Logical Fallacies - Appeal to Authority

Several days ago, I received a comment on one of my posts saying, basically, "So this guy must be an idiot?  I mean come on man!" followed by this link:

Cambridge Virologist Slams Lockdowns as "The Greatest Hoax Ever".

I'll let you read the article if you wish, but the title pretty much says it all.  So, what to think about this?

There's a Logical Fallacy called "Appeal to Authority", in which someone presents a position taken by some expert and uses that person's position as an expert to claim that whatever he's said is right.  In this case, because the good Dr is a virologist, he must be right when he slams current lockdowns as a giant hoax.

Unfortunately, there are many examples like these.

Linus Pauling was a world-recognized chemist who won two Nobel Prizes.  That feat alone puts him in a very small, select group of only 4 people and is the only one to have won two unshared Nobel Prizes.  Obviously, a recognized expert in his field.

However, later in life, Linus Pauling took a position supporting a limited form of eugenics which you can read about in the article linked to above.  He also began promoting the use of massive doses of Vitamin C to treat conditions ranging from the common cold to cancer.

His research was treated with skepticism, as is common in scientific circles but as others tried to replicate his results, faults in his experimental design became apparent.  Ultimately, no subsequent, independent research was able to replicate and support his findings.  

So what do we learn from an example like this?  Only that experts can be wrong, even in areas where they might be considered knowledgeable.  Only independent research can provide the data to either support or refute claims made by anyone, even experts in certain fields.

And appealing to the expertise of an individual is never enough.  Supporting studies and data is what makes someone's claims valid, never the fact that they are an expert.  That's a Logical Fallacy in this case.

Elon Musk is well-known for his two main enterprises, Tesla electric cars and Space-X.  Not only is he rich, he's obviously at least somewhat of an expert in something.  He's also had a number of rather controversial opinions on COVID-19.

There's nothing especially new in what he's contended.  Such views are well known on social media.  The only point in raising them here is to point out that just because Elon is famous and rich does not mean that his views are automatically worth paying any attention to.  To do so would be an example of Appeal to Authority.

Unfortunately for Elon, the scientific evidence does not support his positions.  He might know lots about electric cars, but that doesn't mean he knows anything much about virology or epidemiology.  

As is commonly said in scientific circles: "Extraordinary Claims Demand Extraordinary Evidence".  Even the experts need to provide evidence.

About Those Facebook Shares

I don't generally spend much time reading screeds that appear regularly in Facebook posts. While sometimes there are opinions that are interesting or novel, more often than not they are ill-informed rants with few facts and even less evidence. As seen below, the words of the original post have been italicized for clarity.

Everyone who reads my posts know where I stand with the Covid virus, and the measures our governments have put into place. Let me clarify a few things.

Yes, a quick scan of your FB page reveals another Wexiteer and also someone quite dismissive of public health policies. I also note the use of that phrase “our governments”. Yeah, the people you and I voted into office so they would handle things that needs to be handled. The people who often came from lives more or less like ours. The people who could be you and me, if we wanted to go get elected. So I could write you off as just another Libertarian nutcase, but I will plow on through your screed to see where it ends up.

This is a real virus, that makes some people very ill, or in fact causes death in others. Especially people who have preexisting health issues or sadly, the elderly. I might add that being over 65, I am considered to be in that endangered group.

The typical disclaimer that “some of my best friends are black so I couldn't be racist”, or that “I completely recognize that this virus is real and serious, but....don't tell me what to do...” kind of thing. The problem is that you actually don't take this seriously at all. Nor have you tried to understand why public health measures are important. You “just don't like being told what to do”, when it comes right down to it.

Infection or positive test results, more on that later, are approximately 0.9 percent of the general population. Death rates are approximately 0.3 percent of that number.

Statistics, potentially dangerous and misleading territory. Fortunately, the OP only makes these two quick references to the numbers. The main intent seems to be to minimize the scale of this pandemic. After all, how serious can something be if it's only affecting less than 1% of the population, right? I see this kind of comment almost every day, where someone will say that 99.9% recover, or that less than 1% die, and so on.

The problem here is with percentages applied to big numbers like the population of a country. In Canada, if “only” 1% of the population died of anything, that would still be 370,000 people dead. In the USA, that's around 3.6 million people dead. World wide, that's around 70 million dead. Frankly, for a disease that many chuckleheads have dismissed as “just the flu”, that's not too bad. Seasonal flu might kill as many as 3000 to 6000 people (in a bad year) in Canada. So far (keeping in mind that this pandemic isn't over yet), Canada has experienced around 12,000 deaths. So perhaps 2x to 3x as bad as the flu, so far. Many experts believe that COVID will prove to be as much as 10x as bad as the flu. This article discusses why it's NOT “just the flu”.

Another problem lies in posting numbers that seem to assume that this whole thing is over. It's not. Any number posted today will be old news a month from now. As of June 17, the COVID death rate in Canada was 22 per 100,000 population. As of November 27, the COVID death rate is around 32 per100,000. In the USA, the COVID death rate is around 72 per 100,000, a bit more than twice ours in Canada.

If you really want numbers, you can spend a lot of time on this page: Keeping An Eye on the Numbers – COVID-19 in Alberta.

