> [...] research published this week by The BMJ [...] finds that the government procured an antibody test that in real world tests falls well short of performance claims made by its manufacturers. Researchers from Public Health England and collaborating institutions sensibly pushed to publish their study findings before the government committed to buying a million of these tests but were blocked by the health department and the prime minister’s office. Why was it important to procure this product without due scrutiny? Prior publication of research on a preprint server or a government website is compatible with The BMJ’s publication policy. As if to prove a point, Public Health England then unsuccessfully attempted to block The BMJ’s press release about the research paper.
This seems like pretty dishonest framing from the article. The government was quite explicit about why it was important to procure this product without due scrutiny (https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4353?ijkey=369744d6c8b0...). They urgently needed a lot of tests in order to do surveillance testing, and the normal standards of quality for medical tests don't matter enough to delay pandemic surveillance until they're satisfied.
More generally, I think this clearly demonstrates the problem with claims of politicization: the question of which corners should be cut to address a public health emergency is inherently political.
Funny, a week after the elections we got our first announcement from a biotech firm of a viable 90% effective vaccine, now another week later we have a second firm announcing 94% effectiveness. No politics, right.
When the President banned flights from China months ago, the Democrat response was "XENOPHOBIA". Again, no politics, right.
"Suppression of science and scientists is not new or a peculiarly British phenomenon. In the US, President Trump’s government manipulated the Food and Drug Administration to hastily approve unproved drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir."
The FDA absolutely approved those drugs via emergency authorizations. That's the point: they weren't able to be approved via a normal process so the administration went around the bureaucracy. And in the case of HCQ they did this in contravention of the clear science surrounding the drug.
Do you have a link to "not fake" news explaining how these drugs were somehow not approved?
On the contrary, at least in the US I don't worry about the government censoring scientific journal articles about covid that make them look bad. Maybe I am wrong about this.
Being interviewed on CNN is considered pretty amazing for most people. If you have to make something up that fits the overall narrative and is unlikely to be fact checked by "legitimate" news sources, few obvious/immediate downsides.
Of course, if her employer comes out and says "her statement doesn't match reality" and decides she can't be trusted and gets fired, that changes things. Some will see it as "justified" because she made it up while others will see it as a "coverup to hide the facts!" and again, few obvious/immediate downsides.
I'll state that my wife -an ICU nurse- has stated the same thing. A man dying from COVID19 claiming its a fake virus as he was being sedated to have a tube shoved down his throat passed away days later still believing it was fake. He was one of the first deaths in our region. She broke down hard that night, things are just ramping up here.
Without reading through the article and its sources, are we surprised that patients who were experiencing severe enough symptoms to warrant a ventilator were also teetering on the brink of death?
What I'm surprised at is they are still healthy enough to be talking, yet fit the criteria for ventilation, given what we now know. I'm no doctor. But everything I read in mainstream sources indicates it's well accepted that ventilators were overused earlier in the pandemic.
Yeah, disputed by a hard-right anti-mask COVID truther. I dunno about the story in question, but at this point, these people can't be considered neutral referees. They exist to shitpost and drive wedges between people.
He provided an authoritative source - official death stats - and a rational explanation as to why that source suggests the nurses claim may be a lie. As others in this thread pointed out, the attention of getting on to CNN is unfortunately enough to encourage people to lie.
> It is important to note that it can take several weeks for death records to be submitted to National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), processed, coded, and tabulated. Therefore, the data shown on this page may be incomplete, and will likely not include all deaths that occurred during a given time period, especially for the more recent time periods.
So the website the tweet used as it's source aggregates info directly from the relevant state governments, speeding up reporting compared to going through NCHS. How much, I'm not sure.
This is the website they cite as their source for South Dakota: https://doh.sd.gov/news/Coronavirus.aspx I don't seem to be able to access it - not sure if that's geoblocking (I'm in Canada) or it's down at the moment.
