[AR] Re: ... Coronavirus
- From: Norman Yarvin <yarvin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2020 14:28:41 -0400
On Wed, Apr 01, 2020 at 07:30:54PM -0600, William Claybaugh wrote:
As I continue to look at the (american) data available to me I am
concluding that the Chinese data and all the papers derived from it are
bullshit.
The Chinese appear to be lying about deaths, infections, and rates. None of
their papers can be relied upon.
The data I am seeing continues to suggest a wild R0 near but below four.
Previous claims of 2.2 or 0.9 to 3.5 do not appear to be based on any valid
data.
Well, there's "wild" as in wild New York City, and there's "wild" as
in wild rural Texas. The latter is going to have an R0 much less than
the former.
Anyway, technical medical papers from China seem pretty much
unaffected by politics (except where they get into traditional Chinese
medicine, which the government is big on). There's nothing wrong with
the RNA sequence that the Chinese reported, for instance. It's the
stuff that would make an immediate impact on public relations that
they suppressed or downplayed. (And yes, that includes the numbers of
cases, from which R0 is calculated.) Unfortunately, that's exactly
the stuff that would have been needed to move our own political
needle. R0 is the least of it; if those jerky bootleg videos of
people dying in the halls of overcrowded Wuhan hospitals had been well
authenticated, professionally filmed, and widely broadcast, and if
they'd been accompanied by sympathetic interviews with overwhelmed
doctors on the front lines, attitudes would have been different all
around.
Speaking of sympathetic interviews with Chinese, this one is worth
reading, since it's not mere political backbiting but has concrete
recommendations:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/not-wearing-masks-protect-against-coronavirus-big-mistake-top-chinese-scientist-says
Other related posts:
