If they maintain the current testing rate of 1/4 million a day then the whole country will have been tested in less than six months from now........Then what?

Still the death rate remains stubbornly low at 77 for Thursday, which is nowhere near Peak Covid in May. This is a non crisis..._

Edited October 9, 2020 by DiggerUK

[swankyman]

 

No one gets everything correct. On COVID, he seemed to be spot on.

Many of my friends have PhDs. Some of them are very practical and can bake excellent cakes as well as have an ability to fetch bags of chips. Some of them run large companies or research institutes very effectively. Two run tech companies. You would be very aware of the work of some of them if I started naming them and their achievements. And I don't think I live in a bubble where all the people I know with PhDs are brilliant.

You seem to either have had poor students or have an oddly low opinion of people.

I dropped off the PhD track because I was doing it part-time whilst working and got married.

I only say this after teaching and supervising over twenty PhD students. A PhD only really requires you to get a 2:1 at degree, slave for three years, write a thesis, and blag a viva.

Overrated as a qualification.

[Odysseus]

 

Here we are on the 200th day of the great  farce and we find that 24,337,590 uk citizens have been tested for covid. If they maintain the current testing rate of 1/4 million a day then the whole country will have been tested in less than six months from now........Then what?

Still the death rate remains stubbornly low at 77 for Thursday, which is nowhere near Peak Covid in May. This is a non crisis..._

You assume that individuals can only be tested once. I, for example have been tested twice and my wife gets tested weekly as part of her job.

[DiggerUK]

 

You assume that individuals can only be tested once. I, for example have been tested twice and my wife gets tested weekly as part of her job.

It would be wise and prudent to provide two sets of figures then. One for total tests completed and one for total people tested. They can't even manage that.

The argument I make is that with so many tests completed the depths of this crisis go nowhere. Hospital admissions for those testing positive in general, together with those needing intensive care and ventilation in particular, show nothing that gets anywhere close to a crisis.

The death rate shows, even with the massaging of those figures, that the peak of this crisis is long gone..._

[Arpeggio]

 

You are seriously one sick puppy lol

Just think, some malignant proto-fascist spent time creating that image 

If this was UK during WW2 the woman on the right would have received a lot less tolerance.

If the efforts of the slimmer girl in the factories was to no avail had we lost, the woman to the right would have been the butt of a joke then killed by members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

Edited October 9, 2020 by Arpeggio

[PeanutButter]

 

[zugzwang]

King Tubby says, "Whatever it is, I'll have seconds!"

[Arpeggio]

 

King Tubby says, "Whatever it is, I'll have seconds!"

The Trump thread is here....

[NobodyInParticular]

 

No. Your logic is off.

If we did nothing ye olde model predicted back in March there would be 500k deaths.

We did something, so we are at 60k deaths so far.

 

Doing something has not "saved 500k"... the max it could have theoretically saved is 500k being what they assumed was worst case, less the 60k who did die .. i.e 440k.

You are right in some ways, although it's pedantic. However, modelling is inexact and comes with error bars (not exactly error bars as it's ensemble modelling). 

[Mikhail Liebenstein]

 

You are seriously one sick puppy lol

Just think, some malignant proto-fascist spent time creating that image 

I don't think we should be normalising morbid obesity.

Happy to live and let live if some is bit overweight or even technically just obese, plenty of people are in that category and it isn't that dangerous.  But some of the mobility scooter crowd, particularly in the US spend their entire time filling their faces and only need the scooter due to their morbid obesity.  How does that work exactly?  Too fat to walk very far, so we'll save you the bother of trying - off you go to the burger joint?