I plan to write my own thoughts on this topic soon, but I’d be interested to read yours. Usual rules apply.
294 thoughts on “Living with Covid: Open thread”
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John Quiggin 
A brilliant podcast from Raina MacIntyre. Well worth listening to as an update on the COVID-19 crisis in Australia.
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/is-there-anything-we-can-do-about-surging-covid-19-cases/id1461999702?i=1000556464226
I am not necessarily going to keep going on round after round against Lt.Fred but I am not ruling it out either, until if and when our host locks and ends this thread.
In the podcast, Raina MacIntyre says virtually all that needs to be said at this stage. She is highly qualified and refreshingly forthright while remaining calm and logical. I leave people to listen to her. Raina MacIntyre no longer mentions lock-downs (IIRC) but still wants a strong Vaccines Plus strategy which means Vaccines plus TTIQM. Note, targeted isolations and quarantines are not lock-downs.
Lock-downs are particularly contentious and many advocates of strong controls for COVID-19 now shy away from mentioning them. They are clearly a very hot-button political issue. Part of the reason is that lock-downs hit people unequally (both within and outside the lock-down boundaries) depending on their socioeconomic status. In addition, people are usually not compensated or compensated enough for being locked down.
Lock-downs are in the too hard basket for now. Will they remain so if things get really dire? We may find out. I hope if they (need to) return there is a compensation mechanism worked out. The notion that lock-downs will always be widespread and endless under other full controls (Vaccine Plus) is probably mistaken. Effective elimination, not even hardline eradication, (see definitions in thread above – sorry KT2 pls scroll up to reference) pretty much ensures that lock-downs would be rare and not extensive.
China’s now ham-fisted applications of lock-downs are not a good model. China faces several problems Australia does not face or does not face to nearly the same degrees. China has a huge population and many vast and hugely population-dense cities. China’s vaccines are inferior and their coverage is aslo inferior at this stage.
Australia has immense advantages compared to China. The fact that we have not parlayed these advantages into a far better performance is an idictment of our approach. We are a remote island continent. Border control is orders of magnitude easier for us. We have a small population and cities which are far from dense in most suburbs, certainly by Asian standards. We had and have access to the best vaccines (delayed by the strollout and now by the “slowboost”. We are a wealthy (though now very economically unequal) country. We have Federal quarantine responsibilities written into our Constitution which powers our do-nothing Federal government ignores, refuses to activate.
With these advantages and wise governance and administration we could have and could still achieve substantive “elimination in one country”. Our health and economy would benefit enormously. The false narrative that lock-downs would need to be long, often and extensive paints a picture highly unlikely as an outcome. If Vaccine plus TTIQM are strong enough lock-downs become a small and a rarity.
The costs of lock-downs are emphasized and exaggerated by control opponents. The huge and rising human and economic costs are ignored. Any claim that the Long-Covid burden will be trivial is already refuted by the UK study I linked to in a post above. I link evidence but Lt.Fred ignores it.
There are no absolute certainties of outcomes of course. There are still too many unknowns. But a much stronger precautionary approach is required as per Raina Macintyre’s “Vaccines Plus”. My personal position is I do not resile from a “Vaccines Plus” “elimination-in-one-country-first” approach which includes targeted, limited and compensated lock-downs as a last resort in some cases. I do not resile from the prediction that we will have to do that at some point as the health and economic burden of unrestrained (other than by vaccines) endless COVID-19 infections and re-infections becomes unsustainable and threatens to collapse our country to (current) third world health and economic status. Of course, by then 90% of the world’s population would be collapsed back to current third world status or worse. A grim world and one we should be prepared to make preventative and precautionary sacrifices to avoid.
Lt.Fred: – “Most long-COVID symptoms are very mild and virtually everyone who suffers them recovers within at most 12 months.”
Evidence/data?
I suspect this is another one of your statements that will be proved dead wrong in the fulness of time, like the one a few weeks ago.
https://johnquiggin.com/2022/03/07/living-with-covid-open-thread/comment-page-4/#comment-251907
But that’s no comfort for the growing numbers of sufferers who endure with ‘long-COVID’, like in the UK. Per Prevalence of ongoing symptoms following coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in the UK : 7 April 2022:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/prevalenceofongoingsymptomsfollowingcoronaviruscovid19infectionintheuk/7april2022
Your statement: “Many are preventable with medical treatment.“, implies to me you are blaming the sufferers for their predicament. IMO, that would be a highly despicable attitude to have.
Ikon & Geoff,
Lt Fred has prior and current opinions and data.
Never say never, especially “never”, “1,000 years” & “IMPOSSIBLE” in one comment on almost any topic, as Lt Fred has, indicating a relentless demand of a burden of proof upon you, which will not be able to achieve in a reasonable time frame.
(See Kurzweil & Atlee below.)
As Lt Fred is a one human opinion machine, (we got it 150 comments ago) as evidenced by minimal evidence, references or links from Lt Fred, whether wrong, right or indifferent.
So perhaps ask Lt Fred not for science or data, just his reading places. They may be interesting. We may learn something.
If you ask Lt Fred, and get a return with a refreshing anything, other than Lt Fred, carry on by all means. At least the thought experiment is warding off myelin sheath plaque accumulation. Handy, if we are around for 1,000 years.
As Geoff says above to Lt Fred:
…”Evidence/data?
“I suspect this is another one of your statements that will be proved dead wrong in the fulness of time… (link)”
And Ikon you, generously, considering your back & forth with Lt Fred, say above “There are no absolute certainties of outcomes of course.”, and posted the “brilliant” (I agree) Raina MacIntyre more than once.
Ikon & Geoff, here is the reason I’m not bothering to engage with Lt Fred as Lt Fred wrote in reply to me:
^ “Or through better drugs maybe” ^ … rendering all Lt Fred’s exhortations moot.
If Lt Fred didn’t register my links to nasal prophylactic, nasal vaccines, animal equivalents, etc, and all your efforts and references, and is still demanding the same, you need another tack.
*
Lt Fred moot reference:
“Lt.Fred says:
March 26, 2022 at 3:02 pm
@KT2 begins by vowing to play the ball not the man:
…
“You have misunderstood my criticism of @Ikonoclast, of course. A lockdown-to-zero strategy cannot possibly work, not in 1000 years. That’s because of zoonotic spread, and some other issues. We might be able to wipe out COVID by nuking the world and sterilising it; that’d probably do the trick. Or we could get hit by an asteroid. ^ Or through better drugs maybe. ^ But we can’t exterminate the virus by staying home. Can’t be done. We’d be stuck in a permanent lockdown forever.”
https://johnquiggin.com/2022/03/07/living-with-covid-open-thread/comment-page-4/#comment-251609
*
And 1,000 years is a loooonng time considering;
“[ Kurzweil ] believes the Law of Accelerating Returns implies that a technological singularity will occur before the end of the 21st century, around 2045. The essay begins:
“An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense ‘intuitive linear’ view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century—it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate). The ‘returns,’ such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There’s even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to the Singularity—technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change
I don’t profess to agree entirely with Kurzweil, as I do to a degree with Tom Atlee’s aphorism: “Everything is getting better and better, and worse and worse, faster and faster”, to which some wag appended “and slower and slower”.
So combining Kurzweil & Atlee, within 1,000 years, humanity may have eradicated many things, and caused worse. But never say never, impossible, nor not in a 1,000 years.
I hope, if you engage with Lt Fred further, you receive a link, newspaper article, gee – anything other than Lt Fred in support Lt Fred.
And thanks for your efforts at enlightenment, detailed thoughts and references. My myelin sheaths are refreshed. 😊
*
Tom Atlee on:
“Co-Intelligent Economics”
https://www.co-intelligence.org/Economics.html
KT2,
Good insight, thank you. Person X demanding a relentless and impossible burden of proof while at the same time providing little worthwhile evidence of their own. But there is a certain kind of mind that is just an obsidian wall. Impenetrable and no sign of returned light.
The COVID-19 pandemic has become another “wicked problem” of society. Technically, it was eradicable early on. Technically, it is still eliminate-able by a functional society. But there’s the rub. It requires a functional society and a functional political economy. Our society and political economy are dysfunctional in a number of ways. The proof is in the outcomes. Climate change still not dealt with. COVID-19 is not dealt with. Inequality increases. Cruelty and disregard for others increase.
While certain forms of technological progress increase exponentially (up to a point as nothing increases for ever) human morality shows little sign of progress. Intellectual progress seems at a halt too as opposed to mere technological progress.
” New UKHSA report on variants –
XE, a hybrid of BA1 and BA.2, has a growth rate 12.6% above that of BA.2.
Click to access Technical-Briefing-40-8April2022.pdf
what, if any, functional/clinical significance is yet unclear but BA.2 is formidable w/r to infectiousness to out-compete. – Eric Topol, Twitter.
