Physics and Biology vs. Politics

[_MeDotOrg]

I've been watching Chernobyl on HBO, and I've been struck by how the crisis was precipitated by the gap between the mythos and the logos of Soviet society. Given the right circumstances, the disparity between a society's beliefs and the statutory expression of those beliefs can create a disaster.

In the case of the Soviet Union, physics and politics clashed at Chernobyl. In the United states, biology and politics clashed at the CDC.

When does a a society's mythos blind it to consequences of the logos, and what can happen? In the case of Chernobyl, the political needs and ideological dictates of the Government helped create the chain of decisions resulting in one of the great man-made catastrophes in history. One day in the life of the Soviet State.

In the case of Covid-19, the problem is not physics, but biology. Both tragedies are born of the same tragic supposition: That the needs of the state can override scientific reality.

Both situations were caused by the state's inability to recognize and accept the scientific evidence that that they could not safely do what they wanted to do. The Government apparatus at Chernobyl wanted to run a test under extraordinarily unsafe conditions, so they could get the reactor back up to full strength as soon as possible. In the United States, relaxing social distancing standards in schools and businesses, and ignoring testing and contact tracing.

I was struck by this line from the movie:

Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid.

[_subgenius]

Your assuming facts not in evidence. The "science" on COVID-19 has been inconsistent and to this day has been understandably "evolving".
This is why it's incredibly difficult to make decisions solely "on the science", because with new topics, often the science is inconsistent and without real world circumstances.
Love canal, 3 mile Island, Kansas Hilton, and even legionnaires disease all seem so blatantly obvious when viewed post-mortem.
Hindsight is 20/20.

[_MeDotOrg]

Your assuming facts not in evidence. The "science" on COVID-19 has been inconsistent and to this day has been understandably "evolving".
This is why it's incredibly difficult to make decisions solely "on the science", because with new topics, often the science is inconsistent and without real world circumstances.
Love canal, 3 mile Island, Kansas Hilton, and even legionnaires disease all seem so blatantly obvious when viewed post-mortem.
Hindsight is 20/20.

It wasn't evolving science that said that churches should open on Easter Sunday. It wasn't evolving science that said the virus would disappear like a miracle. It wasn't evolving science that caused early alarm bells from the cdc to be ignored. The United States has around 4% of the world's population and nearly 25% of the fatalities. Virtually every other industrialized country did FAR better at protecting their citizens. The science didn't evolve differently in the United States, the political paradigm responded to it differently.

What should have driven the response to the Pandemic was the health and safety of Americans. Donald Trump perceived the virus as a threat to his re-election because of the near depression level economic slowdown. Quite frankly, the Trump Administration feared an economic disaster more than a biological one. From time to time human beings need to be reminded that all of the systems that we think we control are dependent upon our biological genome. The health of the genome is the foundation of our economy, not the other way round.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

This might make sense in this thread. That’s what we’re dealing with.

https://i.redd.it/f0kj7zr4sik51.png

- Doc

[_Dr Exiled]

We definitely need to do a postmortem on this. The right is touting the new numbers from the cdc that show that only 6% of covid-19 deaths are caused solely by covid-19. Is that relevant? If covid-19 compounds and compromises a person with other health issues that lead to death, the person still died. So, is the 6% a meaningless number? Even so, did we need to kill the economy to stop this or was there another way such as quarantining those with other health issues and the elderly while the rest of us continued on? What role did politics play in this? Did Trump's delay in February make a difference or would the numbers have been bad regardless? There are monetary incentives to claim covid-19 as a cause of death, did that affect the numbers in this country? Do other countries give monetary incentives to call deaths covid-19 deaths? What about hydroxychloroquine plus zinc plus z-pac? Why prohibit this when certain doctors claim this helps? Regarding vaccines, will the virus mutate like so many others, rendering the vaccine ineffective or not that effective? The Flu vaccine routinely hovers around 50% effectiveness. Is that all we can hope for?

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

How many people died solely of an HIV infection?

- Doc

[_Dr Exiled]

How many people died solely of an HIV infection?

- Doc

I don't know. That is why I think the 6% is a meaningless number and part of the political fog going on. There has been a lot of politics involved with this and that has been unfortunate.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

If I stab someone who has hemophilia and they bleed out and die did they die of a stab wound or a pre-existing condition? If COVID-19 induces some form of death with, say, an obese person did that person die from obesity-related causes or COVID? Why not just look at total deaths on average for any given year, and look at total deaths this year and come to a rational conclusion that COVID-19 is most likely responsible for the uptick?

- Doc

[Guest]

The most important thing to realize about the Kenosha killings and Trump's abhorrent reaction to it is this:

The president neglected to note that Rittenhouse was being chased after he had already shot someone.

We’ve come to expect this from Trump, who has an unbroken streak of not speaking ill of white people who support him (or Russian presidents who support him).

Earlier in the day, Biden gave a speech in Pittsburgh that posed a question many honest Americans are asking: “Does anyone believe that there’d be less violence in America if Trump was reelected?”

That question follows a weekend in which a Trump-supporting man associated with a far-right group called Patriot Prayers was shot dead on the street in Portland. It was a ghastly crime, as inexcusable as the double homicide in Kenosha that left a third protester injured.

But look at Biden’s response and Trump’s response and ask yourself which person is more likely to calm the waters.

In the immediate wake of the murder in Portland, Biden released a statement that read in part: “The deadly violence we saw overnight in Portland is unacceptable. Shooting in the streets of a great American city is unacceptable. I condemn this violence unequivocally. I condemn violence of every kind by any one, whether on the left or the right. And I challenge Donald Trump to do the same. It does not matter if you find the political views of your opponents abhorrent, any loss of life is a tragedy.”

