Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Life Lesson Genius: One Panel Truth


o/~ One of these things is not like the other... o/~
























Go ahead, budding Einsteins: You decide which model seems wisest to you, at this point.

Kung Flu response: so simple, a cave man could do it.

Hell, CA Gov. Gabbin' Nuisance is a certified moron, but compared to NYFS Gov. Cuomo (D-Five Families) he's Stephen F**king Hawking compared to Gilligan. Because for once in his mostly useless life, he listened to smarter people (and to be honest, in Nuisance's case, that would be all of them), and did the right thing, when it really mattered. Cuomo, by all accounts, has never done the right thing, or listened to smarter people ever, on anything.














And to be totally full-disclosure fair here, the one place in Califrutopia where it's blowing up -  L.A., I'm looking at you - it's exactly because people there are being NYFC levels of stupid, grouping together, ignoring quarantine guidelines, and doing the exact same dumbfuckery that made NYFC the COVID Capitol of the World.

QED

And from Comments:

"CNN mentioned assumptions of studies in an article from today (drudge linked): https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/07/health/ihme-updated-covid19-model/index.html
 "But the newest version of the model underscores just how important social distancing continues to be: It assumes that those measures -- such as closing schools and businesses -- will continue until August, and it still predicts tens of thousands of deaths."
  
August is SIX GD Months of economic shutdown! Much more at the link." -RSR

Thanks, RSR.

I appreciate the summary of IMHE's assumptions, something no one with a megaphone on the Internet is talking about, even as they plan to get the beaches in Amity re-opened just in time for the 4th of July. It sux that they can't figure it out, while even CNN couched their report in that reality. When CNN scoops you, it's time for some loudmouths to sit down.












There's nothing wrong with IMHE's inherent predictive casualty analysis on that basis, but as usual, the Short-Bus Short-Attention-Span Jackholes don't pay attention to such niggling details, they just think they can cut straight to the conclusion page, and sound like Harvard MD post-doctoral fellows.

I still think they're smoking pure, straight hopeium in opining that this magically fades away in a couple of weeks, though.

There's still no empirical basis for suspecting that out loud, other than blind hope. That's throwing darts at the prediction board, not science.

But it's entirely possible that, like crime, this is driven by the actions of the fractional number of  dumbest dumbass Gilligans in society, and once you cull the stupidest few thousand, like in NYFC, that - exactly like the Three Strikes laws - once those assholes are winnowed out of the general population, the trend spikes downward like a crashing Space Shuttle, largely for the same reasons: stupidity and arrogance meet reality and end up in the same smoking hole of hubris.

On that basis, this may indeed peak shortly, but we'll only know that after it does.
People should buckle down, STFU, and wait and see.



Oh, and for the "lift the lockdowns now!" crowd:

















And since when do we listen to the most unprepared knotheads about when or whether to do that, in the same manner as letting Gilligan take the wheel, or Rainman drive the car...??















Just asking.


33 comments:

John said...

TOIAEIA.

Think of it as evolution in action?

Man, I miss me some Larry Niven.

-JW

Differ said...

I miss Jerry Pournelle; he would have had some cogent thoughts on this issue.

T said...

Aesop said:

"But it's entirely possible that, like crime, this is driven by the actions of the fractional number of dumbest dumbass Gilligans in society, and once you cull the stupidest few thousand, like in NYFC, that - exactly like the Three Strikes laws - once those assholes are winnowed out of the general population, the trend spikes downward like a crashing Space Shuttle, largely for the same reasons: stupidity and arrogance meet reality and end up in the same smoking hole of hubris."


That is classic, Aesop.

On another note:

Reasons for the "Beer Flu" high fatality rate(over double the national average) in the New Orleans are is the high percentage of people with:
#1. morbid obesity
#2. diabetes
#3. heavy smokers
#4. asthma

Aesop said...

@.,

You left out:
5) Holding fucking Mardi Gras amidst a pandemic!

FIFY.

ThatWouldBeTelling said...

The high fatality rate certainly required a lot of Gilligans both allowing Mardi Gras ("I wouldn't have if Trump told meeeee!") and attending it, but all calculations of fatality rates depend on a denominator, the number of people who've gotten COVID-19.

Given that our only widespread class of tests maybe finds active infections, and our testing capacity is very limited, and not strictly needed for people sick enough require hospital care (someone with the symptoms must be assumed to have it, false negatives make depending too much on the test dangerous, and there's a long turn around in getting results), all denominators are bogus for the purposes of calculating a true Case Fatality Rate (CFR). I've read you pretty much have to wait until after an epidemic or pandemic has run its course before calculating an accurate one.

