ADDED: Now, a fair response to my prodding would be to say that scientists cannot be the final word — the "end all" — and that they should "have a little bit of humility" and politicians ought to "listen to [their] advice" but they must balance many factors in making their decisions about "what’s best for the economy." My quotes there are all from Rand Paul, as he questioned Anthony Fauci at a Senate hearing yesterdays. Transcript. You might not realize it if you rely on mainstream media, but Dr. Fauci agreed with Rand Paul — he only offers the scientific advice, based on his area of expertise, and it needs to be fitted into a larger picture with many other pieces having to do with things beyond his expertise:
I have never made myself out to be the end all and only voice in this. I’m a scientist, a physician, and a public health official. I give advice, according to the best scientific evidence. There are a number of other people who come into that and give advice that are more related to the things that you spoke about, about the need to get the country back open again, and economically. I don’t give advice about economic things. I don’t get advice about anything other than public health. So I wanted to respond to that. The second thing is that you use the word, we should be humble about what we don’t know. And I think that falls under the fact that we don’t know everything about this virus, and we really better be very careful....We don't know everything about climate change, and the scientists who specialize in the field should be humble and they tell us to be very careful, but at they same time they know they don't know economics and can offer no expert advice on that score. The politicians are supposed to be the ones who take all the advice and balance everything. In that light, a member of Congress is a good choice to co-chair a task force on climate change. Within that category, to select Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tells us a lot about how Joe Biden wants to balance all the factors in making climate change policy... at least for now as he postures for us voters. What he will really do if he wins the presidency, I really have no idea.
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Now do ABORTION!
Science! Hide behind the word... turn America into Venezuela.
What a great idea.
And WHY does anybody even listen to that WHACK JOB!!! And I'm not talking Joe Biden!!
Democrats do not actually understand how real science works. They only understand Science!
"trust the science"
No scientists, they.
Trump will never meet me socially. I don’t care.
He may not enjoy my company if he did. I don’t care.
It’s him or the Ds, and the Ds are malevolent.
There is nothing difficult about this.
They don't believe in science. They believe in authoritarian rule using "Science" as a prop to justify nullifying the Constitution.
My snark machine is all fired up, but it would be a waste of ammo.
The left uses science in exactly the same way the right does--they promote it when it is to their advantage and they ignore it when it isn't. But one thing the left does that the right does not is the left shouts "science" even when they're ignoring the science.
Hey! She was a waitress and is a Latinx. Science, bitches!
Junk science. Believe the “scientists” who push junk science.
Bartenders Unite ! You have nothing to lose but your tips.
The Democratic Party brand is believe the scientists, trust the science
The Dems are about as anti-science as any group, probably more-so than Reps, they just pick different areas to ignore or label as hate speech.
Captain AOC of the Climate Justice League.
Based on the people I know (I know, totally unscientific) on the left who have already made up their minds not to vote for Biden, I don’t think this will be enough of a concession. But who knows, a lot can happen (or not happen) before November.
I like science an awful lot too which is why I am so sad that science as an industry has been so thoroughly corrupted. How often do we get honest research into politically charged topics?
And I also find it hilarious that that wise, experienced, and learned climate scientist AOC has been thusly appointed.
Another sign that it's a clown campaign whose only benefit at this point is to try to help the downticket.
Here is the science:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Ice_Age_Temperature.png
Nothing that hasn't happened repeatedly in the past. If we're lucky, climate gets a little warmer before it begins the slide back into glaciation. If we're not as lucky, and past is prologue, we have already begun that slide back down to cold.
---Ocasio-Cortez spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said in a statement that the congresswoman made the decision to join the task force "with members of the Climate Justice community - and she will be fully accountable to them and the larger advocacy community during this process."---
May those communities live peaceful, happy and progressive lives beneath the first nice, thick glacier to reach the Bronx.
"Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will co-chair a task force for Joe Biden's campaign on climate change..."
Awesome! On that sciencey-thing, are the Dems and AOC still confused about that XY chromosome thing?
Rand Paul is not a physician but AOC is definitely an atmospheric scientist. Got it.
I think your second part about being humble is another reason why I tend not to vote. As a citizen, I think it’s impossible to see some of the problems of this country from the same point of view as a real-world leader who actually has to deal with them. I don’t trust our leaders, but I also don’t trust my own ignorance.
Merely lying back and thinking about The Science sets progressive bosoms heaving across the land.
If the Dems really believed in science, the Green New Deal would be buried now. We can now see how wildly wrong the covid19 models were. The whole climate change campaign is based on models about what the temp will be for the entire planet in 30 to 80 years in the future. The models are flawed and the data is corrupt. It is all speculation! Why should we believe the climate change models at all?
CAGW is a scam and any reasonably intelligent person should be able to see that.
"Believe the scientists"
Except when they tell us that each person is either male or female.
I think Biden's choice of AOC shows he doesn't believe he's clinched the nomination.
We don't know everything about climate change, and the scientists who specialize in the field should be humble and they tell us to be very careful, but at they same time they know they don't know economics and can offer no expert advice on that score. The politicians are supposed to be the ones who take all the advice and balance everything. In that light, a member of Congress is a good choice to co-chair a task force on climate change. Within that category, to select Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tells us a lot about how Joe Biden wants to balance all the factors in making climate change policy...
LOL.
