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We are not out of the woods yet. Mask up, get vaccinated, and trust the science. This disease is a killer and has rampaged across the world killing a billion, hundreds of millions, 10s of millions, ok 5 million with the average age of death at 82. By the way one question I keep hearing is what is Africa doing so well that their death count is so low compared to North America and Europe? It is much lower, this particularly striking when your realize that Africa also has the lowest life expediencies of all the regions. What a mystery. I guess they do not have crazy right wing anti-vaxxers.
7:27, the answer to your question is obvious. Africa has a much younger population, and they under report their cases because much of the continent doesn’t have access to ANY healthcare.
The WHO has lost all credibility it may have had before the Covid crisis. I don't know if they can ever regain it, certainly not without a clean sweep of the managers that currently bend the science to meet political agenda.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
The WHO said this version of Covid was not transmissible from animal to human. The WHO said there was no need to inhibit travel.
Those two issues are not minor mistakes. Time and lives were at stake and they failed. They then protected the Chinese in a blatant play for pay scenario. That last issue may be considered purely political, the first two issues were examples of incompetence in science or once again pure politics in action.
The WHO will have to earn my trust. I won't blindly follow them. As to the mistakes, they were whoppers.
The real issue is that real scientists can smell activist "science" from a great distance. Real science is based on skepticism. Pep rallies and unsupported assertions, not so much.
"The WHO said this version of Covid was not transmissible from animal to human. The WHO said there was no need to inhibit travel."
It is called science, it changes all the time. You get more information and the science changes. The WHO updates the information as it comes. Science it works, listen to the adults in the room.
Maybe not, but he's obviously a lot smarter than many of them.
9/06/2021 5:47 PM
Aw, er thanks sort of I guess. Yes I am a scientists and the post was meant as a troll.
It is indeed true the science changes as more information comes in. I am not big into the Bayesian approach as most scientists that I respect just have a knack naturally for probability theory which seems to be able to add more to the analysis than simple minded Bayesian stuff. For whatever reason Bayesian approaches seemed to be used by the labs, a couple of quantum crackpots and some philosophy departments. Most science people sort already get it and use probability theory which is much more nuanced. If anyone wants to argue about this than I will just say I do not care and use whatever you think it best as I doubt it matters.
But the in terms of explaining it to the masses the Bayesian approach works better where you update your work/predictions with new and perhaps improving data. The analysis of Covid is exactly the same. You keep updating your predictions with the new data. What the WHO said early on was based on the current data at that time (Feb 2020). What the WHO says now is based on the current data at this time (Aug 2021) so they should be different because new data has come in. In Bayesian language your E or evidence which you have gathered over time has changed so your P probability of observing a future outcome will also change. So you cannot get on the case of the WHO for changing their predictions in light of them including new evidence.
Now with all that said the problem is that non-scientists or the general public who have no idea that science actually changes as new information comes and they will say bizarre stuff like "listen to the science! " Do you mean the science today or the science a month ago or more. The problem is science is not exact and is only giving a probability for the future and it changes as more information comes in. So the scientifically mot probable predictions at one point in time can be completely wrong in many cases once all the information comes in over longer times.
This is not to mention that there is an argument that the WHO does not even abide by the scientific method. So you have no idea if you can trust them. This was kind of the point of the troll post, in that the WHO can always say the "science changes with new information! to cover for their political motives. I suppose you can do a whole Bayesian analysis on if the WHO is trustworthy for what it haw said about Covid but I doubt such a paper would be very popular and could endanger your career which is one of the reasons no one has touched it.
For example suppose the WHO knew that human to human transmission was possible but did not want to say anything to avoid early panic. Perhaps they even had a point now but if this is true why should believe anything they have to say? Perhaps they actually believed this and updated their information to reflect that they where wrong. The latter would mean they believed what they said but they could be incompetent or they have had the best possible information. You can the add a bunch of additional information like where others saying it was human to human, what is the track record of the WHO and so on. One could always use the premise "The WHO is based in Europe" "Bureaucracies in Europe are generally corrupt" therefore it is likely the WHO is corrupt. Not the best logical argument but for anyone who has spent any time in Europe it does not endear confidence in the WHO. .
11 comments:
We are not out of the woods yet. Mask up, get vaccinated, and trust the science. This disease is a killer and has rampaged across the world killing a billion, hundreds of millions, 10s of millions, ok 5 million with the average age of death at 82. By the way one question I keep hearing is what is Africa doing so well that their death count is so low compared to North America and Europe? It is much lower, this particularly striking when your realize that Africa also has the lowest life expediencies of all the regions. What a mystery. I guess they do not have crazy right wing anti-vaxxers.
