Althouse: At the Monday Night Cafe...

April 13, 2020

At the Monday Night Cafe...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

251 comments:

«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 251 of 251

Rosa Marie Yoder said...: Thank you for the thoughtful, interesting and self-challenging comments. It's one of the rare times when reading this blog has been an uplifting way to begin one's day. Such a pleasure.; 4/14/20, 7:32 AM
CStanley said...: Pants I wasn’t here last night but just catching up and saw your note....

Just to clarify, I didn’t mean that comment as a rebuke of you at all. I pointed out your tone just to convey the general impression I get reading the majority of commenters here which is so hostile to the shutdowns that there doesn’t seem to be support for voluntary isolation measures among the general population.

I also enjoyed reading last night’s thread discussing female cattiness. I’ve always related to men much more easily than women too and have nodded in agreement to comments about the ridiculous tattletale posts on Nextdoor.; 4/14/20, 7:42 AM
Paco Wové said...: "HOW New covid-19 cases in the US are showing, "exponential growth"?????"

Gilbar (if you're still out there):

They're not, of course. As I commented last night, the most accurate mathematical model for the progression of a pandemic is probably logistic growth, which at the beginning looks like exponential growth but gradually slows and finally dies out. The problem is at the beginning stages, you don't have enough data to approximate what the logistic growth function will be. Now, as we're getting to what might be the midpoint, we can start to place an upper boundary on cases/deaths/what-have-you. Personally, I'd guess we're at just under half the total for both.; 4/14/20, 7:55 AM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: CStanley, I see what you are saying. I am far too irritable. I'm working on it :); 4/14/20, 8:00 AM
Jaq said...: "hey're not, of course. As I commented last night, the most accurate mathematical model for the progression of a pandemic is probably logistic growth, “

So you figured that people thought that deaths were going to grow exponentially until more people than live on the planet died? Because the exponential portion always applied to the early phases. Later other terms in the equation begin to dominate, based on mostly, the percentage of people who have acquired immunity.

But I am sure you guys had a good time giving a sound beating to that straw man.; 4/14/20, 8:07 AM
Jaq said...: Whatever, it’s good to see a little bit of a reasoned look at the data. It’s a far better attitude than pure denial.; 4/14/20, 8:09 AM
Jaq said...: I would be interested in hearing how logistic growth looks any different and the models we all saw presented in those curve flattening graphics. He’s a hint, it’s not different.; 4/14/20, 8:11 AM
Jaq said...: It all convinces me that you guys didn’t understand what you were hearing when the term exponential growth was bandied about, and imagined it meant something entirely different than what it really was intended to convey, which was to describe the growth of a disease during the early phase when almost nobody was immune. It never meant “explodential.”

Early on, it’s like the tribbles on the Enterprise, when the holds were full of wheat. Eventually the wheat runs out.; 4/14/20, 8:16 AM
BUMBLE BEE said...: stevew... Great resource there!!; 4/14/20, 8:23 AM
Michael McNeil said...: How does one rid oneself of the meddlesome curly quotes?

One can either override the default curly quotes in a specific instance (for example: when producing an html link where curly quotes bracketing the url aren't allowed), or one can turn off curly quotes altogether (unless specifically invoked).

To do the former (override in a particular instance): at the exact point where you wish to insert an instance of (non-curly) double quotes — rather than just quickly typing (tapping) the double-quotes key (on the iPad/iPhone's crappy on-screen keyboard) — instead hold down the double-quotes key for a few seconds, until the subsidiary menu (showing a variety of available quote types) comes up, then select the straight double-quotes (far right in the list).

On the other hand, to disable the curly-quote default altogether (one can still produce individual curly quotes using the foregoing method), go into

Settings -> General -> Keyboard

and turn “Smart Punctuation” off.

