Tara Reade and her very credible sexual assault allegations gives the Democrat party justification to reject Joe Biden for president.

Then what? Bernie un suspends? Some other extreme Left leaning Democrat candidate emerges? Amy Klobuchar? Might as well run a card board box.

You can see them beginning to waver under the extreme pressure of the illogic of it all, it works for those who want a true Leftist to run against Trump. And that is the race that I want, Left / Leftist / Socialism / “adjust” the Constitution V Right / Capitalism / Constitution as intended.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/04/28/joe-biden-tara-reade-senate-documents-university-delaware/

That is where the real action is and that is the race that desperately needs to be had once and for all in America and this situation may force it to happen. Joe Biden is a “Progressive” compromise and a straw horse that fraudulently panders to the real American meat and potato rational Democrats in America who are tired of the Leftist lies and culture of dependency insanity of their leadership.

That I suspect may well be where this is going, and I say thank you crazy, insane Leftist Democrat leadership, in the end you will serve a great service to our country and the world. You yourselves will play a major part and destroy what must be destroyed. Because that is the nature of the beast and what the beast manifests.

The potential is very promising.

don eagle: Moderation takes as long as it takes me to get to something. I do not see anything by you pending.

We also adjust for test performance characteristics using 3 different estimates: (i) the test manufacturer’s data, (ii) a sample of 37 positive and 30 negative controls tested at Stanford, and (iii) a combination of both. Results The unadjusted prevalence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in Santa Clara County was 1.5%

” . .COVID-19 is and has been much more widespread in the population worldwide is not important.”
I am aware of no international evidence that supports the Santa Clara study results of there being such low symptomatic a fatality rates – not even close to.

” . .the population of NYC presently is just under 19 million,” Wrong.

“Caveat 2. the COVID-19 numbers will certainly grow.” Ya think?

Your personal experiences regarding you health care providers are irrelevant with regard to the asymptomatic and fatality rates of Covid-19, though they may well influence your opinions on such.

i have pasted two cdc pages here, at the very bottom of this post. it is interesting to see a couple of things. first, twice as many people have died this year from pneumonia, in the absence of COVID-19. second, the anomalously low seasonal flu deaths this year. could it be that COVID-19 is really just a particularly bad seasonal flu? (remember, corona viruses are a family of viruses to which season flu and the common cold belong). Last, look at the total deaths form the 2017-2018 flu season: 61,099. compare this to the CDC number to date for COVID-19: 24,555. The page was not updated for friday yet so i concede that the number is now higher than that. Now take a look at the age distributed data for both years, and notice that the assertion that COVID-19 is more dangerous for all age groups is patently false. to make the entry of these data easier, there will be two columns, the first for 2017-2018 season, the second for the COVID-19 outbreak, with the cohorts from the charts (the data are not divided the same way in the two sources) listed to the left
0-4 years: 115 under 1 year: 0
5-17 years: 528 1-4 years: 2
18-49 years: 2,803 5-14 years: 1
15-24 years: 22
25-34 years: 194
35-44 years: 479
45-54 years: 1316

the total for 15-54 years for COVID-19, although a larger cohort, is 2,011, smaller than the
18-49 cohort from 2017-18.

50-64 years: 6751 55-64 years: 3124
65+ years: 50,903 65-74 years: 5376
75-84 years: 6773
85+ years 7268

once again, the total for COVID-19 65-85+ is less, at 19,417, than the total from 2017-18.
it is interesting to printout that t he mortality rate given for the 65+ age cohort (it is in a chart later in the document) is 100%.

the caveats when comparing these two sets of data: 1. the 2017-18 data are for influenza-associate disease outcomes, so it might be appropriate to include the numbers form column 4 in the provisional death count chart for COVID-19, which is “deaths with pneumonia and COVID-19”. look at them for yourself, the total are still lower, e.g. for the total deaths, 24,555 + 11,070 = 35,625 for COVID-19 to date, compared to 61,099 for 2017-18. Caveat 2. the COVID-19 numbers will certainly grow.

