Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[alfred russel]

Well no Fredo, the relative death rate in Texas doesn't give us any evidence that "state level restrictions have lost meaning for much of the population."

Yister,

You are totally missing the point here. Socially distancing, avoiding indoor spaces, wearing a mask, etc. all contribute to stopping the spread. The question is to the extent that government restrictions are preventing the spread vs. other factors.

Texas removing all restrictions and cases going down and being in the lower half of the country is a strong indictor that restrictions have much less influence than voluntary compliance.

[alfred russel]

Krugman said deaths.
Last 7 day chart for deaths is here: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_deathsper100klast7days
Texas is #2 after California.
Even adjusted for population they are #6.

LOL. MM, that is a fundamentally dishonest analysis. Death is a lagging indicator, the Texas non policy went into effect at the beginning of the month, and when cases were quite high.

[Admiral Yi]

Yister,

You are totally missing the point here. Socially distancing, avoiding indoor spaces, wearing a mask, etc. all contribute to stopping the spread. The question is to the extent that government restrictions are preventing the spread vs. other factors.

Texas removing all restrictions and cases going down and being in the lower half of the country is a strong indictor that restrictions have much less influence than voluntary compliance.

Fredo, you are totally missing the point here.  We started out talking about causality running from restrictions to compliance.  Now you are talking about causality running from compliance to health outcomes.

Those are not the same thing.

[Eddie Teach]

You can't measure compliance though.

[Valmy]

Paul Krugman wrote "I don't know how many people will die unnecessarily because the governor of Texas has decided that ignoring the science and end the mask requirement is a good way to own the libs. But the number won't be zero."

Just want to note that Krugman is wrong, it has nothing to do with the libs. The reason Abbott did that is because the February power outtage put him on political life support and he knows his moderate Covid policy put him in danger of being threatened from the right. So he lifted all the restrictions a few months early just to save his political ass. So he is doing it to own his right flank.

But I think people are so used to whatever restrictions they have decided to accept now that it will take awhile for things to go back to 2019 conditions even once a large number are vaccinated and certainly Abbott's pronouncement didn't change much. Everybody is still doing whatever they have been doing.

[Berkut]

Paul Krugman wrote "I don't know how many people will die unnecessarily because the governor of Texas has decided that ignoring the science and end the mask requirement is a good way to own the libs. But the number won't be zero."

Just want to note that Krugman is wrong, it has nothing to do with the libs. The reason Abbott did that is because the February power outtage put him on political life support and he knows his moderate Covid policy put him in danger of being threatened from the right. So he lifted all the restrictions a few months early just to save his political ass. So he is doing it to own his right flank.

But I think people are so used to whatever restrictions they have decided to accept now that it will take awhile for things to go back to 2019 conditions even once a large number are vaccinated and certainly Abbott's pronouncement didn't change much. Everybody is still doing whatever they have been doing.

Protecting his right flank is most definitely best achieved by being seen to own the libs. So yeah, he is in fact exactly right.

[Valmy]

Protecting his right flank is most definitely best achieved by being seen to own the libs. So yeah, he is in fact exactly right.

Well nobody is thinking he is owning anything right now, much less the libs. The areas the libs control are doing their own thing. It is not like we are not used to having an adversarial relationship with the state government.

[Tamas]

Guys, if you have not been able to convince Dorsey in one year, perhaps it is time to give up?

Some people just don't have the neural connections required for empathy developed in them. It happens. Don't waste your time on this.

[Valmy]

Guys, if you have not been able to convince Dorsey in one year, perhaps it is time to give up?

Some people just don't have the neural connections required for empathy developed in them. It happens. Don't waste your time on this.

Give up? Sir, we once fought the battle of Hortlund.

[alfred russel]

Krugman said deaths.
Last 7 day chart for deaths is here: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_deathsper100klast7days
Texas is #2 after California.
Even adjusted for population they are #6.

LOL. MM, that is a fundamentally dishonest analysis. Death is a lagging indicator, the Texas non policy went into effect at the beginning of the month, and when cases were quite high.

FYI. For those wondering about what cases have done since Texas removed state level restrictions on March 4.

[crazy canuck]

Guys, if you have not been able to convince Dorsey in one year, perhaps it is time to give up?

Some people just don't have the neural connections required for empathy developed in them. It happens. Don't waste your time on this.

Give up? Sir, we once fought the battle of Hortlund.

[Valmy]

FYI. For those wondering about what cases have done since Texas removed state level restrictions on March 4.

As I said the removal of those restrictions did not actually change anything anybody was doing. Not even in state government offices

It was total political fluff.

[alfred russel]

Yister,

You are totally missing the point here. Socially distancing, avoiding indoor spaces, wearing a mask, etc. all contribute to stopping the spread. The question is to the extent that government restrictions are preventing the spread vs. other factors.

Texas removing all restrictions and cases going down and being in the lower half of the country is a strong indictor that restrictions have much less influence than voluntary compliance.

Fredo, you are totally missing the point here.  We started out talking about causality running from restrictions to compliance.  Now you are talking about causality running from compliance to health outcomes.

Those are not the same thing.

My perspective is that there are different motivations of behavior modification:

-compliance with government restrictions,
-private initiatives and personal decisions to reduce risk.

In the case of Texas, whatever compliance with state government restrictions existed prior to March 2021 does not appear to have been significant in controlling covid-19. This is obvious from what happened regarding disease spread after they were entirely lifted.

My perspective is that meaningful compliance has dropped to zero. Meaningful compliance being confined to compliance with restrictions because the restrictions exist (and not because you think the most safe option is to comply, or because of peer pressure in a community that thinks safety demands certain actions).

[alfred russel]

Guys, if you have not been able to convince Dorsey in one year, perhaps it is time to give up?

Some people just don't have the neural connections required for empathy developed in them. It happens. Don't waste your time on this.

A few thoughts. At the beginning, I was vociferously arguing that the inflated death rates for the disease were overstated, and offered bets to anyone that the ultimate rate would come in under 1%. I also offered bets that Tim's projections of death tolls would overshoot by the predicted dates. I would have won those bets.

During the summer, when MM was discussing the irresponsibility of southern US states during a peak outbreak there, I offered him a bet that the deaths per capita in the consortium of southern US governors would end the year below the national average. He declined - I would have won that bet.

We vociferously argued whether the closing of climbing, hiking and camping areas early on was reasonable. Considering they were almost all open later in the year when cases were much higher, and almost all INDOOR climbing gyms (as well as normal gyms) are now open in the country, it seems the consensus has moved toward my direction whether anyone wants to admit it or not.

[DGuller]

Incidentally, I also believed that IFR was below 1% back then, but now I think I was wrong.  Back then we had to do a whole bunch of back-of-the-envelope estimates, because testing was so limited so the denominator was inconsistently unreliable.  However, the latest figures still appear to point to 2.0%-2.5% case fatality rate, and I just don't think it's plausible to assume that we're still only catching at most 40% of the cases.  It does appear to be the case that the real IFR is somewhere between 1.0% and 2.0%, not below 1.0%.