Author Topic: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?  (Read 675231 times)

skp

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1900 on: May 14, 2020, 06:48:01 AM »
I still don't get it. I'm not convinced spending all this effort on testing/ contact tracing is going to work. How are you going to contact trace people "milling about".  I was thinking about this yesterday when I was in Walmart.  If I got covid, how would they be able to trace my contacts- other than the cashier.  There were a few people there who "invaded" my 6 foot distance.  I didn't take their names.

Shane

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1901 on: May 14, 2020, 07:08:44 AM »
I still don't get it. I'm not convinced spending all this effort on testing/ contact tracing is going to work. How are you going to contact trace people "milling about".  I was thinking about this yesterday when I was in Walmart.  If I got covid, how would they be able to trace my contacts- other than the cashier.  There were a few people there who "invaded" my 6 foot distance.  I didn't take their names.

It's very unlikely people you briefly pass while pushing your cart through Walmart would get infected, even if you had Covid-19. Infection is much more likely in small(er) enclosed spaces, and/or when you spend more time in close proximity to someone who is infected. Here's a good blog post by a professor of biology who specializes in infectious diseases, explaining the mechanics of viral transmission. It gives some good, practical tips on which situations are most risky and how to keep from getting infected.

frugalnacho

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1902 on: May 14, 2020, 07:09:48 AM »
Another thing worth reiterating, and this is especially true as economies open back up and more people start travelling larger distances and coming into contact with more people - testing alone is not that great unless it's supported by rigorous contact tracing. Sure there's some value in testing, but by the time we get to mid July, testing alone is not going to really help anyone. It's only any good if you can say "Yes, you have the virus. Who have you been near in the past 2 weeks?" and then answer that question, contact those people and tell them to take pre-cautions. Otherwise you're just telling a bunch of people, who have been millng about and will continue to mill about, that they're infected. So what?

I'm conscious that everything I'm seeing on the news is TESTING, TESTING, TESTING, TESTING, TESTING. I'm hearing very little about the development of contact tracing infrastructure either in the UK, Europe, or the US.

Anybody else have any links to quality discussion of contact tracing?

Well it's still good to know.  If you wait until you have a spike in deaths at the hospital it's too late and you already have tens of thousands of cases (or more) milling about.  Testing testing testing would let you know a month prior to that that you are having rapid spread, and if you can't contact trace everyone you could still enact public policy measures to counter it.  Even without any contact tracing wouldn't it have been great for new york, or italy, or spain, etc. to know in the very early stages of the epidemic that they had loads of cases milling about?

cerat0n1a

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1903 on: May 14, 2020, 07:25:49 AM »
I'm conscious that everything I'm seeing on the news is TESTING, TESTING, TESTING, TESTING, TESTING. I'm hearing very little about the development of contact tracing infrastructure either in the UK, Europe, or the US.

This week's Private Eye has a fairly depressing description of how the UK plans to do contact tracing - basically out-sourced to the usual suspects paying low wages to unskilled people, and hope that the phone app will do most of the work.

JGS1980

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1904 on: May 14, 2020, 07:45:31 AM »
I'm conscious that everything I'm seeing on the news is TESTING, TESTING, TESTING, TESTING, TESTING. I'm hearing very little about the development of contact tracing infrastructure either in the UK, Europe, or the US.

This week's Private Eye has a fairly depressing description of how the UK plans to do contact tracing - basically out-sourced to the usual suspects paying low wages to unskilled people, and hope that the phone app will do most of the work.

I bet that in the USA, if there was a request from the top for volunteers for contact tracing, there would be hundreds of thousands of Americans ready to work from home FOR FREE to protect EVERYONE from this pandemic.

As I said above; sure its HARD, that does not make contact tracing impossible.

...but there is no interest in our country to pursue this.

Spud

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1905 on: May 14, 2020, 07:58:41 AM »
I still don't get it. I'm not convinced spending all this effort on testing/ contact tracing is going to work. How are you going to contact trace people "milling about".  I was thinking about this yesterday when I was in Walmart.  If I got covid, how would they be able to trace my contacts- other than the cashier.  There were a few people there who "invaded" my 6 foot distance.  I didn't take their names.

It's very unlikely people you briefly pass while pushing your cart through Walmart would get infected, even if you had Covid-19. Infection is much more likely in small(er) enclosed spaces, and/or when you spend more time in close proximity to someone who is infected. Here's a good blog post by a professor of biology who specializes in infectious diseases, explaining the mechanics of viral transmission. It gives some good, practical tips on which situations are most risky and how to keep from getting infected.

Shane posted THIS GREAT BLOG POST yesterday. I greatly enjoyed reading it. I recommend that everyone read it. it will help you put things in perspective as you move around in the world beyond your home.

