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@obi indeed, not surprising
@realcaseyrollins thats what it has always seemed to me, but what do i know @freemo
Nothing about this changes the fact that it was as serious as they said. We always knew, and accounted for, the fact that many more were infected than tested. We also always knew that a large portion were asymptomatic though this doesnt change the fact that a large portion still died, these facts arent at odds either.
@freemo @realcaseyrollins I know its a lot to base off just one study, and to scale it towards the entire population, but if it were to that scale in that range (2.8-5.6%) wouldn't that bring the mortality rate down to somewhere between .02 and .06%? That added with the fact that COVID19 attributed deaths dont require a positive test, I'm just saying its not as dire as the media makes it out to be. Of course a lot of people died. A lot of people are always dying. Never good, but we don't do shit about the rest.
No there are sooooo many things wrong with that assumption.. putting aside anything to do with scaling that figure to the whole population you are forgetting one very fundamental fallacy in your thinking.. its called the False Positive Paradox..
In any disease where the number of people who have the disease is a minority of the population, even if the test for the disease has a very low false-positive rate then when you randomly sample and test the population the **overwhelming** majority of positive results will be false-positives.
this is a more specific form of the Base Rate Fallacy logic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy
No I never said that. No studies show a high infection rate in terms of percentage of the population infected. New york city, for example, one of the worst hit is around a percentage point, most areas much lower.. it has a high R0 but the total number infected in terms of percentages are relatively low thankfully.
As far as I know that too was the same test as we are discussing here so subject to the same False Positive Paradox... point is we need other types of information, like what I discussed above, to really draw any sort of conclusion either way.
I never said the study is worthless, its very valuable, it just doesnt draw the conclusion you (or the media) seems to think it draws.
Data and studies aside if we just look at the high profile people being infected and dieing or otherwise having severe complications should tell you something.
Actor Nick Cordero just had his leg amputated due to getting COVID-19, when the last time you heard of any celebrity getting a leg amputated due to the flu? Or all the high profile people who have died from COVID-19, again, when was the last time you heard of any famous person even dying of the flu?
Any studies or numbers aside its pretty clear even if this is over or under hyped, its a pretty serious disease.
@freemo Truthfully i don't know of anyone famous who has had it bad. Never heard of this guy you referenced lol @realcaseyrollins
Thankfully they havent been huge actors, but famous enough I suppose:
Well that wasnt really the conclusion in the first place.. thought by whom?
All the experts up until then and still now at the moment would say the same thing.. we dont know the number infected very well.
The link i provided explained why the False Positive Paradox means that we cant draw conclusions from the test results without other types of data needed to calculate the true-positive rate.
We would need to first know the actual incidence of the virus in the population along with the false-positive rate of the test, with those two pieces of data then we can conclude meaningful results from the test.
Basically your working backwards, your trying to use a test to determine incident rate when you need to know the incident rate first in order to interprit the results of the test. which is exactly why we need other types of data which we dont have before this particular data comes useful.
@freemo @obi I thought you have to have had the #Coronavirus before you can get the antibodies. Would that count as an "incident"? Perhaps some of these people are naturally immune and were born with antibodies.
False positives happen for numerous reasons. technical inaccuracies of a test (such as detecting antibodies from another source or similar) can be one, but it can also include things as simple as human error, cross contamination, and countless other reasons.
The reason it is called the false positive paradox is exactly because of the reaction you are exhibiting now.. it is counter intuitive to what your instinct tells you when interpreting such a test.
I usually find when dealing with counter intuitive logic it can be helpful to think about it in the most extream case to help you see why it is the way it is... imagine some imaginary disease that is very rare, no one knows how rare it is though (just as we have no clue with coronavirus how common it really is).. so we develop some test to test for the disease so we can figure out how common it is.
Now lets say, for simplicity, we know due to human error or whatever other error inherent int he testing process that 1% of the time the test will say someone has the disease when they really do not (false positive). Lets also assume that in reality (though unknown to the scientists) only one person in the entire world actually has the disease, or for simplicity sake, no one does.
