Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!
-
I'm concerned by this graph's recent U shape, and I'm also concerned that my state is about to overtake the #1 COVID greatest hits slot.
Filed under: Nickelback - Look at this Graph
-
@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
You can't get ought from is. Science can only do is--you need values and other non-scientific things to get to ought.
You can apply a default set of values that gets you a long way: minimise deaths and major disablement, minimise costs, minimise political embarrassment. (It's possible to condense further, perhaps to just “minimise costs”, but that's an option rarely chosen deliberately in public.)
You'd think so, but the evidence of the last few months says exactly the opposite.
-
@error said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
I'm concerned with this graph's recent U shape, and I'm also concerned that my state is about to overtake the #1 COVID greatest hits slot.
It's difficult to compare that chart over the entire timespan. We're testing so many more people right now that you probably should never look at it at all. These two graphs give you a very different picture:
-
@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
minimise deaths and major disablement, minimise costs,
minimisemaximize political embarrassment to the other party.FTFY
-
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
(non-obese people
Fuck.
under 40
Fuck.
with no health problems)
Fuck.
brainwashed the population to think that any random piece of cloth
I looked at a friend of mine's reusable mask (as it came out of the wash) - I think my t-shirt could provide better protection.
-
@dcon said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
(non-obese people
Fuck.
under 40
Fuck.
with no health problems)
Fuck.
I tick those boxes too. YAY!
-
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
I've been meaning to ask you for some time (and means I'm not going to go to your source and read more, of course), but I don't really understand what this graph shows. I mean, I get the overall idea that it's showing excess deaths, but I'm confused by the individual symbols. Can you explain?
Blue bars are predicted number of deaths for that week. But despite being "predicted", it looks very much as if it's the actual number of deaths, with variations every year? The actual number is data available for the past (why would you show "predicted" numbers for the past?) and for 2020 it clearly shows an unexpected peak (compared to previous years), so it's not a projected model from the past. But then I can't see why it's a "predicted" number? Unless maybe the "prediction" just means "not final consolidated numbers" rather than "guessed from past sources?"
Orange line is how much above the prediction it has to be so that it's considered anormal ("excess"). It looks like it's blue bars + some margin, which is what I would expect (just getting 1 more death that some statistical prediction from past numbers isn't really an anomaly). However that line is not a fixed number of above the blue bars, nor is it a fixed percentage, which would be the two most natural ways to define it (and of course blue bars also go above that line when there is what's deemed an excess). But since blue bars aren't really some statistical average, I guess it's expected as well. Maybe it's something like N standard deviations above an average that isn't shown here, although while it would make sense if you plotted all years as a function of e.g. week number (e.g. week 42 has on average N deaths +/- E so the orange line for week 42 every year is N+E), but it makes less sense for a single year? It's not the same orange line for each year e.g. 2019 has a higher orange line than the "predicted" (?) count, and that line even higher (or at least different from) than the lines in 2018 or 2020, so it's not the same.
Red crosses are "excess above threshold" which looks like the actual number of deaths (only shown for weeks when it's above the orange line)? But then why is it higher than the blue bars? Unless again the blue bar is a prediction from... some model that does contain the actual current events but isn't the actual number, and red crosses are the actual numbers? But why show both then?
I guess it's mostly the blue bars, and the fact that they're not the same as the red crosses, that confuses me.
-
@remi As I understand it, the + simply indicates the bar is above the orange line — the height of the + doesn’t matter. I think this is mainly to make sure you can see that, for example, the bar all the way on the left is also above the orange line.
I also don’t understand the other things you mention, though.
-
@Gurth I guess that might explain why it's just called "indicates..." rather than "observed count above threshold." They also seem to be always be the same height above their blue bars, which would make sense if it's just a graphical trick.
If that's the case I would have rather gone for putting those bars in a different colour, or putting the crosses at a constant height to avoid making them look like their height matter.
I guess in that case the blue bars can be considered as the actual numbers (maybe called "predicted" because for 2020 we don't yet have final numbers but it's actual numbers, not a prediction), and the orange line might be "average + std dev of the last N previous years" which might explain why it changes from one year to the next (2019 orange line is higher than 2018 because of the 2018 peak in actual numbers that drag it upwards, and conversely the actual low number of 2019 drags that prediction back lower in 2020).
Thanks, simply ignoring the position of the red crosses actually makes sense!
-
@remi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Blue bars are predicted number of deaths for that week.
