Monday, September 13, 2021

Covid Links - But Not Really About Covid

This post has the appearance of trying to persuade you, but this is actually not so.  I certainly hope you are persuaded by the links and my comments on them, but I have a deeper purpose, which I will get to below (or the next post - don't know.) There are then deeper levels beyond that, which I may or not reveal, depending on how things go. But the people who argue online are not fully representative of...well, of anything, really. So the following links are for demonstration purposes.

I have been waiting this post for bsking to put up her most recent on excess mortality, as she promised. Breaking down national data by race and age and age-adjusting the state data because there are large differences turns out to be interesting.  Florida looks better than you would think from looking at the data - not surprising as it is an old state - and the safest states in the northeast and northwest look even better.  Texas looks worse, and Mississippi and DC look terrible in excess deaths.  She discusses some of the possible variations in assignment and counting.  She is clearly not trying to make any side look better or worse - except perhaps noting defensively that while Massachusetts is often listed among the worst states for covid deaths, this is not so when one makes some reasonable adjustments. She makes the point to me that we should all be looking at data by states anyway, as we will have a much better sense if anything is fishy in the case of places we live, or have lived, or border on. It's easy to get into discussions about whether the upper reaches of the CDC are reliable, when none of us have much access.  But I have  great deal of confidence in what NH is reporting, because I have some familiarity with the people, and the local media, and local knowledge.

I have been following the more recent trends.  You can browse the state data and look at the graphs here. Of note, some states with notoriously bad overall totals, such as New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, show that they are all front-loaded for the beginning of the pandemic.  Not much blip in cases or deaths since then. Texas has as many new cases and almost as many deaths as any time in the last 18 months, and Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas actually have more.  As there is some vaccination even in the lowest-level states, it becomes a question of whether this is because they reopened too soon, the delta variant is worse enough to override even a partial vaccination rate, or some other reasons. South Dakota is interesting.  It was trumpeted last year that Sturgis was/was not a superspreader event as predicted/denied, then watched as new cases quadrupled that month, held steady for another month, and then exploded.  However, that was the time lots of other places were exploding as well, so maybe the festival wasn't the cause.  The same thing is happening this year, with a spike in cases just after the gathering - but a lot of other places are seeing a spike right now as well. I think we will have to depend on honest, knowledgeable reporters in SD to figure that out.  Hope they've got some.

Masks work. This means they have worked throughout, though Stone notes why this is hard to measure. I had an argument with one guy on another site who insisted that because masks do not absolutely prevent covid, they cannot be said to "work." We say that seat belts work even though some accidents are so bad that people die anyway.  We say that condoms work, even though by their very nature people use them wrongly (impatience, usually) or skip them altogether, and relying on them has a higher pregnancy rate than other methods.  We say that calorie restriction works for losing weight because it works some for everyone, at least for a short while, and keeps on working for a smaller percentage. I digress.  Perhaps none of you were going to offer the same argument. There are huge caveats about masks, which I am certain I have stated repeatedly, as have most mask advocates.  There are only secondarily a filter, they are mostly a barrier protection, very effective for coughs, sneezes, singing, yelling. They don't work if you are siting in an unventilated space with someone for extended periods, because all the air in the room eventually passes through the infected people.  They don't work if they aren't worn properly.  Just because they are mandated does not mean they are worn or worn properly, because people rebel and shave the edges. Just as with gun control (and, I think we may soon see, vaccines), people who don't like a law will find ways around it, and you don't get the result you expected.  However, that doesn't mean that gun safety (or vaccination) doesn't work.  It just mean the mandate didn't work.  So too with masks. The masks-don't-work studies I have seen consistently make this error, that mandates don't work.  The places where masking is enforced, as in hospitals and clinics. have found that everything else contagious has gone down so far that they will likely never go back to maskless. From that, they conclude that masks likely provide a similar benefit for covid, even though they have no baselines from 2015-2019 to compare it to.  Because no covid then. 

But the people with skin in the game think they work enough to keep going.  That is always a big deal to me.  Not "authority," which I will deal with later, but skin in the game.

Astral Codex Ten has a very thorough post on what we know about Long Covid. He always has lots of comments, some of which are also lengthy.  I don't think one needs to read even any of them, let alone all of them, but I hope they at least dissuade people from jumping to the conclusion that "he has overlooked this really important point unsupported cliche I need to tell the world." I have seen a couple of links on other conservative sites that "long covid isn't as bad as we feared." As I never saw them express any fear at all, only the carefully curated news that supports the conclusion they had reached before the studies were even begun, that can't possibly be true.  They had no fear at all and have ignored or denied it consistently. You can't get less than zero fear. I feel I have been mentioning this to an empty auditorium for months.  They are holding scraps aloft. "Look, it's not as bad for children as the "experts" told us it would be!"  What experts said that? Who made predictions? So let's start from the simpler premise of "long covid is real," and let's see how big a deal it is rather than ignoring it whenever we calculate what the tradeoffs have been. We conservatives (except me, of course) have an absolute failing grade here.

Nurses are resigning, especially in the states hardest hit recently. Yes, CNN plays the violin here, but 2000 fewer nurses in a state the size of Mississippi is a big deal. Medical care will be worsened for everyone.  There have been claims that postponed care was already killing people, though that did not seem to show up in 2020's numbers. But there is a limit to how long you can postpone things.  It may have started to happen this year. Even if true they only dent the definite covid numbers a little, but it's certainly not good. By the way, the anti-vaccination groups are trying to claim that the nurses are resigning over the vaccine mandates.  Some are, especially among minority populations. I don't see evidence it's a lot.  However, resignations may be occurring for both reasons and both sides trying to take credit for the aggregate number, similar to those poll questions of "Do you think this country is headed in the right direction?"  Pretty useless question, with no predictive value of anything.

