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A Critique on “Nobility of Covid-19 Nurses”

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James Lemon

Well-known member
Referring to this:

In between cases a nurse may crouch, head in arms, lean on a colleague, hide in a stairwell for a moment of solace, or stare at the sky out of any window to get distracted and catch their breath.

Meanwhile there’s news that another nurse doctor or janitor at the hospital died today!


At the end of the day, nurses go home, stretched to the limit and break down sobbing, or steel themselves to make dinner for their own family.

Asher

They should feel much better knowing that anyone 65 years and younger has a better chance of getting killed in a motor vehicle accident on the way to work than dying from the coronavirus. You make it sound like employees in hospitals are dying left,right,and center every day which is simply not true.
 
Last edited:

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Asher

They should feel much better knowing that anyone 65 years and younger has a better chance of getting killed in a motor vehicle accident on the way to work than from dying from the coronavirus. You make it sound like employees in hospitals are dying left,right,and center every day which is simply not true.
Your remark is so openly flippant! What is the relevance of motor vehicle accidents on the bravery of these nurses?

What has that to do with their noble, selfless and extraordinary risk-taking for others and their distinguished heroic self-sacrifice under continuous unrelenting psychological pressure and stress?

“Res ipsa loquitur”
 

James Lemon

Well-known member
What has that to do with their noble and selfless risk-taking for others and heroic self sacrifice.

“Res ipsa loquitur”

Asher

"Meanwhile there’s news that another nurse doctor or janitor at the hospital died today"!

Show me the evidence of nurses, doctors, and janitors dying in hospitals every day?
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
James,

Just focus on the nobility of the nurses and put aside your cynicism in this thread. Here I want to solely show our thanks to these very brave essential workers, daily taking stress and risk, far beyond any training and pay scale. Please be respectful.

I would hope that this remarkable collection of photographs would stir other thoughts.

Asher
 

James Lemon

Well-known member
James,

Just focus on the nobility of the nurses and put aside your cynicism in this thread. Here I want to solely show our thanks to these very brave essential workers, daily taking stress and risk, far beyond any training and pay scale. Please be respectful.

Asher

You should be more responsible with your statements or is that just some type of emotional blackmail? I don't appreciate your implication of being disrespectful.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
You should be more responsible with your statements or is that just some type of emotional blackmail? I don't appreciate your implication of being disrespectful.
I give up, James!

The facts speak for themselves. If you search you will find that wherever large groups of COVD patients are treated doctors, nurses and other hospital workers have died in almost every center where reports are made. This is a worldwide problem! In Newsweek it was reported of of a Study just one month ago! Already over 100 doctors and nurses killed then and increasing! In the U.K. here, USA, weeks ago, here.

Still, James, for the sake of argument, let’s imagine that deaths of health workers doesn’t occur. How would that change things?

Why did you still immediately dismiss the central core of “frontline nurses heroism”

......and change the subject to “road accidents”?

Really, James, how is that relevant to the bravery of the nurses?

Asher
 
Last edited:

James Lemon

Well-known member
I give up, James!

The facts speak for themselves. If you search you will find that wherever large groups of COVD patients are treated doctors, nurses and other hospital workers have died in almost every center where reports are made. In the U.K. here, USA, weeks ago, here

Let’s imagine that deaths of health workers doesn’t occur. How would that change things?

Why did you immediately dismiss the central core of “frontline nurses heroism” and change the subject to “road accidents”? Really, James, how is that relevant to the bravery of the nurses?

Asher

I did not dismiss anything and nor did I change the subject.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
As of April 9th the number of reported nurse and doctor deaths jumped from
100 to at least 199!

This is likely to climb considerably as the supplies of protective gear is in very short supply with major nation’s outbidding each other.

Asher
 

James Lemon

Well-known member
As of April 9th the number of reported nurse and doctor deaths jumped from
100 to at least 199!

This is likely to climb considerably as the supplies of protective gear is in very short supply with major nation’s outbidding each other.

