It is confusing. I *could* try to unkink it, but I don't know enough to do it reliably. Obviously death reporting varies. The US, for example, added a whole bunch of prior deaths between June 26th and July 2nd (that weird hump in the US curve). Rather than smooth things and have my data biases questioned I just used what is publically accessible with some explanation.
Peru, Kyrgyzstan, Chile all suffer from reporting systems that are having a harder time keeping up. Reassessing causes of death afterwards can also impact it. In other places, the data is totally untrustworthy or lacking. We are pretty sure a lot of people are dying in Sub-Saharan Africa but we have no idea how many.
They've already used it on 50,000 people and they are continuing to collect plasma. I think Mayo is spearheading it. Dexomethazone also helped a lot with more critical patients and there have been papers on that as well.
Oh, and I generally avoid the ad hominem attacks - as regular commentators on my pieces can attest. Even when I disagree, I rarely insult. But insult seems to underlie many of your comments - like if you just say things strongly enough you'll undermine my argument by denying my credibility and intelligence.
I'd be happy to have a more civilized discussion. Those tend to avoid categorical statements. I'll show you how by rewriting your first comment on this piece.
Here goes:
"A good read but his opinion is based on 2 irrelevant assumptions/statistics.
1. Haredi herd immunity in NY has led to decrease in death rate. I would argue this is not true. It appears the lower death rate is because of much lower virus prevalence, better testing, contact tracing and isolating of vulnerable populations and improved therapeutics. I have yet to see any evidence of herd immunity in any community.
2. The false choice that any policy implemented in tiny Israel will have any effect on starving children in the developing world.
Given this person’s argument is based on these 2 unproven or irrelevant assumptions... I believe his argument is fundamentally flawed."
Just a few words and there is a civilized discussion, which is a far more effective way of understanding each other and getting someplace useful.
You'll note my initial response on FB was quite a bit more strident than my response here. The response here was part of a larger comment threat which was dominated by questions and arguments rather than responses that attacked basic intelligence and reasoning.
I'll attribute the misunderstanding of my Trump comments to an understandable oversight and the ad hominem attack that accompanied it to - whatever - and we can move on to a more productive discussion.
A lack of virus prevalence and widespread community transmission would actually make this study *stronger* in terms of measuring the impact of kids. You have a higher likelihood of isolating household contacts vs. community contacts.
Put another way: With community contacts clouding the data, age-based transmission effects would be very hard to measure. But if there are fewer chances of community infection then the likelihood of child contact being involved is *higher.*
I'd argue you couldn't do this study anyplace BUT where "there is universal masking, high compliance with rule following and a limited outbreak."
No study is perfect, no data is perfect, but that shouldn't stop us from learning or force us into paralysis from open-ended analysis.
Methodology in a nutshell: "We analyzed reports for 59,073 contacts of 5,706 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) index patients reported in South Korea during January 20–March 27, 2020. Of 10,592 household contacts, 11.8% had COVID-19... We also found the highest COVID-19 rate for household contacts of school-aged children and the lowest for household contacts of children 0–9 years in the middle of school closure."
They have limits on the study, you can read them. But the statement still stands: "Newer reports indicate kids 0-9 are the least infectious group while those 10-19 are the most infections group (of any age)."
Note the word *indicate*. This is *not* "no real evidence". There is real evidence, it just isn't conclusive.
And, yes, there could be reasons for it. As far as I understand it, people transition from being biological children to being biological adults sometime between the ages of 10 and 19.
Trump won't be the end of us all. He's just a caudillo. He and Bernie Sanders were perfectly normal responses to an over-powerful institutional elite (represented by Clinton and Jeb Bush in 2016). They offer to smash those elites - either through breaking down the power structures or by harnessing them to some great communal objective.
For me, Trump is a symptom of a massive decline in the American body politic. I think this decline is directly connected to decisions increasingly being made in faraway DC and individual's power being increasingly limited to their vote. This is why I've written in support of devolution of power - for example neighborhood control of beat cops.
The militarism of both left and right are reflections of those broader trends and were almost inevitable. They will drive us to more and more 'out there' leaders - or more and more corrupt ones.
Aristotle wrote about this trend. He argued that with the inevitable corruption of law in democracies (which I believe Hillary represented) the people turn to a tyrant to rescue them.
In November 2016 I wrote: "If Trump were not elected this cycle, the decline of the rule of law would continue and somebody far worse would come along next cycle. How would they be worse? Unlike Trump, that next person might not be incompetent."
Wisdom in government can be a terrible thing.
(To be fair to Trump, in many ways things were going well before COVID. Minority employment, the economy and American counterbalancing of global bad actors were all in very good shape.)
Few are actually paying the fines (19% as of July 5th). In general, Israel is not a rule-abiding society. Things are much more ad hoc here, which has benefits and drawbacks.
I think the dexomethazone study has been widely accepted. There is a huge amount of publication and separating the wheat from the chaff is very very hard to do. That said, the top-line evidence of deaths (with a second line of statistical and individual diagnosis) is telling an improving story. We just don't know why the story is improving or if it will continue to do so. If it is viral evolution it could obviously turn. If it is medical improvement or increased immunity then that's great.
Latest Comments
COVID-19 Mortality Rates And What It Means
It is related to earlier articles in which I argue for relaxing most economically impactful restrictions while maintaining things like mask wearing. See here: talkmarkets.com/.../changing-the-way-we-fight-covid-19
COVID-19 Mortality Rates And What It Means
It is confusing. I *could* try to unkink it, but I don't know enough to do it reliably. Obviously death reporting varies. The US, for example, added a whole bunch of prior deaths between June 26th and July 2nd (that weird hump in the US curve). Rather than smooth things and have my data biases questioned I just used what is publically accessible with some explanation.
