COVID topic vol 2

[jacob]

Adjusting for population, the Japanese suicide rate is on par with the US.

In the US, COVID is now the third leading cause of death after cancer and heart disease; sometimes competing with and displacing these patients depending on triage conditions.

[nomadscientist]

Japan just does not have a whole lot of covid deaths, despite lockdowns being unconstitutional. An interesting situation that no one seems to find very interesting.

[jacob]

The CDC commission responsible for guiding the vaccine roll-out voted 13-1 in favor of allocating the first batch to both health care workers AND residents of long term care facilities. (There was some political noise about prioritizing one or the other.)

It is still up to the individual states whether to follow these guidelines or not.

[Viktor K]

“ A couple in Hawaii face reckless endangerment charges after they boarded a flight with their 4-year-old son even though they had tested positive for Covid-19, police said.”



https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1249753

[Ego]

Print offs from medical records are what is used today. However, with The COVID social phenomenon, I could see some national or state database issuing a card or add on to the IDs or the like.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/02/health/c ... ium=social

Vaccination clinics will also be reporting to their state immunization registries what vaccine was given, so that, for example, an entity could run a query if it didn't know where a patient got a first dose.

[classical_Liberal]

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[thrifty++]

So vaccine roll-outs. I see that the UK has approved Pfizer shots for roll outs already. Any people in the UK know how that is happening?

In NZ we are told we are expecting shots about March. The first tranche, for front line workers and vulnerable people. This is farther off than most places I hear. However, things have been feeling post-COVID here for some time and we are only at the beginning of summer. SO not too worried, provided we do get them in March! We are getting Pfizer and Moderna.

I heard that Canada is getting their shots in January. Is this true Canadians?

What is happening in other countries?

[UK-with-kids]

So vaccine roll-outs. I see that the UK has approved Pfizer shots for roll outs already. Any people in the UK know how that is happening?

From what I've read, because the checking process is different. The UK's MRHA apparently places more trust in the company's assessment of their data whereas the US authorities demand to see the data and run their own analysis on it. Fauci initially implied the decision in the UK had been rushed but he's since apologised for the remarks.

[chenda]

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IOW, proof of actually having antibodies, the goal of the vaccines, won't be enough. Rather you will have to prove taking a vaccine that may effectively create antibodies instead. Because, "science".

Maybe but I can't help thinking its administratively a lot easier to do it that way. No card no entry. Exemptions, even if scientifically sound, just create added confusion and bureaucratic complexity. And people who get the vaccine are probably more likely to have socially distanced, respected the rules etc.

[jacob]

If titers were accepted, I predict a finite number of "COVID parties" attended by those who think it's better to "get it the natural way". Similar to measles parties. This would be incompatible with trying to keep the case/death load down.

[classical_Liberal]

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[Loner]

Given lies like those, it's no surprise that the public's trust in our institutions is eroding. Especially with social media and the ubiquity of information, it's easier than ever to catch politicians and technocrats in their lies. The "Masks are useful/useless" propaganda made for some very good meme material. It's like in interpersonal relationships. It doesn't take much lying to ruin trust, and a lot of transparence and honestly to (re)build it. My reflex has also become, very often, to hold my belief and largely discount official discourse until I can build my own understanding, as far as my skills will permit. It's easy to blame the rubble for being so prone to conspiracy theories and believing nonsense, but their mistrust of officialdom is kind of justified. When you constantly feeds lies and distorted truths to the population, a fortiori by putting them at risk ("Don't buy masks, there's no point!"), your are kind of bringing about your own downfall.

[classical_Liberal]

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[jacob]

I guess the smart people (not me) saw that one coming. Social media (and the internet in general) has been subjected to "flood the zone"-style propaganda. First as an emergent behavior but then deliberately starting with special interest politics and now politics in general. "Flood the zone" puts out different versions of the truth: Not so much to provide alternative facts but to destroy trust in facts.

In that regard, the belief that "the answer to bad speech is more speech" is complete baloney since the destruction happens "one level up" at the epistemological stage. Facts don't matter when people can't tell them apart.

The "do your own research and make up your own mind" attitude is just the final nail in the coffin. "Doing your own research and gathering the argument for conclusion supported by facts" is waaaaayyyy more work than practically everybody is willing to put in for each and every issue. Instead truth becomes based on "feels" with "google affirmation".

We (the human race) are truly in over our heads at this point.

Some of this was covered in the recent podcast I was on: viewtopic.php?p=231904#p231904

To bring this back on topic, the reason flooding the zone works is that the propaganda is mostly inconsequential to the here and now in people's lives. This is even still the case with COVID. For a long time very few knew anyone who were infected so all they had was indirect information. On the other hand, now that COVID is more widespread one can at least take comfort in the fact that remaining misinformed (after almost 9 months) "only" has personal consequences and that being informed increases the odds of avoiding those consequences substantially. That is not always the case for a given issue.