LWYRUP

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1906 on: May 14, 2020, 08:29:42 AM »
I still don't get it. I'm not convinced spending all this effort on testing/ contact tracing is going to work. How are you going to contact trace people "milling about".  I was thinking about this yesterday when I was in Walmart.  If I got covid, how would they be able to trace my contacts- other than the cashier.  There were a few people there who "invaded" my 6 foot distance.  I didn't take their names.

It's very unlikely people you briefly pass while pushing your cart through Walmart would get infected, even if you had Covid-19. Infection is much more likely in small(er) enclosed spaces, and/or when you spend more time in close proximity to someone who is infected. Here's a good blog post by a professor of biology who specializes in infectious diseases, explaining the mechanics of viral transmission. It gives some good, practical tips on which situations are most risky and how to keep from getting infected.

Shane posted THIS GREAT BLOG POST yesterday. I greatly enjoyed reading it. I recommend that everyone read it. it will help you put things in perspective as you move around in the world beyond your home.

Thank you very much for posting (and highlighting) this -- it was a very helpful read. 

Shane

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1907 on: May 14, 2020, 08:33:33 AM »
As far as contact tracing in the US goes, I'm not that optimistic. Several friends who otherwise seem like intelligent people have started really pushing the narrative that Dr. Fauci and other medical professionals are "puppets of the deep state," with Bill Gates as their leader. They seem to believe that a "mandatory" Covid-19 vaccine is about to be forced upon everyone. So, they keep encouraging people to "not cooperate with the government," because, "the pandemic is just a ploy by the deep state to gain more control over the sheeple." Friends who claim to know that they had Covid-19 last month have told me they purposely didn't get tested, because they didn't want to end up on a "government list." It's depressing to think many Americans are already planning to not cooperate with any future government efforts to do contact tracing, because they believe it's a big conspiracy. :(

Catica

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1908 on: May 14, 2020, 08:42:24 AM »
The whole testing is not clear cut science to me. Why do we have tests that give presumptive, why do we have false positives and false negatives?  Whose test are reliable?  The governor of Maryland obviously thinks the tests available in Korea are superior.  Every test producing company claims that their test is superior.  So what’s is the point of this testing where you have hundreds of companies making these test and none of them are verifiable 100% and the margin errors are so huge? Then we have different modes of testing, PCR chain reaction test for antigens then you have a test for antibodies and even if you are positive or negative none of them are definite indicators whether you are infected or not.  They just give you so called traces of past infection of COVID class viruses. I would love someone to explain this to me.  I’m a layman in virology and micro-biology. Isn’t the electron microscope the only tool that can verify 100% the presence of a specific virus? What kinds of errors are we talking about when we are testing only for specific fragments of the virus' RNA? Does the current detecting technology have a full grasp on separating individual genes?
« Last Edit: May 14, 2020, 09:09:00 AM by Catica »

Spud

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1909 on: May 14, 2020, 08:42:41 AM »
Well it's still good to know.  If you wait until you have a spike in deaths at the hospital it's too late and you already have tens of thousands of cases (or more) milling about.  Testing testing testing would let you know a month prior to that that you are having rapid spread, and if you can't contact trace everyone you could still enact public policy measures to counter it.  Even without any contact tracing wouldn't it have been great for new york, or italy, or spain, etc. to know in the very early stages of the epidemic that they had loads of cases milling about?

I agree with you completely. Thing is, it would have been needed in mid February at the latest. My understanding is that they were nowhere near it at that point, and still aren't.

ReadySetMillionaire

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1910 on: May 14, 2020, 08:43:18 AM »
New York Magazine with an article arguing what I have been saying for a couple weeks now -- why aren't our policies geared towards protecting the elderly?

"Radical thought — perhaps our public policy should start from the most vulnerable, doing what we can to protect them, and proceed outward, and upward, from there."

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/covid-targets-the-elderly-why-dont-our-prevention-efforts.html

ender

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1911 on: May 14, 2020, 08:48:55 AM »
New York Magazine with an article arguing what I have been saying for a couple weeks now -- why aren't our policies geared towards protecting the elderly?

"Radical thought — perhaps our public policy should start from the most vulnerable, doing what we can to protect them, and proceed outward, and upward, from there."

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/covid-targets-the-elderly-why-dont-our-prevention-efforts.html

In my state, over 80% of the covid deaths were from nursing/long term care homes.