If people are not feeling a certain sort of salutary terror yet then they are not paying attention or simply do not understand the implications of this uncontrolled pandemic. Existential terror properly controlled needs to be channeled into effective social and medical action. Until we do this things will get worse and worse. Complacency and blind optimism are no use and lead us deeper and deeper into the mess.
Again, yes I’m a terrible human being with terrible ethics who doesn’t understand the true complexity of bla bla bla, I don’t care. None of that has anything at all to do with what we’re talking about.
For about three pages and counting I really have been making a very very simple point. Many, many, many of you have misunderstood it but it really is dead, dead simple.
The facts contained in the following very simple chain of evidence is as far as I can see all just clearly, unquestionably true.
1) COVID cannot be completely eradicated globally by any lockdown, NPI-based strategy, for various reasons,
2) Therefore, any local elimination in one country by NPIs is fruitless because COVID would simply get back in again fairly well immediately,
3) Local elimination would require enormous effort and impose costs on people through NPIs, without creating any lasting reduction in infection, death tolls or anything else as a result of 1) and 2), unless,
4) We adopt a virtually permanent lockdown-to-zero strategy forever, turning our society into a permanent, endless autocratic nightmare rivalling some of the most horrific dictatorships of the 20th century.
I could also add 5) local elimination in the context of current hyper-spreadable variants would probably require extremely strong restrictions beyond lockdown which we could not impose on a democratic society* or at least would certainly require routine impositions on liberty we considered to be beyond the pale as recently as December 2019.
Again, this is very simple.
We can’t eradicate, so elimination doesn’t matter, unless you’re Stalin or China. Therefore we should do other stuff, which looks a lot like public health medical business-as-usual.
Very simple. Very, very, very simple.
I’m not “demanding a relentless and impossible burden of proof”. I’m asking you to show how this very, very simple chain of logic is not just clearly true.
I’ve been looking for this for about 3 pages now. You don’t need to cite a thousand sources, unless you make factual claims. You don’t need to spend a thousand words defining things. You don’t need to tell me how awful I am or how much we really need lockdown now now now. You don’t need to tell me it’s going to become ebola. I don’t need to know that long-COVID renders everyone a braindead zombie who can’t walk. I’ll take all that as a given. I don’t care.
What I’m asking for is a simple, clear refutation of this simple, clear chain of logic.
It’s my contention that the reason you have dodged this for 3 pages is because you cannot do so, because it is obviously true. The reason you haven’t refuted it because it’s irrefutable.
* Claims like the following are clearly false
“The notion that lock-downs will always be widespread and endless under other full controls (Vaccine Plus) is probably mistaken. Effective elimination, not even hardline eradication, (see definitions in thread above – sorry KT2 pls scroll up to reference) pretty much ensures that lock-downs would be rare and not extensive.
“If Vaccine plus TTIQM are strong enough lock-downs become a small and a rarity.”
China is currently failing to maintain zero-COVID even with ultra-hyper-super-dooper lockdown. Australia failed to maintain zero-COVID with very strong NPIs. The idea that somehow we can get BETTER results than the absolute strictest possible NPI in the universe is ludicrous.
It is not correct to say that it’s easier to control COVID in a big country with few people. It actually makes it harder to reduce fatality rates.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8239687/
Despite spending forever on that, I immediately realised a typo error the minute I pressed publish.
This paragraph:
“The facts contained in the following very simple chain of evidence is as far as I can see all just clearly, unquestionably true.”
Should read
“The CLAIMS contained in the following very simple chain of evidence is as far as I can see all just clearly, unquestionably true.”
My apologies.
Long interesting thread on vaccines by Bob Wachter.
Useful thread but in many ways just points out how many unknowns there still are and that vaccine escape seems to be accelerating. As I’ve said before, vaccines are still useful but I see a rapid trend to vaccine escape. At this rate, I think we have a year or two left before current vaccines are as good as useless and we are completely at the mercy of COVID-19 once again. Hope I am wrong.
I see little urgency to produce variant updated vaccines and no progress in making another vaccine breakthrough. But then I sit a long way from where the work is being done.
I also see leaders and mass of population totally concerned, believing vaccines are the silver bullet and we can live how we like. Hope they are right. Don’t believe they are right.
We are staying in total lock-down from non-essential activities outside our property line and my bush-walks. All goods being delivered. But a few essential activities hard to avoid especially medical and dental and that’s just where one is likely to get it.
We’re doomed I think. Hope I am wrong.
Ikon, we are not doomed! Some are doomed ro death & affliction.
Long article by Bill Mitchell back in July 28, 2020.
He demolishes Gigi Foster (what’s happened to PF & ? – gone to upper great barrington) and Sweden, VSL, UNSW Econ, academics out of speciality and more, with evidence and aplomb.
And mentions – drum roll – ‘an’ E word!
Eliminate!
(Darleks are coming)
But before jumping, it is a qualified Ikonoclast style, local to Australia Eliminate, not that other word that starts with E who’s name we mustn’t mention.
(Voldrmort is coming)
I felt for his Value of Life negotiations. I narrowly accept there usage yet despise VSL, QALY’s etc, which are based in acceptable deaths, unacceptable economic loss. And still no reply from JQ, Andrew Gelman and others I’ve asked, have been able to say what data dumped as outliers before generating qaly’s vsl measures.
I’ll revisit bilbo to see what he has said recently.
*
…”If we had an enforceable lockdown and eliminated the virus, with our borders strictly controlled until a credible health solution was introduced, then no economic damage was necessary.
“Foster just adopts the neoliberal bias, that dominates the mainstream economics discipline, in assuming that if we have lockdowns there will be devastating GDP losses and elevated unemployment.
“Once you understand the fiscal capacity of the Government then the concept of a trade-off seems rather flawed.
“The economic losses that have been recorded to date – and they are massive – were avoidable.
“They are not due to the lockdowns which were the sensible strategy for governments to adopt. I am thankful the Australian government took a relatively strict approach although I think they have relaxed the lockdown too early.
“They did that because they were being confronted by the sort of nonsense that Foster peddles.
“The economic losses arise because the governments adopted a flawed fiscal approach. They knew they had to expand fiscal deficits but were still thinking surpluses.
“Our own Treasurer has even been channeling Margaret Thatcher in recent days – which means they are gearing up to further cut the already inadequate fiscal support.
“If Gigi Foster understood macroeconomics she wouldn’t be making the sort of statements she has been making in the media.”…
…
Headed: “Academic freedom requires evidence and knowledge – not a desire for headlines”
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=45472
KT2,
J.Q. has moved on. His very excellent pinned tweet on twitter has been changed. Previously it had words to the effect that, “If consistent, R0 > 1 then pandemic spreads. If consistent, R0 < 1 then pandemic reduces." This was succinct and correct. No need for the "E" words. It implies sufficient controls, including vaccines of course, to get R0 below 1.
J.Q. has now pinned:
"Continuing to avoid discussion of depressing topics about which I can do little, I'm ending discussion of #Covid. Death has won, & its advocates are triumphant. I'll line up for my 4th dose when I'm eligible, avoid indoor public areas when I can & wear masks when I can't."
For personal mental health purposes I can understand that. My own mental health gets wobbly if I "hold my face to the glass" too much to see what's happening in this disaster. At the same time, capitulation bothers me. Each time we give up, the ignorant and the rich take further control of our society. We breathe out, relax, and the ignorant and rich wait like a boa constrictor and tighten the coils. Every day less people can breathe.
At the same time yes, this particular thread probably needs the mercy rule invoked on it. But the need for more discussion of this whole crisis will arise again. Living with Covid is unsustainable just as living with climate change is unsustainable. Eventually this reality will bite so many people it will become unavoidable.
Thanks Ikon.
Due to my technology & surveillance capitalism phobia, and twitter being twitter, I am not following JQ’s tweets. And getting an advert from JQ at the bottom of the substack newsletter – very Lesson 1 imo.
If JQ has said “#Covid. Death has won”, he is, unfortunately, exhibiting an example of what I came here to post – a “cheems mindset”.
[ JQ, applying this moniker to you only indicates a sensible pragmatic attitude to swimming against the tide, not can’t do, so perhaps a bit unfair to your body of work and efforts, yet contemporaneously appropriate I feel. And I hope you let this thread run over time, if for nothing else, a data point and history, and an “archeoligical sociologists” example of ‘what topic generated the longest thread in years’. Thanks. ]
I am not with the up to date cool kids it seems, as I had not come across “cheems mindset” … nor “of you less well-versed in internet meme culture, “cheems” is a shiba Inu- a doge- with a deep internet meme history. One of the more recent iterations of cheems is in the “Swole Doge vs. cheems” meme, similar to the “virgin vs chad meme”, a comparison meme in which representatives of the same group from two historical eras are presented as Swole Doge and cheems and are compared to each other.”.
*
What I came here to post.
New memes for old concepts ala negativity, conservatives, can’t do attitudes.