So take with a huge grain of salt deaths/total tested, especially since the latter is also iffy because only positive tests are required to be reported by law. Total tested could be way off if a state's health department isn't doing a good job of tracking that (they do have more important things to do), perhaps not sweeping up all the commercial labs. See the long discussion here on Californa's state health department's bogus reporting of tests performed, they would have you believe both the whole state's capacity is only ~2,000 test/day, and that 78,400 tests were conducted in one day.

So maybe Louisiana's bogusCFR is a true indication of something like comorbidities, or maybe it's an artifact of not enough testing compared to Illinois, see both here, where the usual suspects are complaining a lot of blacks are getting it and/or dying in Chicago, ignoring that at 30% of the population there's relatively a lot of them to get it compared to the national average.

chewbacca said...

Stupid people in LA:

So, why aren't the police wearing masks? If the threat is real, why are they willing to face down screaming obese people? If they showed up in hazmat suits, that might be a clearer signal. So glad I don't live there, in any case.

Michael said...

Aesop are we still giving Narcan to OD'ed Drug Abusers?

Any information on Herd Immunity to this nasty bug? Or like the Spanish Flu we simply have to wait it out until it mutates into something less dangerous?

Unknown said...

Aesop.
I usually agree with you.
But not on this.
An alternative viewpoint.

https://straightlinelogic.com/2020/04/06/surrendered-without-a-shot-by-robert-gore/

idahobob said...

I have said for quite a while that the gene pool needs some bleach added to it. Perhaps the kung flu is the needed bleach.

Anonymous said...

We don't even know how many people have had this and either recovered or shown no symptoms.
Without that number, trying to gauge the lethality of this is impossible.

I have an issue with the powers that be STILL not telling us what this is; they're still calling it a flu bug. They're lying. (I know this because I saw their lips move)
They know exactly what this is.

They are STILL not advocating or encouraging the use of over the counter meds to treat this.
Why?
Others have studied the results of ventilators and concluded they do more harm than good.
Why?

There are serious questions to be answered by the MFIC, and it needs to happen soon.
We're Americans, not Europeans. You're not going to corral the US population as easily as the Euro's. Things will spark soon if they continue trying to keep us in the dark, and that is probably a much worse scenario than the mother of all virus'.

Unknown said...

Another, more radical alternative viewpoint.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/april/04/we-will-not-comply/

KDKong said...

Aesop,
Have to concur with unknown on this. Experts have extensive knowledge in their discipline. However this leads to tunnel vision for solutions. To a medical person this means lock down until the virus goes away. First, viruses don't go away. At some point the lockdown will end and the cases will start to spike again. What do we do when that happens? Shut down the country? What will the economy look like at 30%+ unemployment? Which is what we are looking at now. What happens when unemployment runs out? What happens when your preps run out after 3-6-12 months. What about civil liberties and rights of the people?

https://wmbriggs.com/post/30013/

Some food for thought along with other posts there.

The choice now is this. Do some people die from a virus, or do we burn the whole country down to save a few? I get that you don't want to make that decision. No one wants to. But sometimes there are no good options and you have to choose between two bad alternatives.

Flame away.

Bear Claw Chris Lapp said...

Those of you who think that way get off your computer and go out in public, hop a ride on the NYFS subway please. Or STFU. It will only pass when all stay at home for a short period. Stupid is what will prolong this.

Aesop said...

@Unknown, et al
https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2020/04/im-from-missouri.html?showComment=1586294057566#c2110693250920576556

https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2020/04/06/sll-surrendered-without-a-shot/#comment-325183

https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2020/04/06/sll-surrendered-without-a-shot/#comment-325224


Abandoning anything like reason, and doing nothing (AKA "New York Style Kung Flu Response") means this won't kill "a few".
And as I asked earlier,
How many millions of people must someone want to shove into crematoriums before we are justified in calling them genocidal??

ThatWouldBeTelling said...

I have an issue with the powers that be STILL not telling us what this is; they're still calling it a flu bug. They're lying. (I know this because I saw their lips move)
They know exactly what this is.


Who, specifically, is still using that? And are they STEM trained?