At least I'm sure those places have ample access to PPE for their staff.... :\

GuitarStv

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1912 on: May 14, 2020, 08:53:25 AM »
The whole testing is not clear cut science to me. Why do we have tests that give presumptive, why do we have false positives and false negatives?  Whose test are reliable?  The governor of Maryland obviously thinks the tests available in Korea are superior.  Every test producing company claims that their test is superior.  So what’s is the point of this testing where you have hundreds of companies making these test and none of them are verifiable 100% and the margin errors are so huge? Then we have different modes of testing, PCR chain reaction test for antigens then you have a test for antibodies and even if you are positive or negative none of them are definite indicators whether you are infected or not.  They just give you so called traces of past infection of COVID class viruses. I would love someone to explain this to me.  I’m a layman in virology and micro-biology. Isn’t the electron microscope the only tool that can verify 100% the presence of a specific virus? What kinds of errors are we talking about when we are testing only for specific fragments of the virus' DNA? Does the current detecting technology have a full grasp on separating individual genes?

My understanding (and please correct me if I'm wrong) is that right now, being in the medical research profession and working on Covid-19 is a little like the wild west.  There's a lot of pressure, and governments are fast tracking everything without sufficient testing.  Stuff is being pushed out to the public before we know it's ready and working properly.

This is why you're seeing some tests that don't actually work, and a lot of general confusion.

ReadySetMillionaire

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1913 on: May 14, 2020, 08:57:49 AM »
New York Magazine with an article arguing what I have been saying for a couple weeks now -- why aren't our policies geared towards protecting the elderly?

"Radical thought — perhaps our public policy should start from the most vulnerable, doing what we can to protect them, and proceed outward, and upward, from there."

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/covid-targets-the-elderly-why-dont-our-prevention-efforts.html

In my state, over 80% of the covid deaths were from nursing/long term care homes.

At least I'm sure those places have ample access to PPE for their staff.... :\

My wife (a speech therapist) used to work at a nursing home.  She said 22 people have died since March.  She said a normal death rate would be 5 or 6.

This is staggeringly bad for the elderly.

Our public messaging and policy has been terrible.

Spud

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1914 on: May 14, 2020, 09:01:10 AM »
As far as contact tracing in the US goes, I'm not that optimistic. Several friends who otherwise seem like intelligent people have started really pushing the narrative that Dr. Fauci and other medical professionals are "puppets of the deep state," with Bill Gates as their leader. They seem to believe that a "mandatory" Covid-19 vaccine is about to be forced upon everyone. So, they keep encouraging people to "not cooperate with the government," because, "the pandemic is just a ploy by the deep state to gain more control over the sheeple." Friends who claim to know that they had Covid-19 last month have told me they purposely didn't get tested, because they didn't want to end up on a "government list." It's depressing to think many Americans are already planning to not cooperate with any future government efforts to do contact tracing, because they believe it's a big conspiracy. :(

This kind of stuff frustrates me a little, but it also makes me laugh.

I won't speak for America, but in the UK, if you have a house, pay rent or a mortgage, have a bank account, have your salary paid into that bank account automatically at the end of the month, pay taxes, drive a car registered to you at your home address, have ever visited a doctor and have a smartphone that is frequently connected to the internet with loads of personal information on it (email, social media etc) they've already "got you". That covers pretty much all of the population between the ages of 18 and 65.

But no, the real danger is the virus and the contact tracing. What do these people think will happen to them if they end up on a government list? They sound like they should wear tin foil hats and live in bunkers in rural Montana.

There's a guy whose Instagram page I have saved as a bookmark who lives in America. I look at it roughly once a week for fitness related things. He's obviously intelligent and well respected in his field, knows his stuff, nice guy. In a lot of his recent posts, he refers to the coronavirus as the "control us" virus and talks about the government etc. It's got to the point where I've stopped following/checking his page because he's, well, rapidly going nuts.

I suppose that's no different from an intelligent, successful, highly qualified person being terrible with money.

MudPuppy

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1915 on: May 14, 2020, 09:03:51 AM »
@Catica nearly every test has false positives/negatives? Even flu swabs, strep swans, and home pregnancy tests. The tests aren't magically 100% because we haven’t had time to hone them and make them more sensitive. The world has barely been doing this for six months.

GuitarStv

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1916 on: May 14, 2020, 09:12:19 AM »
As far as contact tracing in the US goes, I'm not that optimistic. Several friends who otherwise seem like intelligent people have started really pushing the narrative that Dr. Fauci and other medical professionals are "puppets of the deep state," with Bill Gates as their leader. They seem to believe that a "mandatory" Covid-19 vaccine is about to be forced upon everyone. So, they keep encouraging people to "not cooperate with the government," because, "the pandemic is just a ploy by the deep state to gain more control over the sheeple." Friends who claim to know that they had Covid-19 last month have told me they purposely didn't get tested, because they didn't want to end up on a "government list." It's depressing to think many Americans are already planning to not cooperate with any future government efforts to do contact tracing, because they believe it's a big conspiracy. :(

This kind of stuff frustrates me a little, but it also makes me laugh.

