Reply With QuoteI'm hoping this event allows us to develop a more agile economy that can more gracefully weather these sorts of storms.Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe
Lots of painful lessons are gonna be learned over the next few years.
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Well, at least Virginians don't have to worry about the stores running out of food. If you have no money, you can't buy food.
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I'm hoping this event allows us to develop a more agile economy that can more gracefully weather these sorts of storms.
Lots of painful lessons are gonna be learned over the next few years.
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Florida governor has NOT put the stay at home order in place. Listening to the PC, he made smart cogent arguments. And if things deteriorate, he left it open to pivot.
City of Tamla/Hillsborough County also didn't put the order in place, and will revisit in several days.
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who will get the blame for this....
Screenshot_20200323-183239_Twitter.jpg
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The British government today (Monday) awarded itself a slew of new powers (including the power for police officers to arrest and detain individuals suspected of having the virus) and then announced a nationwide lock-down, including the closure of all 'non-essential' retail businesses. There is almost no dissent in the face of this madness beyond a tiny handful of brave journalists and Members of Parliament. The piece below, published yesterday (Sunday) is a good overview:
PETER HITCHENS: Is shutting down Britain – with unprecedented curbs on ancient liberties – REALLY the best answer? - Mail Online - Peter Hitchens blog
And if you're not interested in hearing from a journalist, perhaps you might be interested in hearing from the head of the Institute for Medical Microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (German audio with English subtitles available): YouTube
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I said the same thing. Seems like the tail is wagging the dog here
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If the proposed investments are implemented wisely, not only will they be life/economy/etc. saving, but they'll leave us in much better shape for the next time this happens.
TMPHBITEU
Here's some sanity, from Bruce Charlton: Bruce Charlton's Notions: Statto world and the birdemic
It's not long, so I'll paste it for you.
Monday, 23 March 2020
Statto world and the birdemic
A statto is a number cruncher - derogatively, someone who sees life through the stats, rather than using stats to understand life.
Stattos have been a near-lethal plague in medicine (especially in the form of Evidence-Based Medicine TM) - and in-and-around when I was an epidemiology lecturer (1993-6) I produced a stream of papers and talks to explain the dangers of statistically-minded people pretending that what they did was science, and that their type of expertise trumped that of those with substantive knowledge (such as doctors).
I completely failed! (no surprise) - and we now live in statto world; where people with some kind of numerical expertise are regarded as experts on everything - especially so regarded by them-selves!
In scientific reality (a world that has all-but disappeared) statistics are used almost entirely to clarify by summary a large quantity of data, so that it can be grasped and understood by somebody who understands the subject. But when somebody does not understand the subject (and especially when they are not truly interested in knowing the truth about it - but have some other agenda) they make truly immense mistakes, with total confidence and a stubborn inability to acknowledge their errors.
Truthful knowledge of a subject is what lets us know what numbers are relevant to an issue, and what (the vast bulk of them) are Not relevant. Shall I give you an example?
It relates to the current birdemic. Given that the death rate is so very low and the bodies stubbornly refuse to pile-up; the entire rationale for the global totalitarian takeover is to stop the limited supply of intensive therapy facilities being overwhelmed.
Yet the birdemic is lethal almost-only to the old and infirm; especially the very old and/or very infirm - and such people would not (in normal, good, medical practice) be put into ITUs on ventilators - because 'their time has come'.
We all will die, and most of us would prefer a good death, but ventialted death under ITU is a Bad death - bad for the patient and the family and loved ones. It is also futile, as confirmed by eye witness accounts that almost everybody put onto a ventilator for the birdemic dies anyway.
Assuming these reports really are facts (which I don't know for sure, because so much of the truth is being withheld and spun) there is Not going to be a shortage of rare intensive therapy facilities unless such a shortage is artificially-created by treating people who would not, and should not, be treated under normal conditions of humane medical practice.
(Also, pragmatically - if (in an insane world) old, multiply sick people with upper respiratory tract infections were to be routinely treated; all the ITU facilities in the world always would be full all of the time - and would never treat anyone who might benefit; because URTI in the elderly and multiply-sick is probably the commonest acute cause of death in the world.
My point is that a couple of relevant facts, whose relevance is not appreciated by stattos, make all the difference in the world.
Even these facts aren't really needed if we take the birdemic at face value, and notice the simple stat that it has killed a small proportion of almost-entirely old-sick people, even in the worst case scenarios (like on board that cruise boat).
But none of this makes any difference in statto world!
And since this crisis is in fact a spiritual war in which everyone is being compelled to take sides; we can see that - with some noble exceptions such as William Briggs (who anyway is not, by my definition, a 'statto') - the stattos have ended-up on the wrong side, fighting on the side of wrong*.
*Instances include Greg Cochran, Nicholas Taleb, and (sadly) Vox Day.
TMPHBITEU
I'm not interested in hearing from any British journalist. But the this video is damned useful. Watch it.
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Not the most coherent analysis (unsurprising, given this guy entertains the notion that demonic spirits may be invading the internet).
He starts off with a rant that epidemiologists don't have enough of an understanding of the ground reality, and are operating in a vacuum (I'm heavily steelmanning his position here).
He then goes on to say that the situation isn't that bad, because only old people will die, and that trying to save their lives is mostly futile (and "their time has come"), and ITUs basically have no value when applied to them.
His argument is as naive and ill informed as someone claiming that putting the economy on hold for a month is basically equivalent to losing a month's worth of earnings.
Rip, this only counts as sanity in the sense that his conclusion is the same as yours. I *really* would like to believe that your reasoning for arriving at this conclusion is of a higher quality than the travesty displayed by Mr Charlton.
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