Nominee for tweet of the month:

Just imagine if he wore the tan suit Obama liked.

Boom!

Cliffs would help if you really want many people to listen to and watch an hour long podcast.

It's somewhat interesting. I've of the view that the two key numbers that define the case data are R(t) and W(t) where W* is a measure of wishful thinking. The scientist whose big into data apologises for having made the bad mistake of ignoring his data because of wishful thinking.

*We can also reduce W(t) to a function of R(t) as it's a reaction to the change in cases numbers.

Had to stop listening eventually as couldn't take any more of that annoying host. For someone who claims to be an engineer he doesn't seem to have come across feedback very much - doesn't even seem to occur to him that lockdowns followed by reopenings as a reaction to case numbers with an exponential growth virus is likely to end with similar results. Unless that is, there's some solution e.g vaccines which we're holding on for.

If he wants to argue the political case against lockdown i.e that the politicians are too useless to cope with all the wishful thinking when the lockdown reduces cases then that might be a fair point but he appears to be a simpering idiot. I'm sure I'm being unfair but wow is he too irritating to listen to.

It shows excess mortality data since Covid for US and Europe and elsewhere for people over and under 65 in USA, and Europe, Israel,
Versus prior years.

Excess mortality is the best metric as it deals with the issue of comorbities and defining a covid death which is more difficult as covid happens to kill older people.

It goes into detail on hard hit places like New York. Compares certain states to others. Compares Australisia, south east asia to the ROW.

Its mainly the data. There aren't many arguments in there. Except how NYC got walloped and was still able to cope, just about. Seasonality. How excess hospital capacity that was built was never used and disbanded in summer as you know, before the winter resurgence in UK. Never forget the justification and reason given for lockdowns. They were to protect and save the hospitals.

When they stick to the data it was interesting. There were plenty of arguments in there which was where it was sometime okay but often very weak from the 'simpering idiot'.

Byond a very crued sense, there ws no data to say hospitals coped. Coping completely would mean no more died/suffered from poor care than if there was twice as much capacity. No data at all on how well hospitals did on that unless it was at the end. Yes buildings were unused but as even they mentioned there may have been lack of staff/etc to use those buildings. We do know many people died in/at homes, that care was denied/cancelled and that in many, if not all, places triaging was increased significantly - where ws the data to even suggest that all that made no difference (i.e hospitals coped just fine).

Three weeks to flatten the curve they said. The nightingales were repurposed. This is an international forum. But our countries are beside each other and we share the same covid season. I can tell you for sure our hospitals coped fine and the death rate curled over last summer just as it did all over europe. But lockdowns remain here again. Had the flu not mysteriously vanished we may have had some trouble come flu season just passed with a double whammy. The vaccine rollout here is a shambles wheras in your country it is excellent. Which is interesting because without a highly vaccinated population the number of deaths has curled over now. So Covid season is over for us, or very close to its end I would argue. Every hospital has vacant beds. Yet restrictions remain, irrationally. Again.

The goalposts kept moving. The justification nearly went from protect the hospitals to no covid deaths or the idiocy and fantasy of "zero covid."

Right, but the vanishing wasn't mysterious. Did you actually expect a lot different, with the health measures in place?

This is supposed to be about the data. Where are you sure the hospitals coped? I live in London and I dont believe they coped that well (magnificant job of managing the dire situation but that's a very low bar for 'coping'). Again if they had produuced data on how well health services coped then that would have been very interesting.

I think your post reflects that there was a politcal case being made. If the case is that the politicians were generally awful then I totaly agree but that's a different angle to an analysis of the data.

The goalpost move that was devasating imo was from 'It's about the R so we must lockdown' to 'cases are falling a lot so we must open up'.

Across the pond, to the left of you. Vacant beds in every hospital throughout the entirety of this. Publicly available data.

===
Check graphs for seasonality in the US

https://twitter.com/martbrod/status/...698149896?s=19

How many excess deaths at home? How many procedures cancelled? How much extra triaging? An empty bed if it literally means a bed is not a measure of anything much.

If that sort of data was analysed by staffed hospital beds/population before the crises then it would be interesting place to start the analysis of health services coping. "Show me the data!"