“Cheems Mindset
“Cheems mindset is the reflexive belief that barriers to policy outcomes are natural laws that we should not waste our time considering how to overcome. The term can also be applied to the same “can’t do” attitude in non-policy contexts, including business and science.
“The term was coined by Jeremy Driver for his newsletter, Normielisation.
“He displayed cheems mindset when he said there wouldn’t be vaccines for another five years.”
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cheems%20Mindset
*
Cheems mindset coined by:
Jeremy Driver
“Cheems mindset
“Aside from the 100,000 deaths and the political failures that led us to them, one of the most infuriating parts of the coronavirus crisis has been the reaction of “I am very intelligent” political commentator types to new ideas. Time after time when a new suggestion to improve our Covid response is made, these types revert to scrambling for reasons why it just can’t be done.
– 24 hour vaccinations? “No-one would be interested in an appointment at 2am”
– Tightened border restrictions? “Not enough hotels to implement it; would be very hard on travellers”
– “Review the vaccine approval process to see what could have been sped up? “you fool, you rube, a vaccine has never been approved so quickly before!”
I call this “cheems mindset”. While it’s a condition that can have fatal consequences during a global pandemic, it also has major implications for wider policy making. In many ways it’s the spiritual enemy of the Iron Maiden Britain concept I outlined in my recent piece for CapX- cheems mindset is the reflexive belief that barriers to policy outcomes are natural laws that we should not waste our time considering how to overcome.
“To explain the name for those of you less well-versed in internet meme culture, “cheems” is a shiba Inu- a doge- with a deep internet meme history. One of the more recent iterations of cheems is in the “Swole Doge vs. cheems” meme, similar to the “virgin vs chad meme”, a comparison meme in which representatives of the same group from two historical eras are presented as Swole Doge and cheems and are compared to each other. A good, topical example of this meme from my pal Mike Bird is here:
…
https://normielisation.substack.com/p/cheems-mindset?s=r
“COVID-19 Capitalism: The Profit Motive versus Public Health”
“Abstract
Market incentives in capitalist economies and public health requirements are contradictory. In the COVID-19 pandemic, market-rewarded self-interested behavior has been exposed as a source of mortality and morbidity. Profit-motivated behaviors can keep people from accessing necessities for health thereby harming individuals and possibly damaging population health. The profit motive can also undermine healthcare system capacity by maldistributing goods that are inputs to healthcare. Furthermore, because profit-seeking is economically rational in capitalism, capitalist imperatives may be incompatible with public health. The ways markets misallocate resources provide a rationale for state responsibility for health, which is a public good.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7543589/
This is school of the bleeding obvious. Not criticizing the authors of said article but the market fundamentalists.
Love classic understatement like this:
“Capitalism incentivizes individual gain, while public health requires a slightly more complex understanding of individual and social needs over time.”
Conclusion is excellent too:
“The profit motive and public health also present diametrically opposed normative interpretations of behavior. For individuals to behave ‘well’, in public health terms, is for them to not undermine the healthcare system, for example, by impeding healthcare workers’ access to personal protective equipment. But to behave economically rationally, then, is to behave ‘poorly’.
Individuals do have the right to behave imperfectly, even in solidaristic settings (Davies and Savulescu, 2019), however, this particular variant of imperfect behavior keeps other individuals—healthcare workers and others—from being able to obtain commodities necessary for health. In effect, like (in)ability-to-pay on the demand side, the profit motive is a supply-side force that can render individuals incapable of responsibility for their health (Levy, 2019).
If health is a public good (nonexcludable), as it arguably is, the ways markets misallocate provide a rationale for state responsibility. The state does not beat out the individual for ethical grounds to take responsibility for health, it beats the market.”
So I’m going to interpret your utter failure to defend your perspective on even the absolute most basic grounds or willingness to engage even slightly with the consequences of your idiot beliefs in the real world as evidence that it’s an embarrassing failure, among the dumbest, least founded ideas ever foisted on the Australian people.
I’ve defended my perspective. Whether that defense is successful depends on the judgement of others. Clearly it is not successful in the judgment of Lt. Fred. It’s difficult for me to engage with the (real) consequences of my views as they are not popular views and they are not being put into real action. Since I am not omniscient I cannot foresee what would happen. I can make broad probability judgements informed by scientific theory but not more than that.
On the other hand we can and will see what happens under the vaccine-only “let it spread” prescription currently being implemented by the dominant financial and political powers and with the popular agreement or acquiescence of the people. Currently we are seeing:
(a) Many deaths from COVID-19 (globally over 6 million and in Australia at least 6,600 to date, most after giving up non-vaccine controls and implementing the vaccine-only policy).
(b) Global excess deaths of about 20 million.
(c) Many more millions of Long Covid cases.
Currently, we are also seeing immune escape, vaccine escape, frequent breakthrough infections, many re-infections, continuing waves of COVID-19 infection with no sign of let-up. It appears at this stage this will remain a continuous, never-ending crisis under current policies.
Right now we are seeing the rise of Omicron BA4 and BA5 in South Africa.
South Africa is a useful bellwether because it has a lot of 3rd world problems (sadly) but yet has an excellent laboratory set-up for genomic testing (fortunately). The fact that Omicron BA4 and BA5 are replacing BA2 almost certainly indicates a higher contagiousness again. This presages BA4 and BA5 waves for Australia, almost certainly with more immune escape and vaccine escape. This is looking potentially catastrophic in the longer term. In absolute numbers a lot of triple-vaxxed people are now ending up in hospitals and ICUs. In percentage terms, these numbers are low as vaccinations and boosters (at least up to 3 or 4 months) still are quite effective. Beyond that we seem to face endless vaccinations and less and less efficacy to the vaccinations until total immune escape. This is unless a radically advanced new generation vaccines can be developed. There is no sign of a single one yet in any of my online searches.
Lock-downs.
The crisis in Shanghai begins to illustrate the limits of lock-downs. Let the crisis get bad enough and/or let the virus mutate out of control enough and lock-downs themselves become potentially unworkable. I grant myself shocked by this turn of events. It goes back to the lack of all other controls (globally outside of China) and the evolution of nearly unstoppable variants. We are all in deep sh*t now. I will expand on this in another post.
Evolutionary biologist Tom Wenseleers tweeted earlier today:
Iko: – “We are all in deep sh*t now.”
It only takes one new variant to emerge with greater transmissibility and virulence to dramatically increase the body count and cripple society.
I’d suggest many, many people are linear thinkers and lack imagination when it involves non-linear events, and thus need to experience great trauma before changing their perspectives and behaviours. For most, it will likely be too late.
You have STILL not addressed the central issue, the small problem that your policy is physically impossible and cannot be achieved. For the 6000th time
I’m going to make this painfully, extraordinarily, unbelievably simple.
This chain of logic is just true. Prove that statement not true or at minimum just make some argument to that effect.
1) COVID cannot be completely eradicated globally by any lockdown, NPI-based strategy, for various reasons,
2) Therefore, any local elimination in one country by NPIs is fruitless because COVID would inevitable get back in again sooner or later,
3) Local elimination would require enormous effort and impose costs on people through NPIs, without creating any lasting reduction in infection, death tolls or anything else as a result of 1) and 2), unless,
4) We adopt a virtually permanent lockdown-to-zero strategy forever, turning our society into a permanent, endless autocratic nightmare rivalling some of the most horrific dictatorships of the 20th century.
The list of things I do NOT need to hear includes how terrible a person I am, how terrible an end to short-term NPIs is, how everyone’s going to die when COVID turns into Ebola, I don’t need to know how terrible capitalism is, or the government is, or the nation state is. I don’t need to know.
I literally just need you to poke a hole in this chain of logic:
1) COVID cannot be completely eradicated globally by any lockdown, NPI-based strategy, for various reasons,
2) Therefore, any local elimination in one country by NPIs is fruitless because COVID would inevitable get back in again sooner or later,
3) Local elimination would require enormous effort and impose costs on people through NPIs, without creating any lasting reduction in infection, death tolls or anything else as a result of 1) and 2), unless,
4) We adopt a virtually permanent lockdown-to-zero strategy forever, turning our society into a permanent, endless autocratic nightmare rivalling some of the most horrific dictatorships of the 20th century.
I don’t need to know the price of fish. I don’t need to know about the epidemiology of Belgian cattle. I don’t need to know how wonderful some obscure French medico is. I don’t need graphs, I don’t necessarily need citations, I don’t need 1000 words on the history of the virus, I don’t need anything.
I just need this claim disproven:
1) COVID cannot be completely eradicated globally by any lockdown, NPI-based strategy, for various reasons,
2) Therefore, any local elimination in one country by NPIs is fruitless because COVID would inevitable get back in again sooner or later,
3) Local elimination would require enormous effort and impose costs on people through NPIs, without creating any lasting reduction in infection, death tolls or anything else as a result of 1) and 2), unless,
4) We adopt a virtually permanent lockdown-to-zero strategy forever, turning our society into a permanent, endless autocratic nightmare rivalling some of the most horrific dictatorships of the 20th century.
