Evidence over Hysteria – Covid-19
Starts well enough, but gets more questionable in the middle and downright risible at the bottom. Claims to be more objective, empirical, etc. than others are unrelated to <i>actually</i> being more objective, empirical, etc.<p>&gt; driven by data from medical professionals and academic articles<p>...as filtered through one person&#x27;s understanding and biases. Often this results in a very different picture than perusal of the original source material would.<p>&gt; I’m most known for popularizing the “growth hacking movement” in Silicon Valley<p>That&#x27;s an anti-qualification.<p>&gt; Rank ordering based on the total number of cases shows that the US on a per-capita basis is significantly lower than the top six nations<p>This is right after he got done explaining why total number of cases of useless. So <i>why is it here</i>? Because it suits the overall theme of minimizing the threat.<p>&gt; Daily growth rates declined over time across all countries regardless of particular policy solutions<p>Sounds compelling, but is it true? Note that the first chart is from SoberLook, which is definitely not one of the top-tier sources cited at the beginning of the article and not even one of those supposedly cited at the bottom (Bloomberg, Johns Hopkins). Bit deceptive, that. I&#x27;ll leave it to you to figure out what kind of source SoberLook is. Oh, and we&#x27;re using the &quot;losing metric&quot; of total reported cases again. Doesn&#x27;t everyone know by now how fraught that is? The author certainly does.<p>The second chart already shows a very different story. There&#x27;s no legend (which is suspicious) but it&#x27;s clear that many of the lines do <i>not</i> flatten out as would be necessary to support the author&#x27;s claim.<p>&gt; Both the CDC and WHO are optimizing virality and healthcare utilization, while ignoring the economic shock to our system.<p>We&#x27;re starting to see a hint of where the author wanted to go with this, probably before one word was written.<p>&gt; According to WHO’s COVID-19 lead Maria Van Kerkhove, true community based spreading is very rare.<p>Hm. <i>Where</i> did van Kerkhove say this? Why is there no specific citation, as for more convenient factoids?<p>&gt; The data from China shows that community-based spread was only a very small handful of cases.<p>Same as above. No citation. And does the data actually show that?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cdc.gov&#x2F;coronavirus&#x2F;2019-ncov&#x2F;prepare&#x2F;transmission.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cdc.gov&#x2F;coronavirus&#x2F;2019-ncov&#x2F;prepare&#x2F;transmissi...</a>
&quot;The virus that causes COVID-19 seems to be spreading easily and sustainably in the community&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.who.int&#x2F;docs&#x2F;default-source&#x2F;coronaviruse&#x2F;situation-reports&#x2F;20200313-sitrep-53-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=adb3f72_2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.who.int&#x2F;docs&#x2F;default-source&#x2F;coronaviruse&#x2F;situati...</a>
&quot;Community transmissionis evidenced by the inability to relate confirmed cases through chains of transmission for a large number of cases,&quot;<p>Don&#x27;t let the digression about aerosols (which nobody has claimed to be a primary mechanism for spread of COVID-19) fool you; the experts, including those included in the author&#x27;s appeal to authority at the beginning, seem to have very different beliefs than those he presents.<p>&gt; Released on March 10th, one study mapped COVID-19 virality capability by high temperature and high humidity.<p>One study. Minimizing again. It&#x27;s a very pretty temperature graph, which doesn&#x27;t actually prove <i>anything</i>. If you follow the link, you&#x27;ll see that it was actually limited to China, which might not tell us much about anywhere else. What we actually know about the temperature sensitivity of coronaviruses is that they&#x27;re remarkably <i>stable</i> up to about 37°C, and infectivity only starts to decline above that.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pubmed&#x2F;14631830" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pubmed&#x2F;14631830</a><p>&gt; Children and Teens aren’t at risk<p>This does seem to be true, or close to it, for once. But why only talk about the lowest-risk groups? Why not people in their 20s, or the high-risk folks at the other end of the spectrum? Minimizing again.<p>This is getting long, so I&#x27;ll stop dissecting each little piece. You get the idea. Let&#x27;s skip to the end, where the agenda becomes clear.<p>&gt; Local governments and politicians are inflicting massive harm and disruption with little evidence to support their draconian edicts.<p>Very objective choice of words there. Inflicting. Draconian.<p>&gt; Every local government is in a mimetic race to one-up each other in authoritarian city ordinances<p>Attributing motive.<p>&gt; The COVID-19 hysteria is pushing aside our protections as individual citizens and permanently harming our free, tolerant, open civil society<p>More appeal to emotion, and expressive of the author&#x27;s real priorities. Don&#x27;t get me wrong, politicians taking advantage of the situation to extend authoritarian power is a real and valid concern. But no way in hell should it be our <i>first</i> concern. It certainly doesn&#x27;t justify twisting the facts and minimizing the threat that disease poses to the most vulnerable - not just the old but also the homeless, the already ill, etc. Those people are not expendable to &quot;Support business and productivity&quot; as the author puts it in a heading.