One more important point that it is being reported that many people are avoiding going to the doctor for serious things other than COVID-19, out of fear of contagion. It is not possible to know how many deaths might result from this behavior. It is also the case that the ability of Americans to afford the necessities is now seriously reduced, and the outcome of that remains to be seen. as for me, i was working in my yard a week ago, and my wife found a tick on me later that night. it had already started to bite. she was able to remove it with alcohol and tweezers, but it left a dime-sized red welt, which looked just as bad the next day, so i called the “Urgent care” folks and described the situation, asking if i could come in. after getting passed around to 3 different people, getting as far up the foodchain as a PA, i was told to just look out for fever and joint pain, and come in then. I i am 67, and have 3 compression fractures in my back from a fall i had doing some tree work on my farm. so i get pain all the time, am i supposed to distinguish the kinds of pain? also, the philosophy seems to be “don’t bother me, get really sick first.” lyme disease is hard to get rid of, just sayin. in addition, i had cataract surgery scheduled for this june, but it has been indefinitely postponed, as being non-essential. so, ok, i can’t work well due to my eyes, but at this point, since i had all my work cancelled through july already, and into the future indefinitely, i guess whether i can work or not is “non-essential”. i have lost more than $20K in income from this already, so i cant pay for the surgery anyway at this point. so, andrew dubya, saying things are “trash”, and blithely saying “wrong”, etc, might indicate a condition known as “knee- jerk”. had you reflexes tested recently? i have a mallet, if you need one.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm#table1
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

Wrong.

Responding or fighting back from an attack is inherently dirty? There are no clean ways to disagree with someone?

You don’t have to go dirty, but ruling it out completely isn’t smart either.

This explains why you excuse the inexcusable behavior of those who manipulate our government

I explained the dilemma. Nothing more.

But the recommendation that we are complaining about is the manipulation of information to drive our nation into lockdown.

Modelers only recommend actions to attain specific outcomes. How it’s implemented is a political decision. Of course, you have to take the specific circumstances into account. You cannot do it like, say, South Korea if you’re completely unprepared, have no masks and mask wearing culture, no testing, no contact tracking. That leaves you with lockdowns and in effect a partial shutdown of the economy. It’s a rather novel situation for policymakers, so in the beginning they start with restrictions that might get things wrong or look silly in detail. (Again, I’m just explaining.)

And yet your original comment was that you would fudge the information, making an exaggeration in order to assure that the decision was heavily weighed in one specific direction.

You run models with the best (plausible) assumptions at that time, take the more dramatic scenario outcomes, and use them to get the policymakers’ attention. That’s the “whine louder” part.

—

Bob,

On April 25 we’ve had the 20,000th death in the UK. If we’re generous, my statement “20,000 will be reached around April 20” was rather correct.

Note that this mostly (or even only?) counts hospital deaths. Those in private homes, elderly care etc. aren’t included. I’ve read estimates that this would double the number to 40,000.

Are you kidding me? Responding or fighting back from an attack is inherently dirty? There are no clean ways to disagree with someone?

O. M. G.! That means that I now have dirty hands just for this response.

“The core swamp consists of established profiteers.”

So the others who abuse power, such as using the IRS, DoJ, FBI, and other government means, for political means don’t count as part of the swamp? I guess Comey, and the others aren’t swamp material after all. In the meantime, the medical modelers manipulated our leadership in order to get their own way, so I guess that is OK, too — no swamp-like activity in that.

“I left because the community is too small and it’s hard to avoid its rituals and authorities, the art of modeling such complex (social) systems is underdeveloped and hard to apply outside academia/government, the incentives lead to “whining louder” and kowtowing”

I stand corrected. You aren’t so anti-swamp as I had deduced. This explains why you excuse the inexcusable behavior of those who manipulate our government for their own purposes.