That right there is some funny stuff! AOC has yet to demonstrate ANY understanding of economics. Not sure if she actually does not know (degree aside) or if she just does not care. Either way, I would trust your average working single-mother to have a FAR better understanding of economics that this empty suit.
again this cnn is there something I should be aware of,
If she plays her cards right, our favorite socialist waitress of color could become the next Surgeon General......
but Dr. Fauci agreed with Rand Paul
Yeah, I did find it somewhat odd yesterday when all these headlines about this "heated exchange" occured and then I watched what was actually said and it didn't seem to me like it was such a heated exchange. I mean, I guess Rand Paul was being a bit advisarial with the whole "[you're] not the end all" quote, but he wasn't saying anything that I thought was too unreasonable, and neither was Fauci in his response. The whole exchange was blown up into this thing, but it really wasn't such a big deal in my opinion.
And with regards to the whole "science" thing, people seem to confuse expert opinion with actual proven facts. It's actually very unscientific to take the opinion of an expert and procede as if it's some sort of an established, proven fact. It's not. It's just an opinion. Opinions can be wrong even (and sometimes often) if they're from an authority.
"I believe in Science." I see this everywhere: yard signs, bumper stickers. This is a fairly weird thing to say. I mean it's not patently ridiculous, but it's sort of like proclaiming "I believe in double entry bookeeping". Okaaay. That's nice...
An estimated 40% of the so-far lost jobs will not return in the near term.
Only 8 million people.
I guess "No Malarkey" wasn't a workable standard in today's Democratic Party.
Remember, it was AOC who set us straight regarding the scientific impossibility of "pulling yourself up by your boot straps".
This is how the DNC is buying off AOC for keeping her#meetoo mouth shut on Tara Reade
"brand" is the word. Green science branding is nothing but a brand. Certain people get rich.
*cough* Al Gore.
Took me a while to even see what your point was: Listen to scientists, so AOC should not be on the panel. But Democrats aren't saying that they are going to give up the power. They are saying that they will be smart about their power by making their decisions by listening to scientists. Of course, they will also be smart about choosing only scientists who say what they want to hear.
but Dr. Fauci agreed with Rand Paul
DR Rand Paul. Rand Paul is a DOCTOR..medical. Not PHD. He deserves the honorific just as much as Fauci
Dr. Paul earned his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C., in 1988. After that, he completed his general surgery internship at Atlanta-based Georgia Baptist Medical Center, followed by a residency in ophthalmology at Duke University Medical Center, completing his training in 1993.
AOC's endorsement of Biden has been lukewarm, at best. He's just trying to get her endorsement to look more positive and win back some of the progressive voters that have been resistant to him.
What [Joe Biden] will really do if he wins the presidency, I really have no idea.
I do. And it ain't pretty.
I trust the science. I worked on thermal models as a NASA contractor, and while they were helpful in design decisions, empirical operational data showed the models to be inaccurate often by orders of magnitude. This was for relatively simple systems like the Space Shuttle. The earth's environment is far more complex.
Liberals have managed to turn "science" in to and empty platitude.
What next? Inga as the president of Mensa?
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...I like science an awful lot too which is why I am so sad that science as an industry has been so thoroughly corrupted. How often do we get honest research into politically charged topics?
There is good science being done even on politically-charged topics. You just won't read about it in the media.
so more subtle then MSNBC then
https://babalublog.com/2020/05/13/cuban-state-run-media-claims-starvation-forced-labor-camps-rampant-in-u-s-due-to-covid-19-pandemic/
Speaking of science I just read this paper by Nic Lewis: Why herd immunity to Covid-19 is reached much earlier than thought.
It's an attempt to tune a mathematical model predicting the course of the epidemic by using data from one county of Sweden.
There are several things I thought were interesting in the paper.
The most important was the conclusion that basically herd immunity was reached when only 17% of the population had been infected with the virus and following that the author's hypothesis of how that could be possible.
Nic Lewis believes that there is considerable variation in how easily different people get the infection. So in the early stages of the epidemic, when infections expand so fast, that is the virus moving through the most susceptible portion of the population. Once the majority of them have been infected, the pace at which the virus spreads slows down considerably. Now the majority of people (and maybe all of us) can get this infection but still most of us need some pretty significant exposures to the virus to actually get infected.
The other thing I find interesting is the model itself. This is very similar to the actual models driving public policy. In fact I think he has basically taken one of those and modified it to reflect the data from Stockholm county.
This is also a little reminiscent of the global climate models in that even though it may seem complicated, and of course it really is, but still the models themselves aren't all that complicated.
Climate science isn't science. There's a lot of data gathering and plotting but they don't understand the meaning of the tools they use.
If their stuff were to an expert on this or that tool, he'd reject it in peer review. But their stuff doesn't get reviewed by tool experts; it gets reviewed by climate scientists.
So they have no adult peer review, as every tool expert can attest.
The Democrat brand is to construct a religion that consists of a few key tenets, such as abortion on demand, POC good-White man bad, Believe all Democrat women, Government is good and needs to run more things in our lives- if not all things, call any research we agree with 'Science' but any research that does not fit our models must be dismissed and the perpetrators demolished.
For any of us to have a disagreement with their tenets is to be cast out as apostates with very similar results to the actions of Muslim extremists. The beheadings have not begun yet (not for lack of talking about it), but the censorship, blackballing, mass hysteria, and storm-troop actions go on regularly.