Finally, if you're using an (Apple-type) bluetooth keyboard with your iPad/iPhone (as I typically do, when at home — such as this one) — or an Apple keyboard on your Mac — one can invoke curly quotes whenever desired by simply typing Alt-[ (for the open quotes) and Alt-Shift-[ (for the close quotes).; 4/14/20, 8:26 AM
Jaq said...: It’s also hard not to wonder whether it got so bad in Italy, Spain, and France, where the culture is to greet friends with a kiss on both cheeks, compared to Japan, where a bow is customary. Not sure how you factor that stuff into a model.; 4/14/20, 8:41 AM
Jaq said...: London, NYC - heavy reliance on “The Tube."; 4/14/20, 8:43 AM
Jaq said...: Taiwan has an effective spy network in China, so they knew what was coming.; 4/14/20, 8:45 AM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: Which would argue *we* have an ineffective spy network in China.

Of course the CIA does not inspire confidence in anything it does these days.; 4/14/20, 8:48 AM
mockturtle said...: Joan asks: Last bit of tinder for this fire: If Sola Scriptura is really a thing, what did Christians do in all those centuries before the Bible was codified and written down? I never get an answer to this one.

Here's one answer, Joan: Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? Matthew 21:42

Here's another: Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. John 5:39

There are 21 New Testament references to scriptures, most by Christ, Himself.; 4/14/20, 8:49 AM
Jaq said...: "Which would argue *we* have an ineffective spy network in China.”

China wrapped up and killed pretty much our entire spy network in China under the Obama administration, and still we kept moving our essential and strategic businesses there. Hopefully we have some still there they are not telling us about, but we didn’t see this coming.; 4/14/20, 8:58 AM
Jaq said...: Didn’t help that POTUS was being impeached for looking into Democrat corruption either.; 4/14/20, 8:59 AM
Michael K said...: Annie-I-am, here is a a cytokine storm case story in the LA Times.

If you are still reading today.; 4/14/20, 9:57 AM
Narr said...: Thanks stephen cooper and stevew for your helpful suggestions as to possible sources of the noises I heard last night in the trees.

The woodcock site was very helpful but I didn't hear anything there that was too similar.
It was a liquid, warbly almost quacking.

As to scripture, Romans 13: 1 -7 and 1 Peter 2: 13-17 (NET) are deeply fascistic expressions.

Narr
IMHSO; 4/14/20, 9:58 AM
Ken B said...: “It all convinces me that you guys didn’t understand what you were hearing when the term exponential growth was bandied about, and imagined it meant something entirely different than what it really was intended to convey, “

Clearly. One commenter actually talked about the hundreds of billions infected, thinking he had scored a killing point. And another commenter denied compound interest is a case of exponential growth. And one thought only integer exponents 2 or higher counted. And one thought the word was just fancy pants rhetoric. And one thought if the data is off the exact curve then it’s not happening. And ...

I linked to an excellent video long ago explaining the basic SIR model, and it explains exponential growth, and the logistic curve. Seems very few were bothered to watch it, or make any effort to learn even the basics of what the epidemiologists are actually talking about.; 4/14/20, 9:59 AM
Ken B said...: Tim
Sophisticated epidemiological model have factors for the chance of transmission in a personal contact, and the intensity of exposure. Those models are used to run simulations. So in Japan the chance and the initial viral load factors would be less than in a model of Italy.
It’s hard to do with curve fitting though.; 4/14/20, 10:03 AM
CStanley said...: @mockturtle- I don’t think that response goes with Joan’s question. The point is, from where did we get the New Testament canon of Scripture?; 4/14/20, 10:03 AM
Ken B said...: The New Testament canon evolved over time and was codified in the 4th century. There were several church councils. A good book is When Jesus Became God by Rubenstein, which has a discussion and references.; 4/14/20, 10:08 AM
Drago said...: Unknown: "Of course the CIA does not inspire confidence in anything it does these days."

Nonsense. The democrats are quite happy that the CIA has been put at their political beck and call.; 4/14/20, 10:57 AM
Narr said...: Jaroslav Pelikan's "Whose Bible Is it?" clarified a lot of things for me.