What IS interesting is the positivity rate, what percentage of positive results come from all the tests that are done. In Alberta, as of the end of November, the positivity rate is well over 7%. That chart appears well down on the site noted above. Epidemiologists have long recommended against opening things up too much if the positivity rate is above 5%. The virus is simply too difficult to control if community spread is that high. And once it gets too high, the ONLY way to bring it down is to shut almost everything down. This is why following the 4 or 5 simple practices is so important. It's either follow those or there will be more draconian measures brought in when there is NO other option. Even Alberta has recently had to recognize that reality.

My point is that there are many numbers. Most of them are changing on a daily basis. Some of the numbers are instructive and others won't be very helpful until we can look back on the pandemic once it's all over. In the meantime, deliberately using the smallest numbers you can find in an attempt to minimize the scale of this problem isn't really helpful. Just remember, a number is only small until it isn't. There was a day, last March, when there were no deaths attributed to COVID in the USA. Now there are over 260,000, a mere 8 months later, and that number is likely smaller than the real number (excess deaths in 2020 were estimated to be well over 300,000 a month ago).

Mainstream media has blown this into a huge fear causing event. Everywhere we look Covid 19 has taken front stage. Every second "story" on the news is about Covid. During the 1960's, the KGB ran psychological research that determined if you ran fear causing messages to groups of people, it took about two months to cause a permanent change in their psyche. That fear would exist in their minds even after hearing facts telling them there was nothing to fear. I only watch TV news about once a week now because of this.

There is no argument that listening to a steady diet of COVID stories can be concerning. Unsettling, even. Personally, I find the science of all this quite interesting. The world has experienced other pandemics, but this is really the first major one since around 1918-20. What it has done, though, is expose the very serious lack of science knowledge and understanding in the population at large. I find that quite concerning because it points to our inability to grasp the scale of other problems that we face globally and, consequently, our ability to address those problems at all, let alone in a timely fashion.

As for what is reported by the media? As everyone knows, “if it bleeds, it leads”. Sure, stop watching TV. But if you want good information, go to the science, and that science is NOT found on YouTube or Facebook.

Our governments, in their efforts to stem the spread of this virus, have seriously overstepped their mandate. Have we really turned into this "nanny state" where we want our governments to protect us from everything, and give us everything? How long do you think our economy will sustain this?

Once more, an unsubstantiated opinion. Or rather, two opinions. So, in order....

First, that governments have overstepped their mandate. I'm not sure what mandate the OP is talking about here. I don't recall seeing anything in ANY political party's platform about seeking the power to manage global pandemics, but I assume that the reason governments facilitate the building of hospitals, funding healthcare, pollution controls, etc., is to minimize unnecessary deaths. Just try and convince the population that governments “shouldn't” be doing things like that. The OP here is just miffed that he is being asked to wear a mask in the interests of public health. And recognize that public health policies will ALWAYS seem like overkill, unless they don't work. If they DO work, nothing will happen, and the naysayers, like this guy here, will complain that it was vast government overreach. If the policies fail, too many people will die and there will be a massive outcry asking the simple question” Why didn't the government DO something?”

Second, that we are being subjected to “nanny state” tactics. I don't think we're even close to governments protecting us from “everything”. Otherwise, they would have banned cigarettes and possibly even cars. And they're certainly not “giving us everything”. Hell, we can't even get proportional representation and pharmacare. Besides, I'm not even sure I understand why this comment is relevant to this discussion. In any case, the economy is going to be in trouble. There is NO way around it. If the virus expands exponentially, as it is now doing, you will have huge numbers of people sick (ie: not going to work, shopping, flying, etc), you will have hospitals overloaded (ie: other medical conditions not being dealt with, more people dying from COVID and other medical problems), and most people, being unwilling to get sick just for the fun if it, not shopping, traveling, working, meeting in groups, and so on. The economy is going to take a beating.

OR, we try to mange this pandemic, control the spread, and allow at some semblance of normal life to continue.

You want some examples to chew on? Look at some countries where the virus has been controlled (usually with short term pain for long term gain) like Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia.... and compare it to countries where their policies have been abysmal failures, like Italy (where hospital patients are receiving O2 in their cars because there is no space inside for them).

The next thing is the PCR test in use. The inventor of this test says it was not designed to test for Corona viruses, and that if you run the test long enough it will find a disease of some kind in everyone.

This is a classic bit of factually incorrect nonsense that has wormed it's way into many social media posts. Unfortunately, it's simply NOT TRUE. This highlights, once again, the risks of just sharing everything you see that you happen to like (in other words, whatever happens to coincide with your personal biases) without checking to see if it's true or not.

In fact, the inventor of this test, one Kary B. Mullis (who died in August 2019, some months before the SARS-CoV-2 virus appeared, making comments from him about this virus quite impossible), said no such thing. The only thing Dr Mullis commented on was that the test he invented didn't seem as useful as a quantitative tool, which just means that you might not want to rely on it to determine how many (in this case, viral) particles were present in the original sample, but it's certainly very good at determining if those viral particles are present and exactly what they are.

It's a very common mistake made by all the YouTube PhDs that have popped up lately to claim that the PCR test can't identify any piece of DNA in particular. In fact, it can. The PCR test can be set up to test for the presence of pretty much any segment of DNA or RNA that we might want to find. Since the complete genetic sequence of this current coronavirus was established back in March 2020, and since we can pick out sections in that genome that are unique to that virus, it is a relatively easy task to set the PCR test to work to see if those unique segments are there. If they are found, it means, very simply, that you have been exposed to the virus and that is is in your body.