'Science' is a work used by Democrats as a plank with which to hit you over the head. It is not enough for me to accept Dr. Fauci as a brilliant epidemiologist and a man to be listened to. But when I ask for other opinions and find other scientists who disagree with him along with a SLEW of economists who are telling us we're staring at a depression level occurance, I have to take Dr. Fauci as one of many opinions I need to consider. Not THE one opinion.
Democrats have too much faith in their religion and government. Fauci represents both of these key tenets. For any of us to doubt Fauci, or to just consider him one of a few key people we should get opinions from, is to go against the faith. We then become dangerous to their religion. And you know from history what happens to people who are dangerous to the State Religion.
I've worked as a software engineer for 30 years for a number of industries. Everywhere I worked, in addition to my "normal" software development duties, I found that I was frequently handed some piece of essential business hacked-together "program" made by some talented amateur, and told to "fix it."
These things were routinely unfixable without completely re-writing them. The physician/architect/MBA who had glued it together out of Access and Turbo Pascal and the help of their teen-aged intern had built their business logic into it so tightly and obscurely that teasing it out again was generally impossible. So, we'd patch them up again, make sure they gave the requested outputs (with no confidence they were, you know, accurate or meaningful), and give them back to the organization with our caveats.
And so it goes. These things are the "computer models" our Intelligentsia depend upon to make "scientific" decisions: built by talented amateurs (not professional software engineers), with layers of accreted bug fixes and uncommunicated assumptions, undocumented features, forgotten purpose, nothing even remotely near the best practices that would be demanded by the most lax of development houses.
A computer model created by a grad student as part of their master's thesis and then built upon year-by-year by interns and other grad students and occasionally looked-over by a friend IS NOT something we should ever trust if we wish to make decisions about the real world.
And yet, here we are.
Why does science, or scientists have to be “believed”? Science is verifiable, and repeatable. It doesn’t require faith to know that 1+1=2. Predictions of the future, models, etc…which are ALWAYS wrong, are now considered “science” instead of best guess work. AOC, Warren and Co…that say publicly we have 12-years to save the planet, or our occupancy on it, is now science, requiring fear and faith.
America has been so dumbed down by a failed Kindergarten through PHD education system, that people don’t even know what science is anymore. I can’t imagine this effort was an accident. Whoever pushed it, was quite successful. They have mastered the art of shaming the stupid to believe their system of debt and indoctrination. You might be stupid…but at least you’re prestigious.
And speaking of climate science something maybe slightly significant happened in the last week. I forget how many gigatons of ice and snow have dropped on Greenland recently but it is a lot, and it's apparently enough to push the total back up to the same ballpark of what it was back when we first started measuring and recording this for Greenland in the 80s.
Is the operative word here "scientism"?
Or are we dealing with appeals to science and credentials, rather than adherence to the scientific method? Such a state would be better termed: "credentialism".
Scientism is the promotion of science as the best or only objective means by which society should determine normative and epistemological values... It is also sometimes used to describe universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or the most valuable part of human learning—sometimes to the complete exclusion of other viewpoints, such as historical, philosophical, economic or cultural worldviews. It has been defined as "the view that the characteristic inductive methods of the natural sciences are the only source of genuine factual knowledge and, in particular, that they alone can yield true knowledge about man and society". The term scientism is also used by historians, philosophers, and cultural critics to highlight the possible dangers of lapses towards excessive reductionism in all fields of human knowledge.
newton nor Harvey would recognize this science,
https://www.conservativereview.com/news/horowitz-now-know-majority-contract-covid-19-asymptomatic-changes-everything/
Finally, I'll be able to take a train to Hawaii.
Science, and Scientists, are notoriously poor at predicting the future, especially for highly complex and poorly understood things such as climate systems and virology.
The Dems don't give a fuck about science. Sometimes the science serves as a useful means some liberal end they want (like shutting own the economy), and sometimes it's not so they ignore it (like allowing males "identifying" as women to compete in women's track and field.)
For the Dems, there is only end - the acquisition of power to forcibly redistribute wealth.
They should skip all the bullshit and just tattoo this on their foreheads.
The fact that someone like AOC is appointed to a committee tasked with saving the world is proof that it is all bullshit.
Science is an iterative process for discovery. However, "discoveries" are often found to be false by the scientific method. That is how it works.
Another way of putting it is that a scientist finds the "answer" until another scientist proves it to be wrong, either in part or in total. That is the history of Science.
Does anyone here believe that AOC understands the Philosophy of Science?
The Democratic Party brand is believe the scientists, trust the science — but...
I thought the Democratic Party brand is believe the women, trust their accusations -- but...
Apparently the one thing you CAN'T trust is the Democratic Party.
Rand Paul also had COVID. So he knows what people are risking.
This was the way Fauci ended that I didn't like "and I think that falls under the fact that we don’t know everything about this virus, and we really better be very careful.... "
Very careful, in this context, means keeping everything shut and the California State University system shutting down for next fall.
Is that careful?
mandrewa said, The most important was the conclusion that basically herd immunity was reached when only 17% of the population had been infected with the virus and following that the author's hypothesis of how that could be possible.