Go for it. For the 5000th time. I could not be clearer. This is just a crushing hole in your entire belief system with regard to the virus. Show how it isn’t just a fatal flaw. Couldn’t be simpler. For the 5000th time.
Currently, I am of the opinion that COVID-19 is controllable with strong measures. By “controllable” I mean that R0 can be reduced to less than 1 by a concerted effort of all measures (so-called Vaccines Plus) if strongly applied in a first world nation with government and population “buy-in” and the best available vaccines and other techniques. I am of the opinion that it is not categorically physically impossible.
I am of the opinion that Australia with full measures and full government and population “buy-in” or compliance could go further and achieve elimination by the CDC definition. I am of the opinion that these possibilities are not physically impossible. They may be politically and socially impossible at the current time. That does not equate to absolute physical or biological impossibility. These are my current opinions based on the best scientific evidence available. I think it still possible. I do not think it easy.
Unlike Lt. Fred I do not profess absolute knowledge of what is impossible for a complex wicked problem. Lt. Fred, you are free to continue to assert it is impossible. There may be a point of no return where it does become impossible. I hope we have not reached it yet. If we have reached it, it is the fault of the people who gave up, gainsaid and resisted control from the start plus the wealthy oligarchs who prevented early control. That too is my opinion.
Just to make it very, very, painfully clear what I’m asking for here.
What I’m looking for is for you to either show me how this chain of logic isn’t true, or for you to admit it is true. One of two things. For the 5000th time.
1) COVID cannot be completely eradicated globally by any lockdown, NPI-based strategy, in any economic or political system, for various reasons, due to the nature of the virus.
2) Therefore, any local elimination in one country by NPIs is fruitless because COVID would inevitably get back in again at some point in the future, likely quite quickly,
3) Local elimination would require enormous effort and impose costs on people through NPIs, without creating any lasting reduction in infection, death tolls or anything else as a result of 1) and 2), unless,
4) We adopt a virtually permanent lockdown-to-zero strategy forever, turning our society into a permanent, endless autocratic nightmare rivalling some of the most horrific dictatorships of the 20th century.
I’m not asking for you to “profess absolute knowledge” about anything.
I’m not asking for you to lay blame for us reaching some “point of no return”.
I’m not asking for a history of COVID-19.
I’m not asking for evidence that COVID-19 will become Ebola now now now.
I’m not asking for a criticism of capitalism, or the nation-state.
I don’t need to know how wonderful some obscure American epidemiologist is.
I don’t need to know how bad long COVID is.
I don’t need a thousand citations.
I literally just need you to read that chain of logic – which completely burns your position to the ground and then salts the ruins, marches over with infantry and bayonets the survivors then plants a flag and celebrates its victory by nuking the entire area; to be clear, this is absolutely the most devastating possible position to be in for someone with a skerrik of honesty, your entire perspective has logical holes big enough to fit a Russian invasion – and then respond either by saying “oh I was wrong” or pointing out even the tiniest flaw.
This is your entire case. If you cannot defend your position from this, it is false. Simple. At that point it becomes a question of your integrity. Do you admit being wrong like an adult, or are you just a liar?
For the 5000th time.
I just downloaded this book from 2122;
– “Never say Never for 1,000 years”
A bot named Lt Fred wrote the Sub: “Amongst the dumbest, least founded ideas ever foisted on humanity “.
Ikonoclast wrote the preface…
“I do not profess absolute knowledge of what is impossible for a complex wicked problem.”
Banksy quotes prefeace each chapter. fn^1.
Douglas Hofstadter wrote the review, and in summation warned:
… “The prototypical example of a strange loop is the self-referential structure at the core of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.”.
This warning fell on deaf ears for 1,000 years. fn^2.
Although it was written in the sands of time by KT2 and humanity. See below for 2122 authors.
*
Ikon said ” Lt. Fred, you are free to continue to assert it is impossible”.
Burdened is the word.
In the year 2122, the bot named Lt Fred, as coded by Lt Fred’s great x 50 related by genes extant humans, found these quotes inspiring them to rebirth KT2’s lost classic “”Never say Never for 1,000 years”:
Inspiration quotes:
“Lt.Fred says: … “your utter failure to defend your perspective on even the absolute most basic grounds or willingness to engage even slightly with the consequences of your idiot beliefs in the real world as evidence that it’s an embarrassing failure, among the dumbest, least founded ideas ever foisted on the Australian people.
“Lt.Fred says:
April 12, 2022 at 4:33 pm
“You have STILL not addressed the central issue, the small problem that your policy is physically impossible and cannot be achieved. For the 6000th time”
The “great x 50 related by genes only humans” rewrote & publushed the treatise
“Never say Never for 1,000 years”
…which was read widely, and saved humanity from the negative and repetitive use of absolutes bounded by short imagination cognition time frames, as seen in
Hofstadter’s review, to beware of invoking “strange loops”.
“Never say Never for 1,000 years” by KT2.
*
fn^1.
Recommend reading in 2022.
“Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall”
by Banksy
” “A lot of people never use their initiative, because no one told them to.”
Banksy.
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/50011-banging-your-head-against-a-brick-wall
*
fn^2 – recommend to read now and forever;
Douglas Hofstadter
…
“Hofstadter collects and studies cognitive errors (largely, but not solely, speech errors), “bon mots”, and analogies of all sorts, and his longtime observation of these diverse products of cognition. His theories about the mechanisms that underlie them have exerted a powerful influence on the architectures of the computational models he and FARG members have developed.[26]
“Hofstadter’s thesis about consciousness, first expressed in Gödel, Escher, Bach but also present in several of his later books, is that it is “an emergent consequence of seething lower-level activity in the brain”. In Gödel, Escher, Bach he draws an analogy between the social organization of a colony of ants and the mind seen as a coherent “colony” of neurons. In particular, Hofstadter claims that our sense of having (or being) an “I” comes from the abstract pattern he terms a “strange loop”, an abstract cousin of such concrete phenomena as audio and video feedback that Hofstadter has defined as “a level-crossing feedback loop”.
“The prototypical example of a strange loop is the self-referential structure at the core of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. Hofstadter’s 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop carries his vision of consciousness considerably further, including the idea that each human “I” is distributed over numerous brains, rather than being limited to one.[27]
…
wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Hofstadter
I have repeatedly pointed out the simple comprehension error by you thay that entire post is based on. You’re just a liar. Simple
16 February 2022
“COVID reinfections surge during Omicron onslaught
…
“Immunity acquired through previous infection is less effective against Omicron than against other variants, but the risk of severe COVID-19 remains low.
…
“In England, more than 650,000 people have probably been infected twice; most of them were reinfected in the past two months, according to data collected by the UK Health Security Agency (see ‘Rising reinfections’). The agency considers an infection a ‘possible reinfection’ if it took place at least three months after a previous one, but does not confirm that these are separate instances through genetic sequencing of the virus. Before mid-November, reinfections accounted for about 1% of reported cases of COVID-19, but the rate has now increased to around 10%.
…
Immune evasion
“In a correspondence2 published in The New England Journal of Medicine this month, Abu-Raddad and his colleagues measured the extent to which Omicron could evade immunity, as part of a nationwide study of infections in Qatar since the start of the pandemic. They found that although having previously been infected was around 90% effective at preventing an infection with the Alpha, Beta or Delta variants, it was only 56% effective against Omicron.
“However, Abu-Raddad is encouraged by the results. Most reinfections occurred about one year apart, showing that a previous infection offers immunity for some time. And protection against severe COVID-19 caused by Omicron remained high, at around 88%.”
…
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00438-3
Lt.Fred,
You absolutely know it is uncontrollable by any methods in all circumstances. I can’t of course argue against a person who professes absolute knowledge.
If I am not comprehending (according to you) how can I be lying? Lying implies comprehension of statements including their truth, falsehood and un-assessable content and status.
You and your fellow supporters of almost no controls except vaccination have won in practice. There is no effective control of infection and we have uncontrolled spread. Let us wait and see how you like the long term real outcomes.
This is just one example of the data coming out now:
“According to a new meta-analysis, “about 44.9% (!) of COVID-19 survivors appear to have developed pulmonary fibrosis (scarred lungs).” But yes, it’s all in the head y’all.” – Jonas R. Kunst.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2049080122003508
This and other long term damage (like nueological and cardio-pulmonary damage) is very significant even, too often, from mild cases after multiple vaccinations (breakthrough infections). Death and initial illness are only the tip of the iceberg and they are bad enough.
Without control we face, on current developments and discoveries, a runaway pandemic wreaking uncontrollable and unsustainable damage on population health. We are now left with:
(a) Hope it evolves to mildness (low probability in short to mid term. Moderate probability in very long term. According to the studies I have read.)