There has always been an irony in American separation of church and state--the men who stood up the country generally believed and studied scriptures that had been approved by state authority (Nicea et. al.) early on, and in their language anyway, translated under state authority and approval (KJV).

Narr
It's almost like there's really no difference sometimes; 4/14/20, 11:09 AM
Ken B said...: More on variolation https://srconstantin.github.io/2020/04/13/variolation.html; 4/14/20, 11:18 AM
Ken B said...: Narr
Yes a good book. Ehrman has a couple relevant titles too.; 4/14/20, 11:19 AM
Jaq said...: "Sophisticated epidemiological model have factors for the chance of transmission in a personal contact, and the intensity of exposure.”

But it’s still informed guesswork. It’s better than nothing, and of course it is going to be wrong, and is impossible to do for a country as large and diverse as the United States with its myriad subcultures. How do you accurately factor in how seriously people take government edicts on social distancing? The only point of the curve fitting I did was to show that the data we were getting fit the predictions we were getting generally. I wasn’t trying to build a model, just to identify where we were three weeks ago as these people who are dying today were getting infected. Ultimately, when this is all over, there is going to be a lot of curve fitting to extract parameters.

Of course the lockdowns makes it impossible to judge if “herd immunity” is coming into play. You can pretend that the lockdowns have had no effect, and attribute the flattening to herd immunity, but that’s just wishful thinking, and goes against common sense. But people here are ready to defend their wishful thinking with their full arsenal of bluster and snark.; 4/14/20, 12:00 PM
Jaq said...: "and the intensity of exposure.”

We don’t know enough about the dynamics of exposure to make such a parameter better than random chance. We can just say “if it’s like other coronaviruses."; 4/14/20, 12:01 PM
Ken B said...: Tim
Yes, but that is why the real epidemiological models like the ones from London come with a wide range of predictions and uncertainties. The know-nothings think vitiates (might as well send some to a dictionary) the models but it doesn’t. Policy decisions must be aware of risks and of what controllable factors have an impact.
It’s a new virus in a new situation. No prediction will be spot on.; 4/14/20, 12:12 PM
Joan said...: I doubt anything much will get done towards solving the innumeracy crisis any time soon.

mockturtle, There are 21 New Testament references to scriptures, most by Christ, Himself.

Sorry but this made me literally LOL. You’re saying for the first 400 or so years of Christianity, all the Christians relied **solely** on the Torah?

The OT is a foundation of Christianity but it obviously lacks the most important thing: Christ. Christianity was spread by sharing the gospel, the Good News of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, none of which became Scripture — actually written down in a uniform way, codified —until hundreds of years later.

Note that Matthew’s gospel was written specifically for a learned **Jewish** audience, hence all the textual support for Jesus as the Messiah from the Old Testament books. One huge point of the New Covenant was that Jesus came to save all nations. You no longer had to be Jewish to be saved. Big discussions in Acts over this and it was quite definitively settled, I’m sure much to the relief of all the adult male converts wondering if they had to be circumcised to be Christian.

Still not seeing any rational basis for Sola Scriptura and the rejection of Tradition, but we humans are really good at convincing ourselves we are correct in all we do, regardless of evidence to the contrary.; 4/14/20, 1:40 PM
Joan said...: Tim and Ken, what do you think of looking at “excess deaths” as a way to measure the impact of the virus and therefore the mitigation’s effectiveness? I’ve seen some discussion that, with the exception of NYC, the excess deaths are just not there. It sounds reasonable to me but I’d like to hear arguments for why it’s not.; 4/14/20, 1:45 PM
Ken B said...: Joan
I think it’s the right way. I explained why earlier, but it’s hard to find old comments! That way you get a measure of the damage caused by the virus. It's trickier (despite the assertion one guy here made that it’s dead easy) because you have to correct for various things. Of course if we do see huge numbers of deaths that will be a small matter. That also iincorporates reduced flu deaths. If granny dies of covid she can’t die of flu. So that should appeal to the flu floggers here.
In some places we have lowered death, from flu, due to the lockdown and the hand washing is what I read, but cannot recall where.
It’s inherently a retrospective number of course. But the excess deaths in Italy and Spain etc are retrospective now, and can give us an idea of what could happen.; 4/14/20, 2:14 PM
Jaq said...: "It sounds reasonable to me but I’d like to hear arguments for why it’s not.”

