Has the Corona virus affected any cons yet? 8 8

[wilbil]

1 hour ago, Mr. Zipper said:

Excellent. Thanks for sharing.

 

no, it is not. it is dangerous.

[tabcom]

1 hour ago, gcstomp said:

 

We are leaving it up for anyone who wants to read, while also including a thread from a biologist who debunked it.

Could you please provide the link?

[tabcom]

41 minutes ago, wilbil said:

no, it is not. it is dangerous.

What do you object to specifically with?

[wilbil]

26 minutes ago, tabcom said:

What do you object to specifically with?

after starting with the lack of professional credentials to understand data, fact, deductions and conclusions? a lot. people will believe it and assume it is a totally credible source. it is not. it is sky is falling we are all going to die sensationalism.

[Logan510]

Anime Central in IL which was scheduled for mid May has been cancelled for this year.

I suspect Heroes Con will also get postponed or cancelled but I have not been able to find any news on that.

[Mr. Zipper]

5 minutes ago, wilbil said:

after starting with the lack of professional credentials to understand data, fact, deductions and conclusions? a lot. people will believe it and assume it is a totally credible source. it is not. it is sky is falling we are all going to die sensationalism.

Did you even read it? It was the opposite of "we are all going to die sensationalism." The article that was pulled is entitled "Evidence over hysteria"

It was pulled because a blue check biologist disagreed with a number of the points and argued the original poster didn't have the "proper credentials" to interpret the data. 

For those who wish to read it: https://www.zerohedge.com/health/covid-19-evidence-over-hysteria

 

[wilbil]

2 minutes ago, Mr. Zipper said:

Did you even read it? It was the opposite of "we are all going to die sensationalism." The article that was pulled is entitled "Evidence over hysteria"

It was pulled because a blue check biologist disagreed with a number of the points and argued the original poster didn't have the "proper credentials" to interpret the data. 

For those who wish to read it: https://www.zerohedge.com/health/covid-19-evidence-over-hysteria

 

yes i read it. you win. i am a pacifist.

[gcstomp]

tab, you want me to provide a link to what?  it is your original link https://www.zerohedge.com/health/covid-19-evidence-over-hysteria  with 1st lines right at that link :

Update (3/22/2020): After falling under much scrutiny, Medium has deleted Ginn's post. Of note, Ginn is a former 2012 Romney digital campaign staffer with no background in medicine or infectious disease.

We are leaving it up for anyone who wants to read, while also including a thread from a biologist who has refuted it. Click on the tweet below to read.

and you can point by point follow as Carl Bergstrom, someone with actual credentials, dismantles every bit of the Ginn material with which you started your thread, and made 15 bullet points over.

You would open up the Bergstrom twitter thread, the guy who knows his from his elbow, to follow along, but the numbered Bergstrom tweets from YOUR OWN original post and counter point each of the numbered Ginn points: 

1. I hate to invest precious time on taking apart the atrocious @aginnt

article pictured below, but it is getting too much traction here and even in traditional media. This thread could be far longer than it is, but I'm doing my best to only discuss the most glaring flaws.

2. The introduction should be blaring red warning to any thinking person. The author begins by disputing that *context matters*. Without the background to put information in context, all the data in the world are not defense against misinterpretation.

3. You can give me all the stock market data in the world; I don't have the background to make the best use of it because I fundamentally do not understand how the market works or how to take advantage of that understanding. Infectious disease epidemiology is no different.

4. *Information gets lost in translation.* The author claims to be an expert in making products go viral. I suppose that field has borrowed some ideas from epidemiology. Now he's trying to back-infer how epi works from what he knows about that area. It doesn't work that way.

5. Imagine Shakespeare run through google translate into Japanese, then translated back to English by someone who'd never heard of Shakespeare. So much depth would be missing. Same here. We end up with loose neologisms like "virality" instead of a solid theoretical framework.

6. The author discusses the apparent decline in daily growth rate irrespective of control measures. He begins with some truism about small numbers being easy to move; this is irrelevant in the face of the exponential growth that he stresses in literally the previous sentence.

7. He fails to see that this drop in apparent growth rates is heavily driven by left censoring and shifts in testing strategy. Testing started at different times in different countries, was influenced by case density, and early-on, tests individuals in all stages of disease.

8. Next, inferences about "virality" and "viral capacity". I suppose he means "transmissibility". If so, we've spent 20 years developing sophisticated statistical methods to detect changes in transmissibility. With noisy, aggregate data this back-of-envelope stuff doesn't cut it.

9. Disaggregating data is essential to provide context, especially for transmission processes. That the virus can cross national boundaries does nothing to negate the importance of spatial structure and within-country analysis. Aggregating data obscures critical patterns.

10. I hate to ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence, but using this lie to sweep away the disaggregated data is such utter nonsense that I wonder how a silicon valley guy could make this claim by mistake.

11. Then there's the bell curve business. If Hernstein and Murray gave the term a bad name, Ginn says "hold my beer". Most things in nature follow a bell curve, so viruses do too? Not science exactly. And do most things? What about log-normals? Exponentials? Etc etc etc.

12. But that's not the worst part. We have literally over a century's history of mathematical modeling epidemic progression. Some look somewhat bell-like. Others don't. It depends on the circumstances, details of the virus, behavior of the population, interventions, etc.