*******

But that's not what I came to talk to you about. I want to go over some history about how opinions are formed on this matter. Way back in early 2020 I thought we might have much less problem on this side of the Atlantic.  Trump had closed down flights despite opponents calling him racist for it - I now shudder to think how quickly it would have spread otherwise, back when hospitals didn't quite know how to treat it and we thought mechanical breathing was going to be key. Plenty of people - I have mentioned that Sarah Hoyt was prominent among them - assured us that we weren't going to have Italy's and France's problem because our hygiene was better.  Others noted that we didn't have so many grannies living with families here, and our hospitals are better, etc.

Well, things spiked quickly, as you well know. Large gathering places started shutting down, particularly indoors. There was still the attitude that if we strangled this in its cradle we'd be okay. The idea of two weeks to bend the curve was only part of that, not some outlier. People now get enraged that the CDC and other experts said that and then it wasn't true, but we pretty much all subscribed to that general idea. One big slam.  don't let it get a foothold.  Then we could deal with a smaller, more manageable crisis after that.  Churches thought they were going to be back open for Easter. There were some voices who were already telling us that novel contagion doesn't always work that way, and even announcing there would be a spike in summer.  I was considered one of the pessimistic ones because I didn't think that the sharp increase in cases was going to be just as sharp going down.  I thought we would have a more gradual decline. 

The deaths kept mounting, and already people were trying on their new denials: there wasn't really an increase; the deaths weren't really covid, they were just sorta covidish, if they existed at all; masks don't work and there's probably nothing we can do to make things worse or better anyway; letting everyone get sick would probably be better. There were, and are, more. Some were darker, part of the motivated reasoning I will discuss later. "Everyone is acting scared (means: I'm brave and they aren't)." "It's only old people and people with other health conditions (the classic defense mechanism against danger, that you are somehow not vulnerable because you are smarter than that.  He only got robbed because he wasn't being alert, etc.) and the self fulfilling "Americans aren't going to put up with this." Sure, it's patriotic to refuse to take health measures

Even in early August I nearly wrote in to one of the podcasts I had been listening to that had predicted a spike late July and early August - see? It didn't happen, did it? I don't hear you admitting you got that wrong. I am glad I held back, because then came September. A half a million deaths later, and people's excuses and opinions haven't changed. I have to wonder what would have changed them. I remember that summer the fury that some people had that some "experts" had dared predict we might have as many as 2.2 million deaths.  What a maroon! That's why you can't listen to experts! I recall being apologetic for them that summer, trying not to call them alarmist and extreme, and cautioning others not to do so either. Well, that's the worst-case scenario...if you look at what's happening in Europe you might leap to that conclusion...don't assume they are just trying to scare you... So, coming up on 800,000 excess mortality now...estimates the vaccines have saved about another 200,000.  Let's run the mental experiment of not shutting down the international airports, and of not closing down to prevent the spread, of not masking, not distancing.  Could that have doubled the death total?  I don't know.  That seems possible. Gee, all the skeptics and critics - including me, to some extent - turned out to be even more wrong.

Remember that hospitals were overfull, with units being turned into covid-only, ERs overflowing - so let's take our imagination experience and double the number of cases. How's that playing out?  Health-care workers doubling their exposure, and so more of them sent home. Whether lack of prompt care drove much excess mortality in 2020 is not clear - I think only a little, but may turn out to be wrong, and 2021 might be worse - but it absolutely would have been happening under that scenario. No hospital beds, huge numbers of doctors and nurses unable to come in because of quarantine.  And some dying, by the way. That gets conveniently overlooked in the "only old and fat people" telling. As with Kipling's "Tommy" and soldiers, societies can devalue sacrificial people who just don't happen to be on their radar at the moment.

So the data changed, and changed dramatically, but people didn't change their opinions.  When that happens, it is fair to ask whether they are engaging in motivated reasoning. Even when I strongly suspect it, I usually refrain from accusing others of poor motives unless I have very good evidence, and even then, only if they are accusing others of poor motives.  I take the view that we are a mix of good and bad motives in all our decisions and we try to inspire others to do the best they can. I have questioned people's motives many times over the last sixteen years, because I think confirmation bias and motivated reasoning is enormous.  But it is double-edged.  As with CS Lewis and Bulverism, if you use that door, it swings both ways. So the data has changed, but the accusation of bad motives has not budged, or has even intensified. Suspicion of the accusers' motives is entirely justified now.

Persuasion isn't supposed to work like this.  Elizabeth Breunig has a nice article on not shaming the unvaccinated, but listening to them, because many of them are not as unreasonable as advertised.  She is a nice person, I think, and it is true. But I am not trying to be persuasive here.  It will surprise you that I am not even talking about covid, ultimately. When discussing reasoning and motivation dispassionately, it is best to take non-emotional examples. Sam says that Julie is taller than she was last year. His wife says, no, she has stopped growing. But I am intentionally keeping this discussion in hot and even angry places.  Because most of you know about logical fallacies in the abstract.  Some of you know them better than I do.  That's not what is happening here, and I want the examples bubbling.  I am also not convinced that gentle persuasion is the best route.  Greg Cochrane has been very ungentle, including to me directly, but he is one of the people who has most changed my thinking over the last five years. I am usually immune to shaming, but it is not mere shaming that is persuasive. It is finding I am wrong that is shaming, and in those instances the lash does not seem unfair.  I get over it pretty quickly.

******

I keep thinking you have read what I have written to date and are slowly absorbing it over the week while I finish.  That won't be the way it works, of course, it will come as a fire hose, and each of you will identify a particular bit you want to comment on, which might be something of less interest to others and which I have long moved on from.  As there is some slight danger that this is my last post except for odd bits I might put in every week or so going forward, I will likely let things collect before I rejoin, if at all.

