TrickstaPriest

I'm more concerned about him literally killing himself with the side effects of taking such a medication. As mentioned by others, it would be an unfortunate situation.

The fact that this is happening, knowingly misreporting to make our understanding worse specifically for political advantage during the worst pandemic in living memory, infuriates me. (edit: who was that villain in the recent star wars? I don't want you to win, I just want __ to lose)

The biggest factor. Heh. But I more meant the rationale they admit to...

As long as they can be confirmed to acting maliciously (and in this case I certainly think they can be). I understand some people's trepidation in having the federal government bust organizations like that... but frankly they have been giving a number of local terrorist organizations a 'free pass'. It is interesting to hear what the (possible) rationale is for doing so, at least. As you say... it hasn't worked out.

er, delete this. misread

It's worth noting that this chart is in death's per week, not death's per day as I first thought when reading it.

That's an extremely good point. It means the infected data from Rural areas is basically 'bad' to begin with. Damn, I didn't think of that either.

Yeah, I should apologize in general - I've been looking/listening to more possible indicators that the rate was probably higher than believed (I got sick twice, in Jan and in March, but I shouldn't have assumed either one was related). The article still doesn't direct me with much information, I will just try and go back to 'neutral' as much as I can until I get better information.

I will have to see how that goes - that would certainly change my thoughts on this a lot. Maybe I've been unknowingly caught up in that narrative - even if you don't explicitly believe something, it can still change your impression on subsequent information...

Yeah. I've been doing my best to understand the desperation people have to re-open, but encourage the question of 'how' as much as I can. I appreciate the context, and data.

The part that bites the most is trying to convince people of that. I try and encourage people to argue for Rural communities, but... they have to be very rural IMO. Thumbnail math puts this as bad, per capita, as the Spanish Flu at around 2 million deaths. At 2.5 million deaths, you have every plague, pandemic, war (including civil), and terrorist event the country of america had faced (besides the Native American massacres/pandemics), but not per capita.

Dude. Your project is cooler than mine I need to do more fun stuff... I somehow got enrolled in the Stanford Coursera class on machine learning. Been putting 3 hrs a night into it, then will start a cert soon after I get that done. I have a recently built server that was for my brother that I want to start crunching some detection on, so I'm back to searching for evil code on github XD

My big concern. Calculus does come in handy... just wish it wasn't in this way. Also, good to hear from someone willing to spend more time with the data than I am. (I'm trying to figure out how to start a project, maybe I should float thoughts past you sometime soon)

Yeah. That 'disease is incredibly effective against human nature' problem. It's very hard for human beings to maintain the diligence necessary to keep something like this down. Alternatively, it could be more people are coming forwards with being sick, or testing availability has increased.

Low traffic is good. The real problem with tracking a pandemic is twofold - exponential growth is dangerous, because even during direct observation it will begin to tick up dramatically. The problem with a pandemic (especially this one) is, as has been stated, the spread ability will happen almost two weeks before you'd see major indicators (such as hospitalization or death). The doubling rate is estimated to be about 5 days (it was 3 for NYC). So in two weeks you'll be three doublings behind while watching major indicators, with the knowledge you are observing something for signs of exponential/explosive growth.

We don't have a government with any experience in this sort of thing, and in the modern world a virus like this (that spreads faster than the flu, which is already amazingly transmissible) could have had a huge impact on every city in the country. But we don't "know" that, we can just move forwards on what we do know.

I mean, in terms of describing treatment that's not bad. I'm sure the reason for the reaction has to do with 'explosive growth' as mentioned before. The real question is, as tkdguy has mentioned, how does one do a controlled re-opening of those areas? Plagues are particularly effective against human nature because of how we process information, perceive problems, and how incredibly difficult it is to be diligent against transmission. That's particularly why you can't just trust the area to handle it, you have to organize the effort in a sensible way.

Yep, the question is whether the resources in a rural community are exponentially or linearly lower. But I wholly agree that it's very easy for a rural area to be flooded, or a hospital even bankrupted. That's the real devil of the question, isn't it?