“The general recommendations are …”

But the recommendation that we are complaining about is the manipulation of information to drive our nation into lockdown.

“They can guide but not determine policy.”

And yet your original comment was that you would fudge the information, making an exaggeration in order to assure that the decision was heavily weighed in one specific direction. In this case, the economic shutdown of the U.S. This is not guidance but policy determination. It worked, to the detriment of the rest of America.

The concern may have been valid, but the extent of the problem was not properly weighed and balanced against the damage that would be done. This also includes millions of routine doctor visits that could have headed off growing problems that now may lead to terrible consequences for some or many of those who have not been diagnosed in a timely manner due to the shutdown of so much of our healthcare industry.

The myopic viewpoint of a small group of people has cost us so very much in terms of medical care, liberty, saving, housing, jobs, livelihoods, and all kinds of other costs and problems that come up from not being able to live life for a month and a half.

The surgery was a success. The patient died.

Trump and his team have not fought back “in the same ruthless ways.”

Fighting back doesn’t imply that one has to use the same (illegal) means one was attacked with. Don’t let them determine how you respond (where they’d have the upper hand), don’t let them set the agenda or follow their narrative, bully back in ways you’re good at and focus on pushing your own agenda. It’s dirty nonetheless. As Trump so often emphasizes, it’s about reciprocity; and if you’re bullied, get even.

How does this make them different from the swamp?

The core swamp consists of established profiteers. Most of the poor modelers are servants, their connection to the swamp can end next Tuesday. The swamp thinks in millions or billions of dollar, the modeler hopes to get his next grant and to make perhaps another step on the career ladder.

Everything you wrote makes it sound as though you left because you did not want to be part of the swamp.

I left because the community is too small and it’s hard to avoid its rituals and authorities, the art of modeling such complex (social) systems is underdeveloped and hard to apply outside academia/government, the incentives lead to “whining louder” and kowtowing. My specialization is better applied to swarms of planetary rovers or distributed manufacturing systems.

that recommendation is extremely wrong.

The general recommendations are increased hygiene, social distancing, protection of risk groups. How that’s implemented is a political decision eventually. There are standard epidemiological responses that under normal circumstances are rather harmless (like closing a kindergarten or reducing traffic to/from affected areas) but that definitely have their impact if applied simultaneously and nationwide. Epidemiologists aren’t economists or lawyers, so their expertise needs to be complemented and their models and recommendations need to be tailored to local situations. They can guide but not determine policy.

The concern for the health care system’s surge capacity was (and is) valid, considering the uncertainties about the disease and from the experiences in Wuhan, then Northern Italy, then Madrid with overflowing hospitals and all the reports and pictures that came with it. The West lost 6–8 weeks and then had to shut down the economy in an overreaction.

Now we need to focus on getting back to normal in incremental and reversible ways (a lot will be trial and error) and make sure that those restrictions on liberties and the economy are lifted as good as we can (note that even role models like South Korea and Taiwan have still restrictions in place, so “back to normal” will not be the normal we’re used to for some time).

You just rationalized the use of the Trump “dossier,” the false accusation against Gen. Micheal Flynn, and other dirty deeds of the leftist swamp. Trump and his team have not fought back “in the same ruthless ways.” Even by your definition, Trump and his team have clean hands, but the modelers and health advisors are dirty.

“They’re not the swamp, they have to play along with the swamp’s rules.”

How does this make them different from the swamp? Everything you wrote makes it sound as though you left because you did not want to be part of the swamp. Please don’t defend their bad behavior and their easy willingness to fudge results and maybe even data.

“Not everybody like Bob or me can just move out of toxic affairs.”

In a free country, there are plenty of other options. You continue to argue that the Dark Age has arrived.

“The modelers’ recommendations aren’t wrong (from what I see).”

Wasting the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people is worth saving a couple of tens of thousands of lives? Add in the destroyed lives of those who are losing their businesses and homes, as well as the other unseen collateral damage such as reduced healthcare access for the rest of us (is that going to cost us tens or hundreds of thousands of lives?), and that recommendation is extremely wrong.