The flu vanished in Sweden too. I've had this argument already with someone else.

This is anothe area where the data lacked horibly. 'Lockdown' is not some definitive event. We need to look at data on how behavior changed.

For example in Sweden
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...eak-in-sweden/

I'm not sure what your point is; its disappearance there is no more mysterious.

Actually, I probably do know what your point is, so I'll explain further and likely counter your argument. Sweden also had, and still has, Covid guidelines, restrictions, etc. Since the flu does not spread as easily as Covid, I expect that it would be drastically reduced with a much lower level of restrictions - IE, like those in Sweden, or perhaps even less.

Really, I'm not trying to argue in favour of any particular level of restrictions, because I don't think we have all the answers yet on what the best approach was, especially when taking into account other consequences, intended or unintended. I live in a part of Canada that has gone with lighter restrictions than most places with fairly good (relatively speaking) results thus far, so I have some sympathy for arguments against tight lockdowns. I just think that suggesting the flu "mysteriously disappeared" is silly, and is the kind of thing that I see the Plandemic/Covid is a hoax/The Great Reset conspiracy theorists posting. Not suggesting you are (or aren't) a proponent of that school of thought, just that it's the kind of argument they make, and I think it's quite weak.

Vanish is the wrong word of course.

Health measures had no effect on the transmission of common cold causing viruses-the rhinoviruses. In other words, masks and lockdowns had no effect and global transmission of rhinoviruses, other respiratory causing illnesses. They circulated as per usual.

I also dont buy the anecdotes on Swedens behavior. While I was in home, my Swedish pal was in bars, restaurants and going to the gym with friends.

I offered some data rather than an anecdote. I agree anecdotes are of almost no value. They also had one on the video about what he saw going on in Sweden - frankly who gives a ****. Show us the data! I support their ideal and want more of it but but they need to stick to it and keep it data driven.

On gyms for example. It's of almost no interest that some people carried on going to gyms. What we need to know is the data on gym usage and if/how it changed.

Yes, The link is referring to march 2020. Everyone's hand washing behavior changed at the perceived beginning of the outbreak.

Sure. it's just an example - I haven't produced what is supposed to be a well researched video on the data.

If they had stuck to analysing comprehensive and detailed data then it would have been interesting and valuable.

Sweden just recently instituted tough Covid restrictions via law, which is a pretty clear signal their strategy failed: There were no signs of herd immunity anytime soon and their policies had failed to keep the people at the highest risk from Covid safe. Now they are playing the vaccine game.

They had to do this as their health services were being overloaded and they were losing the battle for contact tracing. Nobody wants to enter triage with an out of control pandemic that you can not trace. Look to Brazil for an example of how that looks.

Lockdowns are like CPR: A lot of people who get CPR won’t do to good, that is not an argument against CPR. It makes sense to drive in a way that makes you less likely to require CPR, but again - that is not an argument against CPR.

South Africa variant is in the UK now.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ant-cases-rise
I can't imagine anyway that this can be contained with surge testing. Wandsworth & Lambeth are highly populated parts of London and lockdown is being eased quite rapidly now.

Guess we're going to find out how effective the AZ vaccine is at stopping spread and stopping serious illness for this variant. If not very, then we're ****ed again.

This is obviously extreme nonsense. Biden won't be calling Trump for literally anything, ever, and certainly won't be telling prosecutors how to proceed in cases they're investigating.

The only thing more laughable than the idea is the notion that Trump is good at negotiating. From all accounts from people who worked with him, he's pretty much a complete moron. And stuff like the call to the SecState of Georgia bear this out. I dare anyone to listen to that and think they're hearing some kind of master intellect.

Besides, Trump is likely in the state now where he's about to start actively turning on the citizens of the USA, and possibly the country itself. No way on earth he's going to do anything helpful and more likely that he'll actively try to cause harm. It's just in his nature.

Not sure of your point. The hospitals didn't get overwhelmed which means the lockdowns clearly worked.

Italy was the counter example (and possibly Iran), where the hospitals saw a normal day on Monday, a busy day on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday they were in WWIII. Mistakes when dealing with a virus as contagious as this one magnify rapidly.