They tweeted it while the CCP was engaged in a coverup. In late December, Taiwan warned the WHO that the virus was infectious, but because of China’s influence , the WHO didn’t warn other nations. By then it was too late.

According to Our World in Data, they “found many errors in the data”, which made the data “unfortunately impossible to rely on ”. And this from “the international agency with the mandate to provide official estimates on the pandemic.”

Why would you give them a pass on this?

This post makes it sound like the WHO has no idea what they're talking about. It's really not true.

I never said nor implied that. I just think there will be a contingent of people who, whether warranted or not, will say that the WHO has blood on its hands.

Our World in Data explicitly states:

Why we stopped relying on data from the World Health Organization

Until March 18 we relied on the World Health Organization (WHO) as our source. We aimed to rely on the WHO as they are the international agency with the mandate to provide official estimates on the pandemic. The WHO reports this data for each single day and they can be found here at the WHO’s site.

Since March 18 it became unfortunately impossible to rely on the WHO data to understand how the pandemic is developing over time. With Situation Report 58 the WHO shifted the reporting cutoff time from 0900 CET to 0000 CET. This means that comparability is compromised because there is an overlap between these two WHO data publications (Situation Reports 57 and 58).

Additionally we found many errors in the data published by the WHO when we went through all the daily Situation Reports. We immediately notified the WHO and are in close contact with the WHO’s team to correct the errors that we pointed out to them. We document all errors we found. The main problem we see with the WHO data is that these errors are not communicated by the WHO itself (some Errata were published by the WHO – in the same place as the Situation Reports –, but most errors were either retrospectively corrected without public notice or remain uncorrected).

Here is our detailed documentation of where the WHO’s data is sourced from and how we corrected its data – we also provide several options to download all corrected data there. As of March 18 we no longer maintain this database for the reason that the WHO data can not be used for reliable time-series information.

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

This is interesting. Our World in Data explaining why it switched from using WHO data to relying on data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-source-data

With these sorts of errors, and things like tweeting CCP misinformation, I wager the WHO will not come out of this event unscathed.

Yesterday during my daily travels I saw an increasing number of people wearing masks—an odd sight but I think a comforting one given that much of the transmission is through saliva droplets. For the most part Westerners have avoided mask-wearing in their day-to-day, whereas in the East it has become common. I wonder if these habits will change and if masks will become a fixture of western life.

I think the exact terminology was that trump was “bragging about sexual assault”. This isn’t true, but it no less was the dogma at the time and likely still is.

That's the point: the 'demand' for perfect information is nothing but an excuse to inaction, a setting of an impossible bar in order to better mystify and distract. It's also a terrifying demand by the very standard of those who might call for it - 'perfect information' is the kind of thing best gleaned by - yep - more institutional intrusion into everyday life. No surprise given that NOS is a state bootlicker and lover of all things government.

No one demands perfect information. I just don’t want important decisions to be made on information that is off by orders of magnitude and based on unreliable data and assumptions. But I suppose that is the sort of thing you’re used to given your fake, bad faith interpretation of my argument. You wanted authoritarianism and you got it. Enjoy.



I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother contracting the virus, friend. I suspect we’ll all have it soon enough.

It entails getting within transmittable range of a vulnerable person, in your case, unless you two coordinated otherwise. It also entails direct contact with things that she will be in direct contact with, unless you were equipped with protective gear.

What would you have done had she accepted your irresponsible offer?

My kind offer? I would have done what any delivery person would do: carry her bags to her door and be on my merry way. Does that mean I’m going to spread my germs? No.

What would you do? Avoid her?

I can respect that. And you're right, the irresponsible are indeed partly to blame for the conditions we find ourselves within. I was pleasantly surprised that western governments at least tried the educational approach. I could tell it was tough choice for them. But many people hardly even tried. In the states they are throwing "Corona parties", believe it or not. Maybe the draconian measures will help drill it in their thick, self-concerned skulls.

Again untrue I simply asked her. Carrying someone’s groceries does not entail me violating any “rule”. But I’m sure you would need a government to tell you that.

That’s the key to the successes of places like Japan, South Korea and Singapore. They remember the SARS outbreak and took it seriously. They never forgot.

That’s untrue, I kept my distance. But it’s fantasies like yours which result in the knee-jerk measures we now find ourselves in.

But nobody is suggesting any one model should be believed as entirely accurate. There's is simply not enough information.

There's enough information to see what happens if you don't act early and decisively. Italy was clear enough.

I suspect there is a little more to it than simply not acting quickly enough. There are environmental, demographic, healthcare and other situational factors that should be considered.