Asher

However, despite acknowledgment of risk, the occupational death rate for healthcare workers is unknown. In contrast, the death rate for other professions with occupational risk, such as police officer or firefighter, has been well defined. With available information from federal sources and calculating the additional number of deaths from infection by using data on prevalence and natural history, we can estimate the annual death rate for healthcare workers from occupational events, including infection, is 17–57 per 1 million workers. However, a much more accurate estimate of risk is needed.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Policemen when they kissed their spouse goodbye, knew there was a tiny but real chance that that goodbye might be their last one!

Nurses have always been respected for their care. But suddenly they are front line warriors!

Nurses, (currently working in the USA, China, the U.K., Indonesia, Italy or elsewhere), until now, never expected to face a real possibility of dying just from doing their job.

That’s the point, Names!

Asher
 

Tom dinning

Registrant*
Ya gotta laugh.

It’s like watching a tennis match with a painless hand grenade.
Last one to duck!

I get ir, James. Asher can be a bit hyperbolic with his language some days and more than flowery with his choice of words, but his intentions are honourable.

If he were speaking of Australian medical staff, I’d be less emotional but always grateful. On any Sunday the care and compassion provided in our local hospital is second to none. Shifts are long, conditions are tough, expectations are high.
They get my respect even if their fixing my broken foot or checking my suspect rash.

At the moment there are some at risk depending on the ward they work. But that’s always the case. Tropical diseases urge punish the staff.

One thing is for sure, I haven’t met one who needs to be cheered when they leave work. A kind word, thanks, and an acknowledge seems sufficient.

I could,be skeptical to suggest that the hype might be to enable the audience to feel better. Public display of gratitude seems a bit garish and patronising for my taste.

It’s like someone dies and everyone says nice things.
I’m quite content in having thanked my medical contacts well in advance of a pandemic. Let’s see. Birth of my child, caring for my mother in palliative care, saving my life once or twice, fixing my hip, repairing me after a motorcycle accident, saving Christine from the fate of cervical cancer,...............

James. Lighten up a bit. And Ash, we don’t need reminding. But I get it with you.
 

James Lemon

Well-known member
Policemen when they kissed their spouse goodbye, knew there was a tiny but real chance that that goodbye might be their last one!

Nurses have always been respected for their care. But suddenly they are front line warriors!

Nurses, (currently working in the USA, China, the U.K., Indonesia, Italy or elsewhere), until now, never expected to face a real possibility of dying just from doing their job.

That’s the point, Names!

Asher

This is nothing new on the front lines of healthcare workers Asher

The fundamental ethic of health care is that sick persons must receive care . This premise carries an unstated consequence: an occupational risk to healthcare workers who respond to the needs of contagious patients. This predicament was shown yet again during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic. As often occurs when infectious disease outbreaks are caused by an emerging agent, healthcare workers were the group most affected. According to the World Health Organization, 8,098 cases occurred during the outbreak, and 774 (9.6%) persons died . Healthcare workers accounted for 1,707 (21%) of the cases . More specific information from outbreak hospitals in Hong Kong, Singapore, Guangdong Province , and Toronto showed that 378 (57%) of 667 cases occurred in healthcare workers or medical students.
 
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I have worked with a ward full of smallpox infected children. I never was scared as now!

@ Tom

Tom,

This is not calm well organized Australia.

My descriptions are every day reports of the worse places

Here we ignored warnings and so we became like Italy with all surgeries cancelled, 99% of effort devoted to Corona virus patients. Kids at home stresses out working parents so there are less nurses at work. Shifts become longer.

Very, very different from the mundane well run hospitals that fix your hip!

Your hip would not be fixed here if it wasn’t actually fractured! No way!

Essentially all elective surgeries ended a months ago or more.

The hospitals are still over-crowded. We have lines of refrigerated meat trucks serving as temporary morgues in some areas, as the funeral home are full and crematoriums can’t take more bodies either.

In New York there are mass graves in parks!

So cherish what you have down-under, Tom. We had that bliss too

The brutal thing is when we hear of such young people being taken by the virus.

Nursing homes could be considered the biggest tragedy from our neglect or just fate catching up with us!

But the young children and parents with kids suddenly going too is inescapably heart-wrenching.

We are overwhelmed, have no grasp on exact numbers infected or dying and a president who suggested we try injecting or ingesting bleach or disinfectant to cleans the body from the inside!

