We already knew viruses could be transmitted through breathing, touch, bodily fluids, etc.

Every time there's a new virus "experts" have to do new tests to establish the rate new virus can be transmitted by each method.

so you're saying scientists put hidden cameras in bathrooms?

Can we maybe use Taleb's Skin In the Game definition of a true expert as someone with 'skin in the game' as opposed to an IYI (intellectual yet idiot) which is what TS seems to mean by 'expert'?

Look, he even mentioned Epidemiologists in the IYI category in this talk! (from 2018):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv6KLbkvua8

('Expert' discussion section begins at 14.15, Epidemiologist reference just after 17.45)

FWIW IYIs got it drastically wrong in both under and overestimating harm in countries like the UK, as you would expect.

You should be perma banned for acting majorly ret**ded.

The discussion around experts isn't about your theoretical "words, what do they mean?" no true scotsperson fallacy ("if they didn't know what they were doing, they're not really experts!!")

It's about whether we could and should trust the people in peak expert bodies like the UN/WHO (we clearly can't), bipartisan government expert advisers like SAGE (we clearly can't), government scientists and their peak expert overseers (we clearly can't).

It's a practical consideration about how to proceed when expert bodies are at odds with common sense, and how to judge future odds correctly. This thread is full of classic examples - should we trust the WHO's belief/statements that this so unserious that it's a "very low threat to the globe" and that "stigma is more dangerous than the virus" and that "borders should not be closed"? We clearly shouldn't, yet many did. Read the first few pages of this thread (and the 2020 trading thread this was broken out from) - people were saying it was nuts to dismiss the WHO's take because "they're the experts, how can a guy on the Internet possibly know better?" These are actual questions that return $$$$ if you can reliably get it right, and clearly "trust the experts" is horribly flawed strategy.

Should politicians trust that experts like Fauci and Birx are going to minimally competent at their job, and do it better than a chimpanzee? They clearly couldn't; Fauci and Birx and the state expert apparaturs made horrible amateur mistakes that killed 80,000 people and counting.

Should we trust that experts can model correctly and understand the flaws of those models (for example, the UK's SAGE group relied on comically flawed modeling that said R0 can't get below 1, therefore it's best to have it go through the population as rapidly as possible, and just pile up the dead)? We clearly can't.

Can we trust, as individuals, they will advise on masks correctly? Nope. Whether we should "go out and be social with each other, live a normal life" as the pandemic is spreading, because it's "very low risk"? We clearly can't.

Whether we can trust experts is a practical consideration affecting everything from government policy to investments to personal safety, not some weird thing where everyone who screws up isn't an expert. The answer is overwhelmingly "we cannot trust experts ahead of common sense and simple rational analysis in most situations, and to a certainty in novel situations".

Antibody tests are worthless for upper bounds on IFR, but are strong data for lower bounds on IFR. We have enough data now from antibody tests to know that IFR is around 1% and possibly higher; I consider the question largely settled.

This isn't true. We suspected but had little hard data and no well developed equations on the rate and probability. Multiple experts have openly said they don't know. It just hasn't been studied well. It's a physics problem (dosing rate of live virus particles via various media), not specific to each virus. All that's specific are the virus binding sites and the infectious dose, something which is independent of the spread mechanism for similar classes of virus (respiratory for example).

Some data from England. Sample of people, not in hospital or care homes, tested for being currently infected with covid.

Estimates are that between 27 Apr and 10 May, 148,000 people were infected. That's 0.27% of the population.

This estimate is based on tests performed on 10,705 people in 5,276 households.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...gland14may2020

At one point you argued the value of philosophy with which i agree. That has to include an understanding of what is an expert and what is expertise. There is no such fallacy involved.

but then you have to realise you're attacks on me are misdirected. I dont have trust in those sorts of groups either as you must have seen me say a few times.

The disagreement you see is mostly a mirage. We have some genuine disagreements but I'm not sure we have any serious disagreement on the above - certainly not as you make out.