Exactly and that's why CA's approach with sheltering in place till ??? is so counterproductive to reaching that 17%. Gavin Newsom is merely prolonging the misery by setting milestones for opening up that can never be achieved.
I think a lot of people want to make it seem like Rand Paul got into an ugly debate with Fauci because Rand Paul had an amazing point. Keeping kids out of school for longer is only going to hurt *more* the kids who do not have nice middle to upper middle class parents who will sit and watch them do their homework and play board games and eat dinner together like they are doing on all the ads right now. There are kids whose parents can't, and kids whose parents won't. And keeping them out of school is a problem that a public health official should be interested in, right?
mandrewa said...Once the majority of them have been infected, the pace at which the virus spreads slows down considerably. Now the majority of people (and maybe all of us) can get this infection but still most of us need some pretty significant exposures to the virus to actually get infected.
This is something that I've been wondering about. With any sort of contagion I think there are several factors that get overlooked, downplayed, or aren't understood when examining any given outbreak.
I really feel that whether we're talking about with SARS-COV-2 or any other pathogen, that there could be significant variations in infection susceptibility from person to person is not fully understood and appreciated.
There could be differences in how likely any given person may be to even be infected at all due to various gentic, epigenetic, and environmental factors.
The number of virus particles a person is exposed to at once almost certainly has an effect on how likely someone is to become infected and how bad that infection is.
And once a person has been in infected we know that there are pretty significant differences in outcomes. The persons current state of health obviously plays a huge factor. Even something as simple as an otherwise healthy person being tired and/or under a lot of stress versus someone who is not could come into play.
We still don't fully understand or agree on the mutations that occur within the virus itself over time and how much of an impact that they have one way or the other.
In short, there are just so many factors and variables that just aren't fully understood that I find it difficult to just take the opinions and predictions of any expert as some sort of gospel truth that should be used to determine public policy without reservation.
Why anyone would even believe in climate models after what we have been through the past few weeks with Imperial College's Neil Ferguson and IHME is just hard to understand. A model that can look at current data and predict that global temperatures would rise by some fraction of 1.0C in 80 more years? Give me a break.
The fact that AOC is involved shows just how underuse this is. If there is one person who could adequately chair such an effort it would be the late Richard Feynman. But AOC is no Richard Feynman.
This appointment should also satisfy you, right Althouse? You wanted to come out of this holding on to some of the progress toward the Green New Deal, yes?
Fauci is a false prophet. He’s just out there stating the science and creating further panic. He has stated that he can’t guarantee in-person voting will be safe this fall. Who “guarantees” anything is safe? Airlines don’t. Car companies don’t. They say it’s as safe as they can make it, and we accept it.
Then he throws out the “there won’t be a vaccine by the time school starts in September”. That’s true. But it is not science. The consideration is whether or not to open schools this fall. Now that Democrats have tasked the country with eradication of the virus, and that a vaccine is the ONLY solution because herd immunity in evil, Fauci creates the panic he has been assigned.
Two possibilities:
1) Fauci is evil and part of the effort to destroy the economy to coronate Biden or someone in November. He’s as deep State as Comey.
2) He knows the real SEVERITY of the virus created through gain of function research he supported in Wuhan. I personally believe he downplayed COVID in late Feb and early March because he was praying it would be contained. His, along with many other finger prints are on it. He knows more than he is telling the public. He probably knows a ‘guaranteed’ vaccine is either and impossibility, or a loooonnnngggg way away.
I’d imagine Fauci is freaking out, and Dr. Birx is an inconvenience for him. If he is the scientific darling of the MSM you know he’s full of shit.
Downwind socialists (of which I'd class AOC) aren't capable of synthesizing their own system of 'scientific socialism', as did Marx. That's generally the work of first-rate intellectuals. AOC doesn't even seem capable of reading and thoroughly understanding and competing at the univerity prof level (1st and 2nd rate). I'd say more 3rd or 4th rate, middling undergrad at best, given her statements (unless she's playing some long game)
This would explain her intuitive grasp that her poisitional advantage is strategic: To advance the ideas, and float legislation, and be a media figurehead. Drive the wedge into the American House Of Representatives and make a bigger beachhead. Lift 'The People' of the Bronx.
Garner public attention and steer public sentiment against the old, Democratic 'neo-liberal,' 'white' traditional party apparatus. Play the politics, celebrity and media game the best you can.
Of course, her moral judgments, beliefs and principles and experiences are a mix, like all of us, but her actions require truth and knowledge claims. Socialist truth claims are pretty well debunked. yeah there was good science done under the Soviet system, but the party pressure and murder eventually came for everyone.
I think it's better to think of such people as more like cultists, dragging the dead ideology into the future. A game complex enough to keep some very good, some pretty good, some middling and some downright unsophisticated minds engaged in their own messianic dramas. They think of themselves as seeomg reality (truth) as it is, and they're going to share their plans with you. Did you read that latest paper (knowledge), and now it's time to act in the world (activism, politics, media etc) to bring about Utopia and punish the wicked.
What's rarely discussed is that our general move away from more National identity as Americans, religious majority belief, and the wages of the radicals beneath American liberal idealism (moral, social and political issues framed and driven by radicals)
This seems like a reasonable question for Boomers, and which the young already ask me? What kind of stewardship did you, personally, offer of our institutions and heritage?
The pause in air pollution is proving Global Warming's second largest first order forcing.
