Objectively intelligent.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Some of your earlier posts on this board made it sound like you were saying something kinda different. If you ever get together with yourself to talk about what you're posting here, maybe you want to kick that one around.

Here’s what I said that started the back and forth:

“There’s a definite genetic component at work within the set of younger people who are doing poorly with it. I just don’t think we understand it yet.

There are loads of people in their 60s and 70s who are getting it and having mild reactions. We remain, illogically, fixated on outliers.”

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

I did not vote for Governor Whitman, but like her moves in these times. Note her plan requires sufficient immunity to fully reopen. Meaning lots of us have to get sick. This isn't sebby, or less or trump. It's that "woman from Michigan."

https://www.newsbreak.com/news/0Ozw4...n-for-michigan

That sounds like what we've been going, except we never shut down construction and real estate and already reopened landscaping and some other outdoor work awhile ago.

But move to containment is the tricky part. We aren't close and I don't think we're really going to wind up trying. We're just trying not to overwhelm hospital capacity.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Here’s what I said that started the back and forth:

“There’s a definite genetic component at work within the set of younger people who are doing poorly with it. I just don’t think we understand it yet.

There are loads of people in their 60s and 70s who are getting it and having mild reactions. We remain, illogically, fixated on outliers.”

It's a fair point -- you said some reasonable things too.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Icky, the Pentagon isn't letting anyone who's had Covid-19 enlist, which makes more worry again about the lasting health effects.

This follow-up article is also troubling.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

Yeah, and with epigenetics it is really hard to pinpoint which is genetic and what is environmental/developmental.

It would depend on exposure to modifying elements. In the case of people living in polluted areas, epigenetics is significant. In the case of that remote Amazonian tribe which is hiding because it fears being wiped out by Covid-19, not so much. There, their susceptibility or resistance would be almost assuredly entirely genetic.

It also seems contingent on what aspect of one's genes were at play in rendering one weak or robust to the virus. If the aspect is something not impacted by epigenetic modification, then its entirely genetic. I don't know if the frequently discussed ACE2 aspect is modifiable or not.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

This follow-up article is also troubling.

I'm not suggesting that article is not worth writing. But it's a collection of outlier events. If you dig into the semantics, you find that it's structured in a majority of the points made regarding data to alarm the reader and suggest severe or unique symptoms are more the norm than the small exception.

At no point does it, or most articles like it, flip the statistics and say, "Out of a study of 500 hospitalized, 480 resolved in clinically predictable manners."

It is totally true that one can draw the really bad card in the deck with this disease. But the odds are very, very much in favor of drawing one of the other 51.

If Covid were an investment, the tail risk of it savaging in excess of, say, 5-7% of young people with strokes and blood clots, would be minimal. And yet we're served daily a litany of stories discussing it as though the likelihood of 95% of young healthy people recovering from it without unique or severe complication is in the area of 5-7%.

(I've a friend with a clotting disorder who sailed right through this, BTW. If anyone should have been a victim of this severe presentation of Covid, were it indeed as common as suggested in these types of articles, it would be this person. She's quite fine, a month out from it, and never had significant symptoms.)

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I'm not suggesting that article is not worth writing. But it's a collection of outlier events. If you dig into the semantics, you find that it's structured in a majority of the points made regarding data to alarm the reader and suggest severe or unique symptoms are more the norm than the small exception.

At no point does it, or most articles like it, flip the statistics and say, "Out of a study of 500 hospitalized, 480 resolved in clinically predictable manners."

It is totally true that one can draw the really bad card in the deck with this disease. But the odds are very, very much in favor of drawing one of the other 51.

If Covid were an investment, the tail risk of it savaging in excess of, say, 5-7% of young people with strokes and blood clots, would be minimal. And yet we're served daily a litany of stories discussing it as though the likelihood of 95% of young healthy people recovering from it without unique or severe complication is in the area of 5-7%.

(I've a friend with a clotting disorder who sailed right through this, BTW. If anyone should have been a victim of this severe presentation of Covid, were it indeed as common as suggested in these types of articles, it would be this person. She's quite fine, a month out from it, and never had significant symptoms.)

“A Pew Research poll found that 79% of Fox News viewers surveyed believed the media had exaggerated the risks of the virus. Sixty-three per cent of Fox viewers said they believed the virus posed a minor threat to the health of the country.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...virus-fox-news

[sebastian_dangerfield]

At the age of 40, here is your chance of getting cancer:

2.72 (w/in 10 yrs)
8.98 (20 yrs)
20.14 (30 yrs)
41.55 (Ever)

21.57 (Dying of it, over lifetime)

The chance of dying of Covid in one's 40s is hard to pin down, but the ranges I've seen run from 1% to 5%. So I'll use a crude average: 3%.