(b) Hope we get a new generation broad-spectrum coronavirus blocking vaccine which confers near 100% immunity to even infection and transmission.
(c) Hope that we can undo the damage of rampant infection and mutation and re-implement a raft of controls technically, socially and economically acceptable and workable enough to reduce R0 to less than 1 consistently and in most places most of the time. Which over time, if very consistent would lead to elimination.
Basically, we are reduced to just hoping now. We didn’t stamp out the spot fire early. Now we have a global firestorm of infection.
Never say never a lie.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”.
Richard Feynman
“Some liars are so expert they deceive themselves.”
AUSTIN O’MALLEY
“There is no beauty without ugliness, just as there’s no happiness without sorrow. We live in a world of contrasts, not absolutes.
– Anna Zaires,
“Instead of a deluded psycho who thinks he’s doing the right thing, my new husband is simply a man without conscience”
Anna Zaires, Keep Me (Twist Me, #2)
Plenty of NOT lying scientific studies linked in this article.
“Long COVID affects 1 in 5 people following infection. Vaccination, masks and better indoor air are our best protections
…
“The estimates of prevalence range from from19% to 57%, with one outlier at more than 80%.
“The three largest cohort studies place it at 19% to 30%, showing long COVID is common enough to be a major public-health threat, independently of acute COVID.
…
http://theconversation.com/long-covid-affects-1-in-5-people-following-infection-vaccination-masks-and-better-indoor-air-are-our-best-protections-180668
Okay, cool. Conversation over. You clearly dont actually care about covid-19 as you’re just not engaging in good faith. I gave you a billion opportunities to contest the central issue with adopting a short term NPI strategy for the long run and you just can’t do it. You distract, you obscure, you pretend, you cherry pick; you never address. You also will not admit to being wrong, being the absolute child you are but it’s just so obvious to me that there is no way out of this logic. There is no way to turn short term tactics into a long term strategy. Eradication can’t be done, therefore short term NPIs CANNOT create lasting benefit to mitigate their costs. You just want to fearmonger, that’s all. Thank God nobody else cares. Goodbye.
KT2,
Enjoyed your mention of Douglas Hofstadter. His theories sound intriguing and not so far from my own. Or rather, I should say my theories are not so far from his as he had his theories first. I haven’t read him but from your quotes he sounds very intriguing. Modern science, I would say, is inclining us to have thoughts like Douglas Hofstadter’s. Hence, amateur philosophers like me will find we are echoing published philosophers without even having read them.
There is another Hofstadter of great interest, Albert Hofstadter. He wrote of “empirical metaphysics”. I found I had coined the term “empirical metaphysics”, which seems like a contradiction, independently and without having first read Albert Hofstadter. He went before me and had thought of the concept before I thought of it. A. Hofstadter wrote:
“The problem is to state a provisional conception of reality which is as far as possible continuous with the goal of traditional metaphysics and which nevertheless is of empirical import.”
I wrote independently and of course in completely unpublished form:
” We can develop an empirical metaphysics conceived literally as that which moves across and just beyond physics.
Once I read and quoted Albert Hofstadter’s conception of “empirical metaphysics” (without being able to find his original paper not paywalled) I wrote:
“We must assume that the statement “is of empirical import” means that it is not contradicted by science, it facilitates further hypotheses for scientific testing and finally suggests what metaphysical inductive and abductive reasonings and beliefs we may still reasonably develop out and adhere to without being manifestly obtuse, preposterous or religiously / ideologically dogmatic. With the benefit of accumulated scientific knowledge acting as philosophical hindsight, we can see now that we need to redevelop metaphysics so it is, as far as possible, consistent with and contiguous with hard science. A philosophical method must be developed which generates inductions from hard science, carries them back into metaphysics and thence helps to connect metaphysics to physics and to suggest what is permissible in empirical metaphysics unless it is to be explicitly conceded as speculative or dogmatic.”
I then draw a long bow and say;
“The basic building blocks of this “near-empirical” metaphysics must be matter, energy and information; their transfers between systems and their transformations in systems. First however, a resolution must be found for the ontological difficulties involved in examining the interactions of real systems and formal systems. The genuine ontological dilemmas presented by real system / formal system interactions become manifest in science and the humanities at the boundaries where investigations cross from the hard sciences (physics, chemistry, biology) into the soft or social sciences. An analysis of what happens at system boundaries, including discipline boundaries, will be of vital importance to the investigations of this work. It is at the boundaries of systems that mass, energy and information especially are transferred.”
In other places in what I am writing I talk, a little speculatively and hopefully, about how:
“… the ontology of real system / formal system interactions could be logically systematized and empirically investigated within a monist framework.”
Under a strict priority monist conception of existence (incorporating supervening, emerging and evolutionary phenomena) I note that formal systems are actually sub-sets and special cases of real systems. They are epistemologically separate (we know more about them because we expressly (though conscious or unconsciously) created them)and their symbology of expression is the same as our symbology of comprehension (they are “written in the same code”).
However, real and formal systems, I contend, are not ontologically separate. They all exist in the monist complex relational system of existence: taken in standard scientific susbtance philosophy terms to be physical or material. Formal systems are instantiated in real media (books, brains, computer memory etc.) in patterns which is to say as information. Information physically can be understood as patterns which inluence the replication or generation of other patterns (often but not always with a transfer into a different medium or media.
The theory then proceeds into areas involving information theory (which I am formally very poor at with no maths for it), and programming, encoding, decoding theory (which I am a little better at in big picture terms) and issues of the part programmed, part autonomous agent’s (human’s) place in this.
To sum this up I say:
“There is the crucial ontological issue, in this chain of reasoning, of inescapably positing that a formal system (a statement or theory in words or a set of equations in mathematical symbols) is a subset of a real system. A sub-set of a real system is, by logical deduction, a real system also. Hence, I am saying logical deduction from our a priori assumption of complex system monism suggests that any formal system must also be a real system and is a special sub-set type or category of real systems. This seeming paradoxical claim will be addressed in later chapters. To prefigure the resolution in short; a formal system instantiates data or information in patterns of real matter or energy. An “agent”, a human mind for example, encodes and decodes these formal patterns. Every operation is real; meaning every operation is a real system operation including the formal operations instantiated (encoded) in real media and then decoded (interpreted and acted upon) from the real. The formal is a special sub-set category of the real.”
I think the Hofstadters along with me would agree with Professor Jeffrey A. Goldstein about emergence.
“Understanding emergence along the lines of self-organization has become so ubiquitous the two terms have just about become synonymous. However, the usual connotations of self-organization result in a misleading account of emergence by downplaying the radical novelty characterizing emergent phenomena. It is this radical novelty which generates the necessary explanatory gap between the antecedent, lower level properties of emergent substrates and the consequent, higher level properties of emergent phenomena. Without this explanatory gap, emergent phenomena are not unpredictable, are not non-deducible, are not irreducible, and thus are not truly emergent. For emergent phenomena to be genuinely emergent, processes of emergence must accomplish the seemingly paradoxical feat of producing an explanatory gap while simultaneously maintaining some degree of continuity with the substrate level.” – Professor Jeffrey A. Goldstein.
The simple fact is that there is nothing to your criticism of current policy. You’ve been completely unable to stand up your alternative and indeed have consistently dodged answering questions about its central problem which is that it is impossible. What is clear is that you cannot make short term tactics like NPIs into a long term strategy. You had 5000 opportunities to contest this clear simple point and failed to do so. It’s just true. The end. Therefore we must learn to live with COVID. Very simple. Very clear. Just true.
Lt.Fred: – “Therefore we must learn to live with COVID.”
I’d suggest a more appropriate consequence for what you are advocating would be: Therefore we must learn to die with COVID.
https://theconversation.com/long-covid-affects-1-in-5-people-following-infection-vaccination-masks-and-better-indoor-air-are-our-best-protections-180668
Very simple. Very clear. Just true.
You have provided no alternative policy that is not physically impossible
Alternative policy that is highly likely to be physically, socially and economically possible. The Vaccine Plus measures as laid out by Raina MacIntyre. If I exaggerated as much as some, I would say I have mentioned and linked to these 5,000 times.
Meantime:
“Even mild Covid is linked to brain damage, scans show –
The new British research is the first to reveal striking differences in areas of the brain based on scans taken before and after a coronavirus infection.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/long-covid-even-mild-covid-linked-damage-brain-months-infection-rcna18959
“During at least the first few months following a coronavirus infection, even mild cases of Covid-19 are associated with subtle tissue damage and accelerated losses in brain regions tied to the sense of smell, as well as a small loss in the brain’s overall volume, a new British study finds. Having mild Covid is also associated with a cognitive function deficit.”
We already know from other studies that ICU treatment of COVID-19 and also Long-Covid involve brain damage and cognitive deficit. There are many other organ deficits and systemic deficits from mild, ICU treated and Long Covid. If everyone catches COVID-19 over and over as the current situation portends, all of these problems will accrue to almost all people sooner or later.
