Every time you post something in this thread that might prove me wrong about anything, I go on to twitter to see if anyone in the scientific community is saying the same thing as you.

And they never are. No one with a science degree is saying the same thing about the data from France that you are saying. No one is reaching the same conclusion as you.

Does that tell you anything?

I don't know chief, you are either very smart or very dumb.

yes

It lasts as long until a successful vaccine. I think we live with Corona for another 6-12 months.

We aren't shutting economies down anymore and death rates are being managed within socially acceptable levels.

Why don't you think for yourself instead? Data is king, and if you've never developed the critical reasoning skills to weigh it, then you probably should.
That's the thing about these little self selecting communities that rally together around dumb theories. People interested in these (very stupid, instantly debunked to anyone remotely intelligent) theories, get their own little self sustaining communities that no one outside really has any interest in because it's all so dumb. They attract people who don't see the obvious gaping flaws in the theory. Social media with its algorithms and follow choices makes this effect even worse.

The cold fusion community was/is a shining example of this that's gone on for decades. Multiple highly credentialed people including Nobel Prize winners, many of them geriatrics, all scientists, doing experiments, publishing papers (including in somewhat reputable journals), doing interviews, forming societies and professional groups. It can be debunked in about 30 minutes for a competent physicist looking at the contradictory evidence (contradictions with theory and other experiments and flaws in positive experiments), but cold fusion is a global community of thousands of people, many well credentialed, forming dopey positive feedback loops of validation. No one spends much time debunking them because it's just stupid and sad to anyone who knows anything.

I think you don't realize how common this is and how much effects how even real science works. Groupthink and failure to challenge the narrative are very real things that have harmed even mainstream science for decades on some topics. You're also likely confusing a few things:

1. The idea that preexisting T Cell immune response is a real thing
2. What this means for herd immunity (reality: absolutely nothing)
3. What this means for the current estimated death rate (reality: absolutely nothing)

The core of (1) which is real science, you confuse with the excited extrapolations from dickheads who can't think and are double counting (2) and (3) in the existing data, and that no one bothers to debunk.

If some idiot wasn't parroting this stupid Twitter-spew theory in this thread over and over here, I wouldn't bother debunking it either or even know about it.

I think you are confusing critical reasoning skills with bravado.

Regardless, no one cares about what you or I think about T cells. Your analysis is comically incompetent and I am not even going to try to do my own since I don't have the expertise to do it. I will simply continue posting interesting things that I come across, and if that offends you, just ignore me.

A vaccine isn't the end.

Things will never be normal again.

Artificial Intelligence has learned how to kill large numbers of people without destroying infrastructure.

There will be another new virus, and another, and another...

#Singularity

TS, would like your view on USA indeed peaking since August 15, 7-day average not coming down (even increasing), while per capita USA figures are still way higher than Europe.

Michael Levitt seems to be a very intelligent, accomplished guy. He is NOT highly respected on the topic of Covid and has too many tweets to count that have, let's say, not aged well at all.

Wow wtf is this

Hidden immune weakness purported to explain 14% of Covid fatalities

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020...id-19-patients

The US seems to be handling this extremely well thanks to the efficient summer vaccination program for the young and a great balance of mild restrictions and personal freedom.

In the US R is fluctuating around 1 with substantial personal freedom and a strong economy. Europe has an R >> 1 - over 2 in some places like France - at the exactly the wrong time as the weather is cooling, which means they're handling this horribly. The UK is restricting movement again. France is a basket case now with a new infection rate 3x the US and a trajectory of R=2 and will have to follow soon. They're already destroying businesses with new sudden shutdowns because cases are getting so bad, for example in Marseilles:

Coronavirus: Marseille 'astonished' by new French lockdown rules
Most countries in Europe are on a terrible trajectory and look just like France:



I'm getting the hell out of Europe shortly and will likely enjoy a corona-safe, lockdown free winter in the US.

The US is in a great position, having vaccinated large numbers of people with extremely low death rates per vaccination over the summer, while keeping R at 1 and everything under control. Life doesn't have to change in the US and can go on as normal with normal freedoms. Europe in contrast is running into a wall. France (and Europe generally) is in a terrible position, locked down for far too long and then opened up in a stupid way such that cases are soaring uncontrollably and major lockdowns will be required, badly disrupting the (already crap from excessive lockdown) economy and normal life.

Some parts of the US will lock down. But other places will be fine. There's no central authority that can mandate national lockdown due to states' rights and places like Florida should do fine through winter.

Corona depends a lot on the population responsibility levels. Even in New York, some suburbs had very low infection rates while others had over 30%. Even now some of the 30% infection suburbs which should have good immunity are seeing upticks again (Queens for example) thanks solely to irresponsible behavior. While others with very little immunity have next to no cases. Culture and behavior matters a lot.

What are you referring to here??

1000 new cases in one day for the state of NY. Gonna be testing Rand Paul's herd immunity argument very soon. Who we betting on? Paul or Fauci here?

You know as well as I do that activa cases is a **** metric, it is measured differently everywhere.

And you are ignoring my point: Europe's R is >1, but USA's current level of infection and death is still higher than Europe.
And USA its level of infection is also increasing.

We'll see if Europe peaks higher than USA (I think it's likely it will), but your argumentation is again just manipulating the truth to fit with your narrative.

I am sure there are also places in USA where R is >>>1, probably 2.

Again, it's all about R. If it's stable at close to 1 everything is under control and you're doing fantastic mass vaccinations before winter. If it sneaks up you just increase restrictions slightly and you're back down to 1. Texas, Florida, Arizona and other places got large scale partial herd immunity for a very low death rate.

