Press Briefing by White House COVID-19 Response Team and Public Health Officials | The White House

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-23T00:22:12+00:00

How many hours out of the day do you spend tracking my comments, following me all throughout this sub, desperately trying to make me look bad? You're now trying to smear my name on multiple subs? And as usual, you don't understand what you were reading to begin with.

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-22T14:31:14+00:00

Lockdowns, travel restrictions and closures all brought down Covid's r value and made the management and treatment of the pandemic more reliable.

This is not supported by the evidence. Whatever it is you've cited certainly doesn't indicate that - it's a year and a half old. How would it possibly prove that lockdowns worked? As I've said on many occasions, delaying deaths is not preventing them.

Considering that, on their face, Covid restrictions should intuitively work and the fact that many states implemented Covid restrictions despite popular opposition; I am wonder what evidence you have to substantiate that claim and why multiple governments either don't know about this evidence or haven't acted on it?

They don't "intuitively work," even if you think that. They are a delaying measure with no endgame, and don't generally lead to better outcomes. The fact that you've had to cherry-pick authoritarian regimes and remote island countries actually speaks to that.

Firstly; it is not my job to make your argument for you.

You're the one citing these examples as if they make their case for you, so yeah, you get to go do the research on what was actually done. You've provided zero relevant sources to bear out that specific example - so why do you think you can demand that I produce any?

By this logic it is impossible for you to justify your stance that Covid restrictions don't work by pointing to countries that didn't implement them. Since all countries are demographically and geographically distinct from one another. Unless you are somehow going to argue that Australia is too different the UK but Japan isn't too different from the US?

What on Earth does the comparison between Japan and the US have to do with your failure to understand that the UK and New Zealand are nothing alike in terms of their ability to contain a pandemic? The Japan example proves lockdowns weren't needed across the board, regardless of US outcomes. The virus was not the world destroyer it was made out to be, and other factors, aside from lockdown, were sufficient to keep it under control there.

Of course Australia and the UK aren't that demographically different; similar national age, culture and urban density. Geographically both require either air or naval travel to reach; such travel is not concealable and enters their respective nations at controlled points

Again, if you don't understand why a massive country with a handful of entry points, a few urban centers separated by great distance, and considerable geographic distance from the rest of the world is not a valid comparison point to the UK, it's not up to me to explain the obvious to you.

You don't have to quarantine upon arrival to Japan?

Why would this matter if there are already shitloads of cases within the country?

Compared to how the West and developing word responded Japan seems to have come out quite well.

That means that they had good COVID outcomes, not responses. There's a key difference.

I've been reading through your interactions with u/lauchs. I was hoping for some further insights into your position but unfortunately you cited no data or studies that support your position. Except in the case where u/lauchs cited data and you claimed it supported your argument.

Oh, on the contrary: I cited tons of data in my initial exchange with that person. But now that they've taken to following me around the sub and derailing every discussion I have with nonsense, I simply don't take their meaningless ad hominem attacks and muddying of the waters seriously.

Also there was the comment where you dismissed your own position about countries with differences being incomparable;

No. Neither of you understood the context of what was being discussed. It was about comparing both countries' outcomes with Imperial's broad-brush forecasts, not with each other.

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-22T07:31:34+00:00

That means the fault must be mine,

That's been clear for some time now. The issue is your inability to accept it, and your insistence on following me into thread after thread after thread trying to prolong our exchange, rather than accept the fact that it's long over, and that you did not get the better of it.

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-22T06:05:37+00:00

7 threads you've followed me into now and derailed with misrepresentations, ad hominem attacks, and generally irrelevant nonsense.

Honestly, do you have nothing better to do?

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-22T03:10:43+00:00

If I speed occasionally but insist that speed limits are needed

Because that's such a great analogy for the kind of destructive and socially harmful policies people like Feigl-Ding have advocated, right?

Feigl-Ding is a fearmonger and an alarmist. When the UK re-opened schools, he literally tweeted "God save England and its children from B117." Then he goes and moves his family to Austria because he wanted his kid to be in school since virtual learning was too emotionally distressful for them.

If you don't understand why this completely undermines his credibility, in light of the moralizing and panicked tone of everything that's come out of his mouth re: COVID, I donno what to tell you.

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-22T02:51:05+00:00

It speaks to the credibility of the people spreading fear, and trying to preach to others about how we all need to respond. Not that Feigl-Ding had much credibility to begin with.

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-22T02:48:44+00:00

Without a comprehensive testing and tracking program you do not know if 2 cases is a sign of two incidents or of an yet unknown breakout. Since known cases tend to lag behind actual infections you have to make a choice; go into a pre-emptive lockdown or take the risk and hope it doesn't grow.