That page indicates a lag in their data is similarly possible:
> Deaths: SD-DOH does not report deaths until a certified death record has been filed with COVID-19 as a cause or contributing factor. By law, a death record must be filed within 5 days of the date of death.
(I don't know how long it takes between filing and processing after that point, but it's clear that there's potential time between death and showing up in the count.)
Oh, so it is in fact just geoblocked? That's annoying. It's still down for me (and my EU VPN).
Does the site list deaths by date of report, or date of death? Hopefully the later, so we can just check back in a few weeks.
Anyway, in general this "dying breath" stuff doesn't really tell anyone anything useful. For starters, how much faith do you really want to put in what people say when they're so sick they're about to die? Hypoxia significantly affects mental capacities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUfF2MTnqAw
For all you know, these people don't actually realize that they're sick at all.
It's far from clear how to unravel the paradox, but it's certainly not as simple as "let's just all coexist in peace". It's asymmetric: it only takes one person to break the peace.
It takes people to prioritize truth, due dilligence, trust and maturity, not the extremely judgemental attitudes against anything not toing the partyline. The leader is simply the figurehead of the dysfunction, ie. the dysfunction itself meeting with the people face to face!
Who doesn't allow two thoughts at the same time. Isn't that violation against free speech? Do opposite of that.
Bizarrely enough I found a tweet by a rabid right winger and covid denier that linked this BMJ article as proof that covid was a left wing plandemic conspiracy.....
The twit obviously didn't read more than the headline.
Probably hadn't read more than the headline of anything actually.
Say you were Emperor of Antagria(Neighbour of Canada). You find out there is a highly infectious mutated virus spreading. It has entered your country. Early modeling places it less deadly than the flu but higher infectiousness. Which likely means mass deaths.
It's February 3rd, Australia and the USA closed their borders to China. Trump's political opponents are calling him xenophobic and racist. Canada denounced "the spread of misinformation and fear across Canadian society" and called on the opposition to "not sensationalize the risk to Canadians",[15][16] while Tam endorsed the position by the World Health Organization, which "advises against any kind of travel and trade restrictions, saying that they are inappropriate and could actually cause more harm than good in terms of our global effort to contain" the disease.[15]
Your own advisors are likely telling to much of the same thing. Afterall, it's not even a Pandemic yet, that doesnt happen until March 11th. You tend to agree Trump is xenophobic and racist. So you don't shutdown the border. But you could potentially save lots of lives if you do shut it down. You decide not to because you dont want to be called xenophobic and racist.
Month later, March 13th comes along and Canada is finally pretending to close it's borders; when in reality is actually not. Multiple flights a day were still coming from China.
You look at the Canadians and think they might have an idea what they are doing. Maybe those flights are just repatriating their own citizens? You look into it and there's absolutely no checks to see if those people are healthy, they arent really serious about the lockdown.
You think, perhaps we should wear masks? But Canada's chief of public health outright dismisses the idea. It's april now and Tam is saying "people who are not sick should not wear a face mask at all"
You figure that perhaps she's educated and knows well, perhaps masks dont work? You could order that you must wear a mask to go out in public. It might save lives but surely Chief of Public Health in Canada knows what she is doing.
It's now May 20th and this same person now says we should wear masks? Why didn't you tell the citizens of Antagria to wear masks sooner?
At what point do you as Emperor make the decision to lockdown? At what point do you face being called xenophobic and a racist and actually lockdown?
You also realize that when you lockdown and removed fundamental human rights. You need to show people you're re-opening. So you lockdown more than you even need to, in order to have a reopening where you end up at the appropriate lockdown level. So you even shutdown your government's parks and other outdoor areas. Only to open them up shortly afterwards.
Why is Covid so politicized? Why is there corruption and suppression of science? Because without suppressing Covid dissent someone might say you have completely screwed up your response to the issue.
>It is well-though-out and illustrative comment, but since it doesn’t follow leftist narrative mob downvotes it.
Out of interest. You are emperor of Angaria with obviously 20/20 hindsight. What date do you make the decision to lockdown. Pull a Madagascar if you know plague inc.
I can say authoritatively that on February 2nd I started writing goodbye notes to friends, just in case, because I had a timestamp on one of them. It was pretty obvious in late January that things were going horribly wrong.
>Out of interest. You are emperor of Angaria with obviously 20/20 hindsight. What date do you make the decision to lockdown. Pull a Madagascar if you know plague inc.
Before January 1, ideally. Certainly before January 15, which is when Patient Zero is believed to have entered Seattle from China.
Your fictional emperor has a big advantage over the nearby US, though. In January Trump had been impeached by the House and was preparing for his trial in the Senate.
What would have happened if Trump had announced a hard closure of the US land, sea, and air borders on January 14? No one in except US citizens, who all have to quarantine for 14 days at military bases or requisitioned hotels? MSNBC, CNN, the Times, and the rest of the media would have switched from 100% impeachment to 100% "Trump is locking down the country so he can use the military to seize total power!!!!!". Doing this might in and of itself have caused three more Senators to vote for his conviction on February 5.
It's a wonder that Trump amidst all this was able to get a China ban done. In retrospect, those behind the lies about Trump that got him impeached have much to answer for.
The virus was most likely worldwide before anyone knew about it, or could have prevented it. By the time the Wuhan outbreak was in the news, it was far too late.
"Our goal for #COVID19 response remains to minimise severe illness and deaths. But this kick at the curve is a bit different. With schools and businesses open, everyone’s efforts are crucial.
This time, we’ve got to bend it like Canadians: give it the old double-double by layering PERSONAL RISK ASSESSMENT and PREVENTION PRACTICES and RECONFIGURING and DOWNSIZING our in-person #ContactBubble, as and where possible."
What a concise and clear communication. We should all aspire to be more like Dr. Tam.
> Because without suppressing Covid dissent someone might say you have completely screwed up your response to the issue.
1. there is oodles of dissent re: COVID19. Some of it is from idiots, some of it is from people cynically trying to make money, some of it is from people worth listening to (even if they are wrong).
2. there are millions of people saying that you (for various definitions of "you") have completely screwed up
So in the end, your cynical and selectively-drawn account finishes without explaining anything at all.
Misinformation: "It's February 3rd, Australia and the USA closed their borders to China"
1. Taking a connecting flight via another country to the US was not banned. Taiwan, on the other hand, banned all Chinese citizens from entering - from all countries.
2. The US only blocked Chinese citizens from arriving via direct flights from China to the US, but American citizens (and some others) were allowed: "Since then [the ban], nearly 40,000 Americans and other authorized travelers have made the trip" [0].
3. The administration did not setup stringent/effective screening for arriving passengers with symptoms or follow ups for the 430,000 people who arrived directly from China until April 4: "430,000 People Have Traveled From China to U.S. Since Coronavirus Surfaced" [0]
The corruption in the MMR scenario came from Wakefield, including having applied for a patent for a competing vaccine, and receiving over $400k by trial lawyers pushing to show the MMR vaccine to be dangerous, resulting in findings that he "had been dishonest in his research, had acted against his patients' best interests and mistreated developmentally delayed children, and had 'failed in his duties as a responsible consultant'" and his being barred from practicing medicine in the UK.
Regardless, one may still "cautiously note this is the exact scenario that Andrew Wakefield complained had happened with MMR", without contradicting anything you (quite rightly) pointed out about the nature of later events.
And just as with this story, and as others have commented elsewhere, this behaviour by the government (pushing a solution they were aware had a high probability of being substandard) may or may not be more related to political than medical factors, and may or may not have involved malicious intent.
Western Civilization would not have made it to where it is today without the Scientific Method. Full Stop.
Science™, as it exists today, is a deified Organization, filling the vacuum of religion in the secular West.
Corruption grows under the guise of purity. Be it the Catholic Church, be it Sumo Wrestling. What sentence spoke to the HNer's ear is more unquestionably swallowed than one prefaced with "Scientists report..." ? As if Scientists don't have mortgages to pay. As if funding was entirely detached from motives. Full throated acceptance.