What do you imagine is not wrong about giving up our liberties to government? Protecting these liberties and freedoms was the very reason that we fought the biggest wars that we have fought. Now, because of lies and our eagerness to help the underdog, we no longer have liberty or reasonable healthcare. This makes it the biggest cluster-bleep ever.

This is the problem when people put themselves in charge of the decisions that the decision-makers make. We hired the real decision-makers for a reason, and we hired others only to give accurate inputs so that our decision-makers can come to the right decision, not come to the decision that these myopic advisors choose.

We complain about having a ruling class only to discover that there is competition for being in that class. Now we have a new set of overreaching opportunity-grabbers to watch out for and fight back against. They think that they are doing good, but then, so do the leftists and other swamp dwellers, including those who created the “pragmatic” Trump dossier, falsely accused Flynn, and arrested Roger Stone at his house, complete with a SWAT team, frogmen, and CNN as part of the predawn raiding force.

The Federal Government is the Customer.

And when you sell products that must be approved by un-elected government technocrats, you don’t want to be left holding the bag when the “1-800-Sue Big Pharma” class-action lawsuit commercial starts running.

Zimmerman Said;
“So we come to the fundamental question: Why have our press and politicians repeatedly relied on this quack’s predictions? Could it be that his over-the-top cries that the world is about to end might serve their interests, and not the general public’s? Might it be possible that they are using him to convince the pubic to give them more power? Could it?”

Ian C. said;
“Bob,“Endorsing” doesn’t describe it, I’m just telling how the game is played.”

I say, the “game” has always been about the “ends justify the means”. And here is how it’s “played” (proving Bob’s suspicions right) directly from the horses mouth.

Objective 2020, forced vaccinations:

https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/nvpo/national-adult-immunization-plan/naip-path-to-implementation.pdf

“Priority Area 1: Address Technical, Legal, Administrative, And Practical Barriers To Greater Use Of Electronic Health Records (EHRS) And Immunization Information Systems (IIS) To Collect And Track Adult Immunization Data”

How?

Federal government partners can encourage providers and EHR systems that support adult vaccines to build functionality for accurate evaluation of vaccine history and forecast of vaccines due. These systems need to use relevant historical data and/or services from IIS to make these timely decisions. Guidance on these decisions is provided by the Clinical Decision Support for Immunization (CDSi) resources, which provide an implementation-neutral foundation for development and maintenance of clinical decision support engines.2

The plan is all outlined here do use the federal government for the heavy lifting, and the partners to follow orders. The address how they plan to get around personal and legal rights. Most of this has already been addressed in Obamacare. That’s why it has not been revoked yet by the Republicans dragging their feet, and the Democrats making up one crisis after another. The plan has been in action for sometime, and they’re following through even though it hit some road bumps because of President Trump. Someone else was supposed to be in the office.

To encourage production of pandemic vaccines, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) have introduced legislation, known as the Influenza Vaccine Security Act, that shifts liability from pharmaceutical companies to the federal government for personal injury or death resulting from the manufacture, administration, or use of qualified pandemic influenza technologies.

http://www.ufrgs.br/imunovet/molecular_immunology/preventionprimaryimmunovaccine.html

If you can make billions with no liability, would you care about the safety of your product?

Why I do not trust the pharmaceutical Industry;

49,000 Americans dead.(compare that to our current crisis)

https://wjla.com/news/nation-world/chinese-fentanyl-is-fueling-the-us-opioid-crisis-drug-trade-tensions-escalate

Many people I knew in early 2000 caught the flu after having a flu shot. It wasn’t the flu, but a drug resistant bacterial infection. They were given antibiotics to cure their flu. FDA dropped the ball.

https://money.cnn.com/2004/10/11/news/midcaps/chiron/

The tough little Bacteria used in subways for human experimentation. There’s also a problem for space.(#5)

https://www.idstewardship.com/5-interesting-things-serratia-marcescens/

Chiron’s curse. The whole story.

https://www.pharmamanufacturing.com/articles/2004/187/

Who owns Chiron now? A long history, right up to the present, of corruption and bribes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novartis

Scroll down to controversies and criticisms.