Peru, Kyrgyzstan, Chile all suffer from reporting systems that are having a harder time keeping up. Reassessing causes of death afterwards can also impact it. In other places, the data is totally untrustworthy or lacking. We are pretty sure a lot of people are dying in Sub-Saharan Africa but we have no idea how many.
COVID-19 Mortality Rates And What It Means
They've already used it on 50,000 people and they are continuing to collect plasma. I think Mayo is spearheading it. Dexomethazone also helped a lot with more critical patients and there have been papers on that as well.
Changing The Way We Fight Covid-19
Oh, and I generally avoid the ad hominem attacks - as regular commentators on my pieces can attest. Even when I disagree, I rarely insult. But insult seems to underlie many of your comments - like if you just say things strongly enough you'll undermine my argument by denying my credibility and intelligence.
I'd be happy to have a more civilized discussion. Those tend to avoid categorical statements. I'll show you how by rewriting your first comment on this piece.
Here goes:
"A good read but his opinion is based on 2 irrelevant assumptions/statistics.
1. Haredi herd immunity in NY has led to decrease in death rate. I would argue this is not true. It appears the lower death rate is because of much lower virus prevalence, better testing, contact tracing and isolating of vulnerable populations and improved therapeutics. I have yet to see any evidence of herd immunity in any community.
2. The false choice that any policy implemented in tiny Israel will have any effect on starving children in the developing world.
Given this person’s argument is based on these 2 unproven or irrelevant assumptions... I believe his argument is fundamentally flawed."
Just a few words and there is a civilized discussion, which is a far more effective way of understanding each other and getting someplace useful.
You'll note my initial response on FB was quite a bit more strident than my response here. The response here was part of a larger comment threat which was dominated by questions and arguments rather than responses that attacked basic intelligence and reasoning.
I'll attribute the misunderstanding of my Trump comments to an understandable oversight and the ad hominem attack that accompanied it to - whatever - and we can move on to a more productive discussion.
Changing The Way We Fight Covid-19
Where did I say he was competent? In fact I wrote EXACTLY the opposite: "Unlike Trump, that next person might not be incompetent."
Jason Goldfischer loses a bunch of credibility by being unable to read.
Changing The Way We Fight Covid-19
A lack of virus prevalence and widespread community transmission would actually make this study *stronger* in terms of measuring the impact of kids. You have a higher likelihood of isolating household contacts vs. community contacts.
Put another way: With community contacts clouding the data, age-based transmission effects would be very hard to measure. But if there are fewer chances of community infection then the likelihood of child contact being involved is *higher.*
I'd argue you couldn't do this study anyplace BUT where "there is universal masking, high compliance with rule following and a limited outbreak."
No study is perfect, no data is perfect, but that shouldn't stop us from learning or force us into paralysis from open-ended analysis.
Changing The Way We Fight Covid-19
Reposting because it failed the first time...
This is the study - from the CDC website: wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/10/20-1315_article
Methodology in a nutshell: "We analyzed reports for 59,073 contacts of 5,706 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) index patients reported in South Korea during January 20–March 27, 2020. Of 10,592 household contacts, 11.8% had COVID-19... We also found the highest COVID-19 rate for household contacts of school-aged children and the lowest for household contacts of children 0–9 years in the middle of school closure."
They have limits on the study, you can read them. But the statement still stands: "Newer reports indicate kids 0-9 are the least infectious group while those 10-19 are the most infections group (of any age)."
Note the word *indicate*. This is *not* "no real evidence". There is real evidence, it just isn't conclusive.
And, yes, there could be reasons for it. As far as I understand it, people transition from being biological children to being biological adults sometime between the ages of 10 and 19.
Changing The Way We Fight Covid-19
Trump won't be the end of us all. He's just a caudillo. He and Bernie Sanders were perfectly normal responses to an over-powerful institutional elite (represented by Clinton and Jeb Bush in 2016). They offer to smash those elites - either through breaking down the power structures or by harnessing them to some great communal objective. For me, Trump is a symptom of a massive decline in the American body politic. I think this decline is directly connected to decisions increasingly being made in faraway DC and individual's power being increasingly limited to their vote. This is why I've written in support of devolution of power - for example neighborhood control of beat cops. The militarism of both left and right are reflections of those broader trends and were almost inevitable. They will drive us to more and more 'out there' leaders - or more and more corrupt ones. Aristotle wrote about this trend. He argued that with the inevitable corruption of law in democracies (which I believe Hillary represented) the people turn to a tyrant to rescue them. In November 2016 I wrote: "If Trump were not elected this cycle, the decline of the rule of law would continue and somebody far worse would come along next cycle. How would they be worse? Unlike Trump, that next person might not be incompetent." Wisdom in government can be a terrible thing. (To be fair to Trump, in many ways things were going well before COVID. Minority employment, the economy and American counterbalancing of global bad actors were all in very good shape.)
Changing The Way We Fight Covid-19
Few are actually paying the fines (19% as of July 5th). In general, Israel is not a rule-abiding society. Things are much more ad hoc here, which has benefits and drawbacks.
....globes.co.il/.../article-public-paying-small-fraction-of-nis-37m-virus-fines-1001334701
Changing The Way We Fight Covid-19
I think the dexomethazone study has been widely accepted. There is a huge amount of publication and separating the wheat from the chaff is very very hard to do. That said, the top-line evidence of deaths (with a second line of statistical and individual diagnosis) is telling an improving story. We just don't know why the story is improving or if it will continue to do so. If it is viral evolution it could obviously turn. If it is medical improvement or increased immunity then that's great.