The Flu (Health)

[Boreades]

[Mick Harper]

Ho hum, for the second night in a row Newsnight had a set piece argy between the orthodox position and 'our' position (hooray!). For the second night in a row they had managed to dig up a disastrous performer for our side and a smooth operator for theirs (boo!). This is not a BBC conspiracy (they are to be congratulated for running these things at all), just the fact that 'outliers' tend to be woolgatherers -- and it shows. Plus they don't have a lifetime of being invited to air their views -- and it shows.

We did however get a new justification for not airing dissenting points of view from experts. "It will only confuse the public even more as to what they are supposed to do."

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

You are quite wrong to impute base motives to either newspapers or experts. I am tired of these lazy and tabloidal accusations from 'experts' who claim to know, not least because similar ones are routinely aimed at me. Let us hope stoicism will become widespread within the sacred precincts of the AEL one day.

[Grant]

Quite right and I must admit I regularly submit to temptation. It’s so much simpler to assume one’s enemies are evil. Problem is we’ve evolved to seek simplistic answers. That caveman who deeply empathised with refugees from the neighbouring tribe didn’t last very long

[Mick Harper]

Yes, but AE has evolved to seek out simple answers. The easiest way to tell the difference between 'simple' and 'simplistic' is whether anybody else in your saloon bar is saying it too. If they are, you are perfectly entitled to give into temptation and think it too but what baffles me is that anyone who does (not mentioning you, Wylie, Ishmael, Scottie, Boreades etc) would want to advertise their weakness here.

On the other hand, be warned. If you don't utter these silly things on a regular basis you will begin to shrivel up. Maybe to die, maybe to be reborn, it's always difficult to predict.

[Mick Harper]

Finally we got a figure of sorts. We are constantly given the daily infection rate (4,926, rocketing, screamed at us), we are constantly given the daily death rate (37, steady, ignored) but we are never told the hospital admission figure. Only circumlocutions: 'worrying', 'on the rise', 'being constantly monitored'. As a trained AE-ist I kept a lookout, and kept a lookout, and kept a lookout. Finally, as if he couldn't keep the careful ignoral back a further minute, Boris blurted out in Parliament as part of his New Measures, "They have doubled in the last fortnight."

Some things to note though. Nobody uses 'in the last fortnight' unless they are selecting that precise time period for some purpose. We can assume that it hasn't been doubling or nearly doubling over any reasonable time period before. (And by the way, I hope you have noticed, the illness has been lasting a lot longer -- two weeks at the beginning, then three weeks and is now four weeks.) Of course the bald phrase 'hospital admissions', when the death rate is less than 1% and has been for a couple of months, surely points to some other factor than straight acute Covid demand. Supply meeting demand more likely. After all, these are highly subjective decisions at every stage, so if the push is ever-upwards ("we can afford to take borderline cases", "we are instituting a precautionary approach" etc) then they will stay high for the forseeable future.

You will know whether they will be doubling every fortnight or not by the return of the circumlocutions.

[Grant]

The other number which is ignored by the mainstream media is the number of false positives. Is it 0.8% or 4% (I've seen both quoted online). If there are 200,000 tests a day (which Hancock quoted recently) that means 1,600 to 8,000 false positives. The problem with false positives is not an arcane point, it is epidemiology 101.

[Mick Harper]

Epidemiology 101. That deals in large and generalised numbers, I think. Where things like false positives are just factored in or lost (quite validly) in the wash. This is the first time epidemiologists have ever been faced with, as it were, precise numbers, and everyone waiting for their precise reactions. So it really is no surprise they just don't know how to handle it. Applied Epistemology 101.

[Boreades]

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Quite a nice feedback loop has been introduced into the system. The higher the infection rate goes, the greater the demand for more and better trace-and-testing. Irrespective of the false postive factor, this is certain to increase the reported infection rate. The oddest aspect at the moment is that everyone is saying the death rate will climb (one might almost say, willing it to) and yet, despite the two-to-three-to-four week lengthening in the lag time, it stubbornly refuses to do so.

Actually it has, a bit, and it will, a bit more, so the logic of the situation is that we will be in permanent special measures because clearly Covid-19 is a permanent addition to the general pool of flu-like diseases the human race is heir to.

The nearest parallel is 'terrorism' since that is also a permanent condition, also causes a statistically insignificant number of deaths and also requires a permanent regime of special measures to guarantee it remains statistically insignificant. And has the same feedback loop: every time the death rate climbs the demand for special measures rises, the more the special measures rise the more rewarding terrorist acts are.

Since terrorism has never got the correct policy reaction -- minor precautions and a shrug.whenever they fail --I don't hold out much hope short of a vaccine. Which in turn is going to be a whole new epidemiological world. A large variety of inadequately tested weak viruses chasing an inadequately understood strong virus. I hope we win.

[Ishmael]

Why is this madness happening? I don’t understand why these governments are so determined to destroy their own nations.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Grant]

Why is this madness happening? It’s truly the most extraordinary thing to have happened in our lifetimes. And all for a disease which kills fewer people than cancer, pneumonia, heart disease etc. It’s as though people have been reminded that they will die and they’ve put all their fears of mortality into this flu bug, which kills less than 0.1% tops.

The world will be transformed by this. Afterwards the population will have no faith in experts any more, which I would usually say would be good, but who will replace the experts? People need something to believe in, even if it’s nonsense, so what nonsense is on its way?