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Well, the Sky Might Be Falling…
This coronavirus scare is not the same thing as the global warming scare. But one can’t help but notice a few parallels. Or perhaps, a lot of parallels…
First, someone notices possible early signs of a potential danger, makes a best guess on current data, enters that questionable data into an even more questionable computer model, writes and then re-writes the algorithm to confirm their suspicions, extrapolates to the worst possible outcome, and then tells the public that “science” says that’s exactly what’s going to happen unless you do as I say. And if you don’t do as I say, that doesn’t mean that you disagree with my view of the problem or the solution, it means that you don’t “believe in science.”
As I noted in a previous post about Harrison Ford’s views on global warming, “Those who accuse others of not believing in science tend to be those who don’t understand science.”
Another similarity between the global warming panic and the coronavirus panic is that those computer models that were designed to show a looming catastrophe end up being incorrect. Like, way, way, way off. Initial estimates of American deaths from coronavirus ranged as high at 1-4 million. So far we’ve got around 40,000 dead. We think. I’ll come back to that. But anyway, the computer models which guided early decision making on the coronavirus may end up being off nearly by a factor of 100. That’s not an error of 5 or 10 percent. That’s an error of 10,000 percent. That’s incredible.
The next step, of course, is to change how you measure the outcome that is not living up to the flawed computer models. For global warming, you shut down rural temperature stations, and have more temperature stations in cities and on the tarmac at airports, so you can get higher temperatures.
With coronavirus, they started telling doctors and hospitals that anyone who swabbed positive for coronavirus and then later died should be classified as a coronavirus death, regardless of whether the coronavirus actually contributed to their death. Now they’re telling doctors and hospitals that is a patient dies and the doctor suspects that coronavirus may have been a factor, that should be classified as a coronavirus death, even if the patient was never tested.
By the time we get to this stage of the show, even those who seek to take an honest look at the problem cannot do so. The data has been corrupted and thus becomes close to worthless. We are left wondering how many of those 40,000 Americans who are listed as coronavirus deaths actually died of coronavirus. Probably a lot of them. Maybe a vast majority of them. Hard to say, I suppose.
The next step is to go back and change data from the past. The global warming people go back and “correct” the data sets from previous decades, to make them colder (their thermometers were probably off, or the data was probably compiled differently than we do it, or whatever). Thus, as previous temperatures magically become cooler, modern temperatures look warmer in comparison.
The CDC just changed the number of influenza deaths from two years ago – it was 80,000, now it is 61,000. Why would they do that? Presumably because they were getting sick of people pointing out that coronavirus is not as bad as the flu.
Throughout this process, of course, we are told to drive Priuses, or wear surgical masks to Walmart, or something. And if we don’t do as they say, it’s because we “don’t believe in science,” or we actually want to kill people, or we’re so self-centered that we don’t consider the global significance of our choice in cars, or whatever.
But again, if we disagree with their recommended course of action, it’s not because we disagree with them – it’s because we’re evil. Or stupid. Or, most likely, both.
When global warming doesn’t work out they way they want it to, and the polar bears don’t die like they thought they might, then naturally, they make adjustments to the algorithms, and say that they weren’t wrong – it’s just that global warming will become an obvious crisis in 2032 rather than 1995.
Forgot to carry the 1 – sorry about that – but you still should do everything I say. I’m right this time. Don’t you believe in science?
With coronavirus, if the death toll is disappointing to some, it’s not that they were wrong, it’s just that the real threat is going to be the second wave. Or next winter. Or the surge from opening the beaches. Or whatever. It’s coming, and it’s just around the corner. You should still do everything I say. I’m right this time. Don’t you believe in science?
I could go on and on. And so could you, probably. But I think you see my point.
And just to be clear, my point is not that coronavirus is not dangerous. People are dying from it, and perhaps even more are dying from our response to it. So this is clearly a serious problem.
But I think this illustrates one of the real downsides of the centralized control fans using every crisis – real and imagined – as a tool to increase government control. Once we start to understand their playbook, we start to roll our eyes as we watch them go through it yet again, with yet another crisis. It’s almost fun to watch.
Unless one of their “crises” ends up being an actual crisis.
If that were to happen, the actual, real crisis could easily get away from us, because we’re too busy chuckling about all the same stuff from all the same people.
Crisis mongering is dangerous to us now, because it leads us to do foolish things today. But that’s nothing. It will cause real harm someday if one of these crises turns out to be the real thing. Someday, that is likely to happen.
I hope that day is not this day. I guess we’ll see…
Published in General
Probably a ploy by the Trump administration to discredit the CDC, don’t you think?
Plastic bags and straws are killing the planet. Never mind, no reusables please.
I’ve had second thoughts about this. At first, I was opposed to calling a virus-related death a virus death period. However, I think it’s a way to keep track of the spread of the disease. Am I wrong? (For the record, I did not ask my wife this question. I already know the answer.)
We are lucky that we didn’t get hit with a lethal virus
Maybe we should build ‘pandemic’ hospitals the way Singapore did after SARS 2003…
When did that happen? The number was 61,000 when I began looking at the website in February.
My thoughts exactly (but better put, of course). Thank you, Doc.
Meanwhile, there have been found hundreds of elderly people who simply died at home in New York rather than try to get to a hospital. I would guess that many of these are people were scared to death by the press coverage. These are people we need to test for this virus so that we can gauge the full impact of the scary press coverage on this event. Of course, they haven’t been tested. But if they ever are, perhaps the results will motivate the press to tone the scary coverage a little bit if they are really interested in helping people rather than getting clicks.
Is the director of CDC part of the task force?
