BF2S Forums Pandemic thread

uziq wrote:

with that said, do let me know when you intimatately understand bonferroni corrections, spearman's rho, students t-tests, etc. i'm sure you're a whizz at the science of statistical significance and inferring meaningful results from data, what with all those engineering software programs you use to plug numerical values into pre-existing formulas, and all that CAD software you puzzle over. i almost forgot that you have research-level statistics under your belt as well.

Actually I did degree-level stats deriving all that kind of thing from first principals, you didn't.
Well done parroting other people's work though.

None of it really matters when the question is where this virus came from and we still don't know since the chinese have withheld the data.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2021-11-26 04:53:57)

I am not getting worked up over these variants. It was hard enough getting people to care before we introduced the Greek alphabet to the pandemic.

As an alarming new Covid variant spread to Europe on Friday, scientists warned that it would inevitably reach Britain, while ministers faced calls to urgently speed up the vaccination programme.

inevitably? what do you mean? all we have to do is do deep genomic sequencing on everyone, worldwide, everywhere, always, and then close all borders, totally, and stop all people moving, absolutely, and halt the movement of all goods, permanently, every time the virus appears. what do you mean INEVITAVBLY? where are all the technocrats to solve this problem?!?

B.1.1.529, or Omicron

B one one what now? why the silly high numbers? omicron? is that a transformers villain? there has only been 4 variants of covid. i read it on ABC news so i know it's true.

Belgium reported a case in a traveller who had been in Egypt and Turkey rather than southern Africa, suggesting community transmission, while cases were also detected in Israel and Hong Kong. Experts predict it is only a matter of time before it reaches Britain.

what do you mean its spread already even after early detection? it's quite simple: we must ban all travel forever and keep people in their homes. that way covid will get bored and disappear. just like the black death disappeared immediately after medieval padua quarantined. look at the case studies people! i read lots of history so i know!

The EU agreed there was a need to suspend flights from countries in southern Africa following restrictions announced by countries including the UK, Japan, Germany, Italy and Spain. The US and Canada also brought in travel curbs on Friday night.

brave, valiant EU. taking strong and decisive action. there's been one case detected in belgium already (meaning there's many more), as well as cases in turkey and hong kong, major destinations of flights for EU nations, but THAT'LL show those southern africans what's what! omicron will definitely, absolutely, never leave south africa. it's a done deal. we've banned travel! no more tourists gawping at the fauna in botswana!

Does the joke even roll with people who weren't genxer nerds or millennial children in the 80s? Even boomers know who Optimus Prime is. "Ha ha, Omicron, sounds like a Transformers villain!" I've been seeing that parroted a lot.

People are making a bigger deal of this than there needs to be.

Xi, a common name. Nu, can be confused with new. Both letters skipped to avoid confusion and insult, part of the whole point of this labeling scheme. The Greek alphabet avoids adding stigma to the regions where variants are first identified. Part of that lesson stemming from the Spanish flu (those darn Spaniards). From wikipedia (I know):

The name "Spanish flu" is a misnomer,[6] rooted in historical othering of infectious disease origin, which is now avoided.[7] The pandemic broke out near the end of World War I, when wartime censors suppressed bad news in the belligerent countries to maintain morale, but newspapers freely reported the outbreak in neutral Spain. These stories created a false impression of Spain as the epicenter, so press outside Spain adopted the name "Spanish" flu. Limited historical epidemiological data make the pandemic's geographic origin indeterminate, with competing hypotheses on the initial spread.[2]

In referring to the "Omicron variant of COVID-19" someone obviously isn't talking about Hasbro IP or pinning a horrible virus on G.I. Joe.

It's not a contest to see who can remember their Greek Letters in correct order. The people calling out the WHO on skipped lettering with mischievous glints in their eyes probably doublechecked Wikipedia's article on the Greek alphabet first before tip-tapping their snarky quips into twitter. I doubt a lot of those gotcha internet types could describe many scientific and mathematical uses for those letters let alone form a thought in ancient Greek.

So what is uziq going to say about this?

Israel is to ban foreigners from entering the country for 14 days and use surveillance to halt the spread of the new Covid strain, local media report.

The ban is expected to come into effect at midnight on Sunday, following full cabinet approval.

Israel has so far confirmed one case of the potentially more infectious Omicron strain first detected in South Africa.
.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-59448547

bUt Teh vAcCinEs pRotEcT uS

People calling it the China virus followed by a boost of acts of violence against Asian people. Hmm, I wonder why WHO is being careful.

Dilbert_X wrote:

uziq wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

first principals

spoken like a true career mathematician. how does one say ... Q.E.D.?

You spotted a spelling mistake, congrats, you really earned your pay this week.

dilbert: 'we've used all the greek alphabet already? what, is delta the last letter?'
WHO: NEW VARIANT OMICRON
dilbert: lol uzique can't read

Now you're rambling, never said anything like that.

inevitably? what do you mean? all we have to do is do deep genomic sequencing on everyone, worldwide, everywhere, always, and then close all borders, totally, and stop all people moving, absolutely, and halt the movement of all goods, permanently, every time the virus appears. what do you mean INEVITAVBLY? where are all the technocrats to solve this problem?!?

Learn to spell inevitably.

Thankfully the technocrats are closing the borders by putting Africa back on 14 days quarantine.

If you want to do something useful you can go back and find the post where I said the next nasty variant will come out of Africa and should have been ringfenced back then.

Here opening the border to vaccinated but untested interstate arrivals lasted barely five days and they're back to needing a test if they're from 'safe' areas and needing quarantine otherwise.

it's already in europe/the UK. community transmission was established way beyond any traceable link to south africa.

banning travel is clearly highly effective.

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-59448547

bUt Teh vAcCinEs pRotEcT uS

Spoken like a rag journalist putting together their next misleading article. "Omicron variant makes drug companies question their vaccine's effectiveness!"

Hot dilbert take: vaccines don't work
Small print: testing in progress for the omicron variant, too early to tell, may need boosters. More vaccines in our future.

Vaccines are updated as needed. You can get a flu shot every year for the battery of flu variants expected to hit. Thinking about going in for my quadrivalent shot soon.

dilbert doesn't understand how vaccines work and how the future of vaccines will pan out. he's shown several times that his grasp of the science behind this stuff is about on a level with jay's general grasp on any form of mental activity.

needs to go back and study his first principals.

I care little for Anthony Fauci or however you spell his name. He seems to have been setup to be the lightening rod for right wing anger. He is smart enough to be aware of this.

I am really annoyed by right wingers who are now super angry that Anthony F.'s agency funds research on animals.

1. None of the people complaining about animal research really care about the suffering of animals. Same group of people who mock PETA. Stuff their faces full of dead animals while pretending to care about dogs.

2. The right wingers who feel bad about dogs getting experimented on show no such compassion for the downtrodden humans of the world. People who are tweeting about Anthony F. funding research on dogs are the same group of people advocating for flipping over refugee boats or putting mines on the border.

Twice hypocrites. Literally one of the worst sins.

Omnicron variant that spooky? Biden it talking about it on T.V. Think we will close down this winter? I can't imagine America going into another lockdown.

if the variant is more contagious than delta but causes less severe illness, it would be in everyone's interests to keep borders open. a more competitive variant could out-transmit delta and actually suppress a more harmful strain.

this is why speculation before we know anything isn't worth a whole lot.