So armed with our 99% certain test we test the entire population of the world in an effort to determine how wide spread the disease is. What result would we get?
Well according to our 99% reliable rest 78 million people in the world have the disease (we tested 7.8 billion and 1% of them got a false positive).. Since we dont know the actual number of people in the world who had the disease, or even the the false positive rate of the test going in, we will happily conclude the disease has reached 78 million people even though in reality the disease is non-existant.
In other words.. the test is only actually helpful to us if we know the incident rate in the population and the false-positive rate of the test.. without these additional data points the test doesnt tell us anything of value.
Depends.. it has long been the case that laypeople reading studies, or even news media outlets reporting on them, have done more harm than good. Its pretty common for the media and laypeople to draw incorrect conclusions that professionals might know better not to do.
The study **is** valuable, it just doesnt draw any conclusions on its own and will simply be part of a bigger puzzle as time goes on. But the lay person is likely to draw premature conclusions from it anyway.
Among scientists its a huge gripe about how people and the news tend to report on studies. Its almost always wrong.
The study **does** mean what it says, it just doesnt mean what **you** say it means.. the fault isnt in the study or its claims, its in your interpretation of it.
@freemo @obi I mean, if scientists say "more people had #Coronavirus than we thought", I'm inclined to believe them, personally. But again, I respect your opinion.
The study does not say that, only the news which reported on it did.. so no "scientists" are saying that, its not even a scientific statement (how do they measure the percentage people "thought" had it, and are you talking about people who had coronavirus or people who had COVID-19)...
I think what your really trying to say, but lack the scientific verbage to express it is... coronavirus doesnt always manifest as COVID-19, it has a high incidence of asymptomatic carriers... which is entiery true (and what a lot of scientists would agree with including the ones who did that study). but you have to understand in technical language your saying something very different than "COVID-19 isnt very deadly".. both because coronavirus doesnt always cause COVID-19 because it means something slightly different, and also because of reinfections.
Also its a lot easier to know that asymptomatic carriers are high than it is to actually claim 5% of the population had the virus... so your kinda getting yourself stuck in the weeds in multiple ways here.
@freemo @obi "USC and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health on Monday released preliminary results from a collaborative scientific study that suggests infections from the new coronavirus are far more widespread — and the fatality rate much lower — in L.A. County than previously thought...The antibody test is helpful for identifying past infection, but a PCR test is required to diagnose a current infection."
I see no reason to disagree with this, nor any evidence that this is false.
Those arent words spoken by a scientist.. your welcome to beleive it or not, but do **not** try to claim this is something the study or scientists said. It is a layperson's interpritation of it, and not really a technical statement.
notice the words "preliminary" and "suggests" as well, also notice they dont even say who "previously thought" it.. are they talking about popular opinion? Its not a very technical statement but if they are just saying that a bunch of americans sitting home drinking beer thought the virus wasnt as wide spread as it is and this study is evidence they are wrong.. well sure thats fine.. but its not really a surprise to scientists who havent really made much of an assertion either way how wide spread it is, most admit we dont have the data to say that yet.
@freemo
Another example. Years ago Brian Cox was my hero. I even got my emailed questions read on the podcast a few times. I looked up to him in the way he approached science. Then someone asked him on an episode his thoughts about there potentially being a Planet X in our solar system on thousands of years orbit, and provided some interesting data. He mocked the question, and said "no no no there is no planet X or Niburu or any crazy thing like that. 0 chance of that". A few months later some new data came out of NASA(?) Showing some interesting things that might support that. He acknowledged the data and possibility, but didn't apologize at his mockery of a fan asking that question so recently. That's when I lost respect for him. It makes me sad.
