Dunning-Kruger: Why The Dumbass Next Door Will Get You Killed

Despite this meme, and the posted Comments policy

on the right sidebar, today's post was brought to you

by the letters "M", "O", "R", and "N", and the IQ "40".

[I was saving this post for tomorrow, but I finished my appointed rounds early, and maybe I'll take tomorrow off, and just leave this up instead.- A.]

Generally, I appreciate Comments to posts I make. Otherwise I'd just sit in the den and mumble to myself. Good ones add to the discussion, on the theory that None Of Us Is Smarter Than All Of Us, editorial accountability, etc.

On the other side of the scale is the boot camp wisdom delivered by one of my drill instructors:

Truer words have never been uttered.

There's also the 24K gold assessment by Mssrs. Dunning, and Kruger, regarding the regrettable human failing where the less people actually understand about something, the smarter they think they are on that topic.

I tell you plainly, all I know about Ebola is what I've read.
Which is everything I can get my hands on.

Other people read one blog post, can't grasp the basics of even that, and conclude they must therefore be the Smartest Guy In The Room.

Which brings us directly to today's example of That Guy:

Anonymous said...

350,000,000 people live in the U.S.
We have, perhaps, 15 beds available to treat Ebola patients safely. As many as 50% of whom would live and survive the infection. 75% if you're really lucky.
So your best odds in an Ebola outbreak if you become infected, are a 1 in 35,000,000 chance of survival.

I'm to sure [sic] how you did the math there, but it's very very suspect.

We tried, patiently, to explain where the wheels went off his tricycle.

 

Then you're suffering from dyscalculia, but I'll explain it anyways.

There are 350,000,000 people in the U.S., give or take.
There are 15 staffed BL-IV beds.

15 people will get those beds.
Everyone else will get Jack, and Shit.
(That would be 349,999,985 people, if you're keeping a tally, who will be told "Best wishes" along with such sage medical advice as "Wash your hands" and "Cover your cough".)

Once you get into a BL-IV bed, historically you have a 50-75% chance of survival.
Let's split the difference and call it 66%.
66% of 15 is 10. (But it could range from 7-12, historically.)
You thus have 10 chances out of 350,000,000, which reduces to a 1 in 35,000,000 chance of getting into one of those beds, and surviving.

This is called fractions.
It's generally covered for most people in third or fourth grade.

Unprotected and untreated, 80-90% of Ebola victims die.
Horribly.
"Surviving" for the other 10-20% isn't anything to write home about either.
Read up on [post-]Ebola Virus Syndrome.

Short answer, don't get infected.
Stock up, and bunker in.

Because if you get it, and you're Case #16 or higher, you're not going to be treated, just farmed out to a death center, where you will die, and then incinerated.
Being dead already, you won't mind that last part.

QED

One might think that such a painstaking explanation might have soothed the confusion in the mind of such a mentally challenged chowder-head, but no. He had yet to spread his wings to full peacock-fan proportions.

Anonymous said...

Aesop,
So the bush people in subsaharan Africa somehow manage a fifty percent survival rate, but if it makes it to the US we're looking at a survival rate of essentially zero. If everyone in the US is infected, only ten people will remain on the continent.
That sound about right to you?

15 people will get those beds.
Everyone else will get Jack, and Shit.

I have a magical formula that will double the number of those beds. Roll more into the isolation rooms.
There are also things called tents...marvelous inventions.
Good grief.

That, gentle readers, is bag-of-hammers breathtaking stupidity of such epic proportions as to raise a blister on boot leather.

So yet again, we remonstrated, albeit less generously in Round Two.

 

Fucking brilliant!

And can you also squat and shit out double the number of trained personnel to care for them? Doctors, nurses, ancillary staff, lab techs, clean up crew, everyone? And also shit out twice the supplies necessary to care for them? Another eight tons worth of exposure suits alone, just for 15 more patients? Not to mention medicines, IV fluids, tubing, bedding and linen, and so on?

No...? Can't do that?

Did you figure they were going to treat themselves?
Or that the isolation room magically cures people?