For review, one of my most-visited posts, Types of Liberty.  See if you can anticipate as I develop this what this means for vaccination, lockdowns, masking, voluntary shutdown, etc in the various American regions.My hypothesis is that the regional variation in vaccination especially still has some founder effect values behind it. Following David Hackett Fischer, it shows the cultural differences in the various American colonies about the idea of liberty and how that still flows into our cultures now, though in attenuated form. I will not go into detail, except to notice that personal independence and civil disobedience are different in the New England, Coastal Southern, and Appalachian cultures. (I don't have a handle on the Quaker mid-Atlantic on the subject, and so won't try to force some interpretation in.)  The Coastal South was deeply hierarchical, with initial forced obedience to the FFV or other cultural rulers of Wessex mentality.  But this gradually created a shamefulness about being one of the people who had to take orders rather than give them. That former group was larger and may have had more cultural influence. The Appalachian Scots-Irish were mixed independent, often isolated most of the time but still connected to a web of relatives, a clan, which could take on the deeply obedient attitudes of tanistry, thanes of Cawdor, or of Buckland. This was hidden and less formal in America, but still real. It bled over into church authority among the Baptists and the many sects. I am getting far afield here, but these country churches kept splitting off from each other to form small churches a few miles down the road, but within those narrow walls, there was obedience unknown among New England Congregationalists.  It's complicated, probably worth more than a few PhD theses (which I wouldn't encourage, because those knuckleheads would miss every elephant in every room throughout South Carolina, frankly). But I would put big money on the idea that there are congregations in the South where no one is vaccinated and others where everyone is, and where there is division among them, predict a church split in the next few years. So they may be deeply dug in along the lines of "You can't tell me what to do" to the government, yet willingly obedient elsewhere.

This is completely incomprehensible in Northern New England, past and present.  The town and church were originally synonymous, but that's clearly not going to hold up, and quickly the town won out. Like before 1700.  A New Englander - a default libertarian until about 1900 - used to be deeply suspicious of Concord/Montpelier/Augusta and very especially Boston.  Washington DC was beyond even uttering out loud.  The town won out over both the county and the Congregational Church. But the town actually did have the authority to tell you what to do. Without that, no schools, no hospitals, no roads would happen. And deep Yankees would accurately point out in the late 1800s that those things did not happen throughout the south.  If you don't like what the bastards are doing, you vote them out next time. (This has clearly attenuated in the last four decades.  We blame it on the rest of you moving up here.  Especially New York.) But when people dig in and say they aren't going to do what Concord says, it is on the basis of "They're wrong," not "You can't tell me what to do."

Tangent:  The Free Staters from around the country who chose New Hampshire and moved in and thought they could influence the politics of a small state and make us a City on a Hill for libertarianism never got this distinction.  Still don't.  They try that "sovereign citizen" nonsense on us and we just look at them blankly. When they tried to install a " fully libertarian" government in little Grantham, NH it was just anarchy.

Back in line. So when my friend Grim accused me of wanting to defer to medical professionals I was amazed that he would insult me at that depth. I spent my career fighting with arrogant doctors who actually didn't know better than me, and I could prove it, dammit. I am deferring to no one.  The experts, while flawed, are making a better case than the skeptics and I am going along, thanking them for the time they have put in so I don't have to.  But if they are wrong, we don't go to no experts, where we all just make up our own guess, but to new experts.  Throw the bastards out.  (I wish this were still deeply true about northern New England, but fully admit we actually don't throw the bastards out anywhere near as much as we used to anymore. The system may have broken beyond repair.)

So it took me a bit to figure out that in Grim's cultures of origin (which seems to be only a percentage of his current culture), that's how it must look. His word choice was suggestive, bleeding out from that base. And if Grimmy, who can step back into considerable objectivity, leaks out he thinks that about me, who he knows more about...the penny dropped for me. In other mouths, that idea is much more dominant.  All this accusation from others - and boy do I know about those others at this point - that the people who put on masks are nervous and cowardly, and the people getting vaccinations are somehow believing authority like sheeple rather than following evidence, made sense in cultural terms.  In their culture, that would be more likely, at least at some long-inherited level.

But that's more than a little ugly, and I'm going to not only push back, but shove back against it. Eighteen months of accusing that those other people just want power and to tell you want to do and grind you down, and don't actually have any good reasons I now think says more about the accusers than the accused.  Because we have received new data month after month, and they haven't budged.  So does that mean that this level of authoritarianism is what you would do if you held the whip hand, or does it mean that you just don't like being told what to do and reject all reasoning on that basis.  Because at this point, I submit that this has to be at least part of your motivation, based on a dozen comment threads on a dozen sites. If I were wrong, it would have eventually shown up in the comments that you made, and I have been on this a long time now.

That you are annoyed at Karens wearing masks in what you perceive to be a showy, prim manner is irrelevant.  

That high-ranking officials are traveling in ways denied others, or going maskless, or otherwise being hypocrites is irrelevant. It may be relevant as to whether you vote for them again, sure, but that fact that celebrities come to believe they are invulnerable and can do what they want isn't news, and it tells us nothing one way or the other about safety.

That it offends you that most parents are okay with their kids being masked (though they want them back in the classroom), and the kids are bothered by other requirements much more than masks is irrelevant. You want them to be furious. They aren't. This is taking place in your head. You have some need, whether social or personal, for some things to be true and others not. But that has nothing to do with actual truth, and frankly, it's not my problem.

That you want these new vaccines to be dangerous is motivated reasoning. There's no evidence for it.  None. Zero. I tried to be polite for the sake of persuasion rather than confrontation about these bizarre idea that reproductive danger was possible - the absolute go-to for paranoiacs about anything they suspect - but this is just over.  There will be something that shows up about the vaccines that isn't good, according to the law of averages. That's normal.  We already know that premature births are occurring with covid, but not among the pregnant and vaccinated.  I lean against making even complete fools do stuff unless the danger is clear, not because I think it's a bad idea this time to increase public safety (it will) but because I shudder at what such government overreach means next year or the year after. 