I won't speak for America, but in the UK, if you have a house, pay rent or a mortgage, have a bank account, have your salary paid into that bank account automatically at the end of the month, pay taxes, drive a car registered to you at your home address, have ever visited a doctor and have a smartphone that is frequently connected to the internet with loads of personal information on it (email, social media etc) they've already "got you". That covers pretty much all of the population between the ages of 18 and 65.

But no, the real danger is the virus and the contact tracing. What do these people think will happen to them if they end up on a government list? They sound like they should wear tin foil hats and live in bunkers in rural Montana.

There's a guy whose Instagram page I have saved as a bookmark who lives in America. I look at it roughly once a week for fitness related things. He's obviously intelligent and well respected in his field, knows his stuff, nice guy. In a lot of his recent posts, he refers to the coronavirus as the "control us" virus and talks about the government etc. It's got to the point where I've stopped following/checking his page because he's, well, rapidly going nuts.

I suppose that's no different from an intelligent, successful, highly qualified person being terrible with money.

You have to remember that the US has some weird fantasy delusions about their government though.  There is a core of misguided people who believe that gun ownership somehow scares the entire US military and protects them from government overreach.  This group typically then goes and happily votes in authoritarian leaning leaders.  :P

Catica

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1917 on: May 14, 2020, 09:15:36 AM »
@Catica nearly every test has false positives/negatives? Even flu swabs, strep swans, and home pregnancy tests. The tests aren't magically 100% because we haven’t had time to hone them and make them more sensitive. The world has barely been doing this for six months.
Therefore it's understandable that people are suspicious of test results. If we are experiencing wild west in testing, where is the credibility? Who has the upper hand claiming the authority on this issue?

Michael in ABQ

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1918 on: May 14, 2020, 09:22:09 AM »
I still don't get it. I'm not convinced spending all this effort on testing/ contact tracing is going to work. How are you going to contact trace people "milling about".  I was thinking about this yesterday when I was in Walmart.  If I got covid, how would they be able to trace my contacts- other than the cashier.  There were a few people there who "invaded" my 6 foot distance.  I didn't take their names.

It's very unlikely people you briefly pass while pushing your cart through Walmart would get infected, even if you had Covid-19. Infection is much more likely in small(er) enclosed spaces, and/or when you spend more time in close proximity to someone who is infected. Here's a good blog post by a professor of biology who specializes in infectious diseases, explaining the mechanics of viral transmission. It gives some good, practical tips on which situations are most risky and how to keep from getting infected.

Excellent read, thanks for posting that. The diagrams showing who got sick in the case of nearby diners at a restaurant, or people in an open office were very interesting.

frugalnacho

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1919 on: May 14, 2020, 09:32:52 AM »
The whole testing is not clear cut science to me. Why do we have tests that give presumptive, why do we have false positives and false negatives?  Whose test are reliable?  The governor of Maryland obviously thinks the tests available in Korea are superior.  Every test producing company claims that their test is superior.  So what’s is the point of this testing where you have hundreds of companies making these test and none of them are verifiable 100% and the margin errors are so huge? Then we have different modes of testing, PCR chain reaction test for antigens then you have a test for antibodies and even if you are positive or negative none of them are definite indicators whether you are infected or not.  They just give you so called traces of past infection of COVID class viruses. I would love someone to explain this to me.  I’m a layman in virology and micro-biology. Isn’t the electron microscope the only tool that can verify 100% the presence of a specific virus? What kinds of errors are we talking about when we are testing only for specific fragments of the virus' RNA? Does the current detecting technology have a full grasp on separating individual genes?

No tests are 100% accurate 100% of the time.  They start out shitty, and get refined to be better and better.  That is true not just for medical or viral tests, but just about all tests.


MudPuppy

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1920 on: May 14, 2020, 10:55:31 AM »
@Catica nearly every test has false positives/negatives? Even flu swabs, strep swans, and home pregnancy tests. The tests aren't magically 100% because we haven’t had time to hone them and make them more sensitive. The world has barely been doing this for six months.
Therefore it's understandable that people are suspicious of test results. If we are experiencing wild west in testing, where is the credibility? Who has the upper hand claiming the authority on this issue?

The credibility is still with the experts. “Only” 70% accuracy is still better than 100% uncertainty, I’m not sure how that’s difficult to swallow.

Plina

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1921 on: May 14, 2020, 10:57:33 AM »
As far as contact tracing in the US goes, I'm not that optimistic. Several friends who otherwise seem like intelligent people have started really pushing the narrative that Dr. Fauci and other medical professionals are "puppets of the deep state," with Bill Gates as their leader. They seem to believe that a "mandatory" Covid-19 vaccine is about to be forced upon everyone. So, they keep encouraging people to "not cooperate with the government," because, "the pandemic is just a ploy by the deep state to gain more control over the sheeple." Friends who claim to know that they had Covid-19 last month have told me they purposely didn't get tested, because they didn't want to end up on a "government list." It's depressing to think many Americans are already planning to not cooperate with any future government efforts to do contact tracing, because they believe it's a big conspiracy. :(

This kind of stuff frustrates me a little, but it also makes me laugh.