Our host calls it the Kung Flu, in part I assume because prior to SARS-CoV-2 showing up, the flu was the most deadly, easily transmittable respiratory virus we knew. And the 1918-9 Spanish flu is a good zeroth approximation of what we're facing, except now we can save a lot more patients. See also how our last updated in 2017 flu pandemic plan was the base document for our COVID-19 pandemic plan.

They are STILL not advocating or encouraging the use of over the counter meds to treat this.
Why?


Because there are none that are believed to make any real difference? For a long time studies have thrown into doubt that guaifenesin helps these sorts of diseases. Hmmm, does it do anything in the lungs?

Otherwise take acetaminophen or a NSAID if your fever compels you, but we're not sure that's even a good idea for mild fever. Interfering with the body's natural responses is something that should give you pause.

Nothing that treats the cause of the flu is available without a prescription.

Others have studied the results of ventilators and concluded they do more harm than good.
Why?


Because there's a bunch of oddities about severe COVID-19? And the stark fact that most people put on a ventilator die? People make hypotheses, the "attacks hemoglobin" one is conveniently testable, but also brand new.

Why are you so upset by all of the above?

There are serious questions to be answered by the MFIC, and it needs to happen soon.
We're Americans, not Europeans. You're not going to corral the US population as easily as the Euro's. Things will spark soon if they continue trying to keep us in the dark, and that is probably a much worse scenario than the mother of all virus'.


So are you going to be setting off some sparks, rioting in the streets, whatever?

You're not responding rationally to this crisis, and boy are you demanding of answers we either don't have, or haven't had the time to investigate. Answers from fallible human beings, are you demanding a response beyond the quality our authorities a capable of?

Note that our ruling class, which the Instapundit has accurately described as the worse we've ever had, and oh, they want people like us dead anyways, is discovering that just about everything they hold dear is a deadly threat in this sort of pandemic. Hopefully I don't have to provide a list of that, but note that San Francisco has overnight done a complete reversal on their "reusable bags good, plastic bags banned" 12 year old law.

ThatWouldBeTelling said...

It will only pass when all stay at home for a short period.

If you define "a short period" as a couple of years, I suppose. Assuming chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine aren't miracle drugs, and I suppose the prospect of one turning up is one reason our national leadership isn't emphasizing just how bad and long this might be.

And for "TrumpPills," making the big assumption the formal high quality test results won't be corrupted because our ruling class believes "this could be the silver bullet that takes out this administration", and have gone so far as to ban its use in no less than 5 states I've seen claimed (I know that was true, or effectively so in Michigan, New York (some exceptions, including a real clinical test), Nevada, and Ohio, which Governor Half Whitmer of Michigan is said to be following with a one day delay, she has more important things to focus on).

Anyway, TrumpPills could make a game changing difference, but we won't know for a little while. Assuming neither they or anything else turns out to be a therapeutic silver bullet, if and when we think we've gotten control of the incidence of COVID-19, that is, the rate at which it's infecting people, we can then modulate the lock down. Although with so many Gilligans in the population, doing that without exposing a lot more of the extremely vulnerable will be quite a trick. And even with an effective therapy, we still have to modulate demand, and it's likely it won't be effective for everyone.

But the general idea is to use mitigation techniques like social distancing to keep incidence, and thus healthcare system demand under control, below the level the latter gets overwhelmed, and note we need to drive that demand quite a bit down, and do some clever things our host hoped we would do from the beginning so we don't see huge losses from normal accidents and illnesses. And then wait until we have a vaccine, or it becomes clear we won't for an indefinite period of time.

But expecting we will, and that's the way to bet, Bill Gates for example is going full Manhattan Project, deliberately wasting billions to build factories that can turn out any of the current 7 or 7 types of vaccine candidates. Which come to think if, it built its biggest facility at Hanford in his home state, there's a good chance he's more familiar with the Project than the average STEM type of his generation.

elysianfield said...

"Any information on Herd Immunity to this nasty bug?"

Michael,
Have patience, it takes a bit for "She who would be telling" to Google the subject and then commence to the tellin'....

KDKong said...

So your call is to let millions die from economic disruption rather than a virus?

Ray - SoCal said...

Video was from a week ago of lapd dispersing a birthday party. No masks on any police.

ThatWouldBeTelling said...

Thanks, elysianfield, I'd forgotten I hadn't answered a couple of early morning posstings:

Stupid people in LA:

So, why aren't the police wearing masks? If the threat is real, why are they willing to face down screaming obese people? If they showed up in hazmat suits, that might be a clearer signal. So glad I don't live there, in any case.