******

Go back up to the original links.  While I have referenced a few of the topics over the last months, I intentionally chose things that were new information.  Did you treat this as new information to be absorbed into your views?  Likely, you did not. The folks who thought masking was good thought Yes! Masks!  I always said so! And the people who thought masks useless immediately went to There must be something wrong with this.  I say this not to play the percentages - which would be valid - but because I have personally watched you do this. You either have the self-observation to see this, or you don't.  I put up those links, then the subsequent harsh meta-discussion about how things have been going, not to persuade you, but simply to illustrate how this is done. I'm intentionally not persuading.  You are on your own.

There are variations on this motivated reasoning. To move to a more neutral example, Sally says to Cindy that "Catholics don't let their people read the Bible." Then a few others chime in and they discuss this for half an hour, about no private interpretation, Vatican II, whether the practical results bear out Catholic theory, etc.  Then Molly comes in and says "But you are missing the real issue.  Catholics don't let their people read the Bible."  And I wonder  why I am bothering to discuss these things at all. Person after person, known to display some sort of intelligence on other topics, has proven unable to do anything other than burst in, recite their cliche from forty minutes or forty years ago, and expect others to just agree. Do I seem unfair?  This just happened here, and I can pull up forty example over the last year from a very narrow band of sites. And this from people I actually like. It is a subset of motivated reasoning. It wastes everyone's time.  It's just birds chirping out their current location.

But the central motivated reasoning is complicated and varied. You see yourself as brave, ignoring the poor bastard of a cashier at the supermarket quick line who is exposed to a thousand people a day at about 4' distance. Because you estimate, accurately, that you are not in much danger when you shop and don't need a mask. You are suspicious of the conventional wisdom - I really  understand that one, since childhood - and think yourself wise thereby, better than those fools. You don't actually know anyone working in the ICUs but you think things are probably okay there, because...you want that answer. The danger is exaggerated.  All your favorite conservative sites tell you so, and you don't trust the others. 

As a CS Lewis-obsessed person, I feel confident I can lay claim to having looked at layer after layer of possible bad motivations I might have for anything I believe.  As a psychiatrist friend once laughed, "I'm not absolutely sure of my own name. And my mother is a very honest person." Yet even within that context I might well have been only playing a complicated chess game against myself, letting black win this time because it would seem fair. It's unrealistic to expect any of you - except maybe James - to see things that thoroughly.  But this year things went bad.  I tried to stay with my peeps as long as I could, but i just can't.

If I seem unfair to the conservatives about this, and you want to point out how much worse liberals are. I will say I have done that for sixteen years.  Yes I am being one-sided.  Suck it up, Jasper. My belief is that we all have personal and social reasons for wanting some things to be true, and that's normal.  We should try to correct for those, but we might miss a trick. We might miss many tricks. But I expect you to do that homework before you comment.  We have some tradition of that here, which has increasingly slipped away in 2021. Some have.  I would name you, but I would miss some and imply insult to the innocent.

Why do I rant?  It's not about covid, covid is just an example, expressly chosen to burn and chafe. Because without the ability of a large percentage of us to beat ourselves up over possible suspect motives, there will be no cooperative governance, no understanding...

...no western civilisation, and ultimately people will be unable to consider the claims of Christ.  I have that Quest for Saint Aquin  view, a similar oversimplification of Aquinas to Francis Schaeffer's, that logic must ultimately lead to God, and removing logical obstacles in one sect will lead to lightning coming down on an altar elsewhere. Weeding is a humble but desperately needed act.

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule. JRR Tolkien

 


33 comments:

  1. Well said, and a lot to think on. Thanks, AVI.

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  2. "So when my friend Grim accused me of wanting to defer to medical professionals..."

    Pardon me! What I said was meant to be conciliatory, not insulting; and it wasn't quite what you remember. It was specifically: "I can tell you're finding all this distressing, and would like more deference to medical professionals. Your thoughts are duly noted."

    'You would like more deference' is not 'You wish to defer to...' but, rather, that you wish we would listen to these professionals more. So, you see, I didn't meant to suggest that you were wishing to defer to medical professionals: I meant to suggest that you really wished that we would do so, at least to a greater degree than we were doing (or even now are, perhaps).

    I assure you that no insult was intended; I just noted your comments here that you were very frustrated, and saw that you were running into a tough crowd at my place. I had meant that to be a reassurance that I was listening to you and considering your thoughts, and that you weren't wasting your breath.

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  3. Thank you. I expressed my surprise because it did seem unexpected.

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  4. The issue underlying your post is -- How do we each come to form our opinions or assessments of certain matters? Do we think about things rationally and adjust our views as new information becomes available? Or is it some other process?

    On the anecdotal level, I have noticed that many people's political affiliation is almost an inherited characteristic. And it takes a very rare huge event to make them change their views on their chosen Party.

    Another factor is deference to chosen "experts", no matter how obvious their feet of clay. Why would any reasonable person look to Al Gore for a view on asserted Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming rather than, say, Dr. Judith Curry? Yet many of us do. How do we choose which "expert" we believe to be knowledgeable and authoritative?

    A wise executive once shared his view that Peer Pressure is the major driver, for adults as well as children. And if we look at the dubious ESG investments into which high-paid managers are currently pouring other people's money, he may be right about that. The question which is never answered though is -- Where does Peer Pressure come from? Who chooses the direction in which the herd will run?