My test for whether someone believes in "science" is if they support the irradiation of food to kill microorganisms. Not many lefties pass that test.
I saw Dr.Fauci’s response to Rand Paul on mainstream media and it was a good response to Rand Paul’s somewhat silly assertion that Dr. Fauci thought himself to be concerned with economic matters.
AOC is being given busy work by the DNC, who knows maybe something good will come of it.
The chaos in Washington (if that's what it is) won't end if Biden is elected. AOC delivers her report. It's not something that Biden and the people around him really want to turn into policy. But is he really present and aware enough to handle the conflict?
Biden would have to have both business and the left - Clintonites and Sandersites - in his administration. They won't agree about anything. Who will make the final decisions? You would have the kind of conflicts between the White House and the Democrat's left wing that developed under Kennedy and Johnson. You could also have conflicts between political appointees and a strong-willed First Lady.
If Biden gets elected, the best thing for him might be if the Republicans took back Congress. That would mean that the party establishment could keep a lid on the left. It would be a good thing for the country if Pelosi were finally out, too.
Don't overthink this. AOC has great smelling hair.
And CNN just announced they are having world renowned expert Greta Thunberg on Thursday night for their town hall on the Corona Virus. I am not making this up!!! https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2020/05/13/trust-the-experts-guess-whos-going-to-be-a-panelist-on-cnns-coronavirus-facts-and-fears-town-hall-emphasis-on-fears/>
Only if you believe that what they tell us is "science" when it comes to climate is actually "science." It isn't. It is models. And God knows, you should have learned something about models by now.
We are living through Star Wars episode V and VI. Like Palpatine, Fauci has been appointed Chancellor of the Republic. He has been given a wide range of emergency powers to protect the republic from a problem he created. America is now in the process of restructuring the Republic into a Great Empire for the peace and security for all.
Problem with the Sith is there are always two. A master and his apprentice. I just haven’t figured out if Bill Gates is the Master, or Fauci’s apprentice.
Fauci was convinced that AIDS would be largely heterosexual. Didn't happen.
Why are these points so hard to find ?
1. Diamond Princess cruise ship: A new study from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine shows that 72% of those infected aboard the Diamond Princess were asymptomatic. Previously, the estimated percentage of asymptomatic individuals onboard was 46.5.
2. mUSS Theodore Roosevelt: Of the 1,102 confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 onboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, 60% were asymptomatic. Only seven were hospitalized, and one person died.
3. mCharles de Gaulle: 1,046 sailors out of 1,760 on board the French aircraft carrier tested positive for the virus. There were zero deaths, and two remain hospitalized. According to the NYT, about half were asymptomatic.
4. Prisons: Prisons seem to have an especially high rate of asymptomatic cases. According to Reuters, a tally of 3,277 inmates in state prison systems in Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia who had tested positive for the virus showed that 96% of those who tested positive were asymptomatic. 1,300 tested positive in one Tennessee prison: 98% were asymptomatic, six were hospitalized and one died. An entire female prison in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, was tested, and 85% were positive, but three-quarters were asymptomatic.
This Democrat stuff is called "Scientism."
MS OC is planning on becoming a brain surgeon when she retires from Congress at the age of 75.
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
AOC makes me think of the air traffic controller sitting in the bamboo tower on the South Seas island in Richard Feynman's "Cargo Cult Science" lecture. She makes all the right moves, the form is perfect, but the planes don't come.
how Joe Biden wants to balance all the factors in making climate change policy
The most (only) important thing, have someone with a lot of Twitter followers.
Blogger Dave Begley said...
If the Dems really believed in science, the Green New Deal would be buried now. We can now see how wildly wrong the covid19 models were. The whole climate change campaign is based on models about what the temp will be for the entire planet in 30 to 80 years in the future.
From the Idaho Statesman, March 23rd:
Health care experts across the country have warned that people need to isolate themselves, use good hygiene, stop gathering in large groups and take other actions to “flatten the curve” of the coronavirus cases, which is rising steadily.
Why is that important? If outbreaks go unchecked, hospitals will be overcome.
The latest research from the Harvard Global Health Institute projects that anywhere from 244,553 to 733,658 people in Idaho will be infected at some point with the novel coronavirus.
A “moderate estimate” says that about 5% of people with the virus become critically ill, according to ProPublica, an investigative reporting nonprofit that built localized models of the findings.
“Even in a best-case scenario, with cases of coronavirus spread out over 18 months, American hospital beds would be about 95% full,” ProPublica reported.
[For Idaho, in the best case,] prevention measures work, only 20% of Idahoans contract the virus, the outbreak is spread evenly over 18 months, and hospitals can free up most of their ICU beds — there will be one ICU bed for each COVID-19 patient.
Reality, yesterday.
Making those estimates more than 97% wrong.
(The IHME website makes tracking changes in their estimates impossible (or I'm not clever enough to figure it out). Take my word for it, they have sunk like greased safes over the last month and a half.)
Modeling virus behavior is hammer-and-nail simple compared to climate modeling. Nevertheless, the wrongness of these models was nearly total.
From now on, anyone using the phrase "climate models show ..." should be immediately laughed right out of polite society.
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. - Richard Feynman.