Fauci and Birx have no affiliation with CDC.
CDC is looking very non essential
Media grabs the upper bound worst-case scenario to make eye-popping headlines as a business model. Scientists (who are human) like being published in main-stream media and generate studies with potential for eye-popping headlines as their business model. These incentives create a positive feedback system that ends up creating a badly misinformed populace. Fear sells.
40,000 to 4 million is a factor of 100, not 1000, but your point stands that the estimates may have been way too high. Too early to say for sure, but most likely.
Holy cats you’re right. Geez. Sorry about that. I’ll correct it.
Thanks for pointing that out,
I did the same thing in the opposite direction when discussing Neil Ferguson’s initial “estimate” as to the total number of deaths due to Mad Cow Disease.
It happens.
I think I figured out what happened. The initial CDC preliminary estimate for the 2017-18 season was 81,000. It usually takes more than a year before CDC finalizes its number. I found an archived page from Nov 2019 which has an adjusted 61,000 figure so that was done before COVID.
Oregon is about to go down that road.
https://www.wweek.com/news/state/2020/04/19/oregon-may-add-presumed-cases-of-covid-19-to-the-official-death-toll/
That actually makes it more consistent with how the CDC counts flu deaths.
I never know what to think until a Hollywood play actor tells me what he found on Wikipedia.
It’s OK, Doc, you were only off by a factor of 10. In the current environment, that may turn out to be almost as good as a hole in one. :)
I actually messed up a calculation on another thread a couple of days ago, by a factor of 100. I did catch it and correct it, thankfully.
Classic bait and switch.
A guy with a calculator crunching numbers from equations is not a scientist. He is an estimator. A lot of engineering is estimating the outcome of what-if scenarios. It’s closer to engineering than science. Science is when you do an experiment to measure whether reality conforms to a hypothesis. Usually, if your assumptions don’t comport with reality, the hypothesis won’t be demonstrated. Also it needs to be repeatable by some disinterested party. I resent being part of an experiment.
“Don’t you believe in science?”
As a working scientist (geoscience) for about 40 years, almost no phrase makes me become unglued more quickly than this one.
In short, I don’t “believe in science” but I’m open to be persuaded by scientists, even by young unknown scientists, who have produced novel, testable, and falsifiable ideas. And whose work can be replicated.
Testable and falsifiable. Plus it is important to remember that the scientific method — as powerful as it is — is not applicable to every question.
The CDC assumes that most pneumonia deaths are caused by the flu, but often, as with Covid 19, it may not be so. People get old, get hypertension, get lung disease, and become susceptible to pneumonia caused by any number of bugs. It can happen quickly – a sore throat quickly moves to the lungs – strep, staph, any number of pathogens including the common cold. It is not always the flu, or Covid 19. I recently read that, according to published HHS statistics under 1000 who died in 2018 had influenza listed as the cause of death And of those deaths, less than 300 were lab confirmed cases of influenza. That means that the CDC’s estimates for flu deaths are a farce. You can read about it here.
We see what we want to see.
Those who see something else, well, they simply “don’t believe in science.”
Two prepress papers today:
It takes more heat to kill SARS-C0V-2 than was previously thought. 92° C, 15 minutes.
Unsurprisingly (since I’ve read a lot of the papers they used, a meta-analysis in prepress of studies including those in prepress on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 shows “no clinical benefits regarding HCQ for treatment of COVID-19 patients.”
NYC approves, providing that they’re federally funded and under local control There’s a lot more money in auctioning those things off than there was for ventilators.
Much of what I’ve been thinking about the 2020 Wuhan virus mass-imprisonment-without-trial, some of which I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to communicate, is what Dr. B. says in this article.
This post is absolutely brilliant.
When I first learned about hydroxychloroquine, I thought it was something to be used for treatment of cases. Then I heard of it being proposed as a prophylactic, which at first seemed sketchy to me. But then I learned that some of the medical people who were touting it were indeed thinking of it as a prophylactic. It seems that this metaanalysis is making no distinction whatsoever about what stage of the disease was being treated. I just scanned it briefly, so maybe I missed it.
What’s the metric for “back to normal?”
Borepatch has it: the N95 Index.
I don’t know if it’s a farce but it is clearly an imprecise number. Was quite surprised when I started looking at the methodology a couple of months ago – the CDC does not hide it, states quite clearly they are making assumptions when attributing pneumonia deaths to the flu. So is COVID though I actually think the estimates are closer to reality (at least as to deaths). Are total COVID deaths today really 42,514? Probably not. Could be 37,000, could be 47,000. But if you are going to do apple to apple comparisons it is best to use at least somewhat similar methodology and I think the current approach to COVID deaths does make it closer. Another thing to be aware of in making CFR comparisons is that the flu case estimates only include symptomatic cases, while many of the COVID exercises now are directed at measuring symptomatic + asymptomatic. CDC estimates that 40-45% of the flu cases (which it does not count) are asymptomatic.
The members of the CDC’s advisory council on vaccine policy own many patents on technology in the vaccines the CDC recommends. It is no doubt a coincidence that the CDC’s assumptions on flu deaths (or now, COVID-19 deaths) would encourage vaccinations.
We get a hint of this from the large difference between number of people tested (because they had respiratory disease symptoms) and number confirmed with COVID-19. If the majority, to very large majority, with bad enough symptoms to warrant testing right now have something other than COVID-19, then why are we not assigning to a general category unless there is a positive test for Flu strain A, B or COVID-19?
Arizona is tracking 8% confirmed out of all tested. Assigning more than 8% of uncertain cases to “COVID-19 death” is a fraud, a deliberate deception, under this condition.