If it's soaring at crazy rates like Europe is, you're in the doodoo. You need to aggressively shut things down to arrest it. And Europe already has quite a few restrictions, especially the last few weeks - masks, some things closed, no large events, etc. It's spreading at catastrophe rates despite that.

If you weren't a European cheerleader (why aren't you criticizing your own leaders for Belgium's toxic mix of the highest deaths in the world with plenty of restrictions, instead of attacking the US?) you'd see how much worse Europe's situation is.

The things is, there's going to be no widespread vaccine or cure before the winter onslaught, and economies are going to suffer terribly if R is high. Europe is woefully unprepared while the US is in great shape. I've explained this before but perhaps MIT Technology Review will help people understand why the US is so well placed:
This effect is even more pronounced when there's partial isolation/personality responsibility type behavior. The first wave ripped through everyone as life was normal; in contrast the prolonged US burn through went through the high contact nodes, the ones who don't isolate, the ones who are very social and touchy feel and unclean, the ones around superspreaders, nurses, retail workers, the young, prostitutes, minorities, the dense suburbs, etc.

Thus the US is in a fantastic place - it has about the same deaths as many European states (less than Belgium though!) with an effective immunity percentage perhaps 3-4x higher than in Europe. The US has likely reduced R by 0.5-1 in most places which is huge for controlling this and surviving winter without lots of damage.

This is a HIV node map but it's the same general concept. There tend to be a bunch of high infectivity and high spread nodes that are a very large part of R, because they spread it to a lot of people once they get it, and carry it from one semi-closed group to another. When corona burns through over many months in a situation where more responsible/lower spread nodes are isolating more, nearly all the high contact get it and get immune. Combined with minor social distancing, it's not hard to see how this gets R below 1. This basically happened in Texas, Florida, Arizona and many other places during the winter. Imagine the below with all the red nodes and their connection lines wiped out from the graph. It greatly alters infectivity



These same thing doesn't happen in anywhere near the same during a first wave arrested by lockdown where people are living normally. In the US, it's had months to propagate through 20+% of nodes in many regions, finding (imo) way over 50% of the high spread, high contact nodes by natural spread, and immunizing them. The effect on R is greatly magnified by this process. Europe hasn't had this which is why they're in the doodoo coming into winter.

I think he meant infection rather than vaccination. Getting infected and recovering puts you in a position similar to getting vaccinated, or at least I think that's the point that was being made.

Maybe not.

https://news.microsoft.com/innovatio...t-premonition/

Why would AI care about infrastructure? Is it so they can get to their job to earn wages and have enough water to drink and make the toilets flush?

agenda driven conclusions with no evidence presented

R and the number of cases are not unrelated though. If your'e doing some sort of management e.g - testing/policing/etc then a high number of cases strains the system too much and R goes up faster.

I don't know what USA is doing in that regard but:

This is playing out now in the UK and, I think, in France/etc. Obviously behavior is huge but in part it's because it has pushed cases beyond testing/etc capability.

The local lockdown seems wise but only if cases are low enough. UK now has 25% of the population under 'local' measures and London is probably joining any day. very soon it will be over 50% and I strongly suspect a national lockdown (by some name) is nor far off.

If we're betting on mankind vs virus over the next 20 years or so then I'll take mankind. The scientific understanding has improved dramatically and will conquer the whole problem soon. Viruses are just a very easy problem compared to living threats like bacteria and there time is coming soon. Covid has done their like no favours at all.

AI and artificial life on the other hand ... we ain't see nothing yet.

1/ Why is R close to 1 at a higher level of infection better than R > 1 at a lower level of infection?

I agree R > 1 is bad, but your argument makes no sense. If 2 countries have identical testing strategies and number of tests being performed, and 1 has 8% positive stable, and 1 has 4% positive increasing, who is doing better?

2/ I never denied that the trend in EU is bad, it's terrible and partial lockdowns will be necessary and are already being done (though with protests now, too! ). Our political leaders are failing in bringing out a message that is understood by the people, and it is creating friction everywhere, and as a result infection. This is exactly the same that has been happening in the USA for months .

I hope the political leaders focus on pushing down the infection again eventually, unlike the USA who has chosen to kill 300-500k a year until there is a vaccine.

3/ Again, my whole point is that your herd immunity theory is based on assumptions that we don't know a lot about yet. You are using uncertain assumptions to sell something as 100% accurate. We don't know how strong or long immunity is for people who didn't get sick, we don't know how many people got C19, we don't know how much % herd immunity we will need during Winter to stop the spread.

I'd also like to point out that NY & NJ infection is also moving up again, despite from what I understand life still looking incredibly different in both.

4/ The only thing I have defended Belgium for in this thread is their transparency. Data for public consumption is very detailled, and we chose to not try to downplay the numbers. But we were unprepared and the virus spread everywhere in our tiny country, resulting in some very bad things happening.
Also, you know and are deliberately ignoring that Belgium has one of the lowest gaps between excess death & C19 deaths due to our counting strategy.

There is also not a doubt in my head that USA excess death will look worse than Belgium excess death by the end of this crisis. And possibly even official statistics.
Lets compare May 18 to today :
May 18:
Belgium 774 deaths per million
USA 285 deaths per million

September 26:
Belgium 859 deaths per million
USA 631 deaths per million

The gap decreased from 489 to 228.
Though I agree Winter will probably have different trends.

If AI really does exist and is affecting this world (debatable, but I think it's true, simply based on twitter AI bots alone if nothing else)

Then how we would know WHAT they care about?

That'd be like an ant understanding what we care about