#FireFauci Should be the Rallying Cry for a Generation

[surrept33 + 609]

23 hours ago, El Nikko said:

So 2 million Americans aren't going to die from the new bubonic plague Coronavirus after all?

Same with the 250,000 estimated in the UK

Imagine my surprise

Food for thought:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/04/coronavirus-models-arent-supposed-be-right/609271/

Edited April 16, 2020 by surrept33

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

18 hours ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you don't steal from your grandchildren to do it.

Pesky little ankle biters got it coming!  I said, Get off my lawn!  

[El Nikko + 2,145]

4 hours ago, surrept33 said:

Food for thought:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/04/coronavirus-models-arent-supposed-be-right/609271/

My job for the last 13 years has been in the predictive modelling of resisitivity data. The whole point of a model IS to try to predict what will happen using known data.

I've said I don't work in medicine but since this whole thing started I wanted to look at other pandemics/epidemics out of curiousity and to see the 'predictions' versus the outcome and it seems there has been a trend of over estimations of deaths of all epidemics in the last 20 years.

Ministers in the UK cited a report suggesting that up to 750,000 people could die in the UK alone during the Swine flue (H1N1) pandemic, the actual figure was 371 but lets say it contributed to a few thousand more deaths, that is still way way off from such a prediction.

If your models churn out garbage then they are useless, I would say there was probably zero chance that the 2 million figure in the US or the 250k figure in the UK was ever going to happen.

Does no one remember the hysteria over, zika virus, MERS, SARS, H1N1 and so on and so on. Yes this is worse although there will be time to really look into the death figures and other data when it's over because there are some questions that need to be answered. Maybe since we've been warned about pandemics repeatedly for decades these medical advisors should have planned for adequate supplies of emergency ppe for such a case...after all their 'models' have been telling us we've been on the brink of extermination for years.

The real food for thought though is what economic destruction is going to be left behind when they get a handle on the virus because potentially many of the unemployed will not have jobs to go back to and what happens when several million people default on their mortages?

The under 50s or even 60s need to get back to work before the damage done far outweighs any good, we've had the lock down for what 3 or 4 weeks now? anyone dieing of it didn't catch it in a resteraunt, the local bar or a club most of them probably got it while in care, hospital or old people's homes which is where it seems to be spreading.

On that last point I think I mentioned a week ago that my aunt works in a home for the mentally ill, they had one case and sent him to the hospital where he was tested...and then sent back to the home putting everyone at risk. Today there are now 19 people who have it yet the wonderful field hospitals built here are still empty except one which apparently has 19 patients in it.

It doesn't sound like our wonderful NHS (which has thousands of empty beds right now) is doing a very good job at all, no wonder we're doing so much worse than Germany. Virus or incompetance?

 

Edited April 16, 2020 by El Nikko

[surrept33 + 609]

On 4/15/2020 at 10:00 AM, Gerry Maddoux said:

^

The above article is right in many regards, and wrong in just as many. Anthony Fauci has always been the smartest man in the room at the NIH--if you don't count Francis Collins, Head of the Human Genome Project and, paradoxically (because of obvious evolutionary implication) a devout Christian too. Dr. Collins has been noticeably absent during this sad sage with the CV. 

I'm not Dr. Fauci's apologist. He is exceptionally talented but also very political (by report). There is no doubt that America was woefully ill-prepared for the thing that befell us. Who was responsible for that? Was it Dr. Fauci? If not him, then who?

Dr. Collins did write this recently-ish:

https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2020/03/26/genomic-research-points-to-natural-origin-of-covid-19/

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

14 hours ago, El Nikko said:

My job for the last 13 years has been in the predictive modelling of resisitivity data. The whole point of a model IS to try to predict what will happen using known data.

I've said I don't work in medicine but since this whole thing started I wanted to look at other pandemics/epidemics out of curiousity and to see the 'predictions' versus the outcome and it seems there has been a trend of over estimations of deaths of all epidemics in the last 20 years.

Ministers in the UK cited a report suggesting that up to 750,000 people could die in the UK alone during the Swine flue (H1N1) pandemic, the actual figure was 371 but lets say it contributed to a few thousand more deaths, that is still way way off from such a prediction.

If your models churn out garbage then they are useless, I would say there was probably zero chance that the 2 million figure in the US or the 250k figure in the UK was ever going to happen.