7:27, the answer to your question is obvious. Africa has a much younger population, and they under report their cases because much of the continent doesn’t have access to ANY healthcare.
The WHO has lost all credibility it may have had before the Covid crisis. I don't know if they can ever regain it, certainly not without a clean sweep of the managers that currently bend the science to meet political agenda.
So don't believe anything the WHO says because it made some mistakes? Not very bright.
So don't believe anything the WHO says because it made some mistakes? Not very bright.
9/04/2021 5:45 PM
EXACTLY!
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
The WHO said this version of Covid was not transmissible from animal to human.
The WHO said there was no need to inhibit travel.
Those two issues are not minor mistakes. Time and lives were at stake and they failed. They then protected the Chinese in a blatant play for pay scenario. That last issue may be considered purely political, the first two issues were examples of incompetence in science or once again pure politics in action.
The WHO will have to earn my trust. I won't blindly follow them. As to the mistakes, they were whoppers.
The real issue is that real scientists can smell activist "science" from a great distance. Real science is based on skepticism. Pep rallies and unsupported assertions, not so much.
"The WHO said this version of Covid was not transmissible from animal to human.
The WHO said there was no need to inhibit travel."
It is called science, it changes all the time. You get more information and the science changes. The WHO updates the information as it comes. Science it works, listen to the adults in the room.
I’ll wager 8:50 isn’t a scientist at all.
I’ll wager 8:50 isn’t a scientist at all.
9/05/2021 2:02 PM
Maybe not, but he's obviously a lot smarter than many of them.
I’ll wager 8:50 isn’t a scientist at all.
9/05/2021 2:02 PM
Maybe not, but he's obviously a lot smarter than many of them.
9/06/2021 5:47 PM
Aw, er thanks sort of I guess. Yes I am a scientists and the post was meant as a troll.
It is indeed true the science changes as more information comes in. I am not big into the Bayesian approach as most scientists that I respect just have a knack naturally for probability theory which seems to be able to add more to the analysis than simple minded Bayesian stuff. For whatever reason Bayesian approaches seemed to be used by the labs, a couple of quantum crackpots and some philosophy departments. Most science people sort already get it and use probability theory which is much more nuanced. If anyone wants to argue about this than I will just say I do not care and use whatever you think it best as I doubt it matters.
But the in terms of explaining it to the masses the Bayesian approach works better where you update your work/predictions with new and perhaps improving data. The analysis of Covid is exactly the same. You keep updating your predictions with the new data. What the WHO said early on was based on the current data at that time (Feb 2020). What the WHO says now is based on the current data at this time (Aug 2021) so they should be different because new data has come in. In Bayesian language your E or evidence which you have gathered over time has changed so your P probability of observing a future outcome will also change. So you cannot get on the case of the WHO for changing their predictions in light of them including new evidence.
Now with all that said the problem is that non-scientists or the general public who have no idea that science actually changes as new information comes and they will say bizarre stuff like "listen to the science! " Do you mean the science today or the science a month ago or more. The problem is science is not exact and is only giving a probability for the future and it changes as more information comes in. So the scientifically mot probable predictions at one point in time can be completely wrong in many cases once all the information comes in over longer times.
This is not to mention that there is an argument that the WHO does not even abide by the scientific method. So you have no idea if you can trust them. This was kind of the point of the troll post, in that the WHO can always say the "science changes with new information! to cover for their political motives. I suppose you can do a whole Bayesian analysis on if the WHO is trustworthy for what it haw said about Covid but I doubt such a paper would be very popular and could endanger your career which is one of the reasons no one has touched it.
For example suppose the WHO knew that human to human transmission was possible but did not want to say anything to avoid early panic. Perhaps they even had a point now but if this is true why should believe anything they have to say? Perhaps they actually believed this and updated their information to reflect that they where wrong. The latter would mean they believed what they said but they could be incompetent or they have had the best possible information. You can the add a bunch of additional information like where others saying it was human to human, what is the track record of the WHO and so on. One could always use the premise
"The WHO is based in Europe" "Bureaucracies in Europe are generally corrupt" therefore it is likely the WHO is corrupt. Not the best logical argument but for anyone who has spent any time in Europe it does not endear confidence in the WHO. .
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