I think that's simply bad labelling; the blue bars are the actual figures, the orange line is set at a level above the predicted amount (so as to not trigger for minor fluctuations), and the red
+
s are to indicate where the threshold is exceeded (because that's hard to see when things are only slightly in excess, which is more normal). I'm guessing that the predictions are based on long-term rates and population sizes or something like that; it's the kind of thing that actuaries would likely have easily available.We can see that winter '17-'18 likely had problems with flu (which is known to correlate with cold weather), whereas the next year did not. We can also see that the excess death rate reached about a third of the natural death rate earlier this year, enough to be majorly inconvenient but not catastrophic to most post mortem services. The evidence from this is that COVID is not just a flu; it's much worse. (Technically you can't see the cause from the graph itself… but we know that's it from other evidence. There hasn't been a huge upsurge in cancer deaths or heart attacks or strokes or… and whatever it is has to be a gross effect; a quadrupling of the death rate due to fax-related paper cuts wouldn't be noticeable on this chart.)
-
@remi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
I've been meaning to ask you for some time (and means I'm not going to go to your source and read more, of course), but I don't really understand what this graph shows. I mean, I get the overall idea that it's showing excess deaths, but I'm confused by the individual symbols. Can you explain?
I linked the page previously. It's the CDC's excess deaths page:
Blue bars are actual deaths. The orange line is what they consider to be the threshold for excess deaths based on statistical predictions. The little red crosses just indicate a week considered to be excess.
-
@boomzilla Thanks. So it's just that the position of the red crosses are misleading (at least to me), and that the labelling is confusing ("predicted" is not a prediction but the actual figure -- edit: as I hinted before, I guess they call it a "prediction" because "Death counts were derived from [various sources]" but that's just to mean that it's not the "actual" number, but for all intensive porpoises it is).
The overall picture is fairly clear, but this thing about the red crosses has bothered me every time you posted the picture. I tried too hard to put some meaning to their height.
-
@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
An example of this would be requiring a random controlled trial before allowing off-label use of HCQ, but not requiring a RCT for mask mandates
Those two things are not at all comparable, though, since antiviral drugs tend to have much more dangerous potential side effects than face masks. Drugs are highly regulated for a good reason, as frustrating as that may be in our current situation.
-
@dfdub said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
antiviral drugs tend to have much more dangerous potential side effects than face masks
In the specific case of HCQ, its potential side effects and safety concerns have been well known for longer than some of our forum members have been alive
-
@dfdub said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Those two things are not at all comparable, though, since antiviral drugs tend to have much more dangerous potential side effects than face masks. Drugs are highly regulated for a good reason, as frustrating as that may be in our current situation.
HCQ is FDA-approved and has been prescribed for decades. Its side effects are well-known. The side effects of cloth masks are not. So you're right about them not being comparable, but wrong about the direction of the difference.
I would like to thank you, however, for providing such a perfect example of the other point I was making about holding ideas we don't agree with to a higher standard of evidence than ideas we agree with.
-
@hungrier said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dfdub said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
antiviral drugs tend to have much more dangerous potential side effects than face masks
In the specific case of HCQ, its potential side effects and safety concerns have been well known for longer than some of our forum members have been alive
That doesn't change much, though, since:
- Side effects exist and have to be compared to measured benefits in a risk analysis
- We need data on the effects on COVID patients specifically, especially since some of the known side effects might make symptoms worse.
-
@dfdub said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Side effects exist and have to be compared to measured benefits in a risk analysis
You mean like we did for the lockdowns and mask mandates?
-
@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
I would like to thank you, however, for providing such a perfect example of the other point I was making about holding ideas we don't agree with to a higher standard of evidence than ideas we agree with.
See my other answer. The difference I'm making here has absolutely nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing.
-
@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
the death rate due to fax-related paper cuts
-
@remi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
I guess they call it a "prediction" because "Death counts were derived from [various sources]" but that's just to mean that it's not the "actual" number,
It's not a prediction if it's post hoc; it's an estimate.
-
@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dfdub said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Side effects exist and have to be compared to measured benefits in a risk analysis
You mean like we did for the lockdowns and mask mandates?
Are you seriously making the argument that policy decisions should be regulated like medicine? Or are you just being a dick because I disagree with your comparison?
-
@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
HCQ is FDA-approved and has been prescribed for decades. Its side effects are well-known. The side effects of cloth masks are not.
How long have masks been used and what's the largest side-effects observed?
-
@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
HCQ is FDA-approved and has been prescribed for decades. Its side effects are well-known. The side effects of cloth masks are not. So you're right about them not being comparable, but wrong about the direction of the difference.
I don't think any medic would suggest that injecting a cloth mask into a patient's bloodstream is a good treatment, and I don't think they need to check with the FDA to form that opinion.
-
@dfdub said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Are you seriously making the argument that policy decisions should be regulated like medicine? Or are you just being a dick because I disagree with your comparison?
If you really can't see that you're holding one side of the issue to a higher standard of the evidence than the other and making transparent rationalizations to justify that, then I have nothing more to say to you.
-
@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dfdub said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Are you seriously making the argument that policy decisions should be regulated like medicine? Or are you just being a dick because I disagree with your comparison?
If you really can't see that you're holding one side of the issue to a higher standard of the evidence than the other and making transparent rationalizations to justify that, then I have nothing more to say to you.
Okay. I mean, I didn't even disagree with your point about bias affecting the standard of evidence, I just tried to argue that the specific example you chose was crap, but okay.
-
@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
The side effects of cloth masks
-
@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
HCQ is FDA-approved and has been prescribed for decades. Its side effects are well-known. The side effects of cloth masks are not.
It's not like medical professionals or indeed a significant portion of the Asian population wear masks on a daily basis. Cloth masks have been used for decades as well (HCQ was approved by the FDA in 1955 according to Wikipedia; I could trivially find references to general use of cloth masks that date back to ~1920). I'm pretty sure we're familiar with the "side effects" by now.
-
@cvi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
HCQ is FDA-approved and has been prescribed for decades. Its side effects are well-known. The side effects of cloth masks are not.
It's not like medical professionals or indeed a significant portion of the Asian population wear masks on a daily basis. Cloth masks have been used for decades as well (HCQ was approved by the FDA in 1955 according to Wikipedia; I could trivially find references to general use of cloth masks that date back to ~1920). I'm pretty sure we're familiar with the "side effects" by now.
Cloth face coverings certainly haven't been worn for centuries by devout Muslims or by cowboys or by brides or by assassins. There's simply no telling what effects wearing a small piece of cloth in front of your face could have; it's unprecedented.
-
@cvi Fine, I'll withdraw my example. I think most of you got the point I was trying to make anyway.
-
@error said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Cloth face coverings certainly haven't been worn for centuries by devout Muslims or by cowboys or by brides or by assassins. There's simply no telling what effects wearing a small piece of cloth in front of your face could have; it's unprecedented.
If a cowboy gets married in a mosque to a devout Muslim bride, then he'll be assassinated?
edit: The Mask did it!!!
-
@error said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
The side effects of cloth masks
I can say with confidence they do have side effects.
They make my glasses fog.
-
@dcon said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@error said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Cloth face coverings certainly haven't been worn for centuries by devout Muslims or by cowboys or by brides or by assassins. There's simply no telling what effects wearing a small piece of cloth in front of your face could have; it's unprecedented.
If a cowboy gets married in a mosque to a devout Muslim bride, then he'll be assassinated?
No, but if a Muslim assassin cowboy is the bride in a same-sex marriage, he will suffocate.
-
@cvi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
HCQ is FDA-approved and has been prescribed for decades. Its side effects are well-known. The side effects of cloth masks are not.
It's not like medical professionals or indeed a significant portion of the Asian population wear masks on a daily basis. Cloth masks have been used for decades as well (HCQ was approved by the FDA in 1955 according to Wikipedia; I could trivially find references to general use of cloth masks that date back to ~1920). I'm pretty sure we're familiar with the "side effects" by now.
Two things:
- I've seen a study that say surgical masks have negative impact on surgeons' performance. If you want I may try to google it up sometime this week.
- Asian population that wear masks on daily basis protect themselves from something that has significantly larger particles than a virus.
-
@Zerosquare said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@error said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
The side effects of cloth masks
I can say with confidence they do have side effects.
They make my glasses fog.This has always seemed like a big clue to me about their theater component.
-
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Zerosquare said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@error said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
The side effects of cloth masks
I can say with confidence they do have side effects.
They make my glasses fog.This has always seemed like a big clue to me about their theater component.
How so? Your glasses are much closer to your face than the advised distance of people.
-
@topspin that warrants a in its original meaning.
-
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Asian population that wear masks on daily basis protect themselves from something that has significantly larger particles than a virus.
There may be some Asian populations that wear masks daily to protect against something else, but there are Asian populations that wear masks specifically to protect from viruses. It became fashionable during the outbreak of SARS back in 2003 and in places like Hong Kong or Korea never fell out of fashion since.
