If that's the case, wouldn't we have had herd immunity in Belarus by now? Unlike even Sweden, Belarus has taken very few official mitigation measures against COVID-19.
We just had large gatherings for July 3 Independence Day, and previously for parades on May 9 as well.
If anybody's going to demonstrate herd immunity first, I'd guess it would be Belarus. But I haven't seen that in practice yet among people I know here.
If it were the case that one third of the population of London are immune against covonavirus already that would have massive implications on public policy. But we don't really know yet, the science is still shaky on the issue, and we better get it right.
Why then is a think tank, whose purpose is to sell public policy, permitted to discuss science? We know what policy they would like to implement, we don't know if reality agrees, but instead of waiting for better data they are selling their wishes as actual fact. It doesn't work like that in the real world.
Do you mean “waiting for peer review” or “waiting for additional replication”?
That's kind of the same here. Peer review is a very low bar, it just assures that the grossest nonsense doesn't appear in print. The real review happens afterwards when others try to built on a piece of science. Right now we have a really daring hypothesis supported by extremely weak data, and the downside risks are too high to let that guide policy.
We had that before. Anyone remember that paper suggesting that the virus won't spread in a hot climate? The US government liked the idea while Europe went for containment and look where we are.
"First, a few caveats: Both studies are based on small sample sizes and neither have yet been vetted by peer review."
The usual disclaimer for plausible deniability. In Plain English: "Here's crass nonsense that we like because we are paid for it"
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 34.3 ms ] threadWe just had large gatherings for July 3 Independence Day, and previously for parades on May 9 as well.
If anybody's going to demonstrate herd immunity first, I'd guess it would be Belarus. But I haven't seen that in practice yet among people I know here.
Why then is a think tank, whose purpose is to sell public policy, permitted to discuss science? We know what policy they would like to implement, we don't know if reality agrees, but instead of waiting for better data they are selling their wishes as actual fact. It doesn't work like that in the real world.
Do you mean “waiting for peer review” or “waiting for additional replication”?
> they are selling their wishes as actual fact.
“First, a few caveats: Both studies are based on small sample sizes and neither have yet been vetted by peer review.”
That's kind of the same here. Peer review is a very low bar, it just assures that the grossest nonsense doesn't appear in print. The real review happens afterwards when others try to built on a piece of science. Right now we have a really daring hypothesis supported by extremely weak data, and the downside risks are too high to let that guide policy.
We had that before. Anyone remember that paper suggesting that the virus won't spread in a hot climate? The US government liked the idea while Europe went for containment and look where we are.
"First, a few caveats: Both studies are based on small sample sizes and neither have yet been vetted by peer review."
The usual disclaimer for plausible deniability. In Plain English: "Here's crass nonsense that we like because we are paid for it"