If you want to read a more complete assessment of this issue, this short article explains it quite well.

It's important to note that the PCR test does not need to look for the entire viral genome, only for a unique and shorter segment. This is done to reduce cost and testing time. One thing, among many, that these YouTube PhDs don't understand is that the PCR test actually CAN identify a specific pathogen by finding specific sequences of genetic material. That is, quite literally, what this test is designed to do.

Recently Elon Musk, owner of Tesla, tested 4 times in one day. Same nurse, same test, 4 times. He got 2 negatives, and 2 positives. He was not ill in any way. Yet, we shut down our economies based on the results of this test.

Once again, more social media nonsense from these armchair PhDs. To start with, Elon Musk was being tested with one of these “rapid Covid tests”. One reason why these are not widely available in Canada, or in BC, is that they are really not accurate enough yet. These tests actually DO have fairly well-established false negative and false positive result rates. As this article points out, Elon's two false negative results are within the known limitations for this kind of test.

Elon then goes on to question the PCR test itself, once again illustrating the dangers of poorly-informed people commenting about complex technology that they know nothing about. Elon should stick to electric cars, a topic that he actually does know something about. The article linked to above explains why Elon's comments about the PCR test are faulty.

And one more comment about the PCR test. There are many, many, many posts on social media about “the high false positive rate” of the PCR test. A quick search will provide good answers to this from institutions that are well qualified to comment about this. This information from Public Health Ontario covers most questions aboutthe PCR tests used in that province. In actual fact, the false positive rate of the PCR test is widely quoted to be much less than 2%, even close to zero. The false negative rate can be somewhere between 2% and 37%. What it means is this: If the PCR test done on a swab from the inner reaches of your nasal cavities comes back as positive, there is an almost 100% certainty that you harbour the virus in your body. If it comes back negative, it means that there is still a statistical chance that you DO have the virus. The various tests that can be done are described here in this article from Harvard Medical.

Let me say this about the politics of this situation. Any time we give our politicians the kind of power we have given them, our rights and freedoms are in serious danger. All of these freedoms are God given and hard fought for by our predecessors. We cannot and must not, let them be degraded.

First, I object to the phrase “God given”. I'm an atheist. God (or god) has nothing to do with this at all, IMHO, especially since he/she/it doesn't exist..... And if you think your “freedoms are being taken away because you are being asked to wash you hands and wear a mask....but refuse to do these things that will help protect others, you have little justification dragging god into this discussion.

Otherwise,, this strikes me as more Libertarian whining. As a population, even in open western democracies, we give our governments power to put a wide range of restrictions on what we can do. Surely it isn't necessary to reproduce a list here, but a few are worth making. Over the decades, governments have enacted rules that force us to: drive within certain speed limits, drive on one side of the road or another, not drive the wrong way on one-way streets, pay taxes on reported income, license our vehicles, not discharge firearms in populated areas, get a license before going hunting or fishing, follow building and electrical codes for our homes, not assault others, either verbally or physically, not practice medicine without a license, not teach school without a license, not make counterfeit currency, not operate a business without a license, not kill other people.... I'm sure you get the point.

Most of us, at one time or another, have bitched about all these “government regulations” and about some laws that we see as nonsensical. Use of recreational drugs jumps to mind here. Nevertheless, there are still laws about these even now, despite the collateral damage that such laws have created over the decades. (We all know that the “war on drugs” has been an abject failure). People incarcerated for smoking a joint, for example. Lack of research into the possible medical benefits of cannabis for another. The way to fix any of these perceived problems is to put pressure on our elected officials to change these laws where evidence supports that change.

If I can be permitted an ideological aside here, for decades, progressives (and Libertarians, I believe) have contended that personal use of recreational drugs should NOT be a criminal matter and that drug addiction should not be criminalized but treated as a public health issue. Conservatives, on the other hand, have resisted changes in that direction. That could be why we still have very high rates of death from drug overdoses because we have not been able to bring in changes to deal with these problems. Conservatives have resisted every step of the way.

Finally, we live in a world that is inherently dangerous. We can be taken down at any time by a virus or bacteria. Car crashes, random violence, heart attack, stroke, and injury of many kinds happen all the time. If we were serious about saving lives, we would outlaw every sport and activity that causes injury and death. We would outlaw cigarettes and fatty foods.

What I think the OP is saying here is that since we are all at varying degrees of risk of dying from a wide range of things, that we really shouldn't be trying to reduce those death rates, because <shrug>, y'know, shit happens. Y'all gotta die sometime, right? So no vaccines, no hospitals, no doctors, no ambulances, no speed limits, no road rules of any kind, no building codes, no training and licensing requirements for anyone no matter what.... Surely that isn't what he really means, but that is more or less what he is saying.

So we DO have rules about helmets, seat belts, car seats for kids. Those rules are there for good reasons. They make our dangerous lives somewhat safer. (Perhaps they are there to help protect people from themselves, since many are too stupid to take the precautions without being told to). So safe, in fact, that we've forgotten how dangerous certain parts of it have been in the past. This is why more people resist vaccines. They haven't experienced the terrors and damage (personal and economic) of serious infectious diseases. The parallels between this current pandemic and the 1918-20 flu pandemic are uncanny. I would recommend reading The Great Influenza by John M Barry.