The implication in "no scientist said that" was not that "no authority figure said that", but that "the wording is vague and unscientific". Not realizing this, you jump to criticize basing one's conclusion on authority of scientist, bringing as an example your own behavior of drawing conclusion based on non scientifically worded statements of you heroes(authorities), who later are discredited in your eyes (in their entirety as a person and a scientist, "cancelled") by other non scientifically worded statements of NASA(stronger authority I guess), or their non scientific opinion on unrelated subject(elections), without ever yourself studying the field with full rigor and drawing your own conclusions based on specific scientific statements.
TLDR: "you should wholeheartedly trust an authority figure in absolutely everything, up until the point their layperson remarks(which should be gospel to you) are refuted by a greater authority (or they just say something you don't like), and under no circumstances should you ever even consider doing science yourself, kids"
@namark great reply and all, but your understanding of what i was saying was incorrect. He was my "hero" because logic and open-mindedness and mocked a question unscientifically. Then we there was a more authoritative source ( to him, not to me) he completely changed his mind, and then acted like he never opposed the idea. My problem with him, or anybody really is arguing from the position of authority (their authoritative status makes them correct) instead of arguing the actual idea using logic (like he always did before). As for your tldr; that's exactly what I am arguing against, and exactly why I stopped following Cox. So not sure where we disagree there, I couldn't have written it better myself @freemo @realcaseyrollins
My argument is that your understanding of what you are saying is incorrect, and that you are saying the complete opposite of what you think you are saying, however strange that might seem.
Nobody should be your hero, but you shouldn't solve that problem by jumping from one hero to another based on who looks more heroic at any given moment. You should consider their scientific works and statements as scientific works and statements, and their layperson remarks as layperson remarks. They don't make themselves authority figures, you make them authority figures by the mindset of "they must be perfect god, and everything they say must be correct, and if anything they said is incorrect, they are the devil then, and must not be trusted in anything, logic be damned and forever forgotten".
More so, as you can't be an expert in everything, when you are left with no choice but to trust an authority, you should accept that reality, make your choice and remains a mostly silent sceptic, and not go around asserting knowledge that you don't have and trying to convince others that your choice is THE choice, like a fanatic.
@namark well I completely agree with that, so not sure where our disconnect is @realcaseyrollins
Let me paint you a full picture.
@freemo stated that the conclusions drawn are not scientific, which is apparent just based on the wording, which is so vague it can't be science. You having no argument to that, making use of our good friend @realcaseyrollins (who is so far innocent according to my logic radar) derailing the conversation from science to authority, proceeded with the rhetoric of "one should not blindly trust authority" while demonstrating no ability to do so yourself or any understanding of the problem of authority, which you assumed @freemo was having, through an apparent misunderstanding(misinterpretation), that is mostly likely caused by the same lack of realization of your own hypocrisy.
Here is the flow without all the mumbo-jumbo:
freemo: this proves nothing
casey: but authorityyyyy
freemo: well, your choice, but authority is not science
obi: freemo blindly trusts authority, you should not blindly trust authority, cause authority is wrong sometimes (extrapolation: instead you should blindly trust authority that has not lost its authority so far, according to me).
You see where it all went embarrassingly wrong?
@namark @freemo let me paint u my picture. Nothing u said was my intent. I was replying only to the statement that went something along the lines of "he isn't a scientist". All I was saying was that is not a good argument. I even said the person was probably wrong, I don't know, I don't even know what they said. Only saying using he isn't a scientist as a reason to prove something wrong is the wrong way to go about it, because using authority as a proof isn't correct. As for everything else u mentioned, I have no idea what your talking about. Good day @realcaseyrollins
If that was all you said, it would have been a simple misunderstanding, instead you went on a glorious rant exposing the fallacies that plague you, which I could not help but point out. Call it an obsession. Not very healthy I admit.
@freemo @namark @realcaseyrollins I'm not easily offended, just have no interest in engaging with him, no offense. Thanks for the info on the paradox. Really interesting
@namark @freemo I said good day, sir 🤣 @realcaseyrollins
Just for the record while I do mostly agree with newark here he does have a tendency to be a bit nit picky and abrasive. S try not to take the lack of tact too personally, I doubt he means it personally.
@namark @obi @realcaseyrollins