I think life in the west since the second world war has become so mollycoddled that people forget that death exists and that the society was built to a large extent on social-darwinistic principles
BZ come off it - how old are you?
if the answer is less than 91 years old (so 16 in 1945 at the end of WWII) i am calling daily mail bullshit
The alternate meaning is the current lockdown policy adopted across the western world. Which has what aims - precisely? Not “save everyone” literally - we have established that. What then - save as many as possible? How do you measure that - and have you failed if in that goal if the life expectancy of over 80s drops by a couple of years? Or is it “save as much as you can without the health system being overwhelmed”? But what does “overwhelmed” mean exactly? Does our health service have some sort of baseline delivery service the breach of which absolutely justifies the shutdown of the society? Afaik UK general cancer survival rates are poor compared to the EU and this is because the health service is under funded and not enough resources are allocated to screening etc. But that doesn’t justify a lockdown. But covid does - and we return again to the daily death counts etc as a justification, and so on.
So yes - “save everyone” is a reference to the current strategy, whatever aims it purports to have.
“Save everyone” is not an accurate description of our policy goals. Just don’t bother with such lazy misrepresentation, and if you try it, doubly don’t bother with typing an irrelevant paragraph in the hope you’ll be able to pass it off as justification.
The point is that the current strategy is so vague in its aims, so unmeasurable in its efficacy, and so reliant on emotive and scaremongering tactics to manufacture consent for it, that the shorthand “save everyone” for it is completely justified - it might as well be BoJo’s next catchphrase.
Or is it “save as much as you can without the health system being overwhelmed”? But what does “overwhelmed” mean exactly? Does our health service have some sort of baseline delivery service the breach of which absolutely justifies the shutdown of the society?
barry m8 I’ve done this already tonight on ebitdas 1600 deaths thread. here:
The point is that the current strategy is so vague in its aims, so unmeasurable in its efficacy, and so reliant on emotive and scaremongering tactics to manufacture consent for it, that the shorthand “save everyone” for it is completely justified
by “current strategy” i assume you mean “uk strategy”
ie keep people mixing as long as possible, only put restrictions in place two weeks late and when absolutely necessary, pay people to eat inside with strangers, sue schools for closing earlier than the government deems necessary (soon shown to be wrong), force everyone to keep these late restrictions in place longer than if we’d implemented them at the appropriate time?
BZ - of course i take your point but you know bowel cancer is not highly contagious and that is the reason for the measures every country in the world (mostly) has imposed these restrictions on people
you know the alternatives you propose would do nothing to help restrict covid transmission
maybe try again with the hypothetical:
you know (somehow) that HIV is much more transmissible - in fact is transmitted airborne instead of by sexual contact - and any immunosuppressed young person (with crohns or diabetes) could spend the last 6 months of their lives in excruciating pain and misery.
And I’m not trying to hold myself out as some kind of seer, just in case that’s not clear. Doubtless I got a lot of things wrong. Why would anyone expect anything different? It’s a very difficult situation to predict accurately.’
So why the need to constantly try to cut me down to size and make it out like I was totally wrong all the time? When in fact I was much, much closer to being correct than you ever were..
If you want to know why it pisses me off so much it’s because you and your ilk basically called me a fvcking idiot for months and still to this day go out of your way to misrepresent what I actual said.. all to make your own statements at the time somehow less wrong.
I can’t really agree that Scylla called it correctly tbh. Way too pessimistic in terms of mortality.’
I mean all you’re doing there is repeating the same old ‘Scylla is a irrational doom mongering idiot’ bullshit that I put up with for months.. while also COMPLETELY misrepresenting what I actually said at the time.
When I first posted my thread less than 100 people had died in China (officially) and all I said was that it will kill more than SARS, a lot more... that’s all I EVER said in terms of what I thought the mortality would be. I then attempted to highlight the factors that made COVID so dangerous and why it would be difficult to control.
now given that SARS killed 774 people I would say if anything I was massively over optimistic on mortality.
If even now you can’t see why being dismissed as a fear mongering doom merchant, by someone who is lying about what I said in order to justify that assessment, pisses me off then you really should have your head examined.
I feel bad that I managed to set Scylla and Chimp off against each other as they are both generally very sensible posters.