I won't speak for America, but in the UK, if you have a house, pay rent or a mortgage, have a bank account, have your salary paid into that bank account automatically at the end of the month, pay taxes, drive a car registered to you at your home address, have ever visited a doctor and have a smartphone that is frequently connected to the internet with loads of personal information on it (email, social media etc) they've already "got you". That covers pretty much all of the population between the ages of 18 and 65.

But no, the real danger is the virus and the contact tracing. What do these people think will happen to them if they end up on a government list? They sound like they should wear tin foil hats and live in bunkers in rural Montana.

There's a guy whose Instagram page I have saved as a bookmark who lives in America. I look at it roughly once a week for fitness related things. He's obviously intelligent and well respected in his field, knows his stuff, nice guy. In a lot of his recent posts, he refers to the coronavirus as the "control us" virus and talks about the government etc. It's got to the point where I've stopped following/checking his page because he's, well, rapidly going nuts.

I suppose that's no different from an intelligent, successful, highly qualified person being terrible with money.

You have to remember that the US has some weird fantasy delusions about their government though.  There is a core of misguided people who believe that gun ownership somehow scares the entire US military and protects them from government overreach.  This group typically then goes and happily votes in authoritarian leaning leaders.  :P

I always find it fascinating how crazy fantasies people can make up in their mind. Think if they could use that for something better. Personally, it  freaks me out to see people walk with assaultrifles in the street. And then I am thinking about military and police in some countries and not some protesting nutcase with a mask and rifle. I have handled rifles since I was a kid so it is not guns per see.

Catica

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1922 on: May 14, 2020, 11:32:20 AM »
@Catica nearly every test has false positives/negatives? Even flu swabs, strep swans, and home pregnancy tests. The tests aren't magically 100% because we haven’t had time to hone them and make them more sensitive. The world has barely been doing this for six months.
Therefore it's understandable that people are suspicious of test results. If we are experiencing wild west in testing, where is the credibility? Who has the upper hand claiming the authority on this issue?

The credibility is still with the experts. “Only” 70% accuracy is still better than 100% uncertainty, I’m not sure how that’s difficult to swallow.
Are you a spokesperson for every test manufacturing company?

OtherJen

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1923 on: May 14, 2020, 11:35:28 AM »
As far as contact tracing in the US goes, I'm not that optimistic. Several friends who otherwise seem like intelligent people have started really pushing the narrative that Dr. Fauci and other medical professionals are "puppets of the deep state," with Bill Gates as their leader. They seem to believe that a "mandatory" Covid-19 vaccine is about to be forced upon everyone. So, they keep encouraging people to "not cooperate with the government," because, "the pandemic is just a ploy by the deep state to gain more control over the sheeple." Friends who claim to know that they had Covid-19 last month have told me they purposely didn't get tested, because they didn't want to end up on a "government list." It's depressing to think many Americans are already planning to not cooperate with any future government efforts to do contact tracing, because they believe it's a big conspiracy. :(

This kind of stuff frustrates me a little, but it also makes me laugh.

I won't speak for America, but in the UK, if you have a house, pay rent or a mortgage, have a bank account, have your salary paid into that bank account automatically at the end of the month, pay taxes, drive a car registered to you at your home address, have ever visited a doctor and have a smartphone that is frequently connected to the internet with loads of personal information on it (email, social media etc) they've already "got you". That covers pretty much all of the population between the ages of 18 and 65.

But no, the real danger is the virus and the contact tracing. What do these people think will happen to them if they end up on a government list? They sound like they should wear tin foil hats and live in bunkers in rural Montana.

There's a guy whose Instagram page I have saved as a bookmark who lives in America. I look at it roughly once a week for fitness related things. He's obviously intelligent and well respected in his field, knows his stuff, nice guy. In a lot of his recent posts, he refers to the coronavirus as the "control us" virus and talks about the government etc. It's got to the point where I've stopped following/checking his page because he's, well, rapidly going nuts.

I suppose that's no different from an intelligent, successful, highly qualified person being terrible with money.

You have to remember that the US has some weird fantasy delusions about their government though.  There is a core of misguided people who believe that gun ownership somehow scares the entire US military and protects them from government overreach.  This group typically then goes and happily votes in authoritarian leaning leaders.  :P

I always find it fascinating how crazy fantasies people can make up in their mind. Think if they could use that for something better. Personally, it  freaks me out to see people walk with assaultrifles in the street. And then I am thinking about military and police in some countries and not some protesting nutcase with a mask and rifle. I have handled rifles since I was a kid so it is not guns per see.