No, you live in a saner place at this moment. We here, are in the twilight zone!

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
This is nothing new on the front lines of healthcare workers Asher

The fundamental ethic of health care is that sick persons must receive care . This premise carries an unstated consequence: an occupational risk to healthcare workers who respond to the needs of contagious patients.

I am a physician and Virologist, have trained thousands of physicians and not only grown the viruses but also worked in an epidemic.

We never had to face such risks as now with the SARS, MERS and COVID-19 infections, where workers are now under imminent grave existential threat. The biggest risk was from a manic surgeon stabbing an errant resident with a scalpel! Essentially, if one worked as we were trained, getting the disease was a very distant risk and not part of any job assessment as it is now! This is all new!
 

Tom dinning

Registrant*
I have worked with a ward full of smallpox infected children. I never was scared as now!

@ Tom

Tom,

This is not calm well organized Australia.

My descriptions are every day reports of the worse places

Here we ignored warnings and so we became like Italy with all surgeries cancelled, 99% of effort devoted to Corona virus patients. Kids at home stresses out working parents so there are less nurses at work. Shifts become longer.

Very, very different from the mundane well run hospitals that fix your hip!

Your hip would not be fixed here if it wasn’t actually fractured! No way!

Essentially all elective surgeries ended a months ago or more.

The hospitals are still over-crowded. We have lines of refrigerated meat trucks serving as temporary morgues in some areas, as the funeral home are full and crematoriums can’t take more bodies either.

In New York there are mass graves in parks!

So cherish what you have down-under, Tom. We had that bliss too

The brutal thing is when we hear of such young people being taken by the virus.

Nursing homes could be considered the biggest tragedy from our neglect or just fate catching up with us!

But the young children and parents with kids suddenly going too is inescapably heart-wrenching.

We are overwhelmed, have no grasp on exact numbers infected or dying and a president who suggested we try injecting or ingesting bleach or disinfectant to cleans the body from the inside!

No, you live in a saner place at this moment. We here, are in the twilight zone!

Asher


I know all that, Ash, and am eternally grateful for my parents to have conceived me in Australia and hung around long enough for me to put my feet on the ground.

To a large we are the product of our history. As multicultural as it is, as different as the population could be in any country, we are all very similar. Few things divide us into clusters, classes, ethnicity, status.

It’s helps when this sort of thing occurs. The majority trust each other, trust the laws and those who enforce them, make them. We have a great deal of trust in what each member of the community does for the rest, no matter how insignificant the contribution. We have a dislike for Tall Poppies, glass ceilings, braggers.

We do expect people to do their job, though. The old saying: “you only have one thing to do “ is what we expect of everyone. This leads to an understanding that you don’t need to praise someone for doing their job, only when they do more than is required, not more than they expected.

Sure, there are some things that might occur that are totally unexpected. Like a nurse getting stabbed as she treats someone in emergency. But that’s not so much an extra duty to contend with. It’s expected that such a thing could occur. It’s the employer that hasn’t done their job in providing appropriate levels of security.

It’s tough, I know. And it might even be tougher during this pandemic or a war or in an outback community.
But tough is tough.

Expect the worst: take what you can get, deal with the rest, do your job to the best of your ability, expect no thanks, demand no respect.

That’s pretty much any job description.

That’s pretty much how we do it.

And if we don’t like what our politicians do we piss them off quick smart.

All that enables our relatively small population stuck on a large mostly desolate island between the Indian and Pacific Oceans to be quietly better at getting along with each other and calmly dealing with a crisis.

All I can say about the US is : How the fuck did you ever let it happen?
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
The suppressed right wing hardly educated whites were angry deep down that they see on TV, black men reading the news, mayors in major cities black or brown and seethe at the insult of a black President Obama!

They trusted Trump to straighten things out and voted for him!

Asher
 

Tom dinning

Registrant*
The suppressed right wing hardly educated whites were angry deep down that they see on TV, black men reading the news, mayors in major cities black or brown and seethe at the insult of a black President Obama!

They trusted Trump to straighten things out and voted for him!

Asher

I understand that.
I haven’t met any of these suppressed right wingers you mention. They must keep to themselves.