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  5. When experts disagree, I may reserve judgment until the dust settles, or I may lean to one side or the other if I detect more chicanery in the style of one side than the other (assuming that there will always be some lunatics on the fringe of any issue). What I try to do is filter out the reports that don't stand up to scrutiny, or that are being pushed by people with too settled a habit of twisting facts. If they're actually caught admitting that they think it's OK to twist facts in order to nudge people in a beneficial direction, I'll definitely tune out much of what that particular source says after that. At that point, whatever they're trying to convince me of is going to have to be argued by someone who hasn't yet ruined his credibility.

    That's not to say that people who've been caught red-handed in this kind of thing are necessarily lying about everything. It may turn out that much of what they say is true. It's just that I can't count on it, so I'm going to have to learn it from someone else if I'm to be convinced of it at all. Michael Mann, for instance, would be wasting his breath to talk to me about global warming, but a more honest scientist could still get my attention with solid data or models that make accurate predictions--but until he does, I'll remain agnostic, awaiting better data and better models.

    I'm convinced the COVID vaccines are a good idea for people of my age and health, not because political flacks insist on it, but because I've read enough independent reports to settle any doubts I might have had. I'm not yet totally convinced that the vaccines are essential for younger, healthier people, though my guess is that they are at least helpful and largely safe. Still, that conclusion is faint enough that I wouldn't browbeat a younger, healthier person over it, and certainly wouldn't force him to follow my judgment even if I could.

    No one could reasonably call me a dyed-in-the-wool universal skeptic. I'm skeptical about people who have been known to push sketchy ideas based on sketchy arguments. I'm extremely open to arguments based on medical science where no one seems to have a thumb on the scale and the argument has not been poisoned by either politics, or by a conviction that a little dishonesty in the service of the public good--making decisions easier for all those mouth-breathers--is only a harmless white lie.

    I'm not even sure who my "peers" are supposed to be in this controversy. I'm a Trump fan, but I wouldn't have taken his word about a new vaccine without substantiating evidence. I despise Biden and Harris, but I wouldn't have rejected the vaccine once they began touting it in 2021 any more than I agreed with their rejection of it in 2020. The only people whose opinion counts with me are the ones who perform or cite studies that seem well structured and whose results are summarized honestly. This situation has been poisoned by an unreasonable number of episodes in which studies with iffy conclusions are pushed as though they were conclusive, while studies with conclusions that buck the received narrative at any one point are squelched and censored. It's been an extraordinary failure of ordinary honesty and integrity, which has made sorting out the good data and studies ridiculously difficult. The national conversation has degenerated into near uselessness, a free-for-all of hasty recrimination and needless ill will.

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  6. I read your fascinating not rant and found a few bones to pick with you. I like your approach since it seems the voice of reason. At the outset it became obvious that Fauci was willing to lie, prevaricate and fabricate bogus information. CDC, through him, lost my trust going in and nothing they've done since then has regained it for them.

    I now look at all the figures they keep putting out about everything covid related and it doesn't matter if it's overage of deaths, # of cases, # of deaths, or just exactly how full ERs are with covid patients.

    To say that the hospitals were overwhelmed is kind of lying. The NCA sent hospital ships to the largest cities on each coast and they treated a grand total of zero patients for covid, or anything else.

    The NIH, CDC and the rest betrayed themselves and us by presenting a number of myths as reality, very much in the same way the global warming poseurs have created a fake global emergency by going back and systematically 'adjusting' all the historical temperature data and jiggering the new data and playing games with their models that never reflect reality and yet people still swear we're all doomed from global warming. I don't buy that.

    I'll give Murthy some credit for appearing to be what he should be. The rest of that crew, if they told me it was raining outside? I'd look out the window before I believed them. Credibility tossed away is not easily regained.

    I'm leery of a 'vaccine' that doesn't deliver immunity. I don't much care about your numbers but consider what was reported about the outbreak on Cape Cod. The numbers I saw showed that 4 out of 5 in that outbreak had had the vaccine and still got the disease. That's not much of a vaccine. Perhaps the press got that wrong. They get so much wrong.

    I can tell you my estimate of the situation. Covid is a virus. It's out there now and now it always will be. It's not ever going to go away. In that way it will persist like the flu since it is endemic now.

    Heard today on the radio as I went to university; Radio host tells how he was harangued at the post office by some Karen about not wearing a mask. As they left the building he asked, "does your mask not work?"

    If you want to wear a mask, OK, but you don't get to determine that everyone wear a mask because of the righteousness of it. As with the vaccine, if it works, why are you worried about the unvaccinated?

    I'm afraid the vaccines we have so far offer little in the way of immunity and to hear the "experts" now saying, "well, if you have the vaccine, when you get the disease it will be kinder and gentler," just isn't sending the message they think it is.

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  7. I am unaware of any vaccine that guarantees immunity. IIRC, the smallpox and polio vaccines that have made those infections something we don't fear today are/were "only" 95% effective. Several vaccines do not confer lifetime protection, for example tetanus, diphtheria. Why are we suddenly demanding "perfection" from the Covid vaccines? For that matter, why is rejection of the yearly flu vaccine rejected due to lack of perfection? Are we spoiled, or what?

    As for masks, hand-washing, distancing, etc., they are mitigating measures that can reduce viral load exposure. It would be quite surprising to find that an increase in the number of people taking these precautions also resulted in a lower incidence of flu and colds.

    I am opposed to mandates and bans due to contact with toddlers and teenagers. --You WILL eat the broccoli! No, I won't and you can't make me! -- You will NOT do that! Yes, I will and you can't stop me. -- Most of us have never quite outgrown those reactions to autocratic demands. Be honest, now... have you? Of course, we're more reasonable and mature now, will weigh the consequences, and probably do what's in our best interest. The resentment is still there and it clouds our judgment of what exactly is in our best interest.

    The best parenting advice I ever got was "do not prescribe a punishment that you're not willing or able to follow through". While I regret the obvious comparison of governments to parents here... it does speak to the 'wisdom' of governmental mandates and bans which can't be enforced.