I encourage everyone to read his "Cargo Cult Science" lecture (or listen to it: even better). AOC reminds me of the South Sea islander who sits in the bamboo "control tower" wearing woven-grass "headphones" just like the ones the US military personnel wore when they arrived on the island during WW2, to land the planes full of wonderful goodies. Now the military has gone home and the goodies don't come anymore. So the islanders built a replica of the airstrip and did all the things --with great precision-- that the military had done. AOC will sit in the control tower and do things exactly right.
But the planes won't come.
The Church of Science replaced The Church as the source of authority, especially for secularist political leaders. A statement from a Scientist is Truth from On High. "Dissenting" scientists are Apostates and Heretics, fallen Angels gone over to the Dark Side.
Dr Judith Curry is one such fallen Angel.of Climate Science. Dr Robert Atkins was actually the Devil Incarnate of Nutritional Science, a genuine Lucifer rebelling against the Pure, Enlightened, God-given teachings of St Ancel Keys.
Amazing how the Church of Science changes its Dogma over the decades. Not a coincidence some say Science advances one funeral at a time.
We don't know everything about climate change, and the scientists who specialize in the field should be humble and they tell us to be very careful ...
Here's why I get so frustrated about you, Althouse. In many of your posts you demonstrate that you have a first class mind. And yet ... Despite many of us pointing to articles where absolutely top scientists explain what they do and how they do it, you still don't get it, and frankly I despair that you will ever try to get it.
Science is about understanding things to the point where you have models that let you make predictions about how the real world will react when things change. This may come via controlled experiments (e.g., CERN) or observation of gross phenomena (e.g., weather), but the predictions must match the real world or the model is broken and real scientists, humbled, need to revisit their assumptions.
Now compare climate "science." Even if you haven't been paying attention. you can go back and research the predictions made in the 1990s, including Mann's "hockey stick," and compare and contrast with the world as you see it outside your window.
You might also note that there is a trend in the NOAA to adjust the temperature readings, which make the data better match the models. Except that this is precisely backwards -- in real science the models should be adjusted to match the observed data.
I have not heard anything out of Fauci that I didn't either deduce myself or read from other widely available sources. He's simply like today's newscasters quoting tweets and reading prepared copy. He's a prop that we are supposed to assume is an authority, and maybe he is, but I have not learned anything from him I didn't already know, and he's been wrong a number of times because the sources have been. He clearly has no real answers. Being overly cautious and warning of worse case scenarios is easy, safe, and useless.
We need leadership, and that means willingness to take risks. Nobody needs a leader to keep them hiding and cowering. The only way to find out if opening up is going work or not is to do it, but we must fight the initial instinct to run back in the hole at the first sight of trouble, or we will never succeed. There is nothing that can realistically happen in the near future that will make that decision easy. No matter when we do it. The only choice is how much damage are we willing to do to ourselves before we move past this. When we open up, as many of us are already starting to do, there may well be a spike in cases. That's almost assured, but that will happen no matter when we do it. We will expand immunity in the process, which is always the way out. We simply need to do it right this time by protecting the vulnerable rather than everybody.
"Making those estimates more than 97% wrong."
But hey, that's 3% right! Who wants to bet their life savings and future on those odds? Well, we just did, and we better start taking it off the table before we lose our 3% and have to stand outside with a tin cup.
CNN is going to hold a Coronavirus town hall. One of the panelists will be distinguished infectious disease specialist Greta Thunberg.
Yep. Party of Science.
If we really were "all in this together", meaning everybody lost their income, and had the very real possibility of it not returning, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. I mean everybody: all the retirement checks stop, no pay for politicians, media, or "experts". You have to keep in mind that as soon as this is over, the people telling us to stay home lose their value, some also loose their credibility. Lots of incentive to keep up the fear.
From the Idaho Statesman, March 23rd:
The latest research from the Harvard Global Health Institute projects that anywhere from 244,553 to 733,658 people in Idaho will be infected at some point with the novel coronavirus.
...
Reality, yesterday.
Yesterday's reality estimated there were 360,000 (330k to 430k) infections on Mar 27, which is consistent with the first guess; it would be higher if you count all the infections which occurred "at some point".
AOC is a stone cold DINGBAT, on that there can be no question.
" What he will really do if he wins the presidency, I really have no idea."
Great little bumper sticker there.
Fauci was convinced that AIDS would be largely heterosexual. Didn't happen.
HIV is a bloodborne, highly hygienic, and social virus that predictably selected trans/homo males with a socially liberal orientation.
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. - Richard Feynman.
I've repeated that quote myself, but it really applies to other scientists in a given field.
In the real world, just about everyone trusts most science - do you do your own studies and tests to decide which vaccinations your kids will get? Do you believe that a diet of beer, potato chips and plenty of cigarettes is unhealthy based on your own studies?
Sure, they go back and forth about the food pyramid, or how much salt or fat is good or bad, but that's the process of coming up with answers, eventually, as opposed to "revealed knowledge" which doesn't change despite almost always being false to begin with.
Its a metric ton of Commies
On old guy who will gut his appeal to the seasoned citizens in trying to win the Commie youth vote.
This guy is ACHING to lose big.
Big Mike @ 11:05: "...Science is about understanding things to the point where you have models that let you make predictions about how the real world will react when things change."
Bingo. And good echo of Feynman (sorry: my favorite science guy). Who said, "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong."
See also: falsifiability as the central criterion of science.