Scylla - agree with your general take on how blasé the board was but I would say that (i) rof was generally was far better than the general population and media and (ii) there is this general bias where negative commentary on ones own views tends to loom larger than it really is. Whilst i share your general view, I think in fact much of rof was edgily aware of the risks you were raising - yes there was a general naivety but I think in reality only a v small number were actually aggressively attacking you in an ad hom way.
Chimp - I really don’t know why u keep going on about the big number mentioned when it was only mentioned once and Scylla’s explanation of it is perfectly adequate. And frankly at that time in Jan we had no idea what was going to happen. What is crazy about this whole thing is just how lucky we have been in terms of its ultimate IFR. With any fat tailed process making real time predictions is hugely difficult. I’ve avoided criticising the 50 number for example because although it looked a bit naive with proper Oz/Taiwan style quarantine and management it may well have been possible to delay/minimise its impact. Equally had it been more virulent and without any public policy response and collapsed health services truly huge numbers could have died. This was why massive early overreaction ( out of deference to your sensibilities I will avoid the “P” word) - was necessary. The fact is that in medical terms we have been VERY lucky. As I predicted though the economic and social costs I have been vast - because we are indeed prone to hysteria and a media culture that cannot really cope with death. It is tragic but predictable that the media failed to be hysterical when it might have helped; but has now sunk into a rolling hysteria where it cannot talk intelligently about the pandemic and is simply acting as a propaganda tool for endless lockdown.
Barry - I agree that u can’t just measure it in deaths. I also look at the economic and social costs - the UKs gdp last time I looked was pretty much the worst affected of all major economies. We’ve also spent the most, with much of the spending on PR projects, failed projects and projects where large amounts of public money have ended up suspiciously in the pockets of Tory cronies. That said the govt does seem to have done well with the vaccines and if that is a success I think we have to forgive the other spending failures. Albeit I think the failure to manage this in the way those other countries chill points to is ultimately the key issue. We will be paying for it for decades.
Scylla, I think you’re confusing me with someone else. I was not one of those who called you an idiot or said you were sexually excited by big death numbers (at least I don’t think so - genuine apologies if I said something appalling that I’ve now forgotten). I don’t think you are a “fear-mongering doom merchant”, and I never said that I was correct in my own predictions. Really my criticism of you here was quite mild, and yes it is mostly based on that one number which you still defend as “educational” or “raising awareness” or some such.
And just for the record, my prediction in one of the threads was millions of infected and tens of thousands dead in the UK. Don’t think I did too bad really.
And your continued criticism in this thread of my ‘sources’ at the time being the atmospheric gas analysis is more of the same bullshit, which shows your criticism is NOT based on a single number despite your claims otherwise.
Ah... so Chimpies actual problem is he wants everyone to recognise him and his expertise in ‘calling’ this... rather than anyone giving me any credit for having done so.
And just for the record, my prediction in one of the threads was millions of infected and tens of thousands dead in the UK. Don’t think I did too bad really.’
Ah... so Chimpies actual problem is he wants everyone to recognise him and his expertise in ‘calling’ this... rather than anyone giving me any credit for having done so.
Well, no. I already said it was extremely difficult to call correctly. More luck than judgement. Just wanted to note that actually I wasn’t as wrongy-wrong-wrong as you keep saying above. But really, what does it matter?
My criticism was mostly based on that number, like I said. But yeah, you also repeated some false claims about satellite gas analysis (which was widely derided at the time).
It’s funny that you think I’m motivated by ego when from my perspective the main reason you’re getting so angry is because I had the temerity to say that actually I think you weren’t entirely right.
tbh Scylla I’m happy to let the matter drop. I don’t think I actually was an “absolute khunt” to you at the time or at any point since, but I doubt we’ll come to an agreement there. Happy to acknowledge that you were right that COVID was going to be a significant world event, and that anyone who said otherwise was wrong.
Any way back to mad Barry. It's quite simple that the NHS has a finite number of beds so overwhelmed is when those beds are full and people are being turned away from hospital. That is what the government has been seeking to avoid.
" It's quite simple that the NHS has a finite number of beds so overwhelmed is when those beds are full and people are being turned away from hospital. "
The number of beds - is it some sort of a static number that must exist by virtue of the laws of physics?
