I think you bring up some interesting points, but I would add a few points of additional nuance.
My personal beliefs: individual measures like masks, business and school closures, and social distancing are likely helpful, although none of them are foolproof- and we don’t have the science to know how much they help or what the most effective dose of each is. Additionally, practice is more important than policy. My son was watching a YouTube video in which Minecraft programmers in Sweden were talking about working from home since the start of the pandemic. And a half hour spent on Twitter will reveal plenty of people in states or countries with more restrictive measures that have completely ignored them.
The truth about the effectiveness of any intervention is likely to be about differences in degree, not differences in kind. For example, both of the Dakotas have seen over 200 covid deaths per 100,000 of population, while their neighbors Minnesota, Colorado, and Nebraska are at 129, 112, and 122 respectively - despite each of those states having many more cases and deaths in the early days of the pandemic. The pandemic has been terrible in all three states, but it has been meaningfully worse in the Dakotas. There is no climate difference or demographics that explain those discrepancies. Luck? It could certainly be a factor. Every time someone has thought they know something about the virus with certainty, it turns out not to be true (widespread cross-immunization from other coronaviruses? hotter, moister climate of Southeast Asia providing protection? Prior immunization against malaria or smallpox? Huge numbers of asymptomatic infections driving herd immunity after last summer’s surge? Nope, nope, nope, and nope).
We are trying to write history as we live it. That’s hard enough with political history, where history has a degree of art to it. It’s a tougher task altogether in the sphere of public health. Humility and a dedication to facts would benefit us all. Your dedication to identifying the facts and making them understandable has helped the discourse.
Really, really, really good comment. I'm going to have a follow-up/companion piece to this one touching on some of these points. But the upshot is that I fear we took (politically induced) signaling to levels that hurt any chance at increased acceptance of more sensible measures. Even the more sensible measures' effectiveness would have been challenged (both in good and bad faith), of course, but at least we would narrow and clarify issues. As of right now, we're trying to paint a picture with a 40" brush, and it's embarrassingly (and expectedly) bad. Too many clapping seals will cheer on 95%+ of their side's decisions with unwavering zeal, and that's an enormous problem for me.
“I only hope we proceed with a clear memory of what actually happened and not what our favorite politicians, media members, Twitter personalities, and influencers—our team—tell us happened.“ Thank for you this piece. So many Instagram consumers such as myself that follow a mix “health and well-being” and “doctors” often forget about agendas. I’m enjoying anchoring my thoughts in a different space.
I followed several data analysts during the last 18 months, including @HoldLLC, but found your Twitter account later, unfortunately. Excellent work both presenting the real numbers as well as making them easily digestible (not as easy as it sounds). I’m on Twitter partially because I’m in SoCal and need a way to know wildfire spread in real time—which I’m not going to get from the news. Perhaps now that we’ve opened the Pandora’s Box of being obsessed with health in general, and respiratory outbreaks specifically, we are going to need people like you that give us the real time information. I’m hoping that scientists will be more interested in seasonality, which will help explain what aspects of these outbreaks are in our control (hint: very little, and not the masks/distancing we have been obsessed with) and which are not. I am biased a bit, because I spent the last six months helping to write a paper on the topic: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rmv.2241
I think you bring up some interesting points, but I would add a few points of additional nuance.
My personal beliefs: individual measures like masks, business and school closures, and social distancing are likely helpful, although none of them are foolproof- and we don’t have the science to know how much they help or what the most effective dose of each is. Additionally, practice is more important than policy. My son was watching a YouTube video in which Minecraft programmers in Sweden were talking about working from home since the start of the pandemic. And a half hour spent on Twitter will reveal plenty of people in states or countries with more restrictive measures that have completely ignored them.
The truth about the effectiveness of any intervention is likely to be about differences in degree, not differences in kind. For example, both of the Dakotas have seen over 200 covid deaths per 100,000 of population, while their neighbors Minnesota, Colorado, and Nebraska are at 129, 112, and 122 respectively - despite each of those states having many more cases and deaths in the early days of the pandemic. The pandemic has been terrible in all three states, but it has been meaningfully worse in the Dakotas. There is no climate difference or demographics that explain those discrepancies. Luck? It could certainly be a factor. Every time someone has thought they know something about the virus with certainty, it turns out not to be true (widespread cross-immunization from other coronaviruses? hotter, moister climate of Southeast Asia providing protection? Prior immunization against malaria or smallpox? Huge numbers of asymptomatic infections driving herd immunity after last summer’s surge? Nope, nope, nope, and nope).
We are trying to write history as we live it. That’s hard enough with political history, where history has a degree of art to it. It’s a tougher task altogether in the sphere of public health. Humility and a dedication to facts would benefit us all. Your dedication to identifying the facts and making them understandable has helped the discourse.
Really, really, really good comment. I'm going to have a follow-up/companion piece to this one touching on some of these points. But the upshot is that I fear we took (politically induced) signaling to levels that hurt any chance at increased acceptance of more sensible measures. Even the more sensible measures' effectiveness would have been challenged (both in good and bad faith), of course, but at least we would narrow and clarify issues. As of right now, we're trying to paint a picture with a 40" brush, and it's embarrassingly (and expectedly) bad. Too many clapping seals will cheer on 95%+ of their side's decisions with unwavering zeal, and that's an enormous problem for me.
“I only hope we proceed with a clear memory of what actually happened and not what our favorite politicians, media members, Twitter personalities, and influencers—our team—tell us happened.“ Thank for you this piece. So many Instagram consumers such as myself that follow a mix “health and well-being” and “doctors” often forget about agendas. I’m enjoying anchoring my thoughts in a different space.
I followed several data analysts during the last 18 months, including @HoldLLC, but found your Twitter account later, unfortunately. Excellent work both presenting the real numbers as well as making them easily digestible (not as easy as it sounds). I’m on Twitter partially because I’m in SoCal and need a way to know wildfire spread in real time—which I’m not going to get from the news. Perhaps now that we’ve opened the Pandora’s Box of being obsessed with health in general, and respiratory outbreaks specifically, we are going to need people like you that give us the real time information. I’m hoping that scientists will be more interested in seasonality, which will help explain what aspects of these outbreaks are in our control (hint: very little, and not the masks/distancing we have been obsessed with) and which are not. I am biased a bit, because I spent the last six months helping to write a paper on the topic: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rmv.2241
"talking head can provide a technically “truthful” presentation to achieve whatever end he or she so desires."
Mark Twain would observe: "what they want you to know very likely ain't so".
We have an epistemiology problem. what people accept/believe diverges from reality!
The divergence is forced.
Seasonality is presented by most of the observations. But consensus science, which is prevalent, denies uncooperatve observation.