> Science™, as it exists today, is a deified Organization, filling the vacuum of religion in the secular West.
I don't really agree here. I can see the argument that most fields are so advanced that people need to have "faith" in scientific leadership because they can't hope to achieve a deep understanding of most fields of science. At least that trust is given to a group who is ostensibly equipped to refute false or misleading findings via the scientific method.
But that's not replacing the role of religion, which is more political, social, & ethical in nature. I'd argue political systems have displaced religion in most of the West.
All sounds a bit left-field until you hear Venki Ramakrishnan, President of the (UK) Royal Society, describe randomised controlled trials of masks as “methodological fetishism”.
I await the result of Thomas Benfield's (Copenhagen) study on the same with interest.
That quote probably comes with some context. While I'm generally in favor of rigorous testing of all hypotheses, sometimes you have to make decisions before those tests can be completed. (It is worth running the tests in the meantime, though.)
In that case, if the context is what I think: it is methodological fetishism to assume masks are useless until proven otherwise, because the cost is very little, the potential benefit is rather high, and the probability of benefit seems like "at least 10%". And I think certain health authorities were indeed making that assumption early on (though some have said they were simply lying because they thought that would produce the behavior they wanted).
You point is well-taken, but the assumption that masks are useless or dangerous until proven otherwise is simply the well-established precautionary principle. Why dangerous? I travel on the London underground regularly, masks are mandatory but that is not universally observed; a large number of those with masks are constantly adjusting them, touching their faces, then touching the seats and the hand-rails. Those without generally don't touch their faces. Which behaviour is more harmful? I don't know, and until we get some hard numbers of the actual effects of real people's behaviour (rather than hamster-in-a-box studies), nor does anyone else.
It's the privatisation that is making people suspicious: the private companies who've been awarded public money with inadequate scrutiny inevitably turn out to be linked to the ruling party or their donors.
There was never a possibility that an event as generationally and globally impactful as Covid19 would not have be politicized. But it doesn't help that it's happening at a time with record distrust of science.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 97.4 ms ] thread> [...] research published this week by The BMJ [...] finds that the government procured an antibody test that in real world tests falls well short of performance claims made by its manufacturers. Researchers from Public Health England and collaborating institutions sensibly pushed to publish their study findings before the government committed to buying a million of these tests but were blocked by the health department and the prime minister’s office. Why was it important to procure this product without due scrutiny? Prior publication of research on a preprint server or a government website is compatible with The BMJ’s publication policy. As if to prove a point, Public Health England then unsuccessfully attempted to block The BMJ’s press release about the research paper.
More generally, I think this clearly demonstrates the problem with claims of politicization: the question of which corners should be cut to address a public health emergency is inherently political.
The problem is that the government also actively tried to suppress accurate scientific publications about these tests.
When the President banned flights from China months ago, the Democrat response was "XENOPHOBIA". Again, no politics, right.
"Suppression of science and scientists is not new or a peculiarly British phenomenon. In the US, President Trump’s government manipulated the Food and Drug Administration to hastily approve unproved drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir."
Do you have a link to "not fake" news explaining how these drugs were somehow not approved?
www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/11/16/south-dakota-nurse-intv-newday-vpx.cnn
Of course, if her employer comes out and says "her statement doesn't match reality" and decides she can't be trusted and gets fired, that changes things. Some will see it as "justified" because she made it up while others will see it as a "coverup to hide the facts!" and again, few obvious/immediate downsides.
sigh
https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2020/04/24/ventilato...
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/report001.pdf
(See, in particular, figure #2 on page #2.)
You don't need to trust him personally.
You do, though. You need to trust that he's not omitting critical information, either via ignorance or deliberate malice.
Information like this:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/tech_notes.htm
> It is important to note that it can take several weeks for death records to be submitted to National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), processed, coded, and tabulated. Therefore, the data shown on this page may be incomplete, and will likely not include all deaths that occurred during a given time period, especially for the more recent time periods.