What is interesting is that for years the NHS has been cutting beds and pushing for more community services. While this in general serves patients well we have clearly now reached a point where there aren't enough beds to offer sufficient resilience. The whole 5 year forward view by Simon Stevens was around a move away from hospital based care to community provision. I wonder where this stands now? Clearly there will be an expansion in ITU (it was always too small IMO) but other aspects of the pandemic have actually shown that people can be moved out of hospital quicker. For example I was talking to a colorectal surgeon today who said that people were leaving hospital 4 days afte a major cancer operation. Mastectomies are being done as day cases! When I was a surgical F1 over 10 years ago a major colorectal patient would be in about a week and a mastectomy for a good few days. So in some ways you could say "without a pandemic we could cut more beds" but at the same time you clearly need more beds to give sufficient capacity (not that anyone has enough for a pandemic).
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BZ come off it - how old are you?
if the answer is less than 91 years old (so 16 in 1945 at the end of WWII) i am calling daily mail bullshit
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At least he hasn’t said “degenerate” yet
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The alternate meaning is the current lockdown policy adopted across the western world. Which has what aims - precisely? Not “save everyone” literally - we have established that. What then - save as many as possible? How do you measure that - and have you failed if in that goal if the life expectancy of over 80s drops by a couple of years? Or is it “save as much as you can without the health system being overwhelmed”? But what does “overwhelmed” mean exactly? Does our health service have some sort of baseline delivery service the breach of which absolutely justifies the shutdown of the society? Afaik UK general cancer survival rates are poor compared to the EU and this is because the health service is under funded and not enough resources are allocated to screening etc. But that doesn’t justify a lockdown. But covid does - and we return again to the daily death counts etc as a justification, and so on.
So yes - “save everyone” is a reference to the current strategy, whatever aims it purports to have.
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Sorry Barry, I think you might have accidentally typed a load of total guff.
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“Save everyone” is not an accurate description of our policy goals. Just don’t bother with such lazy misrepresentation, and if you try it, doubly don’t bother with typing an irrelevant paragraph in the hope you’ll be able to pass it off as justification.
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FC - sorry to inform you of this, but you and all your loved ones will all one day die, with a probability of exactly 1.
I suggest you try living your life until that sad day, instead of thinking how to save everyone.
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I’m sorry. “Save lives”. That’s much less emotive and much more precise.
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The point is that the current strategy is so vague in its aims, so unmeasurable in its efficacy, and so reliant on emotive and scaremongering tactics to manufacture consent for it, that the shorthand “save everyone” for it is completely justified - it might as well be BoJo’s next catchphrase.
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barry m8 I’ve done this already tonight on ebitdas 1600 deaths thread. here:
https://www.rollonfriday.com/discussion/1600-covid-deaths-today
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and much love to you to barry - have enjoyed our debate and hope you have a good night x
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The same does indeed apply to me. I won’t be locking myself in my flat in a futile attempt to avoid it though. Good night.
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by “current strategy” i assume you mean “uk strategy”
ie keep people mixing as long as possible, only put restrictions in place two weeks late and when absolutely necessary, pay people to eat inside with strangers, sue schools for closing earlier than the government deems necessary (soon shown to be wrong), force everyone to keep these late restrictions in place longer than if we’d implemented them at the appropriate time?
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I mean the strategy across the UK and the EEA. It’s broadly similar.
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tbh if the uk is advancing a “save everyone” strategy at the moment I’d hate to see what their relaxed strategy would be
but i imagine we’ll all find out sooner than we think
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Fc - simple question. Admittedly not entirely related to the discussion above.
You know a perfectly healthy young person could get bowel cancer and spend the last 6 months of their lives in excruciating pain and misery.
Do you, assuming you’re a healthy young person,
1. Get colonoscopy privately every 3 months in a hope to avoid this (no guarantees that you will in fact, avoid this)
2. Insist that the NHS pays for you to have a free colonoscopy every 3 months because you feel especially worried about this.
3. Insist that everyone is mandated to have colonoscopies every three months because terrible things may happen if they don’t
4. Something else????
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5. Refuse to eat meat and die of starvation, just to avoid bowel cancer?