As an aside, my personal opinion is that we should ban cigarettes and some of this overly processed, high salt, high fat junk that passes for “food” these days. We would be better off. So if Libertarians want to hop on that particular bandwagon, I'll be right there behind them. But only if I can still have my beer and chips at the end of the day.

We would also feed the starving and help the poorest of poor. Starvation kills thousands every day. We need to get our priorities right, and do what we were put here for.

Don't get me started about straw man arguments. We could solve inequalities in our societies, we could solve starvation, poverty, illiteracy... There are known fixes for all of those things. The reason we haven't is because it's very easy for people in rich countries to ignore all of these things. These are “other people's problems”. We didn't sort those problems before COVID because we didn't care enough to sort them. Don't blame current public health measures like social distancing and mask wearing for our continuing failure to sort those issues now. We didn't have our priorities right before. COVID is not the reason why we haven't fixed those problems in the past 9 months.

Thanks for listening.

And this is why I don't bother reading stuff like this. Too short on facts. No evidence to back any of it up. An aggravating lack of knowledge, especially of the science behind what's happening. Just. Not. Worth. The. Time.

So, before sharing stuff like the post I've been commenting on, spend some time fact-checking what's being said. Promoting misinformation is one of the causes of the problems we're finding ourselves in these days. Don't contribute to it. Get the facts. Promote those.

My 2 cents.

The Beginning of the End

 The big news today was the call by media outlets in the USA, based on vote counts announced in a few more states, that Donald Trump has been beaten by Joe Biden.  Biden will become the 46th President of the USA.

There has been lots of rejoicing, probably summarized by this little picture:

There will be recounts and legal challenges, to be sure, but the outcome seems pretty clear.  Biden will become President and the USA, but reconciliation with the nearly 50% of voters who supported Trump will not be easy.

Trump and his team have persisted in attempts to seed distrust in the election's outcome.

So, the analysis has already begun.

This article contends that all this election has done is to show us all what the "real" America is.

And this article from The Atlantic addresses the electoral divide and the difficulty both parties will have in coming to terms with the outcome.

Just one more thing in a year that has already had its share of "things".

Living the Pandemic - And Still, More Sweden

This seems to be a continuing trend - more information and analysis coming out about the pandemic response in Sweden.

This latest article from Time takes a pretty close look at the situation and comes to a singularly damming conclusion.  To put it simply, Sweden's response resulted in more deaths and more collateral damage than some, even in Sweden, are willing to admit.  The article's headline says it best:

The Swedish COVID-19 Response Is a Disaster. 

It Shouldn’t Be a Model for the Rest of the World

Living the Pandemic - Again, Sweden

 The following article appeared in Dissent Magazine dated August 31, 2020.  I've copied the text below in case it disappears into the ether somewhere.

All Luck and No Virtue: Sweden’s Coronavirus Response

Sweden bet on both national character and herd immunity, hoping they would complement each other. Months later, the country has little testing and one of the highest rates of cases.

Adele Lebano  August 31, 2020

In the spring, my neighbors here in Sweden were having friends over for Easter and going to restaurants, gyms, and swimming pools while my family and friends in Italy could not take a walk around the block without being questioned by a police officer. The differences were striking even for someone who, as often happens to those living in a foreign country, is used to surprise and estrangement.

In Sweden everything was open and functioning as usual. The government had decided not to implement disruptive measures such as closing schools for children younger than sixteen so that parents could continue to do their jobs. It recommended that people work from home, but never prevented them from going to their offices if they chose to do so. In fact, some were actually encouraged to show up at work so as not to communicate a sense of emergency. Healthcare workers were supposed to wear masks and protections only when dealing with suspected COVID-19 cases to avoid spreading panic.

When my friend brought his mother to the hospital with COVID-19 symptoms in April, healthcare workers took off their PPE as soon as she tested negative, despite the test’s high rate of error. Swedish politicians, public health experts, and the people I knew explained this approach as the natural response of a country that runs on trust. The government trusted people to comply with recommendations as if they were laws; people trusted the government to take care of them in the best possible way; politicians trusted experts to come up with the best measures. Everybody was in agreement and everybody was trusting.

I come from Italy, a place where it is hard to find two people who agree with each other (to borrow Alexis de Tocqueville’s description of nineteenth-century France), a place where the government is blamed for the rain. My feeling of displacement was therefore profound in those early days of March and April. I could not rejoice at my luck for having landed in Sweden and being able to enjoy freedom as if there were no pandemic, and not only because my family and friends were on the other side of the wall. Because what I saw around me, in Sweden, was not freedom.

Months later, what I see is still not freedom as I understand it. Instead, Swedes interiorize norms and rituals and act as if they were free. The country is famous for its so-called consensus culture, but people generally begin in agreement rather than ending there. I argued in the Boston Review that this characterizes an organicist society, where individual choice and public choice perfectly overlap and dissent is expelled; where twenty eminent scientists can publish an editorial against the Swedish approach in one of the country’s two flagship newspapers and have almost no impact on public debate or policy.