Maybe because it’s way worse in NYC, and traffic deaths and normal flu deaths are likely way down due to the lockdown. Think about the spike in NYC *despite* the very likely drop in traffic deaths. But throwing out NYC because people don’t like what it shows seems kind of reckless to me. Plus, it’s way early days in the rest of the country. I feel like people are using “excess deaths” as a way to deny the seriousness of the situation, when really it’s most likely because we slowed down the virus before it got out of control in the rest of the county, so the signal in excess deaths outside of NYC, which is the epicenter, aren’t rising above the noise. Most of these theories come complete with conjecture that the virus has been here for months and except in NYC, it doesn’t make people very sick. That sounds like wishful thinking to me.

I put in an algorithm that scans for uptrending cities, regardless of how small the death counts, the virus deaths are growing at a low level in plenty of places. For instance it spit up Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD, which isn’t exactly flat even with the lockdowns.

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Sure, if you divide it by millions, it’s nothing, but these things grow if allowed to grow unfettered at an astonishing rate. I suppose there is also the objection that if you look at enough cities, some are going to be trending up by random chance. I think that that is just more denial though.

Overall, country wide, the trend is down though. My guess is that for the next several months or more, we are going to be looking at hotspots, which is why I designed the app.; 4/14/20, 2:46 PM
Jaq said...: It’s possible that New Yorkers and city dwellers in general are getting a higher initial dose of the virus, but that’s a hypothesis that maybe you test out later, not a well supported inference on which to base policy.; 4/14/20, 2:50 PM
Ken B said...: Tim
I for one am not suggesting we ignore NY! I don’t think Joan intended that either but she can speak for herself. Quite the opposite. The excess deaths in NY are the best measure of the effect of the virus.
Hotspots are were the virus arrived but mitigation was late or ineffective.; 4/14/20, 2:53 PM
CStanley said...: It’s possible that New Yorkers and city dwellers in general are getting a higher initial dose of the virus

I do think viral load makes a big difference and population density plus subways make a big difference.

But in addition, NYC got seeded by many travelers returning from Europe. If one population has one person with the virus introduced, it’s not going to spread as quickly as having hundreds of cases introduced.

All of the initial hotspots were ports of entry. The west coast benefitted greatly from the China travel ban but the European ban came a lot later.; 4/14/20, 2:58 PM
CStanley said...: I just looked for more data on excess deaths overall but I don’t think the data is available yet. CDC has a chart but states that there’s a lag so it isn’t complete, which is obvious because they only record 8259 Covid-19 deaths (so only about 1/3.)

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm; 4/14/20, 3:02 PM
Ken B said...: An interesting look at Sweden https://unherd.com/2020/04/jury-still-out-on-swedish-coronavirus-strategy/; 4/14/20, 3:13 PM
Joan said...: Thanks. I was not intending to ignore NYC but to special-case it. (Is that a verb? It is now!)

I think there are some factors obviously at play in NYC which are not relevant to the rest of the country, like population density and reliance on public transportation. Outside of big cities like NYC, the number of strangers most people come into contact with is relatively very small, so it makes sense that viral transmission rates would vary greatly depending on these way-of-life factors.

I do believe the virus has been here since last fall, and the vast majority of cases has yet to be uncovered because many people recovered without even noticing anything more unusual than a few days of feeling like crud. There is a collection of disparate types of evidence to support this idea, starting with the Diamond Princess data, then the testing in that German town, through the analysis at the water treatment plant in the Boston suburb and whatever possible herd- immunity thing is going on in California.