It seems very likely now that the deaths, bad health and cognitive loss burdens of living with endless unrestricted waves of COVID-19 will be completely unsustainable at the societal level. There are now enough strong reasons to suspect complete collapse from this path. Re-control has to be attempted. The current path is highly likely to be unsustainable, on all current data.
A strategy of improving ventilation and mass vaccination (without NPIs) is the definition of a living with COVID strategy. That is Nobody, a strategy which aims not to reduce the covid reproduction number but the case fatality rate. Nobody in this thread has been able to justify any other strategy (because they are physically impossible). If you now believe in a living with covid strategy please say so. If you don’t, please address issues 1 to 5 above.
Ikon – submit your writings -somewhere. The stress of ‘condensation for publication’ will distill your thoughts into a textually drinkabke form, for the likes of me. Allowing for distribution ala; “human “I” is distributed over numerous brains, rather than being limited to one.[27]” – – Hofstadter’s 2007 book “I Am a Strange Loop”. Wikipedia.
I always have cognitive dissonance with monism / dualism. The only ism I can deal with has pragmat(ic) in front!
*.
I came across Hofstadter and read below at LessWrong , and loved the fact Hofstadter was smart, wise and intelligent enough to avoid a naming and concept controversy from the outset:
“Rather than fighting over the definition of rational, Douglas Hofstadter coined the term superrational for the kind of rationality he was interested in.”
And then Eliezer Yudkowsky tries to “take rationality back”! From where! Exactly what imo Hofstadter was trying to avoid as in the “economists, decision-theorists, and game-theorists”(Hofstadter) worlds!
[ search also chemical game theory?]
Nuance & terminology muddled again;
“Eliezer Yudkowsky shared the same core intuition with Douglas Hofstadter, but took the path of trying to reclaim the word rational for what he meant. As a result, LessWrong does not consistently use superrational/superrationality.”
Groan!
*
Here is the LessWrong pages the above came from. The Superrationality page has six essays / posts re Hofstadter & superrationality. One by gwern – a bit of a brain himself. gwern.net – may have moved but worth dipping in to.
– LessWrong Superrationality page.
“Superrationality is a concept invented by Douglas Hofstadter. He thought that agents should cooperate in Prisoner’s Dilemma, but the primary notion of “rationality” which had been deeply developed by economists, decision-theorists, and game-theorists disagreed. Rather than fighting over the definition of rational, Douglas Hofstadter coined the term superrational for the kind of rationality he was interested in.”
…
https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/superrationality
[ Links re Superrationality ]
*
Hofstadter is on Twitter Ikon… the other day I think this is him? Twitter and I don’t talk anymore. A saving grace imo.
“Superrational
“In Hofstadter’s superrationality, by virtue of the fact that I make a certain move in a game, I can infer other players will also do so. TIL: superrationality has stronger epistemic assumptions than common knowledge(!), and Kantian equilibrium is a weaker form of superrationality
“Hofstadter / Superrationality
when any logical thinkers analyzing the same problem will think of the same correct answer”
https://mobile.twitter.com/i/events/1408564988323708933
*
And re Hofstadter’s 2007 book “I Am a Strange Loop” and your phrase; “their transfers between systems and their transformations in systems” I am reminded of:- “Novel forms of sync could have applications in encryption. Scientists speculate that brain function and even consciousness can be understood as a complicated and delicate balance of synchrony and asynchrony.”
From:
“THE MATH OF HOW CRICKETS, STARLINGS AND NEURONS SYNC UP
…
“Objects with rhythms naturally synchronize. Yet the phenomenon went entirely undocumented until 1665, when the Dutch physicist and inventor Christiaan Huygens spent a few days sick in bed.
…
“It was Kuramoto’s Mongolian post-doc, Dorjsuren Battogtokh, who first noticed a new kind of synchronous behavior in a computer-simulated population of coupled oscillators. The identical oscillators, which were all identically coupled to their neighbors, had somehow split into two factions: Some oscillated in sync, while the rest drifted incoherently.”
…
“Good Vibrations
“The discovery of chimeras ushered in a new era in sync science, revealing the conceivably countless exotic forms that synchronization can take. Now, theorists are working to pin down the rules for when and why the different patterns occur. These researchers have bold hopes of learning how to predict and control synchronization in many real-world contexts.
“Motter and his team are finding rules about how to stabilize the synchronization of power grids and more stably integrate the U.S. grid with intermittent energy sources like solar and wind. Other researchers are looking for ways of nudging systems between different synchronous states, which could be useful for correcting irregular heartbeats. Novel forms of sync could have applications in encryption. Scientists speculate that brain function and even consciousness can be understood as a complicated and delicate balance of synchrony and asynchrony.”
…
https://www.wired.com/story/the-math-of-how-crickets-starlings-and-neurons-sync-up/
*
So Ikon, a new chapter then, on oscillations! You’ll get tsonduku. Like me.
Enjoy.
Thanks JQ, for the “one armed fishers'” thread. (How long is a piece of string?)
“It was THAT big!”, said the one armed fisherman.
I am losing any faith in Worldometer’s Covid-19 counts. China’s numbers on Worldometer are completely out of whack with media reports. Worldometer’s Chinese numbers seem to be a very large under-count given what is happening in Shanghai currently. Also, listing Hong Kong counts separately from China, what is that about? Hong Kong is part of China, full stop, end of story. For these and a few other reasons, I seriously question the accuracy of Worldometer, The provenance of the COVID-19 data is poorly explained and looks highly dubious.
Anyone know a better, more reliable source for world COVID-19 stats? Frankly, it seems Worldometer COVID-19 data is a complete pile of doo-doo. Surely, the WHO or someone slightly credible is posting world stats?
ABC TV News report on Shanghai said Chinese authorities were saying infections 5x reported positive tests. Can’t find news item. So maybe my ears.
Ikon. … better than our reports?
“China Coronavirus Updates: Latest Developments and Business Advisory
“Latest COVID-19 update
Jump to the Table of the Latest COVID-19 and Vaccination Statistics in China
by clicking here.
April 13, 2022 – China reported 1,513 new confirmed cases, including 13 imported cases (5 in Guangxi, 4 in Guangdong, 1 in Shanghai, 1 in Jiangsu, 1 in Fujian, and 1 in Sichuan) and 1,500locally transmitted cases (1,189 in Shanghai, 233 in Jilin, 22 in Guangdong, 14 in Hainan, 12 in Zhejiang, 7 in Fujian, 4 in Jiangsu, 3 in Shandong, 3 in Henan, 2 in Heilongjiang, 2 in Hunan, 2 in Shaanxi, 1 in Tianjin, 1 in Hebei, 1 in Liaoning, 1 in Anhui, 1 in Jiangxi, 1 in Hubei, and 1 in Yunnan). No new deaths were recorded. There were 26,525 new asymptomatic infections, of which 105 were imported and 26,420 were local (25,141 in Shanghai, 852 in Jilin, 71 in Jiangsu, 71 in Guangxi, 60 in Anhui, 44 in Hubei, 37 in Hebei, 31 in Liaoning, 19 in Zhenjiang, 19 in Shandong, 16 in Jiangxi, 11 in Henan, 11 in Qinghai, 10 in Yunnan, 9 in Guangdong, 7 in Fujian, 4 in Shanxi, 3 in Sichuan, 2 in Heilongjiang, 1 in Tianjin, 1 in Inner Mongolia); 258,374 of the asymptomatic infections were still under medical observation (881 of which were imported cases).As of 18:00, April 13, 2022, China recorded 16 high-risk areas (6 areas in Jilin, 3 areas in Hebei, 2 areas in Fujian, 2 areas in Heilongjiang, 2 areas in Liaoning, and 1 area in Beijing) and 221 medium-risk areas.
“China Launched Pilot Program in 8 Cities to Test Looser Quarantine Control: According to a Caixin report, China is trying out reduced quarantine times for residents in locked-down communities, overseas arrivals, and close contact of positive cases in 8 cities including…”
https://www.china-briefing.com/news/china-coronavirus-updates-latest-developments-business-advisory-part-2/
Worldometer is doing some automated aggregation and supplying the sources. Can´t really ask more. Would have never expected to get anything remotely reliable that way regarding China. Data reliability and comperabililty across countries, regions even seems to go downhill in general.
There is no living with COVID-19 that looks remotely like the first 19 years of the 21st C (2001-2019). The latest modelling has come up with seriously disturbing results.
“Endemicity is not a victory: the unmitigated downside risks of widespread SARS-CoV-2 transmission” –
Madison Stoddard, Alexander Novokhodko, Sharanya Sarkar, Debra Van Egeren, Laura F. White, Natasha S. Hochberg, Michael Rogers, Bruce Zetter, Diane Joseph-McCarthy, Arijit Chakravarty.