But we havn't disagreed on any of this. Put expert in quotes and I'll agree enthusiastically. Most "experts" are far from expert and usually have political influences

We need good politicians because they are the ones making the decisions. It's a very tough job and we commonly elect people singularly ill-equipped to do it.

I doubt we would agree on that characterisation but apart from anything I think you ascribe a belief in the correctness of models that the experts simpyl don't have. It's well known in modeling that models are never correct although they are occasionally useful.

We have to decide who to listen to on masks and everything else - I try to identify who is worth listening to and then I have to decide what to do. So does everybody else.

That's your fallacy again. I believe no such thing about screwing up. But yes of course deciding who we can trust is absolutely a practical consideration. Identifying expertise is a good part of that.

Done. That junk is not welcome in BFI.

Interesting data, thanks a lot for posting. 0.27% is lower than I expected. Based on deaths between April 1 and May now, you'd have expected 5% of the UK population to be infected 3-4 weeks before that period (30K deaths, 1% death rate = 3 million infections resolved to death or recovery). I was under the impression that the UK was doing a terrible job flattening out new infections, but perhaps it's just mediocre rather than terrible. Either IFR is way higher than 1% or your tests now are catching >30% of cases now. The way they act shows far more faith in the models than how you characterize the above. Your country's experts literally decided to let half a million people die awful deaths rather than go for eradication (easily doable in 8 weeks), solely because your peak expert body had comically faulty assumptions that R0 couldn't go below 1 and that a second wave as bad as the first with as many deaths was highly probable without herd immunity. They based their strategy on their trust in that model. They lay it all out in their documents.

Anyone who looks at models as you suggest experts do, AND care to prevent human suffering and death, and has a the philosophical sophistication to weigh the precautionary principle against that ("half a million are needlessly dead if we're wrong"), would not have acted with the advice that SAGE gave. It's the same for a lot of things when it comes to expert advice - the faulty models are blindly trusted when they're little more than hot garbage.

It would be stupid because your side effects could be worse than mild covid.

I see it totally differently but then I also don't simply agree that the UK could have eradicated in 8 weeks. That's where we do disagree about imposing lockdowns and systems/resources being in place.

Still we agree far more could have been done but there's no way experts decided to let loads of people die - that wan't even the decision made by government who were the ones making the decisions. The precautionary principle was not ignored by experts - that's just nonsensical.

I suspect we're going to see some pretty gruesome analysis of how badly people who were already in hospital or care homes have fared. The IFR among them will be much higher than 1 and much higher than for those infected in the general population.

It's not in evidence in Belgium, where a broad population sample showed 3.4% of 65+ vs 9.7% of <65 had antibodies. Care homes are only about 5% of the old.

Perhaps the UK experts who advised this on March 9th based on their models:
Ended up killing a lot more old people than necessary in the UK with their murderous incompetence, but I see no other reason the UK would be different to elsewhere.

On the other side, the vast majority of spread is going to be among the young to the young in the early stages of an epidemic, except in some institutions. I don't think there's reason to be optimistic that its' gone through the old. I've seen no evidence in any country that the old have gotten infected more or form a disproportionate number of deaths compared to known old death rate * population. If anything the reverse is true in most places.

You're portrayal of the UK experts aside, measure to protect care home and hospital patients were woefully inept. Maybe other countries were as bad, i dunno but we seeded care homes with likely infected patients and carers.

I think we're going to see an infection rate in care homes of way way above 0.27% and they represent 8k of that 30k death figure iirc

I agree outside care setting. The old have been more protected so are likely to be less infected.

As states begin to open up again, what are the chances the US is going to need another lockdown in a month or two?

Because once we "open up" I don't see that happening.

For anyone wondering, I posted a classic meme not "hate speech" wtf.

And yes, I got a warning for it.

Another lockdown would mean that the governors and the president were wrong about opening too soon. There will have to be a huge surge in cases and deaths for them to admit it and lockdown again.