I don't doubt that is also demonstrated. The main reason I'm giving such a pass to Rural communities isn't to prevent cases, its that the case spikes shouldn't overwhelm resources there as easily and quickly as a major city. It's just a product of the exponential spread problem. That being said, I'd prefer to maintain fairly strict lockdown measures whenever possible.

It's a good argument for opening up Rural areas specifically. I mean, specificity is important when discussing intent, which is often unstated in people's arguments. But regardless of whether we have a third of the reported cases, our standing in major first-world countries is notably poor compared to other countries (in actual testing rate if nothing else). If I wanted to argue, I'd argue again the effect on our economy and country would have been far better had we had a proper plan and preparation ahead of time, but that's an argument for another time. "cases relative to total testing done" isn't a bad metric, and you can use population density (over population size) as part of the factors when comparing the numbers. I'm wondering what's going on with India. I considered Asian and Middle Eastern areas to be particularly in danger, so I wonder whether there's overall death rate spikes.

Yeah... I think I mentioned the two-week lag when posting the Chinese data. It's nice to get confirmation that the lag estimate (at least) appears to be real. Reproduction rate is only a guestimate at the moment I'm sure - they'll need more data for longer to actually get a better idea of how fast it's spreading.

I was curious about this story - the circumstances seem strange, and there's a lot of reasons someone could get legitimately canned (or canned for political reasons...)

There's a reason its' called "explosive growth". Because everything looks normal until it suddenly detonates in your face...

Yeah, and I do appreciate you reminding folks that our creature comforts can disappear fast. The breakdown of infrastructure is probably the other problem that becomes "exponentially bad" very quick. Rental issues are a huge issue, and suspending eviction is currently just kicking a problem to 'future us', and its a problem that compounds over time. (unlike coronavirus, in which it, in some ways, very slowly 'uncompounds' over time... heh)

Thanks for the heart. The parachute analogy is effective when arguing with people who are just using emotional (and misguided) arguments of a similar nature - but to me it's a similarly problematic meme: it's an oversimplification of what needs to happen for a reopening. We know we can't stay closed, for the sake of maintaining food preparation and distribution if nothing else (setting aside economic arguments, which gets into layers of complexity and society I won't deal with). But human mentality works with connected arguments, so to connect 'staying closed for safety' to 'an oversimplified perspective of re-opening' is a huge problem to me. A more correct argument would involve another oversimplified argument, and then either breaking open (edit- huh, never finished this thought:) why the arguments are oversimplified, or using the parachute argument as a means to drive the conversation/argument in a productive direction. Memetic arguments have become a big thing online, and it's interesting to me for two reasons: 1) Years back (while Obama was in office) I started to consider the problem of memes as being tracable/responsible to no one and being spread with little cost and effort. It's when I started getting involved in infosec more. 2) Recently I've been watching more videos on religious cults, and the "thought terminating cliche" is interesting to me. Not as a tool for convincing people, but as a 'reinforcer' to existing behavior. I also could argue that certain memetic arguments are useful for 'drawing lines in the sand', which is a powerful tool for voting control. So as I think of issues in memetic arguments I try and challenge them. This isn't the political thread, so I'm trying to keep that here to pointing out data that I know is bad. I do sometimes wonder if training people to use arguments like these is useful for fostering anti-arguments to act as a self-reinforcer and isolator, but I expect anyone actually good at doing that makes more money than the government can sign on a paycheck... >_> In Summary: In terms of SF's numeric death rate - context matters hugely. Both in terms of where that death rate is being argued from, and where the argument is intended to address. It's a great argument for rural areas, so I wholly support that direction. I'm sure it means you'll get more 'in the weeds' arguments that will be harder to address from using more context-heavy arguments, and convincing some people less. The tactics I'm fighting are effective after all. Sometimes they'll happen by habit, or need. But someone arguing with better tools will get a lot more bilaterial support and hopefully can get more action based on those arguments. At least, that's my hope (and intention).