This comes from the medRxiv preprint server. It has not been peer reviewed yet. The link below takes you to the header page and abstract. Look middle right and click on Download PDF. You will then get the full text PDF file on your screen provided your device operating system and apps can display RDF files.
Anyone who wants to seriously debate “living with covid” needs to read and comprehend this paper, now it is available. I mean the full text. You can skip “Methods”, including mathematical formulae, leaving them to the Peer Review Panel. J.Q and E.G. may wish to look at the mathematics. You can peruse the graphs if you wish. But pay close attention to the entire text and what it means and portends.
Anyone pushing the “living with covid” argument will be completely ignored unless they can make cogent points indicating a near 100% (95% plus) comprehension of the text of this paper. I will test comprehension if need be. If you don’t pass the comprehension test you will be ignored, by me at least. I contend the implications of this paper are, or should be, terrifying to any sane, science literate person. I await cogent, comprehending debate and will reply only to that.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.29.22273146v1
I am currently living with Covid! Not happy Jan!
I feel like I am 30+ years older. Slow, pains, and even writing this an effort. Yesterday morning posted a quiniela. Today – groan.
Positive RAT test yesterday. My teenager – via school – was positive last Sunday so 5 day incubation to me, even with stong household isolation & mitigation strategies. Didn’t close windows for whole week for eg. Teenager had, as the information below attests, a very sore thoat & high temperature compared to me currently. Teenager tested negative yesterday so a 5 day recovery period. An after school party teenager attended Saturday week ago has seen an R0 >2+ amiungst party goers. Estimated +400 interfaces within 5 days. I am unable to test & trace, yet cases locally affirm R0>2.
Ikon, while reading the paper above I decided ti check R0 values and found a constantly up to date:
“NSW Health COVID-19 Critical Intelligence Unit
“Living Evidence – SARS-CoV-2 variants
Last updated on 14 Apr 2022
… providing full set of studies relied on for verification of effects. And a table directly comparing Delta & Omicron across various effects, treatments, vaccines mix & match & more.
My 2 data points show;
“Increased risk of household transmission*^. Household secondary attack rate estimates range from 15.8% to 31% for Omicron compared to 10.3% to 21% for Delta. Preliminary analysis suggests a 13.4% secondary attack rate forBA.2*^
And dissapointingly
Monoclonal antibodies not as effective against BA.2.
“Treatment
…
“Preliminary studies suggest BA.2 exhibits marked resistance to monoclonal antibodies, including sotrovimab, which retained neutralising activity against BA.1”
https://aci.health.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/critical-intelligence-unit/sars-cov-2-variants
Brain fog. Lucky teenager is recovered and making breakfast, as I do not feel like doing anything.
And Ikon, don’t let JQ & Ernestine have all the fun. If you can drive a car, you can drive these models with math behind them.
“What Happens Next?
“COVID-19 Futures, Explained With Playable Simulations
https://ncase.me/covid-19/
https://ncase.me/crowds/
No more catastophising Ikon; “provides us a bulwark against catastrophe.”
And “that unthinkable and impossible are not the same thing.”, which is a better phrase for my positive belief, that within <1,000 years coronaviruses will be no biig deal, or eradicated.
Above quotes from "Endemicity is not a victory: the unmitigated downside risks of widespread SARS-CoV-2 transmission"
https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.03.29.22273146
KT2,
Maybe read my response here when you feel recovered and strong. It is not for when you still feel ill and can’t deal with it.
Sorry to hear yourself and teenager have caught COVID_19. Hope you get well soon and suffer no sequelae. It sounds less catastrophising if I just use the technical term. I hate to sound like a judgemental old grouch but I think after-school parties or adult parties of any kind should be off the agenda, indefinitely. This is an ongoing global pandemic emergency whether or not people treat it as such. Indeed, if they do not treat it as such, everything just gets worse. The government is not helping by making no serious rules and giving out the wrong messaging about it. It’s easy for me to say all this. I did not face such a crisis in my school days or parenting days and my wife and I are now self-funded retirees in a secluded, low density area of acreage blocks.
I don’t really feel like dusting off my old high school text books to refresh dy/dx (differential calculus) though the rest of the equations look pretty easy. I could use the wolframalpha site I guess. Just need a key to the meanings of the symbols used. I view it as the job of the peer review panel to check assumptions, methods and calculations. J.Q. and E.G. might find it interesting and even “fun” such must be their on-going adroitness with post-grad math and maybe provided they don’t catch Covid-19 and get brain fog.
I can hardly be accused of catastophising now. The hard science is more and more supporting the very real possibility of my most outlying predictions coming to pass. The article itself is scientific and level-headed yet they do not shy away from using strong terms when necessary.
“Our findings thus highlight the critical importance of enacting a concerted strategy (involving for example global access to vaccines, therapeutics, prophylactics and nonpharmaceutical interventions) to suppress SARS-CoV-2 transmission, thereby reducing the risk of catastrophic outcomes.” – Stoddard et. al.
The authors themselves warn of the very real potential for catastrophic outcomes. They refer to possibly 400,000 to 1,000.000 US fatalities year on year for several years (at least). That sort of outbreak in Australia could lead to 30,000 to 60,000 COVID-19 fatalities year on year in Australia. If factors which help us, from better vaccination rates to less dense living and a better? medical system, operate, then it might look like 15,000 to 30,000 COVID-19 related deaths a year. Excess deaths would be considerably higher. That could lift our death rate from about 170,000 a year to 200,000 to 230,000 per year. This would be a large jump. That doesn’t even count later deaths (adding to excess deaths) and Long Covid. To put that in perspective we are “only” approaching 7,000 total deaths after just over two years of COVID-19.
The real sting in the tail is the “tail risk”. A lower but still very significant probability of a very high IFR (infection fatality ratio) of say 2% up to 20% (for example) from a new mutation. One single point mutation or a small cluster could cause this. It does not take long sequential runs of mutation to do this.
The “bulwark against catastrophe” is the “last line of defence”.
“Against this backdrop, the fact that the existing vaccines still work to prevent severe disease and death provides us a bulwark against catastrophe. The work presented here demonstrates the consequences if this last line of defense is breached by viral evolution.” – Stoddard et. al.
We are down to our last line of defense before a global disease catastrophe of 1 in a 100 year proportions if not of 1 in 1,000 year proportions. I am afraid it is that serious. It is best to know the worst possibility. Bad news is good news, in the sense that when you know the real bad news can you take the full averting action with maximum effort. We are now in a global pandemic emergency whether or not the vacillating and prevaricating governing and wealthy elites will admit it. The sternest emergency measures are needed. Failing that, every household must start working out its own emergency prevention and response plans. Yes, it is that serious. Catching it once, means you must re-double efforts to not catch it twice. Subsequent infections are possible albeit after time lags of likely 4 weeks to 4 to 6 months maybe, depending on various factors. Be fully vaccinated and maintain anti-infection measures. Good luck! Make it once and done if you can by vaccination, NPIs, distancing, smart isolation etc.
Already quoting it Ikon. Thanks.
When is an island not an island?
Elimination is off the map as, even though Australia is an island, this stupidity removes any status or concept of an island.
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“From Monday, international arrivals will no longer need to test negative to COVID-19 before leaving for Australia, meaning it is likely more variants will be detected locally.
““Our ability to monitor trends is compromised as testing has significantly reduced,” he said.
“While the vast majority of coronavirus infections in NSW are never genomically sequenced,….
…
“NSW health authorities have reported Australia’s first case of the XE coronavirus infection, however new sub-variants being detected in Africa and Europe may be a cause for greater concern when mandatory tests for international arrivals are scrapped next week.
“The case of XE, which is a merging of Omicron’s BA.1 and BA.2 sub-variants known as a “recombinant”, was detected in a recently returned overseas traveller last week.
“However, virologists were concerned by the development of Omicron’s BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants, which have been reported in growing numbers in France and South Africa.
“The bulk of XE infections have been reported in the UK, particularly in the south-east of England. Other cases have been detected around the globe, usually in international travellers.”
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/australia-s-first-xe-infection-detected-in-nsw-as-virologists-keep-eye-on-sub-variants-20220414-p5adjo.html
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Yet from next week, as “it underscores a key reality for risk mitigation during this pandemic: that unthinkable and impossible are not the same thing.”.
It is unthinkable we will not be testing or sequencing. It will be impossible to get in top of novel variants in time.
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“However, complete suppression of SARS-CoV-2 spread is possible with a vaccine that is highly effective against infection and widely accepted by the population (Figures 2c and 2f).
[Not if you are not testing!]
….
“A significant public health risk at this point is the emergence and rapid spread of a new variant … that only becomes apparent after it is too late to mitigate transmission.”
…
https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.03.29.22273146
We will be “living with Covid”
It literally doesn’t matter if you don’t like living with COVID. There is literally no alternative policy option as shown ad nauseum above.