But there is something else I have seen in these past months: denial. At the beginning this was to be expected; it was the same in Italy, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Coronavirus was always someone else’s virus—the Lombardy virus, the Chinese virus, the Italian virus. As infections spread, people got busy drawing distinctions: Europe is not China, they said, the United States is not Europe, China is not Italy. Some countries notably went the other way and learned from similarity: Greece, for example, modeled its policy on its Mediterranean neighbor Italy. In Scandinavia, Norway, Denmark, and Finland decided to lock down early, apparently judging that pandemics trump national character, rituals, and geography, especially as societies become more interconnected.

But Sweden went its own way. It decided to bet on both national character and herd immunity, hoping they would complement each other. The prevailing attitude was that the virus might run faster among those who did not conform to the customary Swedish independence between generations, or those who favored crowded venues to the solitude of the forest and privacy of their docks—but that would help establish some immunity among the larger population. Interviewed by the Financial Times at the beginning of May, Anders Tegnell, the state epidemiologist and architect of the Swedish no-lockdown approach, was serene: “In the autumn there will be a second wave,” he said. By then, “Sweden will have a high level of immunity and the number of cases will probably be quite low.”

The virus did hit some groups more than others. As in other places, it hit the old, the weak, the ones with few options. In Sweden, many migrants and refugees find work in essential jobs such as healthcare and nursing facilities. Without the necessary PPE or the option of staying home to care for sick family members, they became vectors; they were at greater risk of contracting the virus themselves as they continued to interact with colleagues at work without being provided masks. Testing has never been the default option in Sweden, even for healthcare workers. According to Our World in Data in mid-June—at the height of its testing effort—Sweden was administering only twenty-seven tests per 1,000 people, compared to 180 in Iceland, ninety-eight in Denmark, and forty-seven in Norway.

The result? A disease that was still spreading in Sweden at the end of June, even as it had been contained elsewhere. The country’s seven-day new infection average on June 25 was 1,275 cases per day, compared to forty-two in Denmark and eleven in Norway. This number has since declined, but so has testing, which was drastically curtailed in early July. And the dead stay dead. As of August 25, COVID-19 had already killed fifty-seven of every 100,000 Swedes, compared to fifty-four out of 100,000 in the United States, eleven out of every 100,000 in Germany and two out of every 100,000 in Greece.

Confronted with this grim picture, Tegnell continued to defend the Swedish approach, conceding only that things went worse than he had “hoped.” This was the very same expert who claimed all along to be basing his policies on scientific evidence and mathematical models. It turned out he just banked on luck—and lost. “If we were to encounter the same disease again, knowing exactly what we know about it today,” he told Swedish Radio on June 3, “I think we would settle on doing something in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done.” He insisted that the basic strategy was sound, although there was “potential for improvement,” adding that whereas other countries introduced many measures at once, not knowing which of them was going to work, Sweden was right to run its experiment. Otherwise, Tegnell insisted, “you don’t really know which of the measures you took had the best effect.” It was left to Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the far-right nationalist Sweden Democrats, to voice his “astonishment.” “For months critics have been consistently dismissed,” Åkesson tweeted. “Sweden has done everything right, the rest of the world has done it wrong. And now suddenly this.”

The failure of Tegnell’s approach is not really a matter of bad luck. If anything, Sweden was far luckier than Italy, Spain, or Germany. The virus reached the country relatively late. Swedes had ample opportunity to prepare and take steps to contain its spread. They had the three great assets of time, money, and organization—assets they could have used to stock up on PPE, set up treatment and quarantine facilities, and test, track, and treat as the World Health Organization advised. They had knowledge and expertise in spades, and they had a trusting and compliant populace. Perhaps most important, they had the example of other countries to learn from. If Sweden did not see Italy—then the epicenter of the crisis in Europe—as a useful model, it could have used Denmark, which locked down early even while acknowledging the uncertainty of such measures. As Danish Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said in March, “We have no evidence that everything we are doing works. But we would rather take a step too far today than find in three weeks that we have done too little.” Instead the Swedish government decided to do almost nothing and just hope for the best.

Niccolò Machiavelli, the sixteenth-century Florentine philosopher, described the human condition as dominated by luck (fortuna) and virtue (virtù). The second, he argued, lies in not wasting the first. The vagaries of chance should not simply be accepted; they should be recognized and used. “I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions,” Machiavelli wrote in The Prince. “But she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less.”

In this sense Sweden has been lucky—but not virtuous. The country had many chances to change its approach by responding to new evidence and correcting earlier mistakes. On April 18, Parliament voted to allow the government the power and discretion to introduce emergency measures without asking for Parliament’s approval. The exceptional and time-limited law was a dead letter. In a stroke of preparedness, at least since the beginning of April, schools and other organizations all had plans ready to move most of their activities online (Sweden is already among the most networked societies on earth). But they never used them. Failing government (in)action, citizens could have listened to the few who have spoken out against official policy. They could have held both the government and so-called experts like Tegnell accountable for the rising death toll. None of this happened. Swedes chose instead to stand behind their leaders, ignore the data, and put Tegnell’s image on coffee cups and T-shirts.

To fully understand why Swedes went along with the country’s lack of a plan, we need Machiavelli’s thirteenth-century Florentine predecessor, Dante Alighieri. Two of the mortal sins named in the Inferno are ignavia and hybris. The first, which translates roughly as “moral torpor,” is the laziness of those who rest in comfort and never question anything. The ignavi are walking dead, “the miserable lot, who never were alive.” Hybris, which Dante borrowed from Greek tragedy and myth, is nearly the opposite. It is the flaw of Icarus and Oedipus, Ulysses and Prometheus. It is the arrogance and vanity that blind the hero to his true circumstances, and which inevitably lead to his fall.