Have to say that at least he is optimistic. But otherwise it's more of a denial. This first pandemic will take the time as any other one, 4-6 months, and there's no changing that.

Here for example the Armed Forces has determined (without coming out publicly about it, naturally) that the pandemic will be with us for 6 months. So going back to normal (from the start of the pandemic here) is after the summer here.

That's the probable way things will go. If it doesn't behave like the Spanish flu.

Is it not possible that people can go about their regular lives while still taking proactive measures to limit the spread of the virus? Personally I require no government to tell me that and I fear for people who do.

Do you watch unpartisan media at all? There are hotspots developing in all the large cities across the US, in a week they will all be overwhelmed like New York is today. This juggling you mention is the hope for a few months down the line when the first big wave has passed.

The “unpartisan media” is a contradiction in terms. What I do not listen to is the Chicken Little approach to all this. Already the CDC is telling us the models of, say, the Imperial College of London, were wildly inaccurate, and these are the same models both the US and the UK have used to justify the suspension of our liberties. I wish to see other approaches.

But I will suspect it will get worse before it gets better in the US. The populace is not the healthiest of communities and the underlying conditions are the biggest killer.

So what do people think about Trump's new idea

A step in the right direction, in my opinion. I think a sort of juggling act between lockdown and tentatively opening the economy is the reasonable approach.

I was half kidding. The fact is that the dynamics of good-samaritanship have changed. If you want to help the elderly you need to protect them from yourself by wearing gloves, a facemask, etc. You could potentially kill with the best intentions, but poor foresight.

So was I. I can take a dig, and perhaps it is even deserved.

Where I live the cases are rare-ish. So I don't think we should completely throw our humanity to the wind quite yet. Like you said, steps can be taken to mitigate the risk, and I think that's better than avoiding susceptible populations entirely.

If you were close enough perhaps you transferred the virus to her, and her being elderly essentially killed her. Good going, a-hole.

I don't have a cold enough heart to abandon the elderly during this time. I suspect it's quite easy for you; you've probably been doing it your entire life.

Yesterday I saw what to me was an appalling sight. An elderly woman was walking in the rain with groceries, while able-bodied people were crossing the street to avoid her. This seemed absurd to me. So I did the unthinkable and asked if she needed a hand. She didn't need my help, apparently, but the smile was enough for me to know that my acknowledgment at least meant something to her.

Then I came across the story out of Spain of the corpses of elderly patients found abandoned in their care homes, left to die alone in their twilight days.

I cannot help but think and feel that we are doing something wrong here.

If you have to say you are you usually ain't. That's something you have to prove. Unfortunately I have yet to be sold on anything you've ever tried to put into words on this subject. It reeks to me of fanaticism and veiled persecution, but luckily for us pigs, I know they come from a place so effete and weak and empty that I can hardly be bothered to take them seriously. In fact they've become a mild source for humor, like the funny pages.

You hate the lie and the liar while you generalize about millions of people you've never met: your peers, your neighbors, your countrymen. You emphasize the bad while suppressing the good. You can do little more than levy false accusations—lies. It becomes pitifully clear you've become what you hate.

I was only taking the piss. I assumed you were doing the same.

I keep to myself because your fellow travellers are violent and have a tendency to sucker punch and spit on others.

And NOS4A2 and Streetlight X and Maw would be making similar arguments as they are doing now.

And you’d be still spinning counterfactual fantasies about parallel universes where Hillary won the 2016 election.

A red herring.

I was merely sourcing the quote.

From a new report co-authored by Dr. Fauci for the New England Journal of Medicine:

On the basis of a case definition requiring a diagnosis of pneumonia, the currently reported case fatality rate is approximately 2%.4 In another article in the Journal, Guan et al.5 report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity. If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.2

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387

Dr. Birx of the Coronavirus task force and the Center for Disease Control said in the daily press briefing:
“The predictions of the models don't match the reality on the ground”.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4864096/dr-deborah-birx-modeling

It’s also important from a boy-who-cried wolf standpoint. The more people remember experts and the media emphasizing projections that may not come close to the ultimate reality, the less they may take future warnings seriously.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/26/deborah-birxs-important-reminder-about-coronavirus-worst-case-scenarios/

Dr. Ioannidis was right, “As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data.”

There will be a reckoning.

The thing is the draconian measures you advocate are already in place: liberties suspended, movement restricted, economies ruined. The rule of law has been replaced by the rule of power and authority. You got what you wanted. Any argument about what might have happened had we done otherwise is counterfactual, and so is the “pile of bodies” you try to throw at my feet.