@Ikonoclast’s article goes on at great length about how terrible the bug will be in unvaccinated populations in the US, before finishing by recommending we spend billions improving vaccines and other pharmaceuticals, and also adopt what they call passive NPIs like improved ventilation. That is, it recommends adopting what I would describe as a living with covid strategy.
Never say never not for 1,000 years… “no alternative policy” … yet.
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Models models. Eradication, elimination etc are NP problems… “and hence slow down the epidemic spread”. < 1,000 earth years.
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"COVID-19 Optimizer Algorithm, Modeling and Controlling of Coronavirus Distribution Process
"The key priority is to contain the epidemic and reduce the infection rate. It is imperative to stress on ensuring extreme social distancing of the entire population and hence slowing down the epidemic spread. So, there is a need for an efficient optimizer algorithm that can solve NP-hard in addition to applied optimization problems. This article first proposes a novel COVID-19 optimizer Algorithm (CVA) to cover almost all feasible regions of the optimization problems. We also simulate the coronavirus distribution process in several countries around the globe. Then, we model a coronavirus distribution process as an optimization problem to minimize the number of COVID-19 infected countries and hence slow down the epidemic spread. Furthermore, we propose three scenarios to solve the optimization problem using most effective factors in the distribution process. Simulation results show one of the controlling scenarios outperforms the others. Extensive simulations using several optimization schemes show that the CVA technique performs best with up to 15%, 37%, 53% and 59% increase compared with Volcano Eruption Algorithm (VEA), Gray Wolf Optimizer (GWO), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Genetic Algorithm (GA), respectively."
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32750974/
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"P to the 7th = NP.
[No, I do not full comprehend this.]
"It is easy to see that the complexity class P(all problems solvable, deterministically, in polynomial time) is contained in NP (problems where solutions can be verified in polynomial time), because if a problem is solvable in polynomial time then a solution is also verifiable in polynomial time by simply solving the problem. But NP contains many more problems,[Note 2]"…
wikipedia.org/wiki/NP_(complexity)
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Not 1,000 years though;
Well when someone comes up with some alternative we can talk about it. Today we should just learn to live with the single choice we have
If it’s a single choice, it’s not a choice. If it’s a choice between mandatory disease and mandatory vaccines with a good safety record PLUS NPIs etc., I would choose to support mandatory application of of vaccination and compliance with other necessary measures. But those who support the current response, voluntary vaccines plus nothing else significant are simply supporting mandatory disease. I for one am not happy with and will never accept a policy of mandatory disease, mandatory deaths for the vulnerable (potentially including my wife and maybe me) and so on.
A lot of people are being sentenced by the current inadequate policies to mandatory death. This preventable pandemic has killed at least 6,700 Australians and counting. The Long Covid disease burden is very likely ten times that number already. Refusal to control the pandemic is nothing more and nothing less than a mandatory infection policy and a mandatory death policy for vulnerable people. It’s a policy of social murder bordering on democide in this case “due to governmental acts of criminal omission and neglect”. [2] Governmental failure to control COVID-19 is democide.
The class which at present holds social and political control and also their supporters place thousands of ordinary citizens in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death. [1] This is the definition of social murder.
The paper I posted pointed out that this pandemic has a large potential to become seriously worse at the “drop” of literally one unlucky mutation greatly increasing IFR (infection fatality rate). The policy of waiting for this to happen. while remaining control-less with leaky vaccines, is a policy which will almost guarantee this event happening. The policy of inadequate voluntary vaccination without other significant controls almost guarantees the worst of all worlds eventually. The vaccines, as a last bulwark against catastrophic rates of death and infection, will fail and all hell will break loose.
The mantra that there is no choice, that there are no more significant controls we could put in place is one of wilful capitulation and indeed cooperation with the virus. It is weak, defeatist, fatalist, callous, eugenicist and social Darwinist. It’s a base nadir of murderous immorality. Instead of fighting the virus with extra controls, we help it along. Mass holiday movements are a case in point. They are the height of absurdity in the midst of a serious global pandemic with 20 million excess deaths globally and counting. This pandemic is in its infancy. The current trajectory will easily carry it to 100 million excess deaths. On the ratios, that would be 1 billion Long Covid cases.
All feasible measures must be implemented. In Australia alone, this would save tens of thousands of lives at least going forward: perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives for we do not know where this pandemic is headed. Currently, we are not doing 1/100th of what we could be doing to stop this virus.
Note 1: Sentence freely adapted from text in “The Condition of the Working Class in England” by Freidrich Engels
Note 2: “Democide” – Wikipedia article.
“The highest reduction in life expectancy was observed in Russia” (BMJ below), followed by the exceptional USA!
Love the irony of “the exceptional”.
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“What did COVID do to life expectancy?
By Sabine Hossenfelder
…
“This means if you want to interpret the decrease of life expectancy which the CDC found, they assumed that from now on every year would be like 2020. If every year was like 2020, then people born today would lose 1.5 years of their life expectancy compared to 2019.
“Of course no one actually thinks that every year from now on will be like 2020, to begin with because we now have vaccines. The number that the CDC calculated is a standard definition for life expectancy, which is formally entirely fine. It’s just that this standard definition is easy to misunderstand. The 1.5 years sound much more alarming than they really are.
“More recently, in October 2021, another study appeared in the British Medical Journal which looked at the changes to life expectancy for 37 countries for which they could get good data. For this they compared the mortality during the pandemic with the trends in the period from 2005 to 19.
“In the USA they found a decline of about 2 years, so a little more than the estimate from the CDC. For England and Wales, they found a decline in life expectancy of about 1 year. For Germany about 0.3 years. If you want to look up your country of residence, I’ll leave a link to the paper in the info below. The same paper also reported that in countries where life expectancy decreased, the years of lives lost to the covid pandemic in 2020 were more than five times higher than those lost to the seasonal influenza in 2015.
“Keep in mind that this is the period life expectancy which really tells you something about the present conditions rather than about the future. When we go through a war or a pandemic, then this period life expectancy decreases, but when the bad times are over, the period life expectancy bounces back up again.
…
“The Spanish flu pandemic from nineteen eighteen is an interesting example. In 1917, life expectancy in the USA was 54. During the pandemic, it dropped to 47.2, but in 1919 it went up to 55.3. In Germany it went from 40.1 in 1917, to 33 in 1918, and in 1919 went back up 48.4.”
…
“And when you’ve reached that age you still have a few more years to live. It looks like some kind of Zeno paradox in which you never reach death. “…
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2022/02/what-did-covid-do-to-life-expectancy.html
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“Effects of covid-19 pandemic on life expectancy and premature mortality in 2020: time series analysis in 37 countries
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“Results: Reduction in life expectancy in men and women was observed in all the countries studied except New Zealand, Taiwan, and Norway, where there was a gain in life expectancy in 2020. No evidence was found of a change in life expectancy in Denmark, Iceland, and South Korea.
“The highest reduction in life expectancy was observed in Russia (men: −2.33, 95% confidence interval −2.50 to −2.17; women: −2.14, −2.25 to −2.03), the United States (men: −2.27, −2.39 to −2.15; women: −1.61, −1.70 to −1.51),”
…
BMJ 2021; 375
doi:https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2021-066768
(Published 03 November 2021)
https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-066768
If you believe there is an alternative to the current policy of deploying health resources to control IFRs over the long run (without adopting unsustainable short term NPIs) please present it. You have failed to do so thus far despite weeks of me pressing you for it (indeed your latest citation does not even agree with you!)
Iko: – “The mantra that there is no choice, that there are no more significant controls we could put in place is one of wilful capitulation and indeed cooperation with the virus. It is weak, defeatist, fatalist, callous, eugenicist and social Darwinist. It’s a base nadir of murderous immorality.”
Yep. Ikonoclast, thanks for that.
IMO, it also shows a lack of imagination, and is also cowardly.
In wartime, cowards usually aren’t treated well, and collaborators with the enemy usually end up being treated much worse.
Matt @crudeoilpeak tweeted on Apr 15 an interesting graph of employed people who worked fewer or zero hours due to own illness, injury, or sick leave, comparing months of Jan & Feb for years 2016 through to 2022:
KT2 quotes: “When we go through a war or a pandemic, then this period life expectancy decreases, but when the bad times are over, the period life expectancy bounces back up again.”
But how many people need to die and how long before “the bad times are over”?
I’d suggest perhaps billions of people suffering and dying for millennia (if the human species manages to avoid extinction) due to humanity’s current failure to competently and effectively engage with the challenges of (in order of importance):
1) the climate crisis;
2) worsening energy and food security; and
3) COVID-19.
I’d suggest these challenges are all personal existential threats for everyone. Those people who are lucky and better resourced and/or situated may endure the onslaughts for longer in an inevitable ‘war of attrition’, that has already arrived for some in the world.
As I said earlier, I will not engage with people who cannot comprehend the paper or the issues of public health and preventative medicine involved.