Indeed, or in one European country where the police have reportedly asked for face-shields because so many of their vibrants are spitting on them.

Why they don't have any PPE? Because we've completely dropped the ball on masks less intense than N95 respirators, and until a few days ago it was months long government dogma that non-healthcare workers masking would do more harm than good. A lie which is consequential in many ways.

Any information on Herd Immunity to this nasty bug? Or like the Spanish Flu we simply have to wait it out until it mutates into something less dangerous?

Without a better understanding of how SARS-CoV-2 transmits, which I'm pretty sure needs more test capacity to gain, I'm pretty sure we can't model when herd immunity will become significant. Although as our host has noted, there's for example building herd immunity among the Gilligans who ignore our mitigation orders and requests. I'm spit-balling it at 80-85% minimum, based on the thought to be a lot more infectious measles requiring 90-95%. But that's a guess I have absolutely no confidence in. Expert opinion by for example the same guy has it anywhere from 30-90%.

I guess you can say there's a big difference between knowing that the phenomena exists, and at this stage in a novel pathogen pandemic knowing the number.

As for mutating to a less severe strain, what makes that happen, and transmit favorably compared to the original strain? Something that makes the new strain do a better job at being a virus. Right now there's no "selection pressure" except to transmit more rapidly, and there's little if any pressure of that sort, there are so many Gilligans out there, as well as those with bad luck, probably usually to being exposed by Gilligans. Plus coronaviruses are unique among the RNA viruses in having a proofreading mechanism, so its raw mutation rate is lower, but I don't know enough virology to know the real long term significance of that.

What I'd assume happened with the Spanish flu is herd immunity. Once enough people got it, and we believe some already had a degree of immunity from previous pandemics, it had to adopt or die. So as flu strains do, we assume H1N1 changed, and kept changing or it would have been replaced by another strain. I'm under the impression H1N1 continues to be to this day one of the currently two dominant Type A flu strains, but I don't know if that's the case (or even know if we think we know).

So your call is to let millions die from economic disruption rather than a virus?

I'll repeat our host, show your work, demonstrate how many people will be killed by the economic disruption. "Millions" is way beyond any of my projections, aside from ruling class stupid tricks.

KDKong said...


I'll repeat our host, show your work, demonstrate how many people will be killed by the economic disruption. "Millions" is way beyond any of my projections, aside from ruling class stupid tricks.

You have a lot more faith that the ruling class won't do something stupid than I do.

ThatWouldBeTelling said...

You have a lot more faith that the ruling class won't do something stupid than I do.

Seeing as how I regularly call them out for the masking and testing debacles, I'd say your faith in my faith is misplaced. Those together will kill many thousands, we'll never know how many. But see how California (!!!) is handling this, I never would have predicted that. More than a few Leftists and Democrats are showing they're not insane, nor as hardly as dumb as we thought. Many of course are living down to our expectations, but not without consequences, see Governor Cuomo, I don't think anyone's going to forget his seizures (actually not sure if he went through on any of them) of "unused" respirators and PPE. Or how he and de Blasio let NYC become another Wuhan, or nearly so, maybe.

What you're claiming, without showing your work, is that they'll continue to screw up to the point they'll kill millions of Americans. When, you know, a lot of us have a whole bunch of resources to draw upon, like our being a food superpower, a federal system where I personally have reasonably competent state, county, and city authorities, being "armed and dangerous", etc. etc. etc. We've got a military that the ruling class has been s***ting on all my politically aware life, and they too get to vote with force if it comes to hard cases.

RSR said...

In Politico today -- even if these tapers off in May, it's projected to return in Nov to December; this is the NEW NORMAL: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/08/coronavirus-when-normal-expert-health-care-172005
"A conversation with Dr. Janis Orlowski, chief health care officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges.
[...]
I believe that we're going to return to a semi-normal life at the end of May — Memorial Day. But the other thing that I would say is that we have to prepare ourselves to go through a similar exercise in the fall, in the late fall. If you take a look at the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, and if you take a look at how coronavirus is acting, this is not just the winter and spring of 2020. Probably late November, by December, we are going to go through this again.

Now, what we hope is that we have a vaccine, but there's not going to be a vaccine that's going to be ready in 6-8 months. And so the likelihood is that we're going to spend the summer months having a semi-normal life, but getting ourselves prepared to go through this again and go through it better. Be ready to stay at home. Understand what that means. Everyone get as much toilet paper as they need to have. We're going to do this again and we're going to be smarter and better at doing this. And so, let's start talking about how we make it through the next seven weeks. But then let's talk about how we're going to do it smarter, come the winter time."

