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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Is there any evidence that track and trace actually works where there is no single common source of spread, and if it's so effective why don't we use it against HIV or other STDs...?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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We do use it with STD's -- gonorrhea, syphilis etc. I thought we did do it with HIV. That was part of the original scandal -- we already had track-and-trace machinery, but they were ignored. The Korean secondary outbreak (minuscule as it was) was traced largely back to a single bloke that went partying round the nite spots of Seoul. Leastways that was their version. Not sure how that helps though given the demographic of Seoul nite-spots.
It may be that these track-and-trace schemes work because they are known to exist and therefore inhibit contacts generally but I share your general air of bafflement, Wiley.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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"Hello" "It's your local contact tracer"
"Is this is a sales call"
"Please don't put the phone down. I work for the NHS"
"Oh right, I clap for you"
"Funny you should say that. I have some bad news for you"
"Go on "
"You have been in contact with someone with Covid 19. I need you to take a test. You will need to self-isolate"
"Shit. Do I have to tell my wife and friends?"
"Funny you say that. I have some more bad news for you".......
TBC
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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BBC detector vans! A bit of re-programming (no pun intended) and they could detect whether you've been out recently (i.e. not watching Netflix). Ah, you ask, what then? Bloodhounds kept in a cage in the back (it was on Police 24) to track and trace your contacts.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Grant wrote: | | But epidemiology is like economics - a pretend science which can predict nothing beyond the bleeding obvious. |
It seems to me epidemiology has some scientific basis when you are tracing back to a single polluted source, e.g. a water well with a drowned donkey in it. But when 25% + of the population is going to get a virus and could be propagating it, I am a tad skeptical about track and trace.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Something is rotten in the state of Denmark ...
| The Danish Health Authority disagree with their government’s approach to the coronavirus |
Why? What happened?
| Politicians appear to be pressing the scientific advisors to overstate the danger. |
Just like in the UK?
| The Danish Health Authority continues to consider that covid-19 cannot be described as a generally dangerous disease, as it does not have either a usually serious course or a high mortality rate |
On March 12th the Danish parliament passed an emergency law which – among many other things – decreased the power of the Danish Health Authority, demoting it from a “regulatory authority†to just an “advisory†one.
| This allowed the government to ignore the authority's opinion that Covid-19 was not a sufficiently dangerous disease to permit the government to impose compulsory interventions on the public under Denmark's epidemic law. |
https://www.thelocal.dk/20200529/leaked-emails-show-how-denmarks-pm-steam-rollered-her-own-health-agency/amp
I blame Danish Bacon and the Kalmar Union of 1397.
https://www.dailyscandinavian.com/danish-bacon/
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Oh those crazy Russians ...
On 26th May, Dr Alexander Myasnikov, Russia’s head of coronavirus information, gave an interview to former-Presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak in which he apparently let slip his true feelings.
Believing the interview over, and the camera turned off, Myasnikov said:
| It’s all bullshit […] It’s all exaggerated. It’s an acute respiratory disease with minimal mortality […] Why has the whole world been destroyed? That I don’t know†|
Maybe it doesn't matter, if Vladimir Putin becomes President-For-Life? Maybe Boney M should make a new version?
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Wile E. Coyote wrote: | | It seems to me epidemiology has some scientific basis when you are tracing back to a single polluted source, e.g. a water well with a drowned donkey in it. But when 25% + of the population is going to get a virus and could be propagating it, I am a tad skeptical about track and trace. |
Thanks for the reminder of what epidemiology originally meant.
| John Snow ...was an English physician and a leader in the development of anaesthesia and medical hygiene. He is considered one of the founders of modern epidemiology, in part because of his work in tracing the source of a cholera outbreak in Soho, London, in 1854, which he curtailed by removing the handle of a water pump. |
What did John Snow famously do?
| By talking to local residents (with the help of Reverend Henry Whitehead), he identified the source of the outbreak as the public water pump on Broad Street (now Broadwick Street). |
That much is common knowledge / headline history.
| Although Snow's chemical and microscope examination of a water sample from the Broad Street pump did not conclusively prove its danger, his studies of the pattern of the disease were convincing enough to persuade the local council to disable the well pump by removing its handle |
Oh, hang on, inconclusive science, but the local politicians acted anyway? Starts to sound familiar...
Snow observed that the epidemic may have already been in rapid decline:
| There is no doubt that the mortality was much diminished, as I said before, by the flight of the population, which commenced soon after the outbreak; but the attacks had so far diminished before the use of the water was stopped, that it is impossible to decide whether the well still contained the cholera poison in an active state, or whether, from some cause, the water had become free from it |
The outbreak had already started to follow a natural(?) cycle and diminish, but the authorities could still claim success, by "locking down" the source. Sounds even more familiar...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Snow
| Wile E. Coyote wrote: | | But when 25% + of the population is going to get a virus and could be propagating it, I am a tad skeptical about track and trace. |
Am I wrong in assuming that the success of track and trace depends on three assumptions?
1) Everyone has got a mobile phone
2) Everyone has got a smart mobile phone capable of running the app
3) Everyone willingly installs the app, and keeps it running
Oh, one more...