So much for that great idea.

Bush people in sub-Saharan Africa infected with the virus manage a 10-20% survival rate, not 50%. So will we, with similar levels of medical treatment options for the other 349+M people.

So if it infected everyone, only 280,000,000-315,000,000 people here would die outright.

The rest of the survivors, all 35,000,000-70,000,000 or so, would only have [post-]Ebola Virus Syndrome, which side affects include eventual blindness, along with perpetual headaches, joint pain, and a host of other debilitating problems.

And they'll have 280,000,000+ corpses to dispose of.
But highway traffic will be lighter, so there's that.

Ebola will also probably become endemic to wildlife species on this continent as well, so we could look forward to additional regular outbreaks, forever, without having to wait for another batch to get imported from Africa.

You're going to fix that with tents?

Genius, pal. Call the Pentagon, and tell 'em you've cracked the whole problem, all by yourself, because all we needed to do was pitch more tents all along.

I've only posted somewhere in the neighborhood of 200+ blog posts on this problem in the last 6 years.
You've skimmed one, and hurt yourself trying to digest it.

Stop thinking now, before you sprain your head.
That was really the most embarrassingly stupid pair of posts anyone has ever put up here, in the history of this blog.

No, really.

Walk tall.
And please, keep your thoughts to yourself.
Entertaining as it will be to people for days afterwards, I really don't like kicking the retarded kids; it just looks bad.

Now we come to a conundrum: Duelling Anonymous @$$tards.
Because the wonders of Blogger, and the similar low double-digit IQs involved make it hard to tell if we now have two retards, or one, posting twice.

 Anonymous said...

If you look at the population charts of countries hit by ebola in Africa, ebola was barely a blip.
So asserting the odds of living on if the US is struck by the virus are 1 in 35,000,000 just undermines your own credibility.
The problem with such absurd assertions about the sky falling and world ending is...the next time people take them less seriously. And the next even less.
Until they stop worrying and become cavalier.
Your information, though largely correct (like: isolation precautions in medical facilities leave a lot to be desired, and ebola is very very very bad), is filled with half truths and hyperbole that push it into the land of the absurd.

@$$tard #1: Reading comprehension for everyone but you is still a thing.
Nota bene that at no time did we assert that "the odds of living on if the US is struck by the virus are 1 in 35,000,000". (Scroll up, if you doubt this.)
We said, and in carefully italicized language (Common Core grads, do not dive for a translator; italicized means we did this, it doesn't mean we spoke in the language of the Popes and Caesars.), that

"if it infected everyone, only 280,000,000-315,000,000 people here would die outright."

For those, like Anonymous here, who are manifestly too stupid to comprehend basic English grammar, logic, and rhetoric, I cannot help you. That wisdom represents the Trivium, considered by the ancients to be 3/7ths of a proper education, and a lack of which I cannot remedy in mere blog posts. I urge you to return to the grade school that passed you on to middle school, punch the teachers who failed you in the face, and demand an immediate refund.

And alas for Anonymous #1, I'm not too very troubled that my credibility with demonstrated morons is undermined. I write for reasonably intelligent people, and leave the rest to the tender embraces of Mother Nature and Darwinian selection.

Since I made therefore no such absurd assertions, half truths, nor hyperbole, your pejorative-laden gainsaying is an entirely gratuitous, worthless, unsupported, and putrescent load of horseshit.

Had you any substantiation, you might have attempted to illustrate your point, but as you have nothing like, it's merely the carping of the ignorant demonstrating their mental defects.
Thanks for playing, and we have some lovely parting gifts for you.

 

Now we return to another contribution certainly from the original Anonymous, who not only sticks up for his rank ignorance, but doubles down on it.

 Anonymous said...

You're going to fix that with tents?
It isn't a panacea, but it will offer more than your asserted 15 total beds in the entire CONUS capable of handling ebola patients.