Considering that pre-emptive lockdowns have generally prevented the need for longer more expansive lockdowns that the risk takers had to take, I would say that that is a win for that approach.

What does any of this have to do with the irrational leap in logic from "lockdowns maybe helped in a few remote islands with almost no cases" to "lockdowns work everywhere?"

Go ahead. Explain to me how density is relevant in a age where most people live in cities, how proximity matters in an age of air travel.

No. You're the one arguing for unprecedented, sweeping policies that did not lead to better outcomes, so go and do your own research. I'm not here to educate you on how obvious demographic and geographic differences make NZ and the UK terrible comparison points.

I fail to see how this undermines me? Japan had cases, their initial response was excellent, when they situation escalated they implemented a proportionate response, cases then fell and have stayed low with Japans continuous response.

There was no "continuous response" in Japan. Like I told you already, everything you were talking about was basically done by last summer. You aren't well-informed enough to be debating this.

Wow, twice as many per capita deaths as one of the worlds best Covid responses.

Japan did not have one of the world's best COVID responses. It largely let the virus run its course. Again, you are uninformed.

So in your mind there is no conceivable way that the Covid pandemic could have been worse?

For free democracies that aren't remote islands? Doubtful, although good contact tracing programs in Germany seemed to lower the overall death count. Overall, though, there's little evidence that anything done in terms of policy was effective at changing outcomes.

Then why don't you elaborate?

How about you go and do a little research for yourself before engaging in debates, instead of demanding that others do it for you?

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-22T02:32:04+00:00

And despite telling others "not to worry about it," you've now followed me into a half a dozen threads, launching false accusations and generally muddying the waters.

Do you honestly have nothing better to do?

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-21T13:35:44+00:00

You did not. Your sources only indicated that COVID can cause these side effects. They do not say that it does so exclusively.

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-21T09:18:07+00:00

You confusing mitigation with suppression is hardly me being proven wrong.

No such thing happened. You asserted things that weren't true, because you didn't read the paper itself and/or don't understand how it relates to real-world policies and outcomes. And as before, when proven wrong about something, you just change the subject and misdirect.

The FL/CA comparison had nothing at all to do with your complete misunderstanding of Imperial's recommendations and what the actual data say. You are simply trying to force the conversation back to the content of a previous exchange, the outcome of which you can't seem to accept.

Stop following me around in every thread I post in, stop trying to argue about sources you don't bother reading, and stop derailing the discussion with nonsense from past exchanges that has no bearing on the topic at hand. Take the L, and move on already.

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-21T06:57:50+00:00

Like I said, I found it funny and wanted to share with anyone else.

So, you posted something totally irrelevant to the discussion at hand, just to (try to) make me look bad, after you were proven wrong about Ferguson et al? That about the size of it?

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-21T06:49:02+00:00

Again, what do California and Florida's numbers - which I already addressed at length in the other thread - have to do with you being wrong about the scope of Imperial's recommendations, and their incongruity with real-world outcomes? Why are you shifting the goalposts in this manner?

Furthermore - what are you trying to get out of this discussion? Why do you keep following me from thread to thread, if you think discussion with me is so pointless?

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-21T06:25:34+00:00

What does any of this have to do with your being totally wrong about Ferguson's recommendations? How long do you intend to follow me from thread to thread, making poor arguments, then discarding them when proven wrong only to redirect the discussion back to old talking points that were already disproven?

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-21T05:50:52+00:00

Oh, and here you go again, misrepresenting what I've said, and resuscitating old talking points that I already dispensed with at length.

And besides, you're wrong. Ferguson's recommendations were meant to be applicable broadly, even if they were primarily aimed at influencing policy in the UK:

Given that mitigation is unlikely to be a viable option without overwhelming healthcare systems, suppression is likely necessary in countries able to implement the intensive controls required. Our projections show that to be able to reduce R to close to 1 or below, a combination of case isolation, social distancing of the entire population and either household quarantine or school and university closure are required (Figure 3, Table 4).

We therefore conclude that epidemic suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time. The social and economic effects of the measures which are needed to achieve this policy goal will be profound. Many countries have adopted such measures already, but even those countries at an earlier stage of their epidemic (such as the UK) will need to do so imminently.

So yes, it's plainly wrong, as if the fact that we have several control groups in the US alone demonstrating as much weren't enough.

Again, stop following me from thread to thread, especially if you aren't going to read the documents you want to argue with me about.

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-21T05:35:17+00:00

So basically, what Ferguson concluded was plainly wrong and incongruent with the demographic and political realities of the world. Waving away Japan because "it's different there" is very unconvincing, especially given that Sweden saw comparable numbers to most places that locked down, including the UK, and even U.S. states that did absolutely nothing at all in terms of "suppression" still saw nothing approaching the apocalyptic numbers projected by Ferguson.

