As I said, yesterday, she put up an absurd graph with a clearly political purpose. They put every country that has been blasted by the disease, including smaller ones like Belgium. Meanwhile, they left off much larger countries like Japan or South Korea and more similar countries like Canada or Australia. They only included countries that had been hit hard and then used that to say what a great job that we have done and set up Trump to complain about 2/3 of the "better" countries which were China and Iran. It was obviously political. She has generally been good and I have been pretty supportive of her despite the Google nonsense early on because I know she is in an impossible spot of having to try to maintain her position in the eyes of a raging narcissist in order to try to save lives, knowing that he would get rid of her if she criticized anything. But that act was pretty gross and political. It adds on to my complaint from the day before where she focused on how New Orleans shows us the testing we need to get this under control, ignoring how locked down New Orleans currently is and that clearly we will need more testing if we are to ever emerge. But it provided a degree of cover for the testing failures.
South Carolina to open beaches, parks and retail next week: SC to reopen public beach accesses, retail stores that closed under coronavirus crackdown
I think it is just a side note that branched from the main convo. (Sorta like "The Thread" did many times.) I don't think either of us intend to keep the topic here for any length of time. @WarDamnGator asked me a valid question that I answered and @gator_lawyer had a follow up point. It came from a conversation about our electoral options (which is also off topic). Threads this long have small diversionary topics. ...But I agree if they stay off topic for more than a few posts, they need to be redirected.
Mostly Republican, no military, gun owner. For me its Pee-Wee Herman. I would vote for Pee-Wee Herman before I would Trump. Not sure who's bar is higher here.
I guessing it would be a landing spot for Chanel Rion (OANN) when she is ultimately banned from the WH press room.
Our testing failures? The NHS in England is often touted as the best health system in the world. Their first death due to coronavirus was 3/5 ours was reported 2/29. How are we doing in per capital testing versus the best medical system on earth? France's first death was 2/26. How are we doing with per capita testing versus France? How about deaths per million? How much better are these superior systems without the negative influence of Trump doing? Are you really arguing that Belgium, part of the E.U., is a worse comparison than Australia? Who is cherry picking?
Yes, our testing failures. We started testing very late. If we cut out the extremely small countries, we are still around 22-23rd most tests per capita in the world. And that is including the fact that we started testing very late into the curve, when testing becomes less effective and you need more per capita testing to deal with the problem. Both France and UK have also failed miserably in testing. However, that doesn't mean that we haven't failed miserably too. And, just to note, if you are trying to be on the level with this argument, you are legitimately calling a single provider health system the best in the world, right? This isn't some sort of argument where you refer to them as such just to cover-up failures here but would immediately talk about why we should never consider such a system the moment that the topic changed, right? She was. I am not saying that we should have only listed countries that have done better. Just noticing that almost all of the countries that have done better than us were left off the list. And yes, Belgium is a worse comparable to the US than Australia. Fewer people, much more urban, different culturally (both the US and Australia have their cultural foundations in the UK), shares generally open borders with two countries being slammed by this disease. None of these things are accurate comparables to the US nor Australia.
Fair question. One of the essential steps in methods/stats that drives rigorous science is to control for selection bias. This applies to selecting *things* to be included in a sample. Leaving out comparable countries that have fared better is an example, one that demands far more context. It's not assuming that she did not stick to the science, it is ID'ing where she did not. FWIW, I called it pedaling propaganda because it is framing things to make our situation seem much better than it is. We don't even need to compare to other countries, but rather we need an unvarnished assessment based on our particular situation first.
You have an admin that is under fire from certain media every day for how awful they have handled this. Perhaps for good reason. It is not false to show what countries we have outperformed. Incomplete? OK., but not false. But that one graph does not dictate Birx methodology or policy. It was PR. Every admin, in every White House has and will always control the narrative. In the meantime Birx deserves the benefit of the doubt. She does not need this role or Trump's blessing to validate her work or her career. Her and Fauci are still the right people, and they are using solid science to advise and council. But you will get PR and spin at pressers because you always have and always will. Mullen telling us that he thought Franks threw the ball pretty well in a loss in 2018 did not mean he did not know the real holes in his game and coach him to fix it behind the scenes. Pressers are for PR. They just are. We can wish them not to be at a time like this, but they just are.
Yeah, the Trump influence is unfortunate and imo clearly what drove it. And you're right in suggesting we'd get worse if she was replaced, because you know it would be so much more of a yes man/woman. I still consider it propaganda and remain disappointed and exasperated by it--because it is a daily thing this admin, though not saying she's particularly doing so outside of this instance. He drives the narrative and it's clear that yesterday his interruptions about China and Iran were part of that framing. So in that sense, I do have much sympathy for her even if I personally can't give quarter to any scientist who bends things even a little (and this was much more than a little, imo).
From a standpoint of science, it is false even if there is truth within the comparison. I would have to disagree about one graph not dictating methodology. It is a clear indicator of a flawed methodology because selection bias is a primary threat to validity. I get that all admins' spin. Heck, I'll admit I'm being harsh, but I think there is good reason to be--she's not simply a political appointee but a highly respected scientist, and to me this makes it so much more disappointing and frustrating.
I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'll think on it, and we'll leave this conversation for another day to avoid upsetting Duchen.
Australia and Singapore have always been non-starters. Most countries in the southern hemisphere have escaped the brunt of the virus, because warmer temperatures slow it down and Singapore has a year-round tropical climate. Yes, there are some exceptions further north. Japan, South Korea and Canada are the big ones, I'd say. But the combined population of Japan, South Korea and Canada is less than 2/3's the United States population. The majority of the world has struggled with this virus as bad or worse than the United States.
I think my point is, she is not using selection bias in her actual work, just in a graph at a presser. Science does this all the time. It is why side effects are in small print under the happy people with the pretty logo for every new drug ad.
If correct, we're going to see some major improvement over the next two weeks and I think people's spirits will be lifted tremendously. Right now, it feels like we're stuck in the worst nightmare and we can't escape. Man, I can't wait. 60,308 COVID-19 deaths projected by August 4, 2020 IHME | COVID-19 Projections