In his Monday speech, Biden said: “Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It’s lawlessness — plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted.”

On Aug. 26, Biden condemned the rioting and looting that happened in Kenosha after the police shooting of Jacob Blake: “Protesting brutality is a right and absolutely necessary, but burning down communities is not protest, it’s needless violence, violence that endangers lives, violence that guts businesses and shutters businesses that serve the community. That’s wrong.”

The Washington Post detailed Trump’s Sunday response like this: “Starting before 6 a.m., Trump let loose a barrage of nearly 90 tweets and retweets touting his chances for reelection, attacking Democratic state and local officials over ongoing protests, and defending aggressive actions by his supporters in Portland, who appeared to be firing paintballs and pepper spray at people from pickup trucks as they drove through city streets on Saturday night.”

The president (of the previously United States of America) retweeted, without any context, a video that showed a Black man assaulting a white woman on a subway platform in New York City. The tweet blamed the incident on “Black Lives Matter /Antifa,” though the attack happened in 2019 and involved a serial offender who had no connection to Black Lives Matter or antifa. And the tweet the president shared came from a well-known white nationalist conspiracy theorist.

On Twitter that same day, the president referred to Black Lives Matters protesters as “agitators and thugs.” But it was all praise for the caravan of Trump supporters that descended on Portland, which included members of violent far-right groups like the Proud Boys. They drove huge trucks and waved Trump flags while shooting paintballs and spraying mace at protesters. Trump hailed them as “GREAT PATRIOTS!”

Most telling of all, of course, was the president’s defense of Rittenhouse. It’s notable this president only plays defense attorney when there’s a violent offender who supports him. Fine people on both sides, and all that.

The bottom line is this: President Trump blaming civil unrest in America on not-president Biden is one part time travel, one part authoritarian projection. But Trump’s tough-guy claim that he alone can end civil unrest is like a fox with a mouthful of feathers saying he alone can protect the henhouse.

Outgoing White House dishonesty spewer Kellyanne Conway said the quiet part out loud recently: “The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order.”

Take that, and then take these words from Biden’s statement after this weekend’s violence: “The job of a President is to lower the temperature. To bring people who disagree with one another together. To make life better for all Americans, not just those who agree with us, support us, or vote for us.”

Who do you think is more likely to bring calm? The one ginning up fear, retweeting racist videos and propping up pro-Trump caravans like they’re mobile Reichstag fires? Or the one who has consistently condemned violence and destruction, regardless of which side was responsible?

rhuppke@chicagotribune.com

All who still can't see how blazingly true the above all is, and still supports Trump, is severely deficient in both intelligence and basic humanity. They are most certainly not true followers of the teachings of Jesus Christ, in whom most of them claim to believe and worship!

[_Jersey Girl]

If this helps anything, here's how flu data is collected. You can see that our flu data is based on a combination of testing reports and death certificates. The data lags for up to 2 years behind. God only knows what the data on Covid will involve and how it will pan out 2-5 years from now. The CDC website doesn't really explain how data on Covid deaths are being collected.

No one knows wtf they're doing.

What methods are used to estimate the number of influenza-associated deaths in the U.S.?

The methods to estimate the annual number of influenza-associated deaths have been described in detail elsewhere (1-2). The model uses a ratio of deaths-to-hospitalizations in order to estimate the total influenza-associated deaths from the estimated number of influenza-associated hospitalizations.

We first look at how many in-hospital deaths were observed in FluSurv-NET. The in-hospital deaths are adjusted for under-detection of influenza using methods similar to those described above for hospitalizations using data on the frequency and sensitivity of influenza testing. Second, because not all deaths related to influenza occur in the hospital, we use death certificate data to estimate how likely deaths are to occur outside the hospital. We look at death certificates that have pneumonia or influenza causes (P&I), other respiratory and circulatory causes (R&C), or other non-respiratory, non-circulatory causes of death, because deaths related to influenza may not have influenza listed as a cause of death. We use information on the causes of death from FluSurv-NET to determine the mixture of P&I, R&C, and other coded deaths to include in our investigation of death certificate data. Finally, once we estimate the proportion of influenza-associated deaths that occurred outside of the hospital, we can estimate the deaths-to-hospitalization ratio.

Data needed to estimate influenza-associated deaths may lag for up to two years after the season ends. When this is not yet available for the season being estimated, we adjust based on values observed in prior seasons (e.g., the 2010-2011 season through the 2016-2017 season) and update the estimates when more current data become available.

Why doesn’t CDC base its seasonal flu mortality estimates only on death certificates that specifically list influenza?

Seasonal influenza may lead to death from other causes, such as pneumonia, congestive heart failure, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It has been recognized for many years that influenza is underreported on death certificates. There may be several reasons for underreporting, including that patients aren’t always tested for seasonal influenza virus infection, particularly older adults who are at greatest risk of seasonal influenza complications and death. Even if a patient is tested for influenza, influenza virus infection may not be identified because the influenza virus is only detectable for a limited number of days after infection and many people don’t seek medical care in this interval. Additionally, some deaths – particularly among those 65 years and older – are associated with secondary complications of influenza (including bacterial pneumonias). For these and other reasons, modeling strategies are commonly used to estimate flu-associated deaths. Only counting deaths where influenza was recorded on a death certificate would be a gross underestimation of influenza’s true impact.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/ho ... imates.htm