Genius, pal. Call the Pentagon, and tell 'em you've cracked the whole problem, all by yourself, because all we needed to do was pitch more tents all along.
They already know. People have been handling deadly chemicals in airtight tents and hazmat suits for decades, on a regular basis (sometimes 12 hour shifts....unlike Africa they have access to cooling suits).
Anyway, done here.
I won't post again, don't worry.

Worry? You misunderstand me.

My sides hurt.

 

Look, Dipshiticus Maximus, the problem isn't the lack of beds, you ignorant simpleton fuckwit.

They sell beds online by the gross.

 

What makes BL-IV beds special isn't how many of them there are, it's how many of them come with an attached building with the capacity to provide negative airflow, BL-IV filtration and flawless virucidal handling of every cubic centimeter of atmosphere inside without contaminating the entire surrounding countryside with deadly pathogens for which there is no cure; and incineration of the metric fucktons of BL-IV waste products, from gloves to mattresses; and airlock decontamination of the practitioners; and having metric fucktons of all those supplies already on hand right effing now, oh, and like I wasn't absolutely clear on the concept, having enough goddam practitioners - doctors, nurses, techs, and ancillary staff, who take years of learning and months of BL-IV specific training to be able to competently and safely care for patients in such a hazardous and alien practice environment without spreading the disease, like the amateurs did in a Dallas ICU.

 

So if you really think just popping up a few tents fixes that, you're really too stupid to waste any further discussion on, and you probably need the following diagram in a big way.

 





All part of the service, moron.



But even someone stupid enough to try another bite at that apple can serve as a negative example for those less stupid, so for their sake, we'll finish driving this home.

Because, Gentle Readers, they already use tents now. In Africa. Because "Ebola Treatment Center" is another misnomer, whereby TPTB have been lying to you, me, and most especially, thousands of doomed Africans with Ebola.

Because they don't do much of any "treatment" in Africa. They do "palliative care".

The centers should be called "Ebola Hospice Centers". They wipe fevered foreheads, they offer a cup of cool water, and they mop up Ebola-laden diarrhea and vomitus, until the virus kills its usual 75-90% tally.

The survivors, they send home. Or draft to work in the Ebola Treatment Centers, since

a) they're now immune, and

b) no-effing-body else wants anything to do with them, and their families are probably all dead already; and

c) everybody's working for free anyways, so it doesn't cost them anything.

 

Curiously, health care workers over here have this quaint notion that they should be paid for their labors, so that's not going to work here. Until everybody with a license to practice has left skidmarks in the parking lot. (Like by Day Two.)

 

Call me crazy, but it seems to me getting taken care of by the dumbshits stupid enough to contract Ebola to begin with, and trusting them not to spread it, is like taking your effed up car back to the guys who effed it up the first time, and then expecting they'll get it right the second time, i'n'it??

 

And, when the outbreak is over, they burn the tent and the whole treatment center to the ground.

With napalm.

Just to be sure.

 

And with only 15 actual (not "asserted", shit-for-brains; I posted the documentation, so maybe try reading for comprehension, just for the novelty) BL-IV beds available here, for actual treatment, which gets us to 50-75% chance of recovery instead of 10-20%, if they get you in early enough, everyone else infected is going to get the same African palliative care model, and die at exactly the same 80% slate-wiping genocidal rate as in Africa. There's your potential millions of deaths, because we saw how good the amateur Ebola care models worked in Dallas, five years ago.

 

(And trust me, by three cases outside of BL-IV, the staffs everywhere are going home, and they won't be back until long after this is over. Or they'll die, stupidly, listening to the same official happygas horsesh*t that infected the two nurses in Dallas. And in the course of that dying, spread the outbreak even farther.)

 

So you either get the lotto-unlikely 1 BL-IV bed out of 15; or you get Ebola, and probably (80% or worse) die; or you bunker in someplace until it's over, which wee point I may have been a bit shy about pounding across in the last five or six posts since the beginning of the month. Or maybe some Anonymous jackhole commenters have cement-heads, and sh*t for brains.

 

I could give you good odds on which is likelier.