I have nothing to lose by criticizing the authoritarianism and the obsequious conformism we’ve flung over most of the world. If I’m wrong, that’s the end of it. If you’re wrong, on the other hand, history will never forget.

He’s arguing he’s willing to take a chance with his own health and survival, and he, like anyone else, can take proactive steps to do just that. This is the spirit of people who aren’t gripped by an incessant need for safety and coddling.

You are unable to peer through the tyranny of uncertainty to any foreseeable future. All you have is your math, which doesn’t even require you to look up from your desk for any given amount of time.

I add this precision, because lot's of people arguing for lifting the quarantine are genuinely arguing for the pile of dead bodies and genuinely don't understand why people have a problem with that.

That’s just untrue. No one has ever said nor implied such an idea, and such a dangerous straw man is an incitement to violence.

The argument is that we can take precautions—social distancing, hygiene, testing and protecting vulnerable populations—without having to end the livelihoods and enterprises of people throughout the globe. We certainly don’t need to do it based on the speculations and models of people who overestimate their ability to tell the future.

Certainly; but do you think non-existence would bother with such technicalities?

By definition there is no such thing as "non-existence".

Pretty good description of what people are regularly fed by CNN, the NYT and the rest of the so-called mainstream media.
How many have apologized for this fake Trump bashing news that was splattered all over recenty?

I can almost guarantee that most antitrumpist news has been curated for them by the gatekeepers of their respective bubbles, whether on twitter or reddit or on whatever social media they find themselves entirely among their fellow travellers. Any news that may reflect favorably on the president is wholly excluded, or worse, suppressed, so it is no strange wonder much of their thinking reflects the same.

To be fair, this is also true of Trumpist bubbles, but the frequency of those are almost negligible as far as I can tell.

I enjoyed that one analogy:

“Should it turn out that the epidemic wanes before long, there will be a queue of people wanting to take credit for this. And we can be damned sure draconian measures will be applied again next time. But remember the joke about tigers. “Why do you blow the horn?” “To keep the tigers away.” “But there are no tigers here.” “There you see!”.

It’s a good little racket they’ve set up for themselves. They are both the problem and the solution.

(I think this would be better to be answered in the Corona-virus thread, not here, but I'll answer still.)

His rhetoric afterwards and at present tells quite clearly that he's not seeing ahead. He got lucky with this call, and of course luck is important.

In this case a travel ban/quarantine of people coming from China was something close to his heart, something fitting his World view and his followers. It would go into the category of "be tough on China". Hence the ban on flights from Schengen countries, but leaving the UK and Ireland open for traffic, showed also this kind illogical thinking in the case of the pandemic. As a jab to the EU it's something else.

According to Trump the measures regarding the European bans and the UK exemptions were recommended to him by “a group of professionals”. Trump later banned UK. So what evidence do you have that this is not the case, and further, what evidence do you have that it is a jab at the EU and shows his logical thinking?

Not too much info, but Interesting approach out of the UK.

UK coronavirus home testing to be made available to millions

Millions of 15-minute home coronavirus tests are set to be available on the high street or for Amazon delivery to people self-isolating, according to Public Health England (PHE), in a move that could restore many people’s lives to a semblance of pre-lockdown normality.

Prof Sharon Peacock, the director of the national infection service at PHE, told MPs on the science and technology committee that mass testing in the UK would be possible within days, saying evaluation of the fingerprick tests should be completed this week. The government later took a more cautious line, saying that the tests would not be available so quickly.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/25/uk-coronavirus-mass-home-testing-to-be-made-available-within-days

Someone educated beyond his intelligence. I forget who said that.

I think the idea that the self is an illusion does not make sense. The obvious first complaint is who is having this illusion?

We can discern the answer simply by looking in a mirror. I think the problem of whether the self is an illusion is that it is always argued from the perspective of someone who cannot see his own ears.

Somehow I doubt that is going to happen. She’s already been accused of working with the Russians, so that kind of implies where this will go.

The accusation is he pushed her against a wall, kissed her and penetrated her with his fingers.

nobeernoballs

Lol you have a way with words, Tim, I’ll give you that. Trumpian, even.

Bernie fans might rejoice because these allegations of sexual assault and rape could spell the end for Biden should they get enough traction.

No hospital has promised to heal anyone. In the case of COVID-19, if your immune system doesn't heal you, you will die. All the hospital can do is support you until your immune system does its thing.

Very true. I’m considering the policies of lawmakers and politicians. I think the Hippocratic oath suffices where medical practice is concerned.