[classical_Liberal]

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[Jean]

Basing oneself on facts was Always wrong. To tell if a story is true, you need to look for inconsistencies in it. It's very hard to tell à lier from one affirmation, but nearly every lier will add éléments that will make his story impossible. But then, you need to trust your own ability to notice inconsistencies and not lie to yourself.
More data is really a good answer to wrong data, because ar somepoint, thé lier will himself prove he is lying.
It is good if the goal is me to have a more accurate worldview. I cannot assess the effect of more data on other humans worldview. But it doesn't seem worse than before.

[Loner]

@CL Yes, you put it much better than me. Same with institutions as with people, some are more trustworthy than others and have better track records.

@Jacob Yes, perhaps I put it too simply. I mix up reading lit. reviews and papers (if it really matters) with books or short articles and I look up to people/experts institutions I trust, which in turn I trust because of different heuristics (funding, skin the game, track record, etc.). Bunch of heuristics, really. Not sure I grasp what you refer to when you say "the answer to bad speech is [not] more speech", but what I meant was that the answer to lack of trust in experts would me more honest, transparent speech. Here, our local national health director torpedoed his own credibility when he said, in march, "Don't wear masks, they are useless for this virus", and then, a few weeks later, said "Masks are the best way to protect ourselves". Now, people just discount whatever he says as being politically (vs scientifically) motivated, which it is. If there was a will, from the top, to speak more honestly, I believe trust just might begin to be rebuilt. It appears to be mostly absent.

[chenda]

I think @Jacobs answer is the most correct one. It's another one of @egos "not-so-noble lies". So many of these throughout COVID, and such weird social reactions to them.

I actually see this as a noble lie. If it increases vaccine uptake and efficacy it's worth it. Same with the masks, I actually believed they were ineffective until I was told otherwise. I don't blame the government for lieing; front line workers faced a critical supply shortage and officials were faced with very, very difficult decisions. It may well have been a mistake in that it underestimated the ability of people to make there own masks, but the motivation was noble. Frankly, I have a lot of sympathy for them.

[jacob]

I mean, isn't it easier to tell a noble lie to the faceless masses on social media than it is to your neighbor face to face? And maybe the advice you give your neighbor is different than the "one size fits all solution", because you know your neighbor enough to tailor the expert advice.

Classical media had gatekeepers to keep out misinformation. "Flood the zone" attacks started by infesting local news, which typically have less people to do check the veracity of the information, and social media/the internet removed such gatekeepers entirely.

I used to think that advice existed in a vacuum but the last 10 years have taught me otherwise. One must certainly take the receiver (client) into account as well. Not only that, one must consider the environment the client exists in and what other information they hear. For example, for ERE we have the Wheaton scale and so my advice to someone who is at level 1--3 would be different than one at 4--6 which again would be different than 7--8.

One-size-fits-all, that is, advice given to a public audience is much more difficult (requires more considerations of network effects) than advice giving to an individual. There's a reason I don't talk about my investing in detail anymore. When I did (10 years ago), it was clear that people would interpret what I said VERY VERY differently depending on their level of personal understanding. Sometimes the "miscommunication" effect was astounding. Two people with different levels of insight would take away entirely different/opposite conclusions. Another example would be the standard advice for treating diabetes. Here people are universally taught how to inject and dose insulin according to blood sugar measurements. Why? Because teaching people too radically change their diet is unlikely to be successful---not because it doesn't work in theory but because people fail in practice.

I can not even begin to imagine the difficulty in crafting a one-size-fits-all message to successfully create the optimal behavior in a population where the socio-economic and politicization effects also play a role. Network effects are important. In essence the behavior of a group of humans is different than the behavior of a sum of individual behavior. (<-- something I have the hardest time communicating to libertarians. They dogmatically insist, Thatcher style, that there's no such thing as society or irrational behavior. A huge blind spot.)

This is why when asked in the interview whether critical thinking could solve those problems, my answer was that it was hopeless except for isolated exceptions, one at a time.

@Loner - Knowing in March that hospital PPEs were woefully understocked and knowing that the public could not be counted on doing the right thing, that is, not hoarding masks for themselves or to make a quick buck on eBay, what would you have said back then wrt mask usage if you had been the designated public expert?

I think therein lies the predicament. What's the cost/value of truth wrt human lives saved? Would you lie to someone to save their life? Conversely, would you tell someone the truth if you knew that it would mean that more people would die? (I do not think this is a false choice.)

[classical_Liberal]

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