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meat and everything else that could in theory cause cancer, which is basically any type of food*
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BZ - of course i take your point but you know bowel cancer is not highly contagious and that is the reason for the measures every country in the world (mostly) has imposed these restrictions on people
you know the alternatives you propose would do nothing to help restrict covid transmission
maybe try again with the hypothetical:
you know (somehow) that HIV is much more transmissible - in fact is transmitted airborne instead of by sexual contact - and any immunosuppressed young person (with crohns or diabetes) could spend the last 6 months of their lives in excruciating pain and misery.
you are Ronald Reagan in the 80s
what do you do?
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‘New Chimp_20 Jan 21 00:31
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And I’m not trying to hold myself out as some kind of seer, just in case that’s not clear. Doubtless I got a lot of things wrong. Why would anyone expect anything different? It’s a very difficult situation to predict accurately.’
So why the need to constantly try to cut me down to size and make it out like I was totally wrong all the time? When in fact I was much, much closer to being correct than you ever were..
If you want to know why it pisses me off so much it’s because you and your ilk basically called me a fvcking idiot for months and still to this day go out of your way to misrepresent what I actual said.. all to make your own statements at the time somehow less wrong.
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‘New Chimp_19 Jan 21 10:01
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I can’t really agree that Scylla called it correctly tbh. Way too pessimistic in terms of mortality.’
I mean all you’re doing there is repeating the same old ‘Scylla is a irrational doom mongering idiot’ bullshit that I put up with for months.. while also COMPLETELY misrepresenting what I actually said at the time.
When I first posted my thread less than 100 people had died in China (officially) and all I said was that it will kill more than SARS, a lot more... that’s all I EVER said in terms of what I thought the mortality would be. I then attempted to highlight the factors that made COVID so dangerous and why it would be difficult to control.
now given that SARS killed 774 people I would say if anything I was massively over optimistic on mortality.
If even now you can’t see why being dismissed as a fear mongering doom merchant, by someone who is lying about what I said in order to justify that assessment, pisses me off then you really should have your head examined.
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I feel bad that I managed to set Scylla and Chimp off against each other as they are both generally very sensible posters.
Scylla - agree with your general take on how blasé the board was but I would say that (i) rof was generally was far better than the general population and media and (ii) there is this general bias where negative commentary on ones own views tends to loom larger than it really is. Whilst i share your general view, I think in fact much of rof was edgily aware of the risks you were raising - yes there was a general naivety but I think in reality only a v small number were actually aggressively attacking you in an ad hom way.
Chimp - I really don’t know why u keep going on about the big number mentioned when it was only mentioned once and Scylla’s explanation of it is perfectly adequate. And frankly at that time in Jan we had no idea what was going to happen. What is crazy about this whole thing is just how lucky we have been in terms of its ultimate IFR. With any fat tailed process making real time predictions is hugely difficult. I’ve avoided criticising the 50 number for example because although it looked a bit naive with proper Oz/Taiwan style quarantine and management it may well have been possible to delay/minimise its impact. Equally had it been more virulent and without any public policy response and collapsed health services truly huge numbers could have died. This was why massive early overreaction ( out of deference to your sensibilities I will avoid the “P” word) - was necessary. The fact is that in medical terms we have been VERY lucky. As I predicted though the economic and social costs I have been vast - because we are indeed prone to hysteria and a media culture that cannot really cope with death. It is tragic but predictable that the media failed to be hysterical when it might have helped; but has now sunk into a rolling hysteria where it cannot talk intelligently about the pandemic and is simply acting as a propaganda tool for endless lockdown.
Barry - I agree that u can’t just measure it in deaths. I also look at the economic and social costs - the UKs gdp last time I looked was pretty much the worst affected of all major economies. We’ve also spent the most, with much of the spending on PR projects, failed projects and projects where large amounts of public money have ended up suspiciously in the pockets of Tory cronies. That said the govt does seem to have done well with the vaccines and if that is a success I think we have to forgive the other spending failures. Albeit I think the failure to manage this in the way those other countries chill points to is ultimately the key issue. We will be paying for it for decades.
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Tbh Scylla i don’t know why u let it get to you.
Its self evident u were right and your critics were wrong.
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I actually don’t give a fvck who thinks I was wrong or right CW.
What I find absolutely infuriating is when people lie and misrepresent what I actually said in order to justify having acted like khunts themselves.
All while completely failing to acknowledge that they missed the mark by a much wider margin than I ever did.