My thinking is that to some extent everyone is in some way responsible.
Didn’t you see this coming?
Is the system so broke that it allows an ignorant narcissist run the place?
That’s not democracy. That’s sheer idiocy.
And what are you doing about preventing it from happening again?
Running a country ain’t no game. It’s serious. You can’t give that job to anyone. Yet that’s what we hear.
“Anyone can become the president.”
Now see where it got you.
Someone took their eye of the ball: collectively speaking.
You can’t hold up your hands and blame when your part of the system.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I understand that.
I haven’t met any of these suppressed right wingers you mention. They must keep to themselves.
They are the folk who packed our President’s rallies. Almost all the Republican senators and congressmen are totally intimidated by him. Almost no one will criticize him. It doesn’t matter how crazy his positions are. He has over 90% support of folk who vote “Republican”

The evangelical Christians, might intensely dislike him for these followers,

.....but totally support him as that way they get the right-wing politically motivated judges appointed to the Supreme Court who will reverse all the gains by women and gays: no more abortions is the goal and end gay marriages!

Vice President Pence, a born again Christian, considers him a messenger from God who has been sent to bring back an era of Christ!

If you haven’t heard of this you must be really really isolated from world news.

1. He has undone thousands of Environmental and workplace protection laws.

2. He has withdrawn the USA from the Climate Change meetings and commitments.

3. He considers man made or any “Global Warming” fake news!

4. He dismissed the danger of this virus in the first 6 weeks in the same way.

5. He has refused to use his powers to order companies to make supplies we need as he doesn’t want to decrease the power of middlemen!

6. He made the States actually “Compete with one another in a free market” for masks, gowns, ventilators and test kits!

Everything I have said here is instantly confirmed by a Google search. Nothing here is my “concoction” or interpretation!

But I think “you get it” without me, as it looks like idiocy, as you point out! In a society that is evenly split down the middle between two contentious political parties, the rallying of an extra slice of 10% ultraloyal supporters gave him the Presidency and then everyone fell in line.

Asher
 

James Lemon

Well-known member
The suppressed right wing hardly educated whites were angry deep down that they see on TV, black men reading the news, mayors in major cities black or brown and seethe at the insult of a black President Obama!

They trusted Trump to straighten things out and voted for him!

Asher

It will prove to be difficult climbing down from this mess as it is Asher. No need to throw fuel on blazing a fire. Also everyone acted on a report from Imperial college of London that was never published or peer reviewed?


Months ago, before the pandemic sky fell around us, many people rightfully doubted or scoffed at computer models that predicted, say, where a hurricane would make landfall or who was guaranteed to win a presidential election. The people of Florida and the supporters of Hillary Clinton might happily tell the experts behind those predictions what they should do with their computer models.

It was a world-is-ending projection two weeks ago of as many as 500,000 dead in the United Kingdom and as many as 2.2 million dead in the United States, offered up by professor Neil Ferguson and his team at Imperial College London, that fired up the media’s panic machine. However, overlooked in the hyper-reaction was that this was an unlikely worst-case scenario based on nothing being done to stop the virus’s spread. And Ferguson (who reportedly contracted the virus himself) subsequently cut the projected number of British deaths in half as the government there ramped up its response — and has since drastically scaled it back yet again, to fewer than 20,000 deaths in Britain. As the National Review correctly points out, “Models like this will always turn out to be wrong in some way or other, because they rely on very strong assumptions about aspects of the disease we haven’t thoroughly studied yet. If nothing else, the original Imperial model will be obsolete soon."


As Carl Cannon, Washington bureau chief and executive editor of RealClearPolitics, recently wrote, political bias and social “wokeness” infect everything. From news, sports, weather and entertainment to the food we eat, everything is politicized — even, sadly but not surprisingly, science and medicine and even something as frightening and life-disrupting as the COVID-19 coronavirus, as we saw this past week when the Senate and then the House fought over the terms of a relief package for a nation in virtual lockdown.

With regard to the virus itself, however, the only things that can help us deal with it effectively are facts, truths and evidence, which, unfortunately, seem to be in as short supply as ventilators, face masks and other emergency material.