Matt Bracken said...

Anybody who wants to see Covid-19 "in the wild" without a functioning medical infrastructure, just do a YT search on Guayaquil Ecuador and filter for today.
Yesterday: cardboard coffins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMgP-ujOQyY
Today: mass graves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0PGXx1Pg5I

Why should anybody give a damn about Guayaquil? It's a city of 3 million, mostly slums that is the biggest natural harbor and one of the biggest seaports on the west coast of S. America, calling itself, "the Gateway to the Pacific Rim."

And while Uncle Sam is too busy with it's own outbreak to pay attention....the ChiComs most certainly are. A "rescue" operation will be along any day, like the ones going into Manila. El Presidenty do Ecuador, name of Lenin Moreno, is a red diaper socialist who will welcome China's help in "reforming" Ecuador's society. Ecuador, with great location and rotten banana republic govt, is a perfect launching pad for China into South America. Unrestrained Covid-19 will prepare the way, and ChiCom "rescue operations" will follow behind.

Hope@ZeroKelvin said...

One of the problems with NOLA, besides holding Mardi Gras in the middle of this, is that the health care system never fully recovered after Katrina.

In fact, one huge problem around the country is the contraction of hospital beds, nurses and physicians after 10 years of Obamacare. 'course we have plenty of administrators, regulators, chart checkers, federal gov "programs" for quality, blah blah blah but actual-boots-on-the-ground-getting-it-done folks and actual hospital beds are less.

We are doing okay in Houston metroplex so far. We are twice the area and population of the state of Connecticut actually. Our population density is way less and we have virtually no public transportation, so that has been helpful.

Our covid19 positive doubling time is about 6 days and deaths about 5. Our hospitals have gone to everybody wearing a surgical mask in the hospitals whether with direct patient contact or not.

Only the people taking direct care of covid19+ or PUI patients are in the full PPE. Segregating covid19+/PUI patients immediately into a central location and keeping them out of the rest of the facility has also been helpful.

I don't have any data on HCQ + azithro + zinc or the plasma based therapies yet, but all the hospitals are doing this on protocols so some data should be available soon. Through the grapevine, I have heard both are helping.

My daughter works in IT and her company has a contract for the TCDJ. There are many workers and offenders currently testing positive and there is a Chinese fire drill on what to do. Gov Abbott said no way to releasing felons, so there is a real headache on relocating the infected offenders. In this part of Texas, prisoners needing acute care end up in either UTMB at Galveston (100+ miles away) or two contracted hospitals in Conroe and Huntsville, who have their own issues dealing with covid19.

I don't think anybody really thought through what to do with a mass outbreak of very ill incarcerated persons. Prisons are not noted for their cleanliness and there is a high incidence of comorbidity among the offenders - HIV, Hep C, liver cirrhosis, obesity (since they stopped the prison farms), etc. Spicy times.

Thanks God my daughter has been able to work from home for the last 3 weeks and just had a negative test!





Matt Bracken said...

https://gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/046/469/838/original/749e7cb3bf1ab628.png?1586381497

Aesop said...

Matt
Sorry, but that link comes up as nothing, nowhere.
?

Unknown said...

Agree, would love to hear thoughts.

Unknown said...

Let's not forget the governor's of Fl, and TX, for leaving the beaches open for Spring Break. Spread through out the country.

Wendy (KekistanTrans) said...

Re: Matt Bracken
https://gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/046/469/838/original/749e7cb3bf1ab628.png?1586381497
Aesop said...
Matt
Sorry, but that link comes up as nothing, nowhere.

@Aesop @Matt
Maybe because you don't have a Gab account?
I was able to see it and I liked Matt's image / meme so much I copied it and uploaded to imgur. Here is the image link:
https://i.imgur.com/mtshfDm.png

Landroll said...

Method for developing 'Herd Immunity"

RSR said...

Unknown @ 3:58 -- actually it was the dunces who traveled to those states from out of state in the middle of a pandemic who were responsible, not states' governors for not closing public beaches.

There was a story last week or the week before re: a New York dad who refused to let his son, returning from spring break, back into the house where that son's grandparents also resided -- after the father had told the son to cancel the trip/not to go.
Be like that dad who sees where the responsibility and fault truly lies.

JackOFFalltrades said...

This isn't going away. And when they say it is gone, there will be another. Welcome to the new normal.