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Scylla, I think you’re confusing me with someone else. I was not one of those who called you an idiot or said you were sexually excited by big death numbers (at least I don’t think so - genuine apologies if I said something appalling that I’ve now forgotten). I don’t think you are a “fear-mongering doom merchant”, and I never said that I was correct in my own predictions. Really my criticism of you here was quite mild, and yes it is mostly based on that one number which you still defend as “educational” or “raising awareness” or some such.
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Going on hard on me and telling me to go fook myself etc is an objectively bizarre response to what I said.
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The reason it bothered me CW is that I think stuff like that makes it easier to dismiss people who are saying the right stuff.
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And just for the record, my prediction in one of the threads was millions of infected and tens of thousands dead in the UK. Don’t think I did too bad really.
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I posted the exponential growth rate of a virus with this R0 and the death rate at the existing mortality rate at the time.
It’s bizarre that you think data and statistics are irrelevant to risk analysis.
and yes you were an absolute khunt to me at the time.
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And your continued criticism in this thread of my ‘sources’ at the time being the atmospheric gas analysis is more of the same bullshit, which shows your criticism is NOT based on a single number despite your claims otherwise.
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Ah... so Chimpies actual problem is he wants everyone to recognise him and his expertise in ‘calling’ this... rather than anyone giving me any credit for having done so.
‘New Chimp_20 Jan 21 08:33
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And just for the record, my prediction in one of the threads was millions of infected and tens of thousands dead in the UK. Don’t think I did too bad really.’
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Accusing someone of being sexually excited by big death numbers is weird even for RoF.
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Well they did Tom.
Multiple times.. but multiple different posters.
people were absolutely khunts about it.
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Well, no. I already said it was extremely difficult to call correctly. More luck than judgement. Just wanted to note that actually I wasn’t as wrongy-wrong-wrong as you keep saying above. But really, what does it matter?
My criticism was mostly based on that number, like I said. But yeah, you also repeated some false claims about satellite gas analysis (which was widely derided at the time).
It’s funny that you think I’m motivated by ego when from my perspective the main reason you’re getting so angry is because I had the temerity to say that actually I think you weren’t entirely right.
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tbh Scylla I’m happy to let the matter drop. I don’t think I actually was an “absolute khunt” to you at the time or at any point since, but I doubt we’ll come to an agreement there. Happy to acknowledge that you were right that COVID was going to be a significant world event, and that anyone who said otherwise was wrong.
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This is all classic rof.
Esp feelingchill getting upset at mummy and daddy fighting.
What Barry Zuckercorn said.
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I don’t give a fvck if I was right or not Chimp.
As I have REPEATEDLY said.. in fact I never even come on, or post on COVID threads to avoid this exact shit.
What I object to is you deliberately misrepresenting what I said.
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Any way back to mad Barry. It's quite simple that the NHS has a finite number of beds so overwhelmed is when those beds are full and people are being turned away from hospital. That is what the government has been seeking to avoid.
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I'm still in awe of Scylla.
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" It's quite simple that the NHS has a finite number of beds so overwhelmed is when those beds are full and people are being turned away from hospital. "
The number of beds - is it some sort of a static number that must exist by virtue of the laws of physics?
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What's all this about Scylla being turned on by the number of
deaths?
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Well Barry in so far as there are these buildings called hospitals that have finite capacity and take time to build.
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What is interesting is that for years the NHS has been cutting beds and pushing for more community services. While this in general serves patients well we have clearly now reached a point where there aren't enough beds to offer sufficient resilience. The whole 5 year forward view by Simon Stevens was around a move away from hospital based care to community provision. I wonder where this stands now? Clearly there will be an expansion in ITU (it was always too small IMO) but other aspects of the pandemic have actually shown that people can be moved out of hospital quicker. For example I was talking to a colorectal surgeon today who said that people were leaving hospital 4 days afte a major cancer operation. Mastectomies are being done as day cases! When I was a surgical F1 over 10 years ago a major colorectal patient would be in about a week and a mastectomy for a good few days. So in some ways you could say "without a pandemic we could cut more beds" but at the same time you clearly need more beds to give sufficient capacity (not that anyone has enough for a pandemic).
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Why not reduce the beds even further so that even a flu outbreak would be "unmanageable" - would a lockdown be justified then?
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Who are you quoting, Barry?
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