-
@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Zerosquare said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@error said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
The side effects of cloth masks
I can say with confidence they do have side effects.
They make my glasses fog.This has always seemed like a big clue to me about their theater component.
How so? Your glasses are much closer to your face than the advised distance of people.
So what?
The moist air (and the aerosols that go with that) are jetting out and past my glasses into the room. There are also often jets going out the sides of the mask more towards your back. We imagine that the cloth is filtering the air coming out but it's largely redirecting it and due to being forced through smaller spaces its velocity increases. Should we be standing farther away from someone with a mask?
All that said, I'm sure that they knock down larger droplets and grab onto some of the aerosols. But I'm equally sure that we're playing with our masks and getting them moist, etc, against the sorts of training that medical professionals get. I suspect (and data from various places with various mask policies over time seem to bear this out) that there's a negligible overall difference with masks.
But I wear them in public indoors in the hope that some people will calm the fuck down.
-
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
But I wear them in public indoors in the hope that some people will calm the fuck down.
I don't unless the establishment specifically asks me to.
-
@Zerosquare said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@error said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
The side effects of cloth masks
I can say with confidence they do have side effects.
They make my glasses fog.Me too. The first time I went to the gym, I had keep taking my glasses off to be able to see.
-
@Karla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
I had keep taking my glasses off to be able to see.
-
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
The moist air (and the aerosols that go with that) are jetting out and past my glasses into the room.
Sounds like it isn't quite fitting around the nose right.
-
@dkf it's almost as if he wears the mask improperly...
-
@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
The moist air (and the aerosols that go with that) are jetting out and past my glasses into the room.
Sounds like it isn't quite fitting around the nose right.
IME, the cheap masks made for the general public are simply incapable of being fitted around the nose right. Or maybe can be fitted right, briefly, but the plastic (not metal, because cheap) nosepiece relaxes and requires constant adjustment (i.e., touching the mask) in a (futile) attempt to keep it fitted right.
-
@HardwareGeek said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
IME, the cheap masks made for the general public are simply incapable of being fitted around the nose right. Or maybe can be fitted right, briefly, but the plastic (not metal, because cheap) nosepiece relaxes and requires constant adjustment (i.e., touching the mask) in a (futile) attempt to keep it fitted right.
That's pretty much what I've experienced, too.
-
@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
The moist air (and the aerosols that go with that) are jetting out and past my glasses into the room.
Sounds like it isn't quite fitting around the nose right.
I lost the mask my wife made that had a wire over the nose. She's going to make a new one. It's the only thing that makes wearing a mask with glasses bearable (also I've cut up old CPAP mask straps so I can put that around my head instead of hanging the mask on my ears, which is also much more comfortable).
Very few masks that I see people wearing in public appear to be capable of doing much in the way of sealing around the nose irregardless of whether they're disposable, home made or commercial cloth masks.
-
@boomzilla In that case, I might have gotten lucky with the disposable masks that I found - they come with a metal "wire" (thin flat piece of metal) built-in. Bending it to a face shape indeed makes a huge difference when wearing glasses.
-
So Czechia is back to the same level of lockdown as in the spring starting tomorrow morning and lasting tentatively until 3rd November, but I hope nobody believes it will end then, because it lasted much longer in the spring and we are now starting from higher numbers and people are less willing to honour the rules.
The government once again comes out as muddle headed—after the previous round of measures they, reasonably, said they will now wait two weeks so the effect can show before they'll decide further, but then freaked after a week over the numbers that were completely predictable the week before and declared the lockdown.
Note that it's not as strict lockdown as other places—shops and services are closed except listed, but almost everything is listed, so they really only closed clothes and shoes shops and hairdressers and similar (restaurants are take-away-only since last week already), and we are not free to go anywhere except almost anything is excepted again and since going to nature is permitted, there is no way to enforce any restrictions anyway.
-
@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Note that it's not as strict lockdown as other places—shops and services are closed except listed, but almost everything is listed, so they really only closed clothes and shoes shops and hairdressers and similar (restaurants are take-away-only since last week already), and we are not free to go anywhere except almost anything is excepted again and since going to nature is permitted, there is no way to enforce any restrictions anyway.
It sounds like they learned something from watching the lockdowns elsewhere but had to make some theater to keep people from losing their shit. It looks like it missed you guys almost entirely in the Spring.
-
@boomzilla Yes, it did, because the lock-down was enacted very quickly in the spring, before it really started. It is probably part of the reason many people don't want to follow the rules now—nothing ended up happening in the spring, so they now don't realize there is actual danger if it takes off too much.