Indeed, much of the problem in determining the best responses — medically, socially, financially and otherwise — is that we still don’t know enough about COVID-19 beyond its apparent high mortality rate for older people, especially those with underlying medical conditions. Yet is there another side to the “sky-is-falling” models that are driving much of our responses? Are we not allowed to explore the arguments from acclaimed experts in the field without being accused of being partisan hacks or science deniers?

Logic and simple survival would seem to suggest that we all would celebrate if the world-is-ending models were proved to be dramatically wrong. And it seems that a few brave souls indeed are questioning some of the conventional wisdom.

In an article in the Los Angeles Times, Nobel laureate and Stanford biophysicist Michael Levitt throws a hope-inducing bucket of cold water on the nonstop alarmism being repeated by some in the media and in public office. Levitt says unnecessary panic has been created by focusing on the relentless increase in the cumulative number of cases and spotlighting celebrities who contract the virus. “What we need is to control the panic,” he writes. “We’re going to be fine.”

Levitt studied the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide in January and correctly calculated that China would get through the worst of its outbreak long before many health experts predicted it would. He now predicts a similar outcome for the United States and the rest of the world.

As we are reminded constantly by some media, many health experts predict that months or even more than a year of social distancing will be necessary and that the virus will cause millions of deaths. Levitt, on the other hand, states that his data do not support that doom-and-gloom outcome — just the opposite, in fact.



In the 1960s, during the glory days of NASA, trailblazing astronauts said of faulty predictions from human-programmed computers, “Garbage in, garbage out.” Computer-generated models and predictions may have their place but, when dealing with a pandemic that shuts down the globe, nothing substitutes for firsthand analysis utilizing patients in affected areas.

That is the point of another Stanford professor of medicine and epidemiology, John Ioannidis. In an article for Stat, Ioannidis breaks down why our governments are making decisions without reliable data or based upon flawed models.

The Hoover Institution’s Richard Epstein also waves a flag of caution regarding the COVID-19 dashboards that many news networks and online sites now prominently feature. Epstein’s analysis shows that COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. and worldwide will be dramatically fewer than many have predicted — possibly even fewer than the Hong Kong flu of 1968, the swine flu pandemic of 2009-2010 or seasonal influenza, which can claim hundreds of lives a day.

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthc...s-falling-coronavirus-models-are-simply-wrong
 
Last edited:

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
James,

Where are you gleaning all this hype from and why insert much of it twice. Is this some essay from another source that you are copying “en block”, LOL!

As to models. All initially have to be merely tentative and partly plain wrong. Don’t “reveal that inherent fact” as some “discovery”!

Models get refined as better and better data is acquired.

That is how the Israeli’s missile defenses work. As the incoming projectiles are tracked, the paths are calculated with such great precision that ultimately, a costly but accurate counter-weapon is only fired where the incoming missile is otherwise going to hit a precious human habitat.

The same has happened with various models of this epidemic: they start very crude but move towards useful accuracy. That’s the nature of the emerging science. We now have enough data and competing models that public health agencies can make better contingency plans.

Of course right wing talking heads can use endless early models to show inadequacies. But that’s the set of rifles we had at the onset. Now we are far more knowledgeable.

It’s as simple as this: every hospital plans for maternity capacity based on experience and projections for their catchment area. We never suddenly have 10 times the number of babies popping that night than expected! Same with motor vehicle accidents, hernia surgeries and every other malady. When there is a train wreck or earthquake, we have a contingency for that. Responders train just for that.

COVID-19 simply outstripped our supply of needed services on an international level. That’s why it’s so bad. There has been no overreaction, but just the opposite and a window on the degrades health of the working poor and neglected all over the world!

We will do our best and reach a new normal, where the deaths will be just as tragic, (but like motor vehicle accidents), a terrible ongoing cost that we hope to address better!

Human societies were able to take drastic measures to their degree of authoritarian governance, hence China’s draconian response and earlier success!

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
It will prove to be difficult climbing down from this mess as it is Asher. No need to throw fuel on blazing a fire. Also everyone acted on a report from Imperial college of London that was never published or peer reviewed?