It's roughly the same chance a 40 year old you'll come down with cancer over the next ten years. It's far lower than the chance you'll come down with cancer over the next 20 years.

Now factor in the chance of all the other diseases one might acquire, the accidents in which one might die, and unsurprisingly, you've got a statistically larger and larger chance of death accruing as you age. If you sat down and sketched it out, you'd scare yourself silly. (There's a hedge fund billionaire in Geneva named Alan Howard who stopped skiing and had his image removed from Google after becoming obsessed with risk. And of course there's Howard Hughes at the extreme end of black swan paranoia.)

I think what makes Covid such a fascinating psychological experiment is it shows the extremes to which people will go to try to entirely control their surroundings.

That's really what this is. Covid has a very slim chance of killing you. It's far more likely you'll die in a car accident, or of cancer, or in the US, heart disease. (Somewhere, a man rides a motorcycle wearing a covid mask.) The small delta between being absolutely certain of avoiding death from Covid and being 97% sure of avoiding death from it is causing people extreme uneasiness. I think they want to go out, they know the math, they know the unlikeliness of death accruing from this, and yet, it's really hard to concede that 3%.

Even though their risk of dying from various other causes far exceeds 3% any day of the week.

They say the mind processes loss a lot more strongly than gain. It appears it also favors absolute certainty in an extreme disproportionate ratio to near certainty.

(I do not think it's mere fear of getting sick that has caused people to be so upset by this thing. If you could guarantee people that they'd get sick but not die, I think almost everyone would choose to get the virus and be done with it.)

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

“A Pew Research poll found that 79% of Fox News viewers surveyed believed the media had exaggerated the risks of the virus. Sixty-three per cent of Fox viewers said they believed the virus posed a minor threat to the health of the country.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...virus-fox-news

This new style post kinda reminds me of my old Gilligan Episode posts.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

“A Pew Research poll found that 79% of Fox News viewers surveyed believed the media had exaggerated the risks of the virus. Sixty-three per cent of Fox viewers said they believed the virus posed a minor threat to the health of the country.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...virus-fox-news

The media has exaggerated the risks of Covid. That's not a Fox point. That's an actual point. I'd surmise Fox has also exaggerated the risk. What sane media outlet wouldn't do so? The more fear, the more eyeballs on the story, and the more legs the story has. If I were in a news room, I'd be doing exactly the same thing.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

This new style post kinda reminds me of my old Gilligan Episode posts.

It reminds me why the spin instructor is the spin instructor.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

This new style post kinda reminds me of my old Gilligan Episode posts.

Compliment accepted.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

The media has exaggerated the risks of Covid. That's not a Fox point. That's an actual point. I'd surmise Fox has also exaggerated the risk. What sane media outlet wouldn't do so? The more fear, the more eyeballs on the story, and the more legs the story has. If I were in a news room, I'd be doing exactly the same thing.

Do you talk to people who don't think you sound like an idiot when you say things like this?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

Do you talk to people who don't think you sound like an idiot when you say things like this?

Do you know any media people?

This isn't at all controversial. They look for the most salacious angle. What planet are you on?

Covid is dangerous. There's a low single digit chance it'll kill you, and a small but unknown chance it'll create lasting damage.

As the disease progresses, however, the story risks becoming normalized. As in, people might not continue to be entirely obsessed with it. So at this point, to avoid that risk, every story about NY's rate dropping must be met with some story re-emphasizing the outlier disease presentations. This isn't a right or left media thing. It's an all media thing.

If you want to test the theory, look at the trend line between what the market sees and what the media is writing. Now, a shit ton of the melt up has been due to Fed intervention. But all of it? No. A significant portion of it is a prediction that, while we'll see a U recovery of a sort, we will see a normalization in which Covid is not multiplying wildly around the country as it did in NYC.

But what is the media writing? Few stories are focused on the drop in cases, while the majority emphasize doom events:

1. Massive spike in rural areas to come (though not yet materialized);
2. Kawasaki-like syndrome in .00001 of children which may be related;
3. Immunity from previous acquisition probably unlikely

Etc., etc., etc.

The "it kills kids" angle was destined to be front and center at some point. Efforts to push that narrative started at the very outset of the virus. The reason for this is simple -- takes the narrative from thriller to psychological horror movie.

Another media flurry of bullshit is about to hit from the right, regarding this Durham investigation. WSJ is setting up that probable nothingburger to look like a new Watergate right now. They'll have the credulous at each others' throats on several fronts this election season:

1. Greed vs. Science;
2. D vs. R;
3. Progressive v. Moderate Liberal;
4. Populist vs. Anti-Trump Conservatives;
5. Xenophobes v. Immigration Moderates;
6. China Bashers v. Globalization Proponents

Of course you see all of this. Who couldn't?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

Compliment accepted.

De nada!