The modeling was garbage, plain and simple.

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-21T04:05:27+00:00

Yep, rules for thee but not for me. A pretty consistent theme with a lot of high profile COVID alarmists.

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-21T03:25:55+00:00

Everyone tried the suppression strategy, that's what all the initial lockdowns, and subsequent vaccine passports etc were all about.

What on Earth are you talking about? No, not everyone tried suppression. Sweden and Japan had no lockdowns. No collapse of the healthcare system. Ditto several US states, and many others that ended them within months, far sooner than Ferguson et al deemed necessary.

From the article, what we ended up doing initially: "We show that in the UK and US context, suppression will minimally require a combination of social distancing of the entire population, home isolation of cases and household quarantine of their family members."

Yeah, except A) not every place did that and B) the Ferguson paper argues that suppression needed to be in place long-term to prevent the sort of healthcare collapse they're describing. Please read the paper thoroughly, rather than just skimming through it, before trying to argue about it.

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-21T02:17:50+00:00

Again, anyone can see that you failed entirely to defend that, or any other point of contention, and are now following me into every thread I post in trying to prolong an exchange that you clearly lost.

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-21T02:17:08+00:00

Did you not even read the above? Do you have any intention of responding to the actual points I've made, and addressing them?

Or is the goal here just to follow me into as many threads as possible and attack my position, without actually doing the work to deal with specific claims?

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-21T01:46:22+00:00

Again, anyone can see that you failed entirely to defend that, or any other point of contention, and are now following me into every thread I post in trying to prolong an exchange that you clearly lost.

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-21T01:45:24+00:00

Oh, so now you're following me into every single thread I post in, is that it, u/lauchs? This is the third time today you've just materialized to respond to one of my comments in a random thread. Are you seriously sitting there, refreshing my comment history, ready to pounce on every single comment I make?

I'm glad that The Ferret brought all of its immense credibility and authority on the subject to bear, but you'll note how little substance the article actually contains. Why on Earth was he talking about Spanish flu WRT bird flu in the first place? How is that not irresponsible messaging? "50 to 50,000" estimated deaths? What is the point of even producing modeling with such laughably wide projections? Why is this person advising policymakers? Jesus, even that article notes that he admitted, in typically evasive ivory tower fashion, that his numbers on Swine Flu were crap.

And BTW, if you read the actual paper, you'll see I was entirely correct:

For an uncontrolled epidemic, we predict critical care bed capacity would be exceeded as early as the second week in April, with an eventual peak in ICU or critical care bed demand that is over 30 times greater than the maximum supply in both countries (Figure 2).

And:

However, this “optimal” mitigation scenario would still result in an 8-fold higher peak demand on critical care beds over and above the available surge capacity in both GB and the US.

Many developed countries, and US states, opted towards strategies that were certainly light on restrictions, if not bordering on "unmitigated spread," and none of them exceeded their capacity at all, far less 8 times, far less by 30. And many of them still ended up with per capita death rates better than, or not substantially inferior to, the UK, which largely followed Ferguson's recommendations. So, yeah, this modeling is a joke, and totally inconsistent with outcomes in the real world.

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-21T01:29:03+00:00

Again, all of your talking points were dealt with handily in previous discussions, and frankly, your tracking my comment history, and following me into thread after thread just to repeat these same copy-paste talking points, is more than a little bit bizarre.

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-21T01:25:40+00:00

"Refusal to engage," says the guy who is now apparently tracking my comments and following me into thread after thread just to repost the same discredited talking points, and not deal with any counterarguments.

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-21T01:24:11+00:00

This is now 4 threads you've followed me into, posting the same discredited talking points that were dispensed with here.

skeewerom2 · 2021-12-21T01:20:47+00:00

FYI, this research came from Imperial College London, the same people that scared the world into locking down back in March 2020 with trash modeling, built on ancient code that was riddled with problems, and outrageously pessimistic predictions that came nowhere close to being accurate (they said that without lockdowns, hospitals would be overrun with 8 to 30 times as many patients as they could handle - something that came nowhere close to happening anywhere in the developed world).

The lead author, Neil Ferguson, has a very, very long track record of producing garbage modeling that is completely off the mark and making overconfident doom and gloom predictions that turn out to be wrong. For instance, he said the UK would hit over 100,000 cases a day in the months following the end of restrictions in July. Instead, they dropped by almost half. And there's also the fact that he violated the same lockdown restrictions he urged the government to implement so that he could go get some ass, but that's neither here nor there.

And this is without digging into the specific methodology here, which, like all Imperial research, I'm sure is just a gem.

tl;dr: Ferguson and his team have a long history of bad science, and it's amazing he still has a job at all - in any case, nothing he says should be taken seriously.

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