Sweden’s COVID-19 policy bears the mark of both ignavia and hybris. Countries like Italy and Spain made mistakes and had an unbearable number of deaths, yet they were virtuous in making the best of the hand they were dealt. Others, like Denmark, Norway, and Finland, were also virtuous as they tried to learn everything they could from mistakes and missteps elsewhere. Sweden, by contrast, wasted its luck. Arrogant and vain, it sleepwalked into this crisis and continues to sleepwalk through it. And that is more than a shame. It’s a sin.

Living the Pandemic - Playing With Numbers

 Over the past few weeks, it's been fun to see all the debates over death rates, even though this pandemic isn't over yet and it will be almost impossible to calculate a true death rate until after it's finished.

However, a new assertion that has popped up recently, one I hadn't heard of earlier, how the USA was predicted to have 3 million deaths from this virus, but here we are, only 200,000 deaths and isn't it great how well the Trump administration has done to save us from that devastation.

So I decided to find some of those predictions and arrange them in chronological order to see what I could discern from them.

March 18th, 2020, Healthcare Purchasing News published an article: COVID-19 Predicted to infect 81% of the US Population, Cause 2.2 million deaths in US.  This warning came from Imperial College London and the study can be read here.  It includes a table showing estimated Infection Fatality Rates for different age groups which they claim would result in an overall IFR of 0.9%.

April 21st, 2020 - The Libertarian Cato Institute considered some of the early predictions from those models, mentioning the most sensational one that came from Imperial College London.  That was the report that predicted 2.2 million deaths in the USA.  The Cato Institute's article went on to comment that:

"A month later that 2.2 million estimate was still being used (without revealing the source) by President Trump and Doctors Fauci and Birx to imply that up to two million lives had been saved by state lockdowns and business closings and/​or by federal travel bans."

In retrospect, this seems to be where people on social media are coming up with this notion that since we were supposed to have 2 or 3 million deaths and now we don't, that the Trump administration is doing a great job.

The Cato Institute went on to dismiss this projection.

"The worst‐​case Imperial College estimate of 2.2 million deaths if everyone does “nothing” did not simply mean no government lockdowns, as a March 31 White House graph with two curves implied. It meant nobody avoids crowded elevators, or wears face masks, washes their hands more often, or buys gloves or hand sanitizer. Everyone does literally nothing to avoid danger.The Ferguson team knew that was unrealistic, yet their phantasmal 2.2 million estimate depended on it. As they reticently acknowledged, “it is highly likely that there would be significant spontaneous change in population behavior even in the absence of government‐​mandated interventions.” An earlier February 20 brief said, “Some social distancing is to be expected, even in the absence of formal control measures.”"

So it would seem that, once again, the White House was using a single projection to support the notion that it had been doing a great job of containing the virus.

May 4th, 2020 - CNN Health put out this article: Coronavirus model projects 134,000 deaths in US, nearly double its last estimate.  This model comes from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IMHE) at the University of Washington and has been cited by the White House.  It also represents a steep increase from around 72,000 deaths predicted only the previous week.  Relaxed social distancing and increased mobility were given as reasons for the sharp increase.  At the time, only 68,000 deaths had been recorded as being caused by the virus.

May 18th, 2020 - CNN Health has another article that reports that the IHME has revised its death toll down a bit, now to 143.360, in this article: US Coronavirus death toll passes 90,000 but influential model lowers its prediction.  They attributed the difference to people being more careful and wearing masks.

August 7th, 2020 - People carried an article called: US Coronavirus deaths predicted to hit 300,000 by December as current cases near 5 million.    At the time, there were around 160,000 deaths.  The IMHE model is now predicting as many as 400,000 deaths by year end IF states keep relaxing mandates to control the spread of the virus.  The article also notes that every individual who wears a mask is reducing transmission by 40%.  Relaxing these practices too soon results in a further increase.  At least 39 states had some form of mandate to wear masks, with Kentucky governor quoted as commenting that masks were effective.  The CDC came out recommending against masks with vents.

September 3rd, 2020 - A report from IMHE itself suggested that 770,000 lives could be saved if people and governments took precautions:

"In the first global projections of the COVID-19 pandemic by nation, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine is predicting nearly 770,000 lives worldwide could be saved between now and January 1 through proven measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing." 

The same article also mentioned "herd immunity" with the following statement:

"... cautioned against pursuing the so-called “herd immunity” strategy, which occurs when a large proportion of a community becomes immune to the virus through infection and recovery. The “worse-case” scenario in these projections reflects a situation where leaders allow transmission to run through their population, resulting in significant loss of life. 

“This first global forecast represents an opportunity to underscore the problem with herd immunity, which, essentially, ignores science and ethics, and allows millions of avoidable deaths,” Murray said. “It is, quite simply, reprehensible.” "

September 4th, 2020 - NBC News carried a report that looked both backwards and forwards.  It noted that early predictions were for as many as 3 million deaths - worldwide - if governments don't tighten up social distancing requirements and "...people aren't vigilant about wearing masks...."  The article said that deaths could be as many as 620,000 deaths in the USA with 4 million worldwide.  At the time of this report, there were 188,000 deaths in the USA.

So, what to make of all this....