    As for the truly 'vaccine hesitant' I have empathy as they are willing to consider evidence. Often the hesitancy is emotional -- what if I make the wrong decision for my children -- and I understand that. For those who have always been anti-vaccine and are trying on the costume of 'hesitancy', ya'll can go suck eggs. These are the Wakefield/Mercola/et al $$nuts. I got no patience for you.

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  8. Assistant Village Idiot,

    Quite the tour de force. Your posts are always thought-provoking and show original insights.

    Grim: you were running into a tough crowd at my place.

    You're funny.

    Gavin Longmuir: Another factor is deference to chosen "experts", no matter how obvious their feet of clay. Why would any reasonable person look to Al Gore for a view on asserted Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming rather than, say, Dr. Judith Curry?

    Al Gore is not a scientific expert, nor does he claim to be. Gore is an advocate and public speaker speaking on the scientific consensus. Judith Curry is a legitimate scientist, but she has failed to publish any research that does more than nip at the edges of the scientific consensus on global warming.

    Texas99: When experts disagree, I may reserve judgment until the dust settles, or I may lean to one side or the other if I detect more chicanery in the style of one side than the other (assuming that there will always be some lunatics on the fringe of any issue).

    That's right. It's not the views of any single expert, as there are experts who hold crank views, but it's the consensus of experts that constitutes a valid appeal to authority. Even when there is no settled consensus, that doesn't mean all views have equal weight. Experts may argue over the Moon's constituents, but it's not made of green cheese.

    HMS Defiant: As they left the building he asked, "does your mask not work?"

    Donna B. answers this quite adequately.

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  9. Zachriel: "... the scientific consensus on global warming."

    Zach! Zach! Zach! You really did blow it there. Go and read up on the scientific method. Then come back and explain where "consensus" fits in to true science, where nothing is ever settled -- and even the longest-standing theory tumbles if a single observation is at odds with that theory.

    Then go and read President Eisenhower's Farewell Speech, paying particular attention to his concerns about the potentially negative impact of Federal funding on science. Remember -- Eisenhower had been President of Columbia U before becoming President of the USA.

    How do individuals make up their minds about issues? It seems you are demonstrating that many individuals first look at what other people in the herd are doing and then run in that direction. Peer Pressure! Try thinking for yourself -- maybe we get it wrong, but at least we are using our brains and not allowing "peers" to bulldoze us in a particular direction.

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  10. Gavin Longmuir: Go and read up on the scientific method.

    We didn't say making an appeal to authority is the scientific method. An appeal to authority is a type of inductive argument, based on the experience that experts are more likely to be correct than non-experts in a field, though not infallibly so, and is evaluated as follows:

    • The cited authority has sufficient expertise.
    • The authority is making a statement within their area of expertise.
    • The area of expertise is a valid field of study.
    • There is adequate agreement among authorities in the field, and the authority is expressing this agreement.
    • There is no evidence of undue bias.

    The proper argument against a valid appeal to authority is to the evidence.

    Gavin Longmuir: Then come back and explain where "consensus" fits in to true science, where nothing is ever settled

    Everyone, including scientists, rely on the work of others. Regardless, evidence trumps, and science can be said to be an empirical method of challenging the prevailing consensus.

    Gavin Longmuir: -- and even the longest-standing theory tumbles if a single observation is at odds with that theory.

    That's a bit of an exaggeration. The anomalous precession of the orbit of Mercury didn't cause Newton's Theory to tumble. It was just recast as Newton's Theory (excepting that anomaly thingy). Even direct observations can have a multitude of confounding factors.

    "All models are wrong. Some are useful." — George E. P. Box

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  11. I would give more weight to Donna's points if the evidence was not right there in front of us. No matter what you do you will still stand a good chance of getting the disease. Destroying the economy to prevent it strikes me as really stupid.
    With regard to the words of Z,

    I doubt the expertise of the specified authorities. They have gooned it big time and appear to have been responsible for the gain in function research that led to this debacle.

    The authorities making their statements have contracted their own statements over and over again. How do you explain that? Are they wrong, partly wrong, mostly wrong or just not all that expert?

    The valid field of study is an interesting one don't you think? Every social medium and spokesman for authority dictats has banned any speech that contravenes the "authority" and when I say banned, I mean banned and expelled from the internets and even professional associations. That's not a good sign that we're hearing the results of valid studies when one bunch squelches every voice that says otherwise.

    I think you'll find that when you suppress all dissenting voices you get adequate agreement among authorities in the field." That's what's happening now.

    The bias is all around but some cannot see it and refuse to believe it could be there.

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  12. That's the problem with censorship: the censorers lose all their credibility. They think they're protecting people from dangerous bad ideas, but what they're really doing is causing people to doubt the censors' party line. That's bad policy, but it's particularly bad if the censors actually have some valuable information and need to get it out.

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  13. HMS Defiant: No matter what you do you will still stand a good chance of getting the disease.

    When social distancing and masks are ubiquitous, the level of virus in the population is significantly reduced, and with it, the level of virus load acquired and the probability of infection.

    HMS Defiant: The authorities making their statements have contracted their own statements over and over again.

    That's what happens when it's a rapidly evolving *novel* pathogen.

    HMS Defiant: Every social medium and spokesman for authority dictats has banned any speech that contravenes the "authority" and when I say banned, I mean banned and expelled from the internets and even professional associations.

    Private platforms can regulate speech, such as when people propagate falsehoods in the middle of a deadly crisis.

    What's interesting about social media is that they found out that they can keep people interested (and make oodles of money) by connecting them with like-minded people. That's great for knitting clubs, not so good when conspiracy theories spread.

    HMS Defiant: I think you'll find that when you suppress all dissenting voices you get adequate agreement among authorities in the field.