This is the website they cite as their source for South Dakota: https://doh.sd.gov/news/Coronavirus.aspx I don't seem to be able to access it - not sure if that's geoblocking (I'm in Canada) or it's down at the moment.
> Deaths: SD-DOH does not report deaths until a certified death record has been filed with COVID-19 as a cause or contributing factor. By law, a death record must be filed within 5 days of the date of death.
(I don't know how long it takes between filing and processing after that point, but it's clear that there's potential time between death and showing up in the count.)
Does the site list deaths by date of report, or date of death? Hopefully the later, so we can just check back in a few weeks.
Anyway, in general this "dying breath" stuff doesn't really tell anyone anything useful. For starters, how much faith do you really want to put in what people say when they're so sick they're about to die? Hypoxia significantly affects mental capacities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUfF2MTnqAw
For all you know, these people don't actually realize that they're sick at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
It's far from clear how to unravel the paradox, but it's certainly not as simple as "let's just all coexist in peace". It's asymmetric: it only takes one person to break the peace.
Who doesn't allow two thoughts at the same time. Isn't that violation against free speech? Do opposite of that.
The twit obviously didn't read more than the headline.
Probably hadn't read more than the headline of anything actually.
It's February 3rd, Australia and the USA closed their borders to China. Trump's political opponents are calling him xenophobic and racist. Canada denounced "the spread of misinformation and fear across Canadian society" and called on the opposition to "not sensationalize the risk to Canadians",[15][16] while Tam endorsed the position by the World Health Organization, which "advises against any kind of travel and trade restrictions, saying that they are inappropriate and could actually cause more harm than good in terms of our global effort to contain" the disease.[15]
Your own advisors are likely telling to much of the same thing. Afterall, it's not even a Pandemic yet, that doesnt happen until March 11th. You tend to agree Trump is xenophobic and racist. So you don't shutdown the border. But you could potentially save lots of lives if you do shut it down. You decide not to because you dont want to be called xenophobic and racist.
Month later, March 13th comes along and Canada is finally pretending to close it's borders; when in reality is actually not. Multiple flights a day were still coming from China.
You look at the Canadians and think they might have an idea what they are doing. Maybe those flights are just repatriating their own citizens? You look into it and there's absolutely no checks to see if those people are healthy, they arent really serious about the lockdown.
You think, perhaps we should wear masks? But Canada's chief of public health outright dismisses the idea. It's april now and Tam is saying "people who are not sick should not wear a face mask at all"
You figure that perhaps she's educated and knows well, perhaps masks dont work? You could order that you must wear a mask to go out in public. It might save lives but surely Chief of Public Health in Canada knows what she is doing.
It's now May 20th and this same person now says we should wear masks? Why didn't you tell the citizens of Antagria to wear masks sooner?
At what point do you as Emperor make the decision to lockdown? At what point do you face being called xenophobic and a racist and actually lockdown?
You also realize that when you lockdown and removed fundamental human rights. You need to show people you're re-opening. So you lockdown more than you even need to, in order to have a reopening where you end up at the appropriate lockdown level. So you even shutdown your government's parks and other outdoor areas. Only to open them up shortly afterwards.
Why is Covid so politicized? Why is there corruption and suppression of science? Because without suppressing Covid dissent someone might say you have completely screwed up your response to the issue.
I never said Trump's actions in February prevented the virus from entering the country. It of course would be post-virus entering the country.
I also laided out that timeline literally from wikipedia. If I am wrong somewhere. Perhaps we can update wikipedia, just tell me where it's wrong.
Out of interest. You are emperor of Angaria with obviously 20/20 hindsight. What date do you make the decision to lockdown. Pull a Madagascar if you know plague inc.
I agree that a lot more countries should have closed down travel from infected countries a lot sooner; the UK never did this properly.
Before January 1, ideally. Certainly before January 15, which is when Patient Zero is believed to have entered Seattle from China.