My best prediction is a very patchwork response - a half assed re-lockdown in some areas, a proper one in other areas.

Without aggressive testing, contact tracing and isolation I don't see how you stop it going slowly through the population. Summer will help slow spread, partial immunity in some areas (20% of New York have had it, and those will be the highest contact nodes), greater social distancing than before will help, better testing and isolation will help.

I think it's just going to be a patchwork mess for a long time with a depression level economy, far more job losses and business shutdowns, and business uncertainty stopping most risk taking and new investment.

It's especially tragic what's going on with nursing homes in the US.

Google says 1.5mm live in nursing homes.

"At least 28,100 residents and workers have died from the coronavirus at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities for older adults in the United States, according to a New York Times database. The virus so far has infected more than 153,000 at some 7,700 facilities."

Hard to say how many are actually in this pool including workers and "other long term care facilities for older adults," but I would imagine 153k represents 5%+. And that's only the ones they've caught. Based on those #s IFR for that sub-population is close to 20%. Anyway you slice it #s are high for IFR and/or total that's had it.

#s from 5/11/20

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...login-facebook

Have a 98yr old grandma in a nursing home in upstate NY. They've not had any confirmed cases at their location but today 1mi down the road another facility had 24 positives.

I'm at least sure that sending sick folks who are discharged from hospital BACK into these homes was a horrible policy (Cuomo, others). It was up to the home to "properly" care (yeah right, I'm sure they had the ability to) for a c19+ patient coming back but they legally couldn't not accept them. ****ing shameful.


edit;

Article in The Telegraph shows scientists who believe 6.5 million people in England have already had the virus since it came here.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-h...-deaths-cases/

I was very sick mid Jan with a bad throat and high fever, who knows if that as just flu or not.

The R rate in London is apparently now around 0.4 compared to 2.8 before the lock down. I wish they enforced the lock down for slightly longer but who really knows.

The WHO is now warning Europe to prepare for a more deadly second wave to hit this winter, I guess we can only have two hopes. 1. It doesn't. 2. The governments prepare.


Thanks.

A breakdown of New York City using the data from official sources gives an IFR of 1.4%:

And some interesting facts come out of this (my calcs):

- The hopsitalization-required rate comes out at at least 6%
- The death rates by age come out at 0 for under 18, 0.2% for 18-44, 1.3% for 45-64, 3.5% for 64-75, and ~10% for 75+.

Exactly what was estimated for the death by age rate three month ago when this all started in that study out of China. The experts claiming that IFR was far lower than 1% were of course very stupid. This stupidity led to the models of nearly all economic analysts about the economic impact of this being very wrong.

These rates (the hospitalization-required rate in particular) mean you can't just let it go through the population, unless you spend about 8 months with full hospitals, rolling lockdowns, economic damage and your old locked inside. And even then you have no guarantee it hasn't mutated (or immunity faded) for a second wave of a new strain in winter. Eradication is the only sane option, anything else is nuts. If experts had galaxy brain rather than cuck brain, they would have used this unique opportunity these last 8 weeks of lockdown to eradicate corona and all other infectious diseases that can't be eradicated by distancing.

Also note that New York is a young city, where the average age of males (worst hit) is 35.2 years. The US average is 38.2.

If it's a physics problem, we want physicists working on it, not virologists.

Virologists can't even get peed on by bats right, we don't want them messing around with real science.

TS, you're right about 99% of the stuff in this thread but I think worldwide eradication is an impossibility. Maybe in theory it's possible but in practice there is just no way. Maybe if there is massive death and it mutates and starts killing all ages at a 5% clip it may get most of the tard's attention but at this stage I don't see it as possible, it's become too politicized.
The virus is going to get it's shot of what it can do but warnings, modeling, science, etc... Isn't going to get the US and Western Europe population motivated enough for everyone to do what it takes. All we can hope for is it mutates into a much weaker strain and we'll have to hear it from all the tard's "see it was just a bad flu you mask wearing cucks!"