    You are confusing social media with the scientific community. Of course, scientists are biased. And sure, scientists tend to be very conservative, but the scientific community will bend to evidence. That's why what you hear about COVID has changed over time. If you have the evidence, then you can get published. Just don't be surprised if nonsense is treated as nonsense.

    Texas99: They think they're protecting people from dangerous bad ideas, but what they're really doing is causing people to doubt the censors' party line.

    Social media has created highly concentrated information bubbles, which has allowed nonsense to be treated as substantive.

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  14. Blogger HMS Defiant said...
    "I would give more weight to Donna's points if the evidence was not right there in front of us. No matter what you do you will still stand a good chance of getting the disease. Destroying the economy to prevent it strikes me as really stupid."

    What evidence are you referring to that I'm not seeing?

    What did I write that makes you think I would prefer destroying the economy to prevent this? Is getting vaccinated going to do that? Is standing a few feet apart in the checkout lane disastrous to business? Mask-wearing created business opportunities.

    I disliked the mandated extra unemployment benefits and especially disliked how long they lasted. The ban on collecting rent/mortgage payments was ridiculous. We'll be paying economically for a long time for both of those and neither of them did anything to stop the spread of Covid.

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  15. Donna: "We'll be paying economically for a long time for both of those and neither of them did anything to stop the spread of Covid."

    Yes indeed, Donna. We will be paying economically for a lot of bad Lock Down decisions made by our bureaucrats & politicians. And paying in health terms too.

    You are pointing to a key issue which our Best & Brightest completely ignored -- decisions about public health involve trade-offs. For example, we can make vehicles much safer in crashes to save lives and reduce injuries. But doing so inevitably increases the size & weight of the vehicle making it less fuel efficient. There is no free lunch.

    Think back over the course of Project Fear -- how often did you hear about senior officials acknowledging the trade-offs and justifying their decisions? Did you hear them apologizing to the relatives of the young people who committed suicide because of the Lock Downs? How often did you hear them acknowledge that people with strokes, heart attacks, and cancer were dying because of delayed treatment while the medical system focused on saving the lives of other people with Covid?

    These are difficult balances to strike, because benefitting one group of people harms another group of people. Pretending that "Zero Covid" is the only thing that matters is false. We needed open discussion about the trade-offs -- but we did not get it.

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  17. You seem to be upset that people don't change their minds once they've come to a conclusion. And I agree that people should be open to change to some extent. However, at some level we should take Ephesians 4:14 to heart "As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of people, by craftiness in deceitful scheming;" Certainly we should be open to changing our minds, but we should do it carefully. As I read your take on covid-19, it seems that you too have not really changed your opinions much. Apparently you must have just had the right ones from the beginning. :)

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  18. Regarding the mask study, as with ALL things covid-19, there are alternative views. Since you are so interested in motivations, one criticism of the study "Is it possible that that highly moralistic framing and monetary incentives given to village elders for compliance might dissuade a person from reporting symptoms representing individual and collective moral failure—one that could cost the village money?"

    And yes, this guy is as angry as you: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/bangladesh-mask-study-do-not-believe

    My position from the beginning (proving your point?), is not that masks have no efficacy, but that it is small when used in a public setting and this study, even if it is taken at face value, would show relatively small impacts on infectivity (altho "small" is in the eye of the beholder).

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  19. Brad: As I read your take on covid-19, it seems that you too have not really changed your opinions much.

    Assistant Village Idiot: "Way back in early 2020 I thought we might have much less problem on this side of the Atlantic. . . . Well, things spiked quickly, as you well know."

    Meanwhile, others kept repeating that COVID was no big deal, a hoax, no worse than the seasonal flu, even as hundreds of thousands were dying.

    Brad: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/bangladesh-mask-study-do-not-believe

    this one would get you laughed out of a 7th grade science fair.

    Any analysis of a scientific study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research that starts like that is probably not serious.

    1. establish the starting condition.

    They tested for exposure to COVID at the start of the experiment.

    2. randomize cohorts into even groups in terms of start state and risk.

    The population is very large 342 thousand, 600 villages) so random fluxes will be minimized.

    3. isolate the variable you seek to measure.

    The study shows that mask promotion worked to increase mask usage, social distancing, and reduce infection. That doesn't "prove" masks were the primary cause of reduced infection, but it is strong evidence.

    Brad: My position from the beginning (proving your point?), is not that masks have no efficacy, but that it is small when used in a public setting

    When dealing with exponential growth, small changes in initial conditions can have very large changes in outcomes.

    Brad: and this study, even if it is taken at face value, would show relatively small impacts on infectivity (altho "small" is in the eye of the beholder).

    They showed the reduction represented significant savings, as well as reduced human suffering.

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  20. Brad: can anyone demonstrate that this data makes a more compelling case for “masks worked on old people but not young people and thus decreased overall disease”?

    See Table A17 from the study.

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  21. The mask study seems to have cost $3 million. That seems to work out to $87 per person, for a 20 week study, including follow-up. So, a year's intervention for the US population would be $76 billion.

    Is there any place for cost/benefit analysis in the "masks work" argument?

    We may be seeing 20% inflation in the future, so perhaps that doesn't seem to be a large sum. I think it's a large sum. I also observe at social gatherings people don't mask "properly." The Met Gala ball is a case in point. Long term, servants masking and elites not masked is poisonous.

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  22. Cranberry: That seems to work out to $87 per person, for a 20 week study, including follow-up.

    The study required more extensive testing, surveys, and monitoring; and therefore, cost significantly more than implementation.

    Cranberry: Is there any place for cost/benefit analysis in the "masks work" argument?

    Abaluck et al: "We estimate that a scaled version of our intervention being implemented in Bangladesh will cost about $1.50 per person, and between $10K and $52K per life saved, depending which estimate we use for excess deaths."