4) Nobody blocks mobile data
Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency ... and a pretty phone app
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Grant
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I think the government's strategy is clear. Put off having to admit the whole thing was a gross over-reaction for as long as possible. If they can string this out for long enough they hope to pretend that they have saved the nation. They would have got away with it but for two brave leaders - Bolsonaro and Lofven.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Grant wrote: | | I think the government's strategy is clear. |
I think it is still possible that "Track and Trace" will lead to a new spike of deaths as fit workers eg those providing care to the most vulnerable in care homes, hospitals are forced to stay home. It might be news to Public Health England but there are not unlimited numbers of care workers, nurses, doctors, fire fighters, police officers.........and folks are already working many colleagues down due to shielding.
Of course, to Public Health England those excess deaths due to old folks falling, or not being able to access hospitals after minor strokes etc or say not to check on those elderly folks with dementia....is err a resource/political problem......
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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This is so ridiculous. It's obvious by now that Coronavirus is not a thing. And yet this madness persists.
In America, it finally ended, because the media decided they had to support the riots and the terrorizing of white neighborhoods.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Ishmael wrote: | | This is so ridiculous. It's obvious by now that Coronavirus is not a thing. And yet this madness persists. |
| On-Line wrote: | | Panic......"sudden mass terror," especially an exaggerated fright affecting a number of persons without visible cause or inspired by trifling cause or danger, 1708, from an earlier adjective (c. 1600, modifying fear, terror, etc.), from French panique (15c.), from Greek panikon, literally "pertaining to Pan," the god of woods and fields, who was the source of mysterious sounds that caused contagious, groundless fear in herds and crowds, or in people in lonely spots. In the sense of "panic, fright" the Greek word is short for panikon deima "panic fright," from neuter of Panikos "of Pan." |
| On-Line wrote: | | Pandemic......of diseases, "incident to a whole people or region," 1660s, from Late Latin pandemus, from Greek pandemos "pertaining to all people; public, common," from pan- "all" (see pan-) + dēmos "people" (see demotic). Modeled on epidemic; OED reports that it is "Distinguished from epidemic, which may connote limitation to a smaller area." The noun, "a pandemic disease," is recorded by 1853, from the adjective. Related: Pandemia. |
Pan has a lot to answer for...
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Doh! It Just Gets Worse (part 4)
In The Guardian of all places.
The Lancet has made one of the biggest retractions in modern history. How could this happen?
James Heathers |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/05/lancet-had-to-do-one-of-the-biggest-retractions-in-modern-history-how-could-this-happen
This may be of interest, and perhaps even significance, in an AE kind of way. James Heathers rambles on for a while, but he does asks questions about how we know what we know.
| It is natural to ask how this is possible. How did a paper of such consequence get discarded like a used tissue by some of its authors only days after publication? If the authors don’t trust it now, how did it get published in the first place? The answer is quite simple. It happened because peer review, the formal process of reviewing scientific work before it is accepted for publication, is not designed to detect anomalous data. |
I'm shocked, shocked, that such a thing should be admitted (in The Guardian of all places). Yet those that audit data have known for decades that peer-reviewed articles regularly (even normally) get published with the reviewers never looking at the original data.Or even asking for sight of the data. It's too much like hard work for many reviewers who are just trying to nudge up their citation count.
| Now, that Lancet study has been retracted, withdrawn from the literature entirely, at the request of three of its authors who “can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sourcesâ€. Given the seriousness of the topic and the consequences of the paper, this is one of the most consequential retractions in modern history. |
Until the next Really Serious Retraction, which won't be long, as they come along regularly. So regularly, in fact, that there's a whole website devoted to them:
https://retractionwatch.com/
I commend them to the house.
Who is this James Heathers?
| James Heathers is a research scientist at Northeastern University in Boston MA. He studies biosignal methodology and metascience |
Good job he's not a physicist or any other kind of "proper" scientist trying to comment on how "peer review" usually works (or not) in Climate Change "science". That certainly wouldn't have got published so easily (in The Guardian of all places).
| At its worst, it is merely window dressing that gives the unwarranted appearance of authority, a cursory process which confers no real value, enforces orthodoxy, and overlooks both obvious analytical problems and outright fraud entirely. |
Quite.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I've had a bit to do with peer review over the years so I would like to comment (but remember the 'a bit'). First off The Lancet is different league. Or at any rate it used to be. Not so much gold standard as official repository. The second thing to remember is that academic journals have themselves changed very significantly. When they kicked off (in the seventeenth? eighteenth? nineteenth? twentieth? centuries) they were in the hands of scientists and academics, an adjunct of university life and university presses (for better or worse).
This came to an end because of none other than Robert Maxwell who spotted that in the brave new post-Second World War world, every self-respecting institution would need a copy of the relevant journals and if he bought them up he could charge practically what he liked to supply them. Far from damping down demand this meant the number of journals took off like a rocket. Why? Well, all of a sudden it was a bit difficult getting your paper published in a peer-reviewed journal (Maxwell had seen to that) and since academics needed to publish to get ahead, there was a vast proliferation of new peer-reviewed journals.
Something had to give. It looks from Borrie's waxing that it was the peer-reviewing. But more on that another time.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Tangential question:
Will Maxwell (and his silver hammer business model) get a mention in AE on Telly News?
As the prequel to Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich (Netflix)
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