Peter Brown wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 10:18 am
In case anyone here is genuinely interested in original analysis, which btw would require you not bring any partisan angle to this issue (foreverlax convinced me yesterday that absolutely zero Democrats care much anymore about fact-gathering), I'd suggest taking the time to read the following, incredibly well-laid out, data-driven, debunking of the hysteria in this country over Covid-19. If you find anything wrong in this man's report, feel free to post. As far as I am concerned, he has the answer and we will be back to business within 2 months tops.
https://medium.com/six-four-six-nine/ev ... 767def5894
Data is data. Our focus here isn’t treatments but numbers. You don’t need a special degree to understand what the data says and doesn’t say. Numbers are universal. I hope you walk away with a more informed perspective on how you can help and fight back against the hysteria that is driving our country into a dark place. You can help us focus our scarce resources on those who are most vulnerable, who need our help.
First, he (author) is a Silicon Valley technologist - no real expertise on pandemics. So everything he says has to be viewed within that light. Also the founder of the Lincoln Project, and pretty deeply involved in R politics (including Koch funding). Understanding the author and where he comes from is always useful.
Lots of misuse of data from my perspective. He has this whole section about a bell curve as if he can actually predict for the US when the peak will occur. He cannot - the information is not in the data yet. The whole thing about per capita has some limited value, and the US does have the advantage compared with other countries in that we have a lower average population density. But the US is also quite mobile, and with our lack of testing we have essentially spread the virus all over the country without knowing where it might be.
But the essential problem is he is making predictions on his "knowledge" of data, not on actual science of epidemics/pandemics. And any predictions on actual effects are meaningless in the face of rapidly changing situations on the ground with respect to social distancing, lockdowns, shutdowns, etc.
He is essentially misusing statistics to argue a political point (which is exactly what you would expect given that the Lincoln Project is actually his political project).
Also, just because the virus is sensitive to UV light does NOT mean that it will die down in the summer. It might slow the spread or it might not, but that is a speculation not yet evident in the data. BTW, look at the progression in Australia, coming of a hot summer. Still taking off like gangbusters.
This is a bit like Trump's hope that we can just fix this with some old drugs in new combinations. It _might_ be possible, but we do not actually know the answer. We can hope, but in the meantime we need to run the trials.
So I don't see a lot of value in his piece other than to make people who want to believe there is some magic way out of this. Which is a public disservice at this point.