"Trust the science" is a canard. It presupposes that all scientis agree with one another. And that one scientist is just as good (intelligent, reasonable, nuanced, etc) as any other that you can wheelbarrow in front of a camera.
"trust the science" canard - part deux...
which just goes to show that the ones who say "trust the science" aren't really empirical, scientific thinkers: they are simpletons - with an agenda.
That an organization would put a half-retarded mouth-breathing dingbat like AOC in charge of anything other than mopping a floor (once they show her which end to use) speaks incredibly highly of that organization.
Nice contrast between Fauci, who professed to be humble (snort), whereas the Climate Scientists are 100% arrogant defer-to-me-or-we-all-die political actors more than they are "scientists." My question for the current predicament is why we don't get a "second opinion" from an opposing epidemiologist before we kill the economy to prevent a few more sick people?
And by the way, it is impossible to "open too early" since we have already passed that opportunity. The choices left are late and too late and soon only one will be available. Enjoy the coming depression, people.
Science? Ehh...too political now. Everyone knows God Bows to Math.
In a tomb of Enoch, in the queen's chambers
She lives, guarding that holy cubit
God-given accuracy, measuring untold prophecy
How she loved that sacred inch...
- Minutemen
Paul's comments weren't "silly" - he was making the much-needed-to-be-specified-point that Fauci is only dealing with one portion of this issue, and his comments on schedules for lockdown/opening things up are not taking economic factors into consideration.
I'd rather have the balancing done by someone who doesn't go around mistaking economic costs for benefits.
CNN is holding a townhall meeting on the Wuhan Flu. One of the panelists will be that distinguished infectious disease expert Greta Thunberg.
Party of Science.
Just listen to what Corona virus expert Greta Thunberg has to report Thursday night on CNN. I'm sure she has all the answers. She did for Climate change!!
Bill bright, the 'whistleblower' from novamex, dials up to eleven, with a 50 million death count in his upcoming congressional testimony,
So they have no adult peer review, as every tool expert can attest.
Yes, the most cogent criticism has come from experts in applied statistics or other academics with deep understanding of statistical methods and tools. My friend is a long-time software developer and a PhD in Geology/Climate with a focus on modeling. He also reads this blog and would be well positioned to deliver some anecdotes regarding the improper or incompletely understood application of models. But it turns out that a lot of "climate scientists" actually believe their models. This seems a failure deeper than misusing R or Matlab, but more fundamentally failing in understand that ALL models are wrong, even useful ones.
He mostly goes after social scientists, but if you want a devastating display of the innumeracy and/or sloppiness with data and analysis perpetrated by often prominent academics, check out Andrew Gelman's blog, which has been linked here recently.
"The science is settled" is the same as "the law is settled"..
...so long as it agrees with liberal dogma. Those in the respective professions that disagree are heretics.
Better than malarkey is a high standard.
Why isn't every dedicated environmentalist like AOC in support of opening the economy? To them, the No. 1 cause of climate change is overpopulation. Pandemic = gift horse.
interesting,
https://dailycaller.com/2020/05/13/coronavirus-pennsylvania-rachel-levine-mother-nursing-home/
Wait until you get a load of Fauci and Birx's battalions of "contact tracers".
A little late in my book, but I'm not a scientist. They were reasonably successful during the AIDS epidemic. Finding out who had their dick in your ass last night is almost exactly like finding out whose air you shared last night. It'll be fine.
Governor Wolf is doing outstanding work in this area, creating the Coronavirus Contact Corp of Pennsylvania.
The CCCP.
Co-chair will be John Kerry.
I almost feel sorry for him.
The NY Post ran an article yesterday that sea level rise will be much worse than expected.
https://nypost.com/2020/05/12/scientists-warn-sea-level-rise-could-be-much-worse-than-current-predictions/
The second paragraph is as follows:
This drastic change is being predicted if Earth warms by another 3.5 degrees Celsius (38.3 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100.
We are getting our "Democrat" science from people that cannot do 7th grade temperature conversions and editors that don't catch that the world is projected to warm by 38.3 F by 2100.
From everything I have seen, AOC's science is also at about this level.
@Owen, Feynman is the person who crystallized it for me.
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
Richard P. Feynman
Why does science, or scientists have to be “believed”? Science is verifiable, and repeatable. It doesn’t require faith to know that 1+1=2.
1+1=2 isn't science, it's mathematics. Math is not a science. Science has to use the scientific method, which is not good enough to prove things in mathematics. Mathematical proofs are based entirely on logic. Mathematics is strictly deductive reasoning, science is inductive reasoning.
Inga said...
I saw Dr.Fauci’s response to Rand Paul on mainstream media and it was a good response to Rand Paul’s somewhat silly assertion that Dr. Fauci thought himself to be concerned with economic matters.
I think you will be happy to hear that Rand Paul was making the exact opposite point. That Fauci is not at all concerned with economic matters, and therefore he should not be the main authority on when to open up the economy.
Furthermore, Rand Paul made the excellent points that Fauci had been wrong about the disease progression, and therefore should be humble even when stating judgements about the science.
Finally, Rand Paul pointed out that not opening schools has severe consequences for kids who I thought we used to all be concerned about- kids whose parents can't and won't help them with at-home Zoom school. So we must weigh the risk to all of those children against the newly stated fear of kids getting a rare and dangerous version of COVID.