There was indeed ONE projection that mentioned over 2 million deaths in the USA from this pandemic.  Interestingly, it was from a single model that had previously also made rather fantastic projections about earlier disease outbreaks (this is mentioned in the Cato Institute's article, above).  The worst-case assumption of this model seemed to be that absolutely nothing would be done to counter the virus - not just no government actions, but no actions on the part of individuals either.  For obvious political reasons, this is the one that the White House latched on to rather early, followed, more recently, by some of the President's supporters

Most of the others were much more cautious and probably underestimated the number of deaths.  Recent projections are for around 400,000 deaths in the USA by the end of the 2020.  Of course, the virus won't have finished with us by then, so we should draw little solace from that number.  Any possible vaccine is still months away.

[Final Edit] - It's September 25th, and Trump is still making the claim that the USA managed to prevent up to 3 million deaths, according to a story from the BBC dated September 23rd.  I guess once you find a good story, it's best to stick with it, even if it's complete nonsense.

Watching a Goat Rodeo

 Thanks to a FB friend of mine, a new term: "Goat Rodeo"

It seems a pretty appropriate way to describe what's going on in the USA these days and perhaps elsewhere, as public health officials try to encourage people to be sensible and take simple precautions, while some politicians deliberately try to confound the whole process.

A recent article in The Atlantic - America is Caught in a Pandemic Spiral accurately describes the situation.

That article was followed by another: How We Survive the Winter, discussing a selection of quite simple things that all of us could do to minimize the problems that will surely visit us in the coming months.

An inordinate amount of air time has been wasted arguing (fighting, really) over this matter of masks.  It is simply too big a task to summarize it all here, but this article from Science Based Medicine, entitled Misinformation and Disinformation About Masks and COVID-19 covers the topic quite well.

So, we will see.  Schools are opening up and already cases are appearing in students all across the country.  Some, in the USA, opened and then promptly shut down again.  Cases are spiking upwards and deaths are slowly increasing.  Protests against lockdowns, masks, vaccines and probably other annoyances, are running rampant in many countries.

This could be an interesting winter.

Conflagration in a Time of COVID

 If the year 2020 wasn't already bad enough, some parts of the country (the US, specifically) are burning up.  There are massive infernos from southern California right up to the Canadian border.

So, yes, it's a climate emergency.  The pictures are certainly dramatic enough.  Scenes from cities bathed in an orange glow and very limited visibility.  Flames everywhere.

Some of the impact has been lost because so many people are preoccupied by the COVID thing, but there are fires, lots of them, and it's just another example of something that has been predicted that we, as a society, have managed to ignore.  Until now.

There are many accounts of what's going on.  

This one looks at the link between the fires and climate change.  What's behind the 'unprecedented' wildfires ravaging California

CNN has this story:  California's wildfires show how climate change is making forced evacuations and power shut-offs the norm

Thick Wildfire Smoke Blocks Sun, Turns Bay Area Sky Orange.

West Coast fires: Hundreds of homes burned to ground, Oregon governor says

And some state politicians have been fighting back, particularly against Trump who, they say, has failed to fight climate change.

So basically, it's pretty desperate down there.  Today, we here in southern BC have very smoky fires as the smoke drifts north.  It's not as bad (yet) as it was during the summers of 2017 and 2018, but it's pretty bad.  I hate to think of the hell that exists in California, Oregon and Washington.

So even though COVID seems to have taken up all our energies, remember that there is an even larger crisis that has not gone away.

Living the Pandemic - Thinking of You

 I received an interesting little card in the mail the other day (actually addressed to me and my partner).  Apparently I have managed to upset someone with my position that SARS-CoV-2 is a real virus and that the virulence of the virus is something that needs to be taken seriously.  Oh, and also masks.  And probably a vaccine, when one is ready.  This is what the card said:

So I composed a reply to Mr/Ms Anonymous.

Dear Mr or Ms Anonymous:

Thank you for your card.  I am flattered that you have considered my comments (wherever they might have been made) to be so poignant and cogent and consequently threatening to your fantasy world that you felt it necessary to write.  I am sorry, however, that you feel so insecure in your position that you needed to remain anonymous.  I at least have the courage of my convictions and the scientific evidence backing them up that I am quite prepared to associate my real name with anything I say.  I'm also prepared to change my position when new evidence requires such change.  I doubt you would be convinced by anything that could be recognized as real evidence.

To make the statements you made, clearly showing where your "thinking" is on this whole issue, really highlights the temerity of accusing ME of arrogance.  I'm not basing my understanding on fairy tales and conspiracy theories that have not a scintilla of truth to back them up.

You insist that the true fight is against tyranny.  I see the true fight to be against the kind of ignorance and fear that must exist for people like you to make the assertions contained in your note.  Really - "... a flu like virus with a 0.024% chance of dying....  SARS-CoV-2 has never been isolated so tests are meaningless".

I hate to state the obvious, but this is NOT the Middle Ages.  If you were better educated, you might know that viruses can be studied quite easily with modern lab techniques.  Far more is known about them (and this virus as well) than it seems you understand.  And if you had any sense of social responsibility, you would recognize that a very small number of simple practices could make a big difference in the kind of damage this virus could do to our society.

Quite frankly, I would consider uninformed people like you to be a serious threat to the rest of us if not for one thing: everyone with any education, critical thinking skills at all and the ability to understand reliable information, will recognize your babblings for what they are and will ignore them.  Consign them to the trash bin of nonsense where they belong.