Months ago, before the pandemic sky fell around us, many people rightfully doubted or scoffed at computer models that predicted, say, where a hurricane would make landfall or who was guaranteed to win a presidential election. The people of Florida and the supporters of Hillary Clinton might happily tell the experts behind those predictions what they should do with their computer models.

It was a world-is-ending projection two weeks ago of as many as 500,000 dead in the United Kingdom and as many as 2.2 million dead in the United States, offered up by professor Neil Ferguson and his team at Imperial College London, that fired up the media’s panic machine. However, overlooked in the hyper-reaction was that this was an unlikely worst-case scenario based on nothing being done to stop the virus’s spread. And Ferguson (who reportedly contracted the virus himself) subsequently cut the projected number of British deaths in half as the government there ramped up its response — and has since drastically scaled it back yet again, to fewer than 20,000 deaths in Britain. As the National Review correctly points out, “Models like this will always turn out to be wrong in some way or other, because they rely on very strong assumptions about aspects of the disease we haven’t thoroughly studied yet. If nothing else, the original Imperial model will be obsolete soon."


As Carl Cannon, Washington bureau chief and executive editor of RealClearPolitics, recently wrote, political bias and social “wokeness” infect everything. From news, sports, weather and entertainment to the food we eat, everything is politicized — even, sadly but not surprisingly, science and medicine and even something as frightening and life-disrupting as the COVID-19 coronavirus, as we saw this past week when the Senate and then the House fought over the terms of a relief package for a nation in virtual lockdown.

With regard to the virus itself, however, the only things that can help us deal with it effectively are facts, truths and evidence, which, unfortunately, seem to be in as short supply as ventilators, face masks and other emergency material.

Indeed, much of the problem in determining the best responses — medically, socially, financially and otherwise — is that we still don’t know enough about COVID-19 beyond its apparent high mortality rate for older people, especially those with underlying medical conditions. Yet is there another side to the “sky-is-falling” models that are driving much of our responses? Are we not allowed to explore the arguments from acclaimed experts in the field without being accused of being partisan hacks or science deniers?

Logic and simple survival would seem to suggest that we all would celebrate if the world-is-ending models were proved to be dramatically wrong. And it seems that a few brave souls indeed are questioning some of the conventional wisdom.

In an article in the Los Angeles Times, Nobel laureate and Stanford biophysicist Michael Levitt throws a hope-inducing bucket of cold water on the nonstop alarmism being repeated by some in the media and in public office. Levitt says unnecessary panic has been created by focusing on the relentless increase in the cumulative number of cases and spotlighting celebrities who contract the virus. “What we need is to control the panic,” he writes. “We’re going to be fine.”

Levitt studied the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide in January and correctly calculated that China would get through the worst of its outbreak long before many health experts predicted it would. He now predicts a similar outcome for the United States and the rest of the world.

As we are reminded constantly by some media, many health experts predict that months or even more than a year of social distancing will be necessary and that the virus will cause millions of deaths. Levitt, on the other hand, states that his data do not support that doom-and-gloom outcome — just the opposite, in fact.

Months ago, before the pandemic sky fell around us, many people rightfully doubted or scoffed at computer models that predicted, say, where a hurricane would make landfall or who was guaranteed to win a presidential election. The people of Florida and the supporters of Hillary Clinton might happily tell the experts behind those predictions what they should do with their computer models.

It was a world-is-ending projection two weeks ago of as many as 500,000 dead in the United Kingdom and as many as 2.2 million dead in the United States, offered up by professor Neil Ferguson and his team at Imperial College London, that fired up the media’s panic machine. However, overlooked in the hyper-reaction was that this was an unlikely worst-case scenario based on nothing being done to stop the virus’s spread. And Ferguson (who reportedly contracted the virus himself) subsequently cut the projected number of British deaths in half as the government there ramped up its response — and has since drastically scaled it back yet again, to fewer than 20,000 deaths in Britain. As the National Review correctly points out, “Models like this will always turn out to be wrong in some way or other, because they rely on very strong assumptions about aspects of the disease we haven’t thoroughly studied yet. If nothing else, the original Imperial model will be obsolete soon."