 

I mean I am just copy/pasting from your own link, demonstrating why your read thru isnt what you understood it to be.

 

 

 

[gcstomp]

Anyway, link for latest statistics, updates every few hours as countries submit their updates: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

337,881 worldwide cases, but for the 111,402 closed cases, 87% recovered/discharged, with 13% death rate.

In U.S., drop down to open link, again it is updated every few hours so these numbers will be vastly outdated by morning https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

and this is not speculation, conjecture, projection, just data as provided by participating counties.

38,164 cases. This is just the start in the U.S. so there are a mere 574 closed cases, 31% recovered, 69% death, but again this is a virtually meaningless number as we are just at the start of the data collection. I pointed out 3 days ago, when U.S. had 11,000 cases, numbers would be outdated by morning. With U.S. cases doubling every 2 to 3 days, and some CDC models showing 160 mill to 214 mill could be infected in country throughout epidemic https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/us/coronavirus-deaths-estimate.html

Edited March 22, 2020 by gcstomp

[tabcom]

50 minutes ago, wilbil said:

after starting with the lack of professional credentials to understand data, fact, deductions and conclusions? a lot. people will believe it and assume it is a totally credible source. it is not. it is sky is falling we are all going to die sensationalism.

Grammar sonny 

 

Your reply to my request leaves me with the impression you haven't even clicked the link, let alone read even a snippet.

I'm sorry if my post doesn't support your confirmation bias.

[tabcom]

1 hour ago, gcstomp said:

tab, you want me to provide a link to what?  it is your original link https://www.zerohedge.com/health/covid-19-evidence-over-hysteria  with 1st lines right at that link :

Update (3/22/2020): . . .

 

 

 

OK, THANKS

I read the article BEFORE that update was posted. I'll check out the rebuttal.

 

MY OWN UPDATE

" . . dismantles every bit of the Ginn material with which you started your thread,"

Carl Bergstrom doesn't really offer a rebuttal. It is more a stream of consciousness outline of undeveloped thoughts. 

Edited March 22, 2020 by tabcom

[BigDaddy1]

Nickel City Con just announced they are indefinitely delaying the comic con, and are releasing refunds within the next couple days. 

Edited March 23, 2020 by BigDaddy1

[Cobbledclam]

One of the best worst movies ever! You can find part 1 and part 2 on EBay 

[Murphman13]

NC governor just extended public school closings to May 15th. Heroes Con in June probably is in serious doubt now.

[jonminkun36]

On 3/10/2020 at 5:51 AM, Tony S said:

A lot of back and forth here - including many people well educated and well spoken.  But I'll add my few cents...

Yes, the seasonal flu does make many more people sick and kill many more people every year than does CV-19.  That is a fact. So many a person and some of our politicians are saying "quit worrying"

But - CV 19 morality rate is far, far higher than the flu.  The WHO organization is putting the mortality rate at 3.4%. That would be 3400 deaths per 100,000 cases.  Versus 14 deaths per 100,000 cases of the flu. And there is no vaccination as yet - it will be at least next year and maybe two years before such is available.  One could say a three percent chance of something happening is low. But we are talking about death . If 3.4% --- or even 1% --- of commercial airline flights crashed NO ONE would fly - including the pilots and attendants. 

It is also worth noting that age and gender seem to be a large factor. Two thirds of the deaths are male. 30% are 60-69 and 50% are 70 or older. So WHO says CV 19 has an overall 3.4% mortality rate. But most of those deaths are men age 60 and older. Not too comforting a thought if you happen to be part of that demographic.  But still there is unknowns about the stats. There are not enough test kits, won't be for another month. Maybe a lot more people that get it and never get tested - and recover just fine. That would reduce the overall mortality rate.  Which is why we NEED the test kits. So public health officials have a better picture of transmission, can better plan. 

CV-19 also appears to spread really fast once it hits an area (perhaps because no vaccination exists and since it is new few people have a natural immunity) So when it hits an area, it can quickly explode in the population. Which overwhelms local medical resources. THIS is the reason why of all the quarantines. As Barney Fife would say - "we need to NIP it in the BUD!" 

Countries with developed economies may actually have end up more problems with controlling CV 19 until a vaccine is available.  Corona-19 has greatly harmed all people on the planet. I still have breathing problems myself. The doctor said to use organic mullein drops, I found mullein leaf for myself. Everyone is still trying to get rid of the symptoms of the virus. But I don’t think we can get rid of it; it has damaged our bodies. Because developed countries have economies largely based on retail. People waiting on people, people shopping, people attending events. 

Soooo.. There is no way we'll know now how this plays out. Maybe a year from now we all are saying big fuss about a little thing. Or maybe it will get really bad. Or maybe it would have been really bad except for the over-abundance of caution being practiced by health control officials and businesses/organizations cancelling large public events. Postponing or cancelling ECC - and event that draws huge crowds (what, 100,000 attendees?) into an area that it's believed CV-19 may have been circulating for a couple of months.  They might as well postpone - as a lot of guests and fans were thinking they might just skip. 

That's all true, my friend.

Edited July 13 by jonminkun36

[Sigur Ros]

Great.  You revived this thread.

Now people are panicking trying to find they're respirators and plastic domes.

[CGC Mike]

I do not mind the casual mention of covid but, seems that the topic had to be banned, I am going to lock this thread.