None of these people have my trust, and motivation is not the health and well-being of this nation.

Bacteria from eggs (that come from chickens butts) that is known to cause bladder infections introduced into the bloodstream is one contamination. Viruses and pathogens from Reesie’s monkeys that cause cancer is another.

The most insidious, beyond even Thimerosal (methylmercury, completely safe as long as you stay out of the sun) is agents that has sterilizing side effects.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproductive_immunology

“The mechanism of the vaccine is injection with cloned ZP cDNA, therefore this vaccine is a DNA based vaccine. This results in the production of antibodies against the ZP, which stop the sperm from binding to the zona pellucida and ultimately from fertilizing the ovum.[7]”

“Another vaccine in investigation is one against HCG. This immunization would produce antibodies against hCG and TT. Antibodies against hCG would prevent the maintenance of the uterus for a viable pregnancy therefore preventing conception. Another vaccine that is utilized is the peptide β-hCG that is more specific to hCG and a more rapid and effective response”

This additive will boost the immune system… So much that woman’s body will reject the sperm before conception, making impregnation impossible without a doctors intervention.

Bill Gates funds the people providing bad information to trump on this outbreak. And this is what he said recently.

https://vaccineimpact.com/2020/bill-gates-calls-for-vaccine-certificates-as-requirement-for-travel/

Will we be willing participants in the New Dark age? Trade our freedom… For what security? If they’re cutting back oil production, will they lift the energy restrictions against the orders of the green new deal, now that they have what they’ve always wanted, to provide carbon for the Economy?
Not if Bill Gates has something to say about it.
https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_innovating_to_zero/transcript

Ian C., I salute you. (Not sarcasm)

“I learned to enjoy dirt, so I chose areas that are deliciously dirty but that also give me plenty of leverage to do good. And I sleep like a baby.”

The swamp lives, it has always lived, and will always live, and its better to embrace and accept that it in fact exists then to turn ones nose up and be outraged at it. This is what it is to be human, to be alive and to learn to exist and survive. This is the Political Realm, where all is possible.

And this is also an example of the interface where abuse of power and models and equations of justification like in Strategy Over Morality live and thrive. And in the end some good may come from it (The survival of someone or some entity), but a lot of bad exists and thrives their, people live and people die their.

This is where government researchers with lax standards research and release deadly contagions upon the world. This is where doctors and PHD consultants are tasked to believe what they are told to believe, never mind common sense and their fiduciary responsibilities, as long as there exists plausible deniability and a finger can be pointed else where.

Ian C, I again salute your honesty and I wish you the best of luck with your weighty load, you obviously have broad shoulders.

This song came on the radio while I was writing this comment, I thought it appropriate: https://youtu.be/2Beda3kFNjo

Before that gets interpreted in unintended ways, let me say what I meant by “dirt.” It covers all the usual deal making (including political deals), taking advantage of situations and creating favorable situations, fighting back against unfair attacks in the same ruthless ways. Then the people out there (with often idealized ideas of how things should be) love to think that this is “dirty.” So when I say “dirty” then please think of “pragmatic lie” and “giving a decision-maker what he wants in exchange for save passage” and not of “doing stuff that kills people.”

The swamp is a self-serving and corrupt bureaucratic-industrial complex. Then we have those who have to deal with it. Like modelers in the public health domain. They’re not the swamp, they have to play along with the swamp’s rules. Especially when there are no alternatives. (Among other reasons that’s why I left the modeling field.)
Want to change it? Reduce harmful incentives, establish beneficial incentives, remove the established networks of profiteers. I’m sure that many would prefer to play a cleaner game instead of being forced to participate in an unhealthy relationship. Not everybody like Bob or me can just move out of toxic affairs.