In the 1960s, during the glory days of NASA, trailblazing astronauts said of faulty predictions from human-programmed computers, “Garbage in, garbage out.” Computer-generated models and predictions may have their place but, when dealing with a pandemic that shuts down the globe, nothing substitutes for firsthand analysis utilizing patients in affected areas.

That is the point of another Stanford professor of medicine and epidemiology, John Ioannidis. In an article for Stat, Ioannidis breaks down why our governments are making decisions without reliable data or based upon flawed models.

The Hoover Institution’s Richard Epstein also waves a flag of caution regarding the COVID-19 dashboards that many news networks and online sites now prominently feature. Epstein’s analysis shows that COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. and worldwide will be dramatically fewer than many have predicted — possibly even fewer than the Hong Kong flu of 1968, the swine flu pandemic of 2009-2010 or seasonal influenza, which can claim hundreds of lives a day.

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthc...s-falling-coronavirus-models-are-simply-wrong
Just for the record!
 

James Lemon

Well-known member
James,

Where are you gleaning all this hype from and why insert much of it twice. Is this some essay from another source that you are copying “en block”, LOL!

As to models. All the models initially have to be wrong. Don’t “reveal that inherent fact” as a “discovery

Models get refined as better and better data is acquired. That is how the Israeli’s missile defenses work. As the incoming projectiles are tracked, the paths are calculated with such great precision that ultimately, a counter weapon is only fired where the incoming missile is going to hit a precious human habitat.

The same has happened with various models of this epidemic: they start very crude but move towards useful accuracy. That’s the nature of the emerging science. We now have enough data and competing models that public health agencies can make better contingency plans.

Of course right wing talking heads can use endless early models to show inadequacies. But that’s the set of rifles we had at the onset. Now we are far more knowledgeable.

It’s as simple as this: every hospital plans for maternity capacity based on experience and projections for their catchment area.

We never suddenly have 10 times the number of babies popping that night than expected!

Same with motor vehicle accidents, hernia surgeries and every other malady.

When there is a train wreck or earthquake, we have a contingency for that. Responders train just for that.

COVID-19 simply outstripped our supply of needed services or an international level. That’s why it’s so bad. We will do our best and reach a new normal where deaths will be just as tragic, but like motor vehicle accidents, a terrible ongoing cost that we hope to address better!

Human societies were able to take drastic measures to their degree of authoritarian governance, hence China’s draconian response and earlier success!

Asher

Yes I provided a link at the bottom. I omitted the double paragraphs but its not hype compared to some of the fear mongering articles you have presented us with. The point is action was taken without evidence.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Yes I provided a link at the bottom. I omitted the double paragraphs but its not hype compared to the fear mongering articles you have presented us with.
The difference, James, is that I am trained, qualified, proven, well read, experienced and relatively up to date on the science of the matter. What I read are the maize of original peer-reviewed science articles that I have just the skills to comprehend sufficiently.

... ..and thus attempt to filter to a far better degree. Still my conclusions are always tentative! I too have to reappraise and refine my understanding with each day’s flood of news.

However, I am no COVID-19 “expert”, as I have no frontline responsibility and none of the resources necessary to hone my skills to an actionable level.

Your quote, of “certainties”, by contrast, especially having as part of its obtuse coloring, reference to Hilary Clinton, the “hyper arch-enemy” of the crazy right, LOL, stands out as unprocessed “Red Meat” for Fox News and Breitbart audiences!
 

James Lemon

Well-known member
The difference, James, is that I am trained, qualified, proven, well read, experienced and relatively up to date on the science of the matter. What I read are the maize of original peer-reviewed science articles that I have just the skills to comprehend sufficiently.

... ..and thus attempt to filter to a far better degree. Still my conclusions are always tentative! I too have to reappraise and refine my understanding with each day’s flood of news.

However, I am no COVID-19 “expert”, as I have no frontline responsibility and none of the resources necessary to hone my skills to an actionable level.

Your quote, of “certainties”, by contrast, especially having as part of its obtuse coloring, reference to Hilary Clinton, the “hyper arch-enemy” of the crazy right, LOL, stands out as unprocessed “Red Meat” for Fox News and Breitbart audiences!