Your fictional emperor has a big advantage over the nearby US, though. In January Trump had been impeached by the House and was preparing for his trial in the Senate.
What would have happened if Trump had announced a hard closure of the US land, sea, and air borders on January 14? No one in except US citizens, who all have to quarantine for 14 days at military bases or requisitioned hotels? MSNBC, CNN, the Times, and the rest of the media would have switched from 100% impeachment to 100% "Trump is locking down the country so he can use the military to seize total power!!!!!". Doing this might in and of itself have caused three more Senators to vote for his conviction on February 5.
It's a wonder that Trump amidst all this was able to get a China ban done. In retrospect, those behind the lies about Trump that got him impeached have much to answer for.
"Our goal for #COVID19 response remains to minimise severe illness and deaths. But this kick at the curve is a bit different. With schools and businesses open, everyone’s efforts are crucial.
This time, we’ve got to bend it like Canadians: give it the old double-double by layering PERSONAL RISK ASSESSMENT and PREVENTION PRACTICES and RECONFIGURING and DOWNSIZING our in-person #ContactBubble, as and where possible."
What a concise and clear communication. We should all aspire to be more like Dr. Tam.
My timeline was taken from wikipedia and did not make it to october. My intention wasn't to criticize Dr Tam, though I do agree that I did.
The point I was making is that it's very difficult to make decisions; and more importantly make the right decision.
1. there is oodles of dissent re: COVID19. Some of it is from idiots, some of it is from people cynically trying to make money, some of it is from people worth listening to (even if they are wrong).
2. there are millions of people saying that you (for various definitions of "you") have completely screwed up
So in the end, your cynical and selectively-drawn account finishes without explaining anything at all.
1. Taking a connecting flight via another country to the US was not banned. Taiwan, on the other hand, banned all Chinese citizens from entering - from all countries.
2. The US only blocked Chinese citizens from arriving via direct flights from China to the US, but American citizens (and some others) were allowed: "Since then [the ban], nearly 40,000 Americans and other authorized travelers have made the trip" [0].
3. The administration did not setup stringent/effective screening for arriving passengers with symptoms or follow ups for the 430,000 people who arrived directly from China until April 4: "430,000 People Have Traveled From China to U.S. Since Coronavirus Surfaced" [0]
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-trav...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_MMR_autism_fraud#Confli...
Regardless, one may still "cautiously note this is the exact scenario that Andrew Wakefield complained had happened with MMR", without contradicting anything you (quite rightly) pointed out about the nature of later events.
And just as with this story, and as others have commented elsewhere, this behaviour by the government (pushing a solution they were aware had a high probability of being substandard) may or may not be more related to political than medical factors, and may or may not have involved malicious intent.
Science™, as it exists today, is a deified Organization, filling the vacuum of religion in the secular West.
Corruption grows under the guise of purity. Be it the Catholic Church, be it Sumo Wrestling. What sentence spoke to the HNer's ear is more unquestionably swallowed than one prefaced with "Scientists report..." ? As if Scientists don't have mortgages to pay. As if funding was entirely detached from motives. Full throated acceptance.
I don't really agree here. I can see the argument that most fields are so advanced that people need to have "faith" in scientific leadership because they can't hope to achieve a deep understanding of most fields of science. At least that trust is given to a group who is ostensibly equipped to refute false or misleading findings via the scientific method.
But that's not replacing the role of religion, which is more political, social, & ethical in nature. I'd argue political systems have displaced religion in most of the West.
Also, shouldn't your username be YuenglingLight
Science has been all three in Europe for the last 80 years, in the US, the last 40.
I await the result of Thomas Benfield's (Copenhagen) study on the same with interest.
In that case, if the context is what I think: it is methodological fetishism to assume masks are useless until proven otherwise, because the cost is very little, the potential benefit is rather high, and the probability of benefit seems like "at least 10%". And I think certain health authorities were indeed making that assumption early on (though some have said they were simply lying because they thought that would produce the behavior they wanted).
(see linked footnote https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n21/peter-geoghegan/cron... )