The modelers’ recommendations aren’t wrong (from what I see). Which of the recommendations are followed and how they’re implemented are decisions that eventually are made by elected officials and their trusted advisors (who aren’t modelers). Most of the unwise or silly actions we see all over the West are due to uncertainty and lack of preparation. The measures are rather similar all over the West, so it’s either a really big conspiracy by the Globalist Swamp (that even a professional paranoid like me is falling for) or we’re perhaps seeing a disease that’s more than just the flu. (Can’t remember a flu season where hospitals were flowing over and mass graves had to be dug out.) That being said, we definitely need to watch out for opportunity-grabbers and their overreach and fight back against that.

It isn’t just the politicians, bureaucrats, and the press that are the swamp, it is also consists of others that we rely upon to not be part of the swamp.

It was bad enough that the medical community modelers and experts were willing to let their own priorities take precedence over the priorities of the rest of the country, what with them telling us that it is the virus that will tell us when it is time to end our marshal-law-and-house-arrest policy. Now we discover that modelers in other fields also believe that they know best what the priorities should be. Indeed, some people seem to believe that “If you want to change something out there, your hands get inevitably dirty.”

Trump has made change, but the Democrats were unable to find any of this inevitable dirt. Indeed, they had to generate their own dirt in order to make it appear that he and his team were dirty. It seems that some people are unable to make change without getting their hands dirty, and others are able to make change while remaining clean. The difference is that some people don’t take the short cuts through the muddy swamp, because they are willing to do the extra work to do the right thing.

We elect officials in order to have them set the priorities, but now we see that the swamp, those who are willing to supersede our elected policymakers, is larger than we believed. Reports to the press also are subject to misrepresentation of actual model results, thus the rest of us are also given bogus information for us to rely upon.

Our policymakers received bogus information, and we were directed to give up our liberty. We received bogus information and agreed to give it up. Now we are wondering how and when we are going to be granted that liberty back again. Somehow, we Americans agreed to alienate our unalienable rights. (This morning, Sunday, there are a few church congregations willing to defy the virtual martial law, at the risk of heavy harassment by the government.)

To answer Robert’s question: “Why have our press and politicians repeatedly relied on this quack’s predictions?” Leftists want us to believe in science, because they are now able to manipulate the science (making it bogus science) to tell us what they want us to believe, so that they can rule as they please. Rather than getting answers that are based upon science or reality, we get answers that are pulled out of people’s backsides, and these answers are worth just as much as this implies, as we have seen with this flu cluster-bleep.

The government, including our once wannabe-conservative president, now tells us how to live our lives, ruling as they please, and the scientists and the press back them up, telling us that it is the virus (meaning that it is the modelers) that will tell us when we can exit lockdown. Even the president, who is supposed to drain the swamp, is proposing borrowing huge amounts of money in order to do things that the government wants done (taking that money away from the loan pool available for the rest of us to borrow as part of recovering from this nightmare).

The coming Dark Age has arrived.

If one mixes anything with politics, one gets politics. It happened to climate modeling, it’s happening to epidemiological modeling. Fortunately I’m no longer involved in the modeling business. I’m only telling what I’ve learned during my time there.

Those other problems aren’t out of view, that’s mostly happening in the layers of politics, media, and the public that are driven by attention and fashion. Of course, we’ll see misallocation of resources and will neglect some other important areas (like with climate protection, which draws resources away from environmental protection), but that’s the usual SNAFU state of politics.

—

Bob,

That’s very laudable. You can take this position if you aim to describe and judge the world. Doesn’t work for me. If you want to change something out there, your hands get inevitably dirty. The amount of dirt grows logarithmically to the significance of the task — many people can’t stand that and find excuses why they stay “honorable” or invent harmless pseudo-problems to waste their time on as long as they don’t have to confront what’s out there. The space industry isn’t so much different. You know that. You’re writing about it several times a week.
You can protect yourself or your organization to some degree from the dirt thanks to some smart arrangements, but you cannot avoid it completely as you’re not operating in isolation.