Oh it was in response to your Trump,Obama reference that might be considered red meat for CNN. The same folks who six months ago would like us to believe that we are all going to die from C02 poisoning or drowning from sea level rise in a hundred years. Is that the same red meat you are referring to.. based on the same types of computer models you love so much?
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Oh it was in response to your Trump,Obama reference that might be considered red meat for CNN. The same folks who six months ago would like us to believe that we are all going to die from C02 poisoning or drowning from sea level rise in a hundred years. Is that the same red meat you are referring to.. based on the same types of computer models you love so much?
CNN is vegetarian, LOL!

But you have always been dismissive of climate change, as constant as the Northern Star. We do actually need contagonists or otherwise we’d need to build windmills!

Asher
 

James Lemon

Well-known member
CNN is vegetarian, LOL!

But you have always been dismissive of climate change, as constant as the Northern Star. We do actually need contagonists or otherwise we’d need to build windmills!

Asher

Exactly all the proof will be in the pudding this time next year. I do not dismiss climate change, the sea levels have been rising for 12 thousand years already. I am skeptical of the the idea that some diabolical force is purposefully trying to destroy the planet though. Those vegetarians, are killing too many plants as it is, but that's another topic.
 

Tom dinning

Registrant*
They are the folk who packed our President’s rallies. Almost all the Republican senators and congressmen are totally intimidated by him. Almost no one will criticize him. It doesn’t matter how crazy his positions are. He has over 90% support of folk who

But I think “you get it” without me, as it looks like idiocy, as you point out! In a society that is evenly split down the middle between two contentious political parties, the rallying of an extra slice of 10% ultraloyal supporters gave him the Presidency and then everyone fell in line.

Asher

I gave up reading about the US and it’s bizarre behaviour some time back. Nothing surprises me any more.

My question still stands. It’s the same question my father would have asked me, the same one I have asked many students, the same if it were my great grand daughter.

What are YOU going to do about it?

Complaining does fuck all to change things. Except your blood pressure, perhaps.

Make a list of all the things you can do to make a difference and to change what you cannot tolerate.

Or is that the problem. You tolerate.

Doing nothing is the same as tolerate and toleration is the end of change.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Tom,

I don’t complain much, rather I simply report and do my best to give back to society the best I can.

As to changing our sorry situation, it’s our own responsibility to use democracy to have a power clean out! We are divided as a nation.

Even in Australia, aren’t there big discussions about increased mining of ore for China and in turn China flooding the country with low cost products that decimate local industries

Here we almost speak two different languages of values.

We can’t even discuss topics easily where we are so divided by our views of what is factual!

Our biggest challenges come from our own Republican Party leaders almost total lack of knowledge of biological science. This ignorance is made far worse by the confounding negative effects of hereditary “opinions”, magical thinking, religion and xenophobia.

What’s amazing is that Trump stirs relatively poor working whites to enthusiastically support him, against their own interests, by promulgating vague nationalistic ideas of “America First”, that really draw on latent xenophobia and racism.

But at least we can make progress by defeating the worst of the bunch coming November! That means we have to leave our comfort zone and support candidates in “red states@ to get Democrats elected!

Asher
 

James Lemon

Well-known member
Tom,

I don’t complain much, rather I simply report and do my best to give back to society the best I can.

As to changing our sorry situation, it’s our own responsibility to use democracy to have a power clean out! We are divided as a nation.

Even in Australia, aren’t there big discussions about increased mining of ore for China and in turn China flooding the country with low cost products that decimate local industries

Here we almost speak two different languages of values.

We can’t even discuss topics easily where we are so divided by our views of what is factual!

Our biggest challenges come from our own Republican Party leaders almost total lack of knowledge of biological science. This ignorance is made far worse by the confounding negative effects of hereditary “opinions”, magical thinking, religion and xenophobia.

What’s amazing is that Trump stirs relatively poor working whites to enthusiastically support him, against their own interests, by promulgating vague nationalistic ideas of “America First”, that really draw on latent xenophobia and racism.

But at least we can make progress by defeating the worst of the bunch coming November! That means we have to leave our comfort zone and support candidates in “red states@ to get Democrats elected!

Asher

It would appear that the democratic party imploded during the Obama administration. What you are left with, is Trump and the MSM and that is the reality that you will wake up to come November.
 
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