Coronavirus - are we all doomed?

[vba_php]

 

[Minty]

What does N95 stands for?.

I thoutght this was an N95 - great little phone

 

[AccessBlaster]

View attachment 80656

Try the resizing function, it works a charm!

 

[AccessBlaster]

Why does CNN and MSNBC cut away [EVERYDAY] before the experts have a chance to talk to the world community?

I can only guess they are not interested in what Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr Deborah Birx have to say.

They cut away to start the bashing.

 

[Steve R.]

Why does CNN and MSNBC cut away [EVERYDAY] before the experts have a chance to talk to the world community?

I can only guess they are not interested in what Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr Deborah Birx have to say.

They cut away to start the bashing.

Yesterday, I was walking by the TV and I incidentally heard a female reporter ask Trump to explain some Covid-19 response deficiencies that an Inspector General had found. Trump asked her who the Inspector General was. She could NOT answer!!

It is good that Trump did not immediately respond to the question, but instead asked her to explain the source of her information (the report).

Journalism has sunk to a new low were a person attempting to push an adversarial question to make Trump look bad, is not even prepared to cite the report that she allegedly read. Another gross example of fake news.

 

[AccessBlaster]

A story CNN will not run.

 

[AccessBlaster]

 

[Jon]

Boris out of intensive care. Yay!

 

[AccessBlaster]

Boris out of intensive care. Yay!

Awesome news!

 

[AccessBlaster]

So are the models wrong? Regarding death projections. I'm starting hear grumbling from all sides.

 

[Slap]

The models are just that, models. The snowflakes won this time and we pandered to the worst case scenario. Reality is more people will likely die from the crippled global economy than would ever have done from coronavirus. They won't die tomorrow of course but over many years from reduced life expectancy..
Controversial yes but that's my take on it. Heaven knows what they do when covid-20+ comes along, nothing left in the tank!

 

[Steve R.]

So are the models wrong? Regarding death projections. I'm starting hear grumbling from all sides.

You are correct, there have been an increasing accusations concerning the accuracy of these models. Regrettably these attacks seem to be principally motivated by the political agenda of those attacking the models. Those attacking the legitimacy the models don't seem to want to acknowledge the extensive number of variables that a model has to depend on or that they are evolutionary as new data comes in. On a personal note: I don't like accusations that the models are "wrong". There is that old adage: "garbage in, garbage out". The models are not "wrong" in a literal sense but are an approximation of what to expect. Better than nothing.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Looking at the projections, I see that the predicted growth rate was exponential. The most serious problem with exponential growth models is their EXTREME sensitivity to noise levels - in this case more specifically, statistical noise. Also known as imperfect data. The model could be absolutely correct in form. Even so, if you have one parameter off by less than 5%, because of the nature of exponentials, your model could grow completely out of proportion to reality. And as we all know, life isn't perfect.

I am not making excuses for government models. I just know that people OFTEN tend to put too much trust in models. And models can NEVER be better than the data available to drive them.

 

[Jon]

I was going to chip in and talk about the large error bars when dealing with exponential projections. If something is doubling every 3 days, you could have figures showing 1/4 of the models prediction by being just 6 days out on your projections. Then I see both @Steve R. and The Doc have also commented on this. Similar arguments have been made against global warming predictions, since you can tweak the model to get the result you want. Just a little adjustment here, and a small one there, and voila! You have the world burning up! I won't get into the climate debate here, but just to say any model can be sensitive to the input variables, let alone the algo itself.

Edit: I am hoping @Pat Hartman's comments about the true mortality rate are true, since then we might have a faster way out of this crisis. I think only the antibody test will give us that answer. Apparently, early results seem to be that the population infection rate is in the single figures, or at least that is what they are suggesting in the daily briefing in the UK. If it was mid-single figures, say 5%, the mortality rate would be about 0.7% in the UK assuming we hit 20K deaths as the models predict.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Of course I could be totally unkind about this. Having seen the pollution maps of Wuhan and other hard-hit cities, this actually could be an engineered virus created by the global warming crowd to get us to stop using cars.

Actually I know it is a natural virus - but how long do you think it will take before someone SERIOUSLY makes that accusation? Or have I missed seeing such a thing that has already happened?

 

[Jon]

There is a biowarfare lab in Wuhan, so the accusations are already out there. However, the wet markets are their own lab of sorts, leading to the creation of all sorts of nasties.

 

[vba_php]

There is a biowarfare lab in Wuhan,

there is biowarefare everywhere Jon. governments are always contemplating it, aren't they?

 

[AccessBlaster]

There is a biowarfare lab in Wuhan, so the accusations are already out there. However, the wet markets are their own lab of sorts, leading to the creation of all sorts of nasties.

According to one report I saw, the bio lab(s) are adjacent to the wet market(s) in Wuhan.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

All the reports I have seen suggest that this is a "naturally" formed mutation of the general family of corona viruses and probably came from bats. The viruses might not be truly alive but they can be traced. For instance, it looks like what REALLY hit New York City was the European version of the virus, probably from people who were in Europe on holiday or business and came back BEFORE the symptoms started manifesting in Italy.

 

[AccessBlaster]

Yes the horseshoe bat was present in the lab, but not normally eaten or sold in the wet market. They do eat and sell other bats, but they are suspicious of the horseshoe.