Buck up, Tim. We’re all going to die someday, but very few of us will die of COVID-19, especially if the most vulnerable continue to take precautions.; 4/14/20, 3:16 PM
Jaq said...: This one is for the "Washington-Arlington-Alexandria” area counties in Maryland:

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All zeros before what I posted, suddenly it’s doubling at a very high rate. Maybe there was a concert three weeks ago, or a street festival, or a nursing home staff member came down with it an spread it. IDK. This stuff needs to be closely watched, and local shutdowns for a couple weeks might be called for. I think the indefinite shutdowns just defy human nature, but two weeks in a particulary city when a problem crops up does not seem unreasonable to me. If we can keep the rates low enough, we can deal with this by contact tracing, maybe.; 4/14/20, 3:18 PM
Jaq said...: "I do believe the virus has been here since last fall, and the vast majority of cases has yet to be uncovered because many people recovered without even noticing anything more unusual than a few days of feeling like crud.”

"Isn’t it pretty to think so.” - Hemingway; 4/14/20, 3:18 PM
Jaq said...: I don’t need to “buck up” BTW. I am fine. I am just keeping my eyes open rather than burying my head in the sand with comforting ideas that aren’t supported by actual evidence. I think it’s weird that people don’t want to hear what is really going on, but I guess it’s human nature.; 4/14/20, 3:20 PM
Jaq said...: The earliest documented cases are December, BTW.; 4/14/20, 3:22 PM
Jaq said...: There have been stories claiming widespread exposure, but when you go to the original news item, it’s about a study of blood bank samples that is about to start that is looking for it with no results reported. I have seen that one.; 4/14/20, 3:25 PM
Jaq said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/14/20, 3:29 PM
Jaq said...: Some people like to read military history, some people like to knit, I like to look at data. It’s a hobby. I used to do a blog like that, but one time I spent three days working out a problem, dug out my old engineering texts, came up with a useful table, wrote it up and published it, and somebody on a popular message board cut and pasted the whole thing onto their board without even a link. After that I gave up on it. So don’t think that I am doing this out of fear. I enjoy it.; 4/14/20, 3:31 PM
madAsHell said...: accomplishit

The dirty work of accomplishment!! Great portmanteau !; 4/14/20, 3:33 PM
Ken B said...: “ I do believe the virus has been here since last fall,”

I do not. Inconsistent with the death patterns, and the (sketchy and very incomplete) serum tests we have seen in Europe. I am reminded of Gibbon (who is worth reading selections of). Something like “The only failings of these pleasant tales are want of truth and common sense.”; 4/14/20, 3:43 PM
Ken B said...: “ If we can keep the rates low enough, we can deal with this by contact tracing, maybe.”

To which many here are very hostile. Odd really.; 4/14/20, 3:45 PM
Joan said...: Tim, I'm also a data geek but not to the same extent as you are. As I said, there are disparate data points to consider on how the virus spreads and what the actual infection rates are.

As I know you know -- all of the data we're getting now is crap. The number of deaths is over-counted in many cases, based on funding incentives among other things, but it's also under-counted by not including deaths at home, for example, in NYC. None of the data coming from China, Iran, or Russia is worth a damn. I've seen articles saying the death-BY-coronavirus rate in Italy is only about 15% of what is reported, which is more accurately described as the death-probably-WITH-coronvirus rate.

Even as we ramp up testing, the number of cases isn't a solid number either, because there is no discussion of false negatives/false positives. We occasionally hear a number of tests performed, but not usually -- the only thing that's reported is the number of positives.

As antibody testing ramps up, we'll get more (somewhat shaky) data, and that should help to determine how long it's been here. It is plausible that at least some of the late fall uptick in flu hospitalizations in CA were due to COVID-19. We'll just have to wait and see. At any (well, any most likely-to-happen) rate, what we have seen so far shows us that we are unlikely to overwhelm our medical capacity, especially given that we have the ability to scale it up much more quickly than most people anticipated. It makes sense to me to spend money on increasing availability of medical care rather than to lose trillions by shutting down everything.; 4/14/20, 5:12 PM