Ah, we're talking about the ones in my state's capitol today. https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/05/14/michigan-stay-home-order-capitol-protest-gretchen-whitmer/5188313002/ At least this time they didn't try to storm the House chamber with rifles. The governor has been receiving death threats, though, so this is far from over.

MudPuppy

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1924 on: May 14, 2020, 11:35:54 AM »
No, and I’m not sure what gave you that impression.

Catica

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1925 on: May 14, 2020, 11:38:25 AM »
No, and I’m not sure what gave you that impression.
your proclamation that all the tests are 70% accurate.

MudPuppy

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1926 on: May 14, 2020, 11:39:41 AM »
Not all of them are 70% accurate. The rates do vary by specific test. I’m a healthcare professional so it’s my job to know that.

mathlete

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1927 on: May 14, 2020, 06:32:00 PM »
You have to remember that the US has some weird fantasy delusions about their government though.  There is a core of misguided people who believe that gun ownership somehow scares the entire US military and protects them from government overreach.  This group typically then goes and happily votes in authoritarian leaning leaders.  :P

The most frustrating part is that it feels like the people most skeptical of the US government never do or say anything when the government actually engages in behavior that is worth being skeptical over.

The government of North Carolina conspired to do race based voter suppression. Voting is one of the most American things you can do and the state government tried to keep certain people from voting. This isn't conspiracy theory, it's conspiracy fact. And North Carolina certainly isn't the only state doing it.

But people would rather believe that Fauci is a deep state asset or that we're hiding UFOs or something. The government conspiring to suppress the vote isn't sexy enough.

GuitarStv

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1928 on: May 14, 2020, 06:40:10 PM »
You have to remember that the US has some weird fantasy delusions about their government though.  There is a core of misguided people who believe that gun ownership somehow scares the entire US military and protects them from government overreach.  This group typically then goes and happily votes in authoritarian leaning leaders.  :P

The most frustrating part is that it feels like the people most skeptical of the US government never do or say anything when the government actually engages in behavior that is worth being skeptical over.

The government of North Carolina conspired to do race based voter suppression. Voting is one of the most American things you can do and the state government tried to keep certain people from voting. This isn't conspiracy theory, it's conspiracy fact. And North Carolina certainly isn't the only state doing it.

But people would rather believe that Fauci is a deep state asset or that we're hiding UFOs or something. The government conspiring to suppress the vote isn't sexy enough.

Don't discount outright racism as motivation.  North Carolina wasn't suppressing white votes.  Many people are OK with that.

kei te pai

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1929 on: May 14, 2020, 08:49:59 PM »

Kris

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1930 on: May 15, 2020, 06:03:57 AM »
You have to remember that the US has some weird fantasy delusions about their government though.  There is a core of misguided people who believe that gun ownership somehow scares the entire US military and protects them from government overreach.  This group typically then goes and happily votes in authoritarian leaning leaders.  :P

The most frustrating part is that it feels like the people most skeptical of the US government never do or say anything when the government actually engages in behavior that is worth being skeptical over.


I was just noting this yesterday. I have observed lunatic acquaintances on FB complacently watch the criminally unconstitutional activities of the Trump administration, but are now typing things like, “It’s 1984, sheeple! Orwell is happening right in front of you!” about attempts to control Covid and develop a vaccine against a global pandemic.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2020, 07:07:57 AM by Kris »

nereo

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1931 on: May 15, 2020, 06:17:06 AM »
anytime someone uses the word 'Sheeple" i pretty much ignore whatever they are saying. 

Even the founders understood there was a balance between personal liberty and a stable, productive society, and that we ought not to stay too far in either direction.

mathlete

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1932 on: May 15, 2020, 07:34:09 AM »
anytime someone uses the word 'Sheeple" i pretty much ignore whatever they are saying. 

Even the founders understood there was a balance between personal liberty and a stable, productive society, and that we ought not to stay too far in either direction.

The world is an increasingly complex place. Knee-jerk contrarianism (saying "sheeple") is a coping mechanism for complexity. Turning your brain off and always assuming the worst of higher powers is the same as turning your brain off and always assuming the best intentions IMO.

obstinate

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1933 on: May 15, 2020, 07:37:14 AM »
anytime someone uses the word 'Sheeple" i pretty much ignore whatever they are saying. 
It's been like a decade since the last time that word was used unironically. Nobody says it any more, even the people who think their interlocutors are fools.