So Rand Paul made no silly point at all.
The real question of government versus private enterprise is argued on too philosophical and abstract a basis. Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity—and until they do (and find the cure), all ideal plans will fall into quicksand.
Richard P. Feynman
Maybee: "So Rand Paul made no silly point at all."
Correct.
So our Russian Collusion Truther Inga simply made up a "silly point" to use.
She does that alot.
I expect next she'll tell us that was what Rand Paul was "secretly thinking" in the same way Inga and her pals all know what Trump "secretly believes" about his supporters.
Fernandisteinn said,
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. - Richard Feynman.
I've repeated that quote myself, but it really applies to other scientists in a given field.
There's another layer to this.
That is what is the correct attitude that people who are not scientists should have towards science?
Suppose you have two people, one of whom is a scientist saying something about something in his field and the other is a non-scientist criticizing the first person.
Who should you believe?
Well I believe most people make that calculation pretty easily. If this is the only information you have then you believe the scientist and ignore the critic.
And I think that is the correct attitude. If you are ignorant about a subject then the smart choice is to believe the expert.
But notice that pre-condition there, if you are ignorant. Everything changes if you are not ignorant. If you are not ignorant and you think you know something about what the argument is about then you can look at the arguments themselves and judge the issue by the arguments and not the identity or status of who is making the argument.
The latter situation is of course the spirit of science. The person doing it is engaging in something like science even if they are totally mistaken and don't really understand what they are talking about.
And the former situation, where someone defers to the expert, is, even if it is the correct response for most people most of the time -- because after all they aren't really that interested in the subject -- is actually quite far from what the scientific spirit is about.
In particular it's ironic when you see people, heavily invested in a certain belief, who have chosen to believe an expert not because they understand the arguments of the expert, but because they recognize that they don't understand the subject, arguing vehemently against people, who whatever the limitations of their understandings are trying to understand the subject.
"Believe the scientists"
I'm a scientist and I don't believe me.
Which, I humbly suggest, makes me a good scientist.
If we are to tak AGW models as science they would change when the results fall short.
But more fundamentally let's look at these like they were a scientific discovery. Here's what should have happened.
AGW scientist 1: Hey guys, I developed a model and the long term results are disturbing.
Other scientists: OK, let's examine your experiment (model). Scientist 2 is an expert leading teams on ancient temperature interpretation. Send him your surrogate information,any adjustments you have made and the reasons for that adjustment. Also, if you discarded any data, tell us what and why.
AGW Scientist: Will do, and thanks.
Other scientists: Scientist 3 is the head guy on atmospheric science. Send him your assumptions on the atmosphere.
AGW scientist: Great,I await the findings of his team.
Other scientists: Now send you model, how it was developed and modified to Scientist 4 at Big Brain U.
AGW scientist: On the way. Thank you all.
What really happened:
AGW scientist: My model says we're all GONNA DIE!
Other scientists: Give us your background data.
AGW scientists: No! The data points are not documented, some changed and some discarded. And the records of the changes don't exist.
Other scientists: Hey,this hockey stick results from any series of numbers entered and ignores the Medieval Warming period.
AGW scientist: Liar. Denier. You are paid shills of big oil. You want our children to die!
Counting K-12 and college, there are about 76 million or so students in this country. We've pretty much shut down education for all of them. So far they've all lost at least a third of a school year, and if the fear-mongers have their way, they'll lose another half of a school year in the fall. (I'm assuming the availability of a vaccine at the end of the year saves the second half of the schoolyear.) Doing the math, we've sacrificed 25 million years of education so far, and could lose another 38 million years in the fall.
For what? Being generous, the lockdown so far may have saved 100 thousand lives and continuing it may save that many more in the fall. But most of the people saved will die of something else within a few years, because the virus is not very lethal unless you're already pretty old and/or sick. Let's say the average person saved lives another 3 years. That works out to 300 thousand years of saved life so far, with another 300 thousand years in the fall.
So we've traded 25 million years of education for 300 thousand years of life, i.e., a ratio of about 83 to 1. Is that a good trade? Then consider that this lost education is only part of the cost of the shutdowns. Off the top of my head, I'd guess the other costs are at least twice as high. Whatever you think an extra year of elderly and/or sick life is worth, is it worth 249 years of education?
“I think you will be happy to hear that Rand Paul was making the exact opposite point. That Fauci is not at all concerned with economic matters, and therefore he should not be the main authority on when to open up the economy.”
“I have never made myself out to be the end all and only voice in this. I’m a scientist, a physician, and a public health official. I give advice, according to the best scientific evidence. There are a number of other people who come into that and give advice that are more related to the things that you spoke about, about the need to get the country back open again, and economically. I don’t give advice about economic things. I don’t get advice about anything other than public health. So I wanted to respond to that.
Fauci made a point of telling Rand Paul that he never made himself out to be the only voice in this and that he doesn’t give advice about anything other than public health. Rand Paul asserted the opposite. Fauci corrected Paul’s assertion.
"I give advice, according to the best scientific evidence."
Yet prominent folks in the same field see different evidence as "best".
Kai Akker,
"May those communities live peaceful, happy and progressive lives beneath the first nice, thick glacier to reach the Bronx."
Fair enough; AOG is a member in good standing of the Let's All Starve To Death While Freezing In The Dark Coalition after all.
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