 

And now, I'm going to hand it over to frequent commenter Nick, just in time for him to climb up the ropes, and come down with an Atomic Elbow smash on our Fucktard Of the Day.

Take it home, Nick:

In Africa, they don't have 3 million people counting on truck drivers to deliver tomorrow's groceries. Or 9 million. They don't have a large percentage who would die without daily or weekly meds, which aren't stocked locally, and can't be stockpiled by individuals. Their supply chain looks completely different.

They don't riot if their favorite sports team wins, let alone if the stores are closed for a week.

Since you sound like you work for the CDC, the patronizing attitude that the people need to be kept from panicking annoys the HELL out of those of us with better than room temperature IQ and the motivation to take care of ourselves. I suggest reading your own CDC guidelines on Business Continuity and Pandemic Flu. Ask yourself the same questions they ask, like, can your business survive with only 50 of people coming to work? Then ask if modern western society can survive if only 50% of people go to work.

Having been thru civil collapse (Rodney King riots in LA), terror attack (I was 8 miles from ground zero on 9-11), and a variety of natural disasters (Rita, Ike, Harvey)- the thread that holds our society together is thin and strained.

Airline pilots for some airlines can rightly be fired for lying to passengers about the severity of any issue. This is the way it should be. Treat people as adults. Don't lie to me. The pushback when your lies are exposed, and the CDC DID NOT COVER ITSELF WITH GLORY IN 2014, will be worse than the truth.

nick

Also, nit picking over one idea (where the reservoir is) is a great but tired tactic to distract from the bigger issue. If this gets here, we are not prepared and people will die. Let them panic! What do you expect them to do? Run out and stock up on food? Close the border? Quarantine arriving flights??? HOW IS ANY OF THAT A BAD THING?

How, indeed?

Ebola in Sh*tholia is a blip because when you're already at a Turd World nothing Stone Age status of civilization, an epidemic can't put much of a dent in things.
It's a wee bit different in the First World, in a delicately-balanced, high-trust society intensely dependent on everything working all the time.
So where does that leave us?

The odds point to this arriving here.
We've all but thrown the gates open and rolled out a red carpet for Ebola this time.

In 2014, we were two BL-IV patients away from being West Africa.
Two.

Idiots, get that through your thick skull.
The smart people have already grasped the significance of that fact.
If Duncan had infected two more people, it would have gotten out loose in the wild.
We had no vaccine at all then.

And we have nowhere near enough now; perhaps a few tens of thousands of doses.
I've seen nothing anywhere that indicates they can ramp that up to hundreds of millions (let alone billions) of doses in even the next year. They've been vaccinating like crazy in DRC, and it's still doubling reliably, blowing right past all those mythical "containment rings" of vaccinated people, and has now spread to a second poverty-stricken Turd World Sh*thole.
Color me shocked. It's within a short bus ride of two or three megapolii, with international airports in each.

Which means it could be anywhere in 24 hours from yesterday.
And once it hits 16 cases here, they're going to be cared for by the Amateur Hour Follies, at a hospital untrained, unstaffed, unequipped, and unprepared for it. Maybe one near you. They're not going to just roll bunk beds into the paltry few BL-IV wards.

Or, mirabile dictu, it might flame out in Africa.

To this day, no one in authority, anywhere, can explain why it burned out in West Africa after only 2 years, because they never met any of their posted goals for contact tracing, containment, number of facilities, safe burials, or anything else. Not one.

I wouldn't bet the farm on that square this time around either, thanks anyways.

But if it does get here, a la a 2019 version of Duncan, you won't know for two weeks, when someone shows up at your local ER, with blood shooting out of all orifices.

It'll be a wee bit late to "make a plan" then.

No doubt Anonymous Simpleton will be trying to pitch a tent, and telling you everything's gonna be okay. And the morons at CDC will be telling you, yet again, "We can handle this! We're ready for it! First World health care! Magic beans!"

Best Wishes with that plan.

I hope my readers will understand if I choose to approach things with a bit more realistic viewpoint.

But thanks, Anonymous Simpleton(s) for providing the usual Comedy Relief.