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  23. Zachriel,
    I said AVI hadn't changed opinions "much". Also, assuming a certain number would fall ill and then acknowledging that number was wrong is not exactly the same as changing an opinion.

    I agree that the tone of the blog I linked was problematic, hence my "he's as angry as you". Anyone that is going by "el gato" is not trying to get in a scientific journal. Which doesn't mean he's wrong.

    I would like to see some numbers regarding how much the transmission and infections would change based on the results of the study. I understand your "exponential" comment and would like to see a parametric analysis around how different the US would look. I could try it, but I wouldn't be sure of the results.

    I'm not sure you got the authors point when you pointed to Table A17, which was "first off, this proves conclusively that 'your mask does not protect me.' (though we already knew that) if it did, it would protect everyone, not just old people. but it didn’t. and the idea that it stopped old people from getting sick but not young people is similarly implausible. the odds on bet here is that old people were more inclined to please the researchers than young people and that they failed to report symptoms as a result."

    In any case, my main point in my "masking" comment was that AVI was making the point that this study was basically unassailable. Honestly, NOTHING seems unassailable in the time of covid. I linked to some criticism of the study, which much of it seemed plausible to me, if not to you.

    I appreciate your thoughtful comments.

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  25. Here is a link to a google sheet I created that shows various possibilities for transmissibility. Maybe you could state your assumptions and we could see the impact of a 10% change in transmissibility.
    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bz7C25jPiTGWIE2YkAReGOBbxBJWgtvpLfxJj5JFmD4/edit?usp=sharing

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  26. Brad: Here is a link to a google sheet I created that shows various possibilities for transmissibility.

    It's important to keep in mind that Reproduction Number is theoretical and actual transmissibility depends on human responses. The typical pattern is relaxation leading to increased spread followed by agitation leading to reduced spread. That makes the actual pattern dynamical.

    Also, the effectiveness of the vaccines are probably greater than 70% for the Delta variant, at least in the U.S., and if not, then boosters will be made available.

    In any case, you suggest several possible values for the effective Reproduction Number. Let's use 3. Assume one generation a week, and a 10% reduction in spread due to masking. After seven weeks, twice as many people will have become infected in a society that doesn't mask. In eleven weeks, more than three times as many people will have become infected in a society that doesn't mask.

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  27. Zachriel,
    I would disagree with your 70% since I have seen numbers as low as 40%, but since the data is all over he place, I included the 70%.

    You are right about the geometric progression as far as you take it. However, you neglect to point out the part where the population available for infection gets smaller. That is why an epidemic curve is bell shaped and not continuously upward.

    The other point is that a lower R value that is still above 1 will only flatten the curve and not stop continued infection of the population. Remember all the "flatten the curve" graphics? My point on the graph is that even high-ish vaccine efficacy and high vaccination rates will not stop the virus with Delta's high transmissibility. Vaccines looked like a good way to almost stop the pandemic with 95% efficacy and Ro of 3, but not so much with and Ro of 7 or more.

    So I am back to what material difference will masks make when we are almost all going to be exposed, even if masks "flatten the curve" a bit.

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  28. Unknown: However, you neglect to point out the part where the population available for infection gets smaller.

    Vaccinations and previous infections reduce R0—but the ratio remains the same. A 10% mask efficiency would reduce new infections by half over a seven week period. So, as more people acquire immunity, whether through vaccination or natural infections, the masks continue to slow the spread.

    Unknown: The other point is that a lower R value that is still above 1 will only flatten the curve and not stop continued infection of the population.

    Slowing the infection allows for implementation of other social measures, including vaccination and boosters as required. On the other hand, there's no accounting for perversely refusing to take simple measures against a dangerous pathogen, but that's humans for ya.

    --
    Notes on previous comment:

    Ceteris paribus, growth is exponential. In this case, R0 is the base, and generations or weeks are the exponent. Given R0 = 3, each person infects three others in a week, while each of those infect three others, and so on. By weeks, we have 3, 9, 27, 81, 243, 729, 2187. The expansion of new infections is, therefore, R0^W.

    After seven weeks, the infected population expands 3^7 = 2187 times. If the population wears masks, and given a 10% reduction in exposure so that R0 = 2.7, then the infected population would expand 2.7^7 = 1046 times. Masks therefore cut the number of new infections in half after seven weeks.

    The longer the expansion continues, the greater the effect of masking. After eleven weeks, the ratio is 3^11/2.7^11 ≈ 3.

    By the way, in this basic model, the value of R0 doesn't matter. The *ratios* remain the same.

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  29. Zach incorrectly asserted: "Ceteris paribus, growth is exponential."

    The more sophisticated, better informed view is that most growth processes are better described by a Logistic equation -- effectively an S-shaped curve.

    Professor Charles Handy made a small industry out of demonstrating the application of the S-shaped curve to real world examples.

    But exponential growth is more frightening, and thus gets pride of place among the proponents of Project Fear.

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  30. BTW, Brad is "unknown". Don't know why it didn't identify me.

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  31. Gavin Longmuir: Zach incorrectly asserted: "Ceteris paribus, growth is exponential."

    Ceteris paribus, holding other things constant.

    Gavin Longmuir: The more sophisticated, better informed view is that most growth processes are better described by a Logistic equation -- effectively an S-shaped curve.

    This is not a logistic equation:
    https://ktla.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2020/11/AP20318623472781.jpg

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  32. In a complex world in which more things are usually going on than in the little segment we're myopically focused on, ceterus doesn't stay paribus for long. All the little temporary exponential curves start colliding and moderating each other. The whole world isn't 100% stocked with E. coli, for instance, to the exclusion of all other life forms.

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  33. Texas99: ceterus doesn't stay paribus for long

    Quite so! If humans continue to reproduce at their current rate, about 1% per year, they will swallow the Sun in just a few thousand years.

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