If you expect anyone to take you seriously, you need to present your evidence and be prepared to show how it supports what you believe to be true.  Don't hide behind pseudonyms and anonymity like a coward.  And, for the love of god, deal with facts, not fictional twaddle.  (As an aside, you won't find facts on Vaccine Choice Canada's website).

I do hope that perhaps someone who recognizes your writing and your views will reach out and offer the help you so badly need.

One last thing.  Don't EVER make the mistake of dragging my partner into any dispute or discussion that only has to do with my views.  She was quite annoyed that your card was addressed to the both of us because she sees being included the way you did as being just one more example of the kind of patriarchal crap that intelligent, independent women have been fighting for decades.  And I happen to agree with her.  She and I often share similar views on issues like this, but it was MY comments that you had an issue with.  

Sincerely, etc, etc...

I understand that my response was not the kind of kind, calm, understanding missive that our Provincial Health Officer would endorse.  I have to leave that for her.  Frankly, I am increasingly angry, particularly with ignorant, foolish nitwits who insist on confounding every simple, practical effort to control this virus while we wait for better treatments.  And it's not like this hasn't been done before.  HIV/AIDS appeared nearly 40 years ago.  We STILL don't have a vaccine, but we have effective treatments and we have, importantly, excellent and simple ways of avoiding the virus.  By now, surely everyone has heard of "safe sex".  So it CAN be done.  We CAN control this virus using just the knowledge and understanding that we have available right now.  Pretending that this virus doesn't exist, claiming that it hasn't been sequenced, repeating that it's "just the flu", insisting that masks won't help or that taking simple precautions only show how fearful everyone is..... none of those help.  None of them.

What my grandchildren need is the opportunity to go back to school and to play with their friends.  The opportunity to learn science, writing, reading, play sports. For parents to get back to work.  Limiting community spread of this virus can make all of those things possible.  Silly comments from virus-denying clowns will not help.  They either need to get on board or they need to be ignored.

Living the Pandemic - New Insights into Coronavirus - Circa July 6, 2020

 One podcast that I've been starting to listen to lately has been The Daily from the New York Times.

One particular podcast was called "Four New Insights About Coronavirus".  Unfortunately, these are new insights from early July (or even earlier), but they are interesting when placed into more recent context.  I'd suggest readers listen to the podcast, but what follows is my take on what was said.  The link above comes with a transcript which is easier to scan through.

(1) This virus is now being seen as a vascular disease.  It gets into the body via the respiratory system but it attaches to blood vessels, fine blood vessels in particular.  So effects will be seen in the lungs, the kidneys, the digestive system, the brain - particularly the small blood vessels in those organs.  Strokes, dementia....

(2) The virus mutates, apparently about every 2 weeks.  Most of these mutations aren't that important, but one mutation has been.  There are two strains - the Wuhan strain and the Italian strain.  It appears to have made it easier for the Italian strain to transmit between people.  This is still being debated, but it's one more item.  Possibly 5x to 10x better able to infect human cells.  It was noted that this is generally the way viruses go - more transmissible and less virulent.  So far, we aren't seeing less lethal but possibly more transmissible.  There is a reference to what happened in the 1918 flu pandemic.

(3) More and more evidence is showing that you are much safer outdoors than inside.  One study from Japan indicated that you are 20x more likely to pick up the virus indoors compared to outside.  This seems to have much to do with air currents and whether you are sitting inside each others droplet cloud as it floats around.  Outdoors, the breeze blows it away.

We have not seen any big spike in infections in the cities where most of the protests took place. So it looks like they didn’t lead to a lot of transmission. That doesn’t imply that everything is safe just because it’s outdoors. The important thing is how far apart people are when they’re outdoors. So sitting right next to somebody else in front of a stage at Mount Rushmore, for example, where the chairs are zip tied together, is not safe. Masks or no masks, you still really want to try to keep six feet distance.

(4) Finally, there is growing evidence that it could be more safe to open schools.  There is evidence that kids are not big transmitters of this virus.  There have been examples - Denmark opened their schools in April, Finland in May, and neither saw a spike in cases.  Of course, there are other people in schools besides kids - teachers, other adults.  But schools are important, not to mention the value to the economy when parents can go back to work. So it needs to happen, but it needs to happen carefully.

Having said that, schools are more important than restaurants, bars, etc.

More Alberta Woes

 Found this on the Web recently, castigating the Conservatives for how they've managed their up-to-now main resource and who they insist on blaming for how things have turned out.

"I still hear uninformed Conservatives recite the "job killing policies of the NDP" mantra. Do they not know the facts, or are they just misleading Albertans? Oil royalties made up almost 80% of Alberta's revenue in the 70s. Through 44 years of reducing oil royalties, Getty, Klein, and Stelmach gave away our revenue to Oil and Gas shareholders, and the Conservative donors. Currently royalties are only about 3% of our revenue. Low oil prices kill jobs, not NDP policy. This graph show in spite of low oil prices, how the NDP were creating (tech, and green) jobs in 2017 and 2018) and were reducing our deficit. In their first year, the UCP shed 300,000 full time jobs. The second slide shows continuing increases in O&G production, and steadily declining royalty revenues for Albertans. Conservatives have mismanaged the O&G file. Know the facts:"