I learned to enjoy dirt, so I chose areas that are deliciously dirty but that also give me plenty of leverage to do good. And I sleep like a baby.

Ian C: Bah. The right and proper thing to do when someone demands you do something unethical is to smile, tell them no, and if that isn’t good enough for them, walk away.

I say this having done this numerous times in my life. I might not be as wealthy as I could have been by being corrupt, but I can sleep at night, knowing I have never willing participated in unethical activity.

You, not so much, apparently.

This is what the modelers and advisors to Trump said that they did. So now we are living under a lockdown that turns out to be worse than the disease and have no exit strategy and no method to determine when to exit (part of the strategy, and why Trump has to set up a new advisory panel). Thus, bogus information has screwed us very, very badly.

How will we Americans ever be able to trust the medical community again?

How will we readers of BtB ever be able to trust any models in the future, knowing that modelers are willing to give bogus results in order to elicit action?

“Politicians and political bureaucrats have usually other things on their minds and discussing the subtleties of scenarios and model uncertainty is beyond their attention span”

Instead of anyone paying any attention to all the myriad other problems that we have, we are laser focused only on this one flu (as though it is the only problem we have or as though we can only handle one problem at a time) and how we are ever going to recover from the terrible effects of the overreaction to it that we made. A flu is only one among a herd of problems that have to be dealt with, but bogus modeling and overexcited advice put us into a position that is far worse then the effects of this Wuhan flu. We are no longer dealing with those other problems, allowing them to also come and bite us in the butt just as we are trying to recover from what is turning out to be an ordinary flu, dragged out for months after it should have run its course.

https://youtu.be/azcoaFKjAtQ

These government people are employed to know what is going on in the real world related to disease and its spread. Why is there no default calculation when ever anything that China states is discounted by?

This is a part of this mysterious way that our government agency heads professionally conduct themselves, are they required to believe what ever a government representative from China or anywhere else says? Is that their default? And we can also remember how the heads of the FBI and the CIA and the NSA conducted themselves. Is it either sedition or willful ignorance, that is their default setting?

I have listened to the likes of Gordon Chang on many different radio shows and he spells out very clearly how the Chinese think and operate and what they intend, all in plain English and in no uncertain terms. And Chang has been proven over time to be very much correct on all of this.

And you can throw your models right out of the window as they appear to be in the instance of this contagion to be just the busy work of a bunch of number crunching high IQ nerds. In time the numbers will be revealed, and then they are going to be argued about as to how the dead were classified and calculated.

I look forward to that version of this argument in the near future.

“Endorsing” doesn’t describe it, I’m just telling how the game is played. Many researchers and engineers make the mistake to think that their “pure product” is sufficient and leave out the important part of selling it to the right people in the right ways that work. Careers plateau early and startups don’t get off the ground when people don’t know how to sell their stuff in their specific industry — all the hard work is wasted then. Many such cases. Sad.

—

john hare,

It’s different when you talk to peers or customers who actively want a working solution. Obviously it’s a reciprocal relationship. If you have to hard sell to a customer base like I described in an earlier comment, it’s different. They get what they incentivize for. If you have to whine louder to get their attention, whine louder or leave the business.

I refuse to alter business estimates to fit situations. I irritate people, but my integrity remains intact. My estimates are normally correct, which makes people believe them and take them on face value.

Ian C: One question: My impression was that you endorsed the approach of “whining louder.” Do you? Because if you do, then I would not trust your models.

Nor would I ever want anyone to hire you. The criteria should always be to do good work, not political work.

As Mark Twain said many times, “When in doubt tell the truth.”

Ian C: I don’t see you as an enemy, but I do see your last quote as the poster child for the modern generation of modelers, willing to overstate the danger even if their models really don’t call for it, merely to get the government to do things they want.