Kris

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1934 on: May 15, 2020, 07:42:50 AM »
anytime someone uses the word 'Sheeple" i pretty much ignore whatever they are saying. 
It's been like a decade since the last time that word was used unironically. Nobody says it any more, even the people who think their interlocutors are fools.

Lol. I see it used unironically about once a week.

nereo

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1935 on: May 15, 2020, 07:43:27 AM »
anytime someone uses the word 'Sheeple" i pretty much ignore whatever they are saying. 

Even the founders understood there was a balance between personal liberty and a stable, productive society, and that we ought not to stay too far in either direction.

The world is an increasingly complex place. Knee-jerk contrarianism (saying "sheeple") is a coping mechanism for complexity. Turning your brain off and always assuming the worst of higher powers is the same as turning your brain off and always assuming the best intentions IMO.

Not turning off my brain - just severely discounting anything someone says who starts using words like 'sheeple'. 
IME these individuals aren't willing to have a rationed conversation about pros & cons of various measures.  They want to insult anyone who doesn't accept their belief (they're unthinking 'sheeple').


mathlete

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1936 on: May 15, 2020, 07:45:29 AM »
Not turning off my brain - just severely discounting anything someone says who starts using words like 'sheeple'. 
IME these individuals aren't willing to have a rationed conversation about pros & cons of various measures.  They want to insult anyone who doesn't accept their belief (they're unthinking 'sheeple').

I meant that people who unironically say "sheeple" are probably turning their brains off.

obstinate

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1937 on: May 15, 2020, 07:47:11 AM »
anytime someone uses the word 'Sheeple" i pretty much ignore whatever they are saying. 
It's been like a decade since the last time that word was used unironically. Nobody says it any more, even the people who think their interlocutors are fools.
Lol. I see it used unironically about once a week.
What corner of the internet of the internet do you play in lol? I guess I'm just not hanging with the cool kids.

Kris

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1938 on: May 15, 2020, 07:53:28 AM »
anytime someone uses the word 'Sheeple" i pretty much ignore whatever they are saying. 
It's been like a decade since the last time that word was used unironically. Nobody says it any more, even the people who think their interlocutors are fools.
Lol. I see it used unironically about once a week.
What corner of the internet of the internet do you play in lol? I guess I'm just not hanging with the cool kids.

I see it all over FB and the comments sections of online newspapers.

LightTripper

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1939 on: May 15, 2020, 07:54:01 AM »
anytime someone uses the word 'Sheeple" i pretty much ignore whatever they are saying. 
It's been like a decade since the last time that word was used unironically. Nobody says it any more, even the people who think their interlocutors are fools.

Lol. I see it used unironically about once a week.

Anybody who has tried to get an actual sheep to do something it doesn't want to do would never use the term....

frugalnacho

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1940 on: May 15, 2020, 08:29:25 AM »
anytime someone uses the word 'Sheeple" i pretty much ignore whatever they are saying. 
It's been like a decade since the last time that word was used unironically. Nobody says it any more, even the people who think their interlocutors are fools.
Lol. I see it used unironically about once a week.
What corner of the internet of the internet do you play in lol? I guess I'm just not hanging with the cool kids.

I see it all over FB and the comments sections of online newspapers.

probably by libtards.  Thanks Obummer!

Bloop Bloop

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1941 on: May 15, 2020, 08:37:33 AM »
Herd mentality goes both ways.

Here the Australian government has performed probably the best job in the world of flattening the curve and has also (maybe belatedly, but not too belatedly) eased lockdown, doubled welfare payments for everyone and given casual workers wage relief to the extent that barely anyone is worse off under the pandemic. (It will be a different situation when the bill has to be paid, though.) Yet people in the comment section of the Guardian and reddit still give the government shit, because they will never support a conservative government. If the government does something that the opposition actually supports, like all of the current welfare measures, they just accuse them of borrowing from the opposition playbook - as if that's a bad thing.

Any time you have a consensus view on a forum, I think that forum is no longer suitable as a discussion space. It just becomes a circle jerk and a deplorable place to visit. People should encourage contrarian views as it's the only way to test your own.

One of the things I like about this forum is that you get a diversity of views and consensus is not seen as something to strive for.

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1942 on: May 15, 2020, 09:03:21 AM »
Alternative view:

My personal life satisfaction is negatively correlated with reading any sort of comments, liberal or conservative, regarding politics on a news site or facebook.  The level of discussion usually just makes me sad for humanity. 

MMM forums are marginally better. 

There are a handful of blogs where the comment sections are actually really interesting, but I have made myself avoid those because then I get sucked in and then oops its 2am. 

mathlete

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1943 on: May 15, 2020, 09:18:44 AM »
Alternative view:

My personal life satisfaction is negatively correlated with reading any sort of comments, liberal or conservative, regarding politics on a news site or facebook.  The level of discussion usually just makes me sad for humanity. 

