[ExI] bikers again

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com> 
Subject: Re: [ExI] bikers again

 

On Fri, Sep 4, 2020 at 11:13 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

  >…So… if we postulate that covid is over… certainly the OF or WITH covid fatality rate would crater.  Ja?

 

https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/

 

>…It's on the decline--not for the first time--but not over by a long stretch…

 

I have seen that graphic 100 times, and it always brings to mind the comments of the Belgian leader.  She claimed these nations’ covid numbers cannot be compared with each other because they are being counted differently.  She is looking more right all the time.

 

>…How will we know when covid is over?

 

>…The CDC will let us know. :-)  -Dave 

 

Ah, thanks Dave, I feel so much… em… better… now that I know that.

 

There was an article in the Washington Post which contained this comment:

 

Unlike … protests in late May and early June that took place outdoors, the Sturgis gathering was attended by hundreds of thousands of people who “spent hours and hours in bars, tattoo parlors, casinos and other entertainment venues where much of the transmission occurred,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy…

 

OK, so ja, we know, bars, casinos, tattoo parlors, indoor rock concerts that sorta thing.  We know.  That’s what Sturgis is all about.

 

In a similar article, not by Osterholm, an immunologist who studies this sort of thing was focusing on the Sturgis dataset.  His motive was different from mine perhaps, but not really.  We both want to know if Sturgis would be a super-spreader, I have biker friends who went, people I advised to stay back, people who urged me to come.

 

OK so Sturgis wasn’t a super-spreader or apparently even a nominal spreader, but we were so caught off guard by that sub-spreader signal. A prominent “immunologist” didn’t seem to recognize it.  But I did.  Way down here in the nowheres, little microscopic tiny spike asked the obvious question: what is the case rate and fatality rate vs the expected value?  

 

My Extropian friends, big thinkers, I ask you the same question.  Take the numbers from your county, or state, or anywhere where you have access to daily data. Scale it to the expected value for the month of August per half million please.  Report your results.  I already did Los Angeles county and Santa Clara county.  Do use a county with at least half a million, for I don’t trust extrapolation up.  

 

LA: 40.  Santa Clara: 12.  Sturgis: 1.

 

So this “immunologist” went on and on about this guy who apparently caught covid at the rally and died, how needless, how tragic, oh swoon, how could we have allowed this rally under such dangerous conditions as this, woe, woe is me, and so forth.  Needless?  Well hell, how could “we” have stopped that bike rally?  Could we?  Spoiler alert: nooooooo, we couldn’t.  That’s what made this dataset special: no politics mucking up the results.  How often does THAT happen?  Has it ever before this?

 

The “immunologist” demonstrated zero recognition, this “immunologist” failed to recognize the kind of signal that real immunologists (who are actually doing real immunology (correctly)) and even motivated amateurs such as me, this signal we are puzzling over until our puzzlers are sore: 

 

Why was that Sturgis case rate about half the expected value and the death rate about… ? … a tenth?  Did covid mutate into something that most catchers never noticed?

 

Anyone?  Anyone?

 

spike

 

 

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