Does no one remember the hysteria over, zika virus, MERS, SARS, H1N1 and so on and so on. Yes this is worse although there will be time to really look into the death figures and other data when it's over because there are some questions that need to be answered. Maybe since we've been warned about pandemics repeatedly for decades these medical advisors should have planned for adequate supplies of emergency ppe for such a case...after all their 'models' have been telling us we've been on the brink of extermination for years.

Thanks for that rational, level-headed analysis.  The media-induced fear porn lately is verging on edge of absurdity.

[TooSteep + 142]

The over-reaction and irrational level of panic is predictable. It is not a grand conspiracy.

It is predictable for the same reason that somewhere between 30-60% of the general population has a fear of flying. And also a fear of nuclear reactors. An informed person would point out that they are irrational fears, since flying and nuclear reactors are much safer than auto travel and coal-powered plants. An order of magnitude safer. So why, as humans do we fear flying, reactors and SARS-CoV-2? Because all the deaths happen at once, in one place! That's it. It really is that simple.

If the total deaths from the virus were evenly spread out over the next 18 months, nobody would be inappropriately panicked and enthusiastically suspending the constitution. As humans, we just cannot cope with bulk death. Over the next 6 years, millions will die globally from the effects of the lockdown. But the deaths will trickle in, and they will be widespread. They won't all happen in one place at one time (unless, I suppose, extreme civil unrest erupts as a result). There will be no panic.

Gerry is so on point. It is the job of the CDC and the NIH to be prepared for these things. The better job they do, the fewer bulk deaths, the less the panic.

[BradleyPNW + 282]

On 4/15/2020 at 8:00 AM, Gerry Maddoux said:

Then, when Mr. Obama entered office, he defunded said team, until the Ebola scare, whereupon he hastened to regroup it.

No. Republican Freedom Caucus/Tea Party morons refused to fund. Obama was always in favor of supporting pandemic response. 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/obama-ebola-coronavirus-trump-congress-tea-party-a9469186.html

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

WASHINGTON — Recent attacks by a Democratic outside group blame congressional Republicans for exacerbating the Ebola epidemic by continuously seeking to cut funds for government health agencies.

But the charge leaves out a critical point. President Barack Obama hasn’t been consistent on funding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the dominant U.S. public health agency combating the outbreak. In some years, he’s been a budgetary champion for the CDC. In other years, he’s bowed to austerity.

{From Huffington Post. My friend actually headed that PREDICT group, by then under the National Security Council reporting to Homeland Security. Mr. Obama (whom I'm not bashing) allowed that team to be dismembered from lack of funding, mainly because the healthcare bill was eating into total budgetary healthcare dollars. Mr. Obama hastened to bring back the PREDICT team upon the emergence of Ebola, when the fellow came back to Dallas and the nurse caught it. Just saying, neither Democrats or Republicans actually thought the PREDICT team was a high-priority . . . unfortunately. Feel free to couch this however you wish but the facts are the facts: the team was disbanded by Mr. Obama, reformed during the Ebola scare, then disbanded again by Mr. Trump. I don't think it will ever be defunded again, so we won't have to argue this issue.}

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

On 4/16/2020 at 11:34 PM, surrept33 said:

Dr. Collins did write this recently-ish:

https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2020/03/26/genomic-research-points-to-natural-origin-of-covid-19/

Thanks for posting this. Dr. Collins, god bless him, is a peace-loving guy. I'm sure he realizes that the ineluctable finding that Covid-19 had been manufactured in the Wuhan lab would cause the world to erupt in war. I'm equally sure that he knows full well how incredibly stupid it was for them to even have the horseshoe bat in the Wuhan lab. Maybe they were making a vaccine--that's putting the most lipstick on this pig possible.

Even if the virus came from the wet markets, President Xi's people knew an awful lot about this virus by JAN 2--that's when they published the genome on the internet science journal. And if they knew the genome they were also well aware that the virus disconjugated iron from the hemoglobin molecule, caused extensive microthrombus in blood vessels, entered cells via ACE2 and HIV gateways, caused cytokine storms in older people with antibody proliferation, and most of all, was exceptionally contagious.

So rather than warn us all, serving as a savior of the human race, Mr. Xi chose to release this child of Satan upon the world. Xi is nothing short of a bioterrorist--I don't care what Dr. Collins says. And just between you and me, I suspect that very thing has entered Dr. Collins' thoughts, as pure as he tries to keep them.

BTW, since I was recently attacked on this issue, I am a fan of Francis Collins, whom I've followed for years. He is the keeper of the gates.