MMM forums are marginally better. 

There are a handful of blogs where the comment sections are actually really interesting, but I have made myself avoid those because then I get sucked in and then oops its 2am.

I'm first world and white and pretty rich. Almost nothing, including COVID, that is talked about in news or political circles materially impacts my life. I agree that in some sense, "reading the comments" is bad for your health. But I think I owe it to a lot of people to be clued in on what's going on and how people feel about it.

Kris

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1944 on: May 15, 2020, 09:26:38 AM »
Alternative view:

My personal life satisfaction is negatively correlated with reading any sort of comments, liberal or conservative, regarding politics on a news site or facebook.  The level of discussion usually just makes me sad for humanity. 

MMM forums are marginally better. 

There are a handful of blogs where the comment sections are actually really interesting, but I have made myself avoid those because then I get sucked in and then oops its 2am.

I'm first world and white and pretty rich. Almost nothing, including COVID, that is talked about in news or political circles materially impacts my life. I agree that in some sense, "reading the comments" is bad for your health. But I think I owe it to a lot of people to be clued in on what's going on and how people feel about it.

This is how I feel. People bitch about the other side living in a bubble all the time. But the only way to get out of the bubble... is to work on it.

Bloop Bloop

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1945 on: May 15, 2020, 10:17:48 AM »
I think it is helpful to reject any argument that refers to an overarching world view and analyse each issue separately and critically. Otherwise it is easy to join a faction and then...you are not a free thinker any more.

Samuel

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1946 on: May 15, 2020, 10:49:27 AM »
Sometimes I think there should be occasional popups on Facebook and other platforms gently introducing different cognitive bias concepts.

"Did you know Confirmation Bias describes each person’s underlying tendency to notice, focus on, and provide greater credence to evidence that seems to confirm his or her existing beliefs?"*

"Did you know Anchoring describes the tendency to rely on initial information to “anchor” subsequent judgements and interpretations?"*

Seeking out multiple sources and points of view is great and puts you ahead of the curve but developing some understanding of the predictable pitfalls of human cognition would help too.



*Language lifted from https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/

Kris

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1947 on: May 15, 2020, 11:31:28 AM »
Sometimes I think there should be occasional popups on Facebook and other platforms gently introducing different cognitive bias concepts.

"Did you know Confirmation Bias describes each person’s underlying tendency to notice, focus on, and provide greater credence to evidence that seems to confirm his or her existing beliefs?"*

"Did you know Anchoring describes the tendency to rely on initial information to “anchor” subsequent judgements and interpretations?"*

Seeking out multiple sources and points of view is great and puts you ahead of the curve but developing some understanding of the predictable pitfalls of human cognition would help too.



*Language lifted from https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/

That would be great. Unfortunately, those pop-ups would probably only serve to make many people double down on their beliefs.

FB has a function now that pops up a “fact check” link below many articles people post that have been debunked. I see so many people react to that by saying that the fact checks themselves are the fake news, and that it’s proof that FB is a tool of the lamestream media.

Saffron

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1948 on: May 15, 2020, 12:02:56 PM »
I've had 2 work colleagues pass away from Covid-19 in the past 2 weeks. The first was a police officer in my agency. I knew him and we chatted from time to time. The second was a facilities manager for my building. Both were in their early 60s.

At least in hotspot areas like Washington DC we need to keep up with the social distancing and maximizing teleworking. If it weren't for the fact that I'm in my early 30s and have no kids, I wouldn't be volunteering to go in and keep essential operations going. 


waltworks

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #1949 on: May 15, 2020, 12:08:56 PM »
I think it's fair to say that the internet was the worst thing to happen to humanity in this millennium so far. It's interesting because I was (as a preteen!) on the internet in the 1980s when I was a huge nerd/student/mascot in the mathematical modeling division at LANL.

At that time, everyone on the internet was insanely smart and nerdy. If you wanted to find porn (yes, it existed, and yes, I looked for it... sigh) or anything else, you had to spend a lot of time on gopher at various FTP sites and man, when you found it... it wasn't worth the effort or the wait.

If you asked a question on usenet, you'd get some jerks and flaming, but from bickering PhDs (I got royally reamed when I wanted to build a Tesla turbine powered motorcycle in my garage...for good reason) rather than stay at home moms trying to sell essential oils, or people who can't spell telling you about how the gov't wants to control them.

I'll come across as an elitist jerk, but the internet is bad for dumb people. It's bad for average people. It's bad for even fairly smart and educated people - they're too stupid and/or cognitively biased/lacking in formal logic skills and stats to deal with the signal to noise ratio.

Here I am posting on a forum (and I have thousands of posts!) but if I could wave a magic wand and turn the internet off forever, I'd probably do it.

-W

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!