You have a recurring misunderstanding between the size of a molecule and the size of a single virus particle.
Bad News Thread
- Thread starter kickingandscreaming
- Start date
You have a recurring misunderstanding between the size of a molecule and the size of a single virus particle.
kickingandscreaming
PREMIER
Thanks for posting this. I posted this at the beginning - about 14-15 weeks ago when he first made his dire prediction stating would occur in "6 to 14 weeks" and have been giving semi-weekly updates. I needed to post one last. This can serve at the last one. No need to get @dad4 bent out of shape one more time
Back in January, Michael Osterholm, who's been an adviser to Joe Biden on the virus, warned that the next six to fourteen weeks would be the worst of the pandemic.
We're now beyond fourteen weeks from that moment.
The case numbers are down 76 percent:
"I want to be so wrong on this one," Osterholm said. "I will publicly celebrate me being wrong if this [surge] doesn't happen, because I just wish we didn't have to go through this."
Well, I'm sure our inquisitive media will follow up with him and give him an opportunity to celebrate publicly.
They wouldn't fail to pursue a story like this just because it undermines the panickers. I mean, these are curious people, and professionals to boot!
Ahem.
This, by the way, is the same person who said on October 9 that Florida would be a "house on fire" within weeks because it wasn't listening to him. We know how that one turned out.
You'd think after a while he'd stop and wonder: "Maybe I don't fully understand this virus. Maybe I should keep the shaming and the unnecessary panic to a minimum. Because it sure seems as if the resumption of normal life doesn't affect anything."
But of course not.
I'm spending a few days in the Florida panhandle. I cannot believe how (relatively) unmasked it is here compared to central Florida, where I live. And everything is fine. No overwhelmed hospitals, nothing.
This, I am convinced, is why many of them don't want the masks coming off. Not because they fear a spike, but precisely because they fear nothing will happen. At which point the handful of remaining skeptical thinkers will wonder how they got snookered into all this in the first place.
MAYBE Dad4 is Michael Osterholm
. To close this I post a link that reviews some of the issues we have seen with COVID predictions.Forecasting for COVID-19 has failed - PMC
Epidemic forecasting has a dubious track-record, and its failures became more prominent with COVID-19. Poor data input, wrong modeling assumptions, high sensitivity of estimates, lack of incorporation of epidemiological features, poor past evidence ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Thanks for posting this. I posted this at the beginning - about 14-15 weeks ago when he first made his dire prediction stating would occur in "6 to 14 weeks" and have been giving semi-weekly updates. I needed to post one last. This can serve at the last one. No need to get @dad4 bent out of shape one more time
Forecasting for COVID-19 has failed - PMC
Epidemic forecasting has a dubious track-record, and its failures became more prominent with COVID-19. Poor data input, wrong modeling assumptions, high sensitivity of estimates, lack of incorporation of epidemiological features, poor past evidence ...
The ultimate failed epidemic prediction --
kickingandscreaming
PREMIER
He's not even a good troll anymore. He needs to break out another one of his aliases. This one is stale.
kickingandscreaming
PREMIER
Oopsie! Sorry for the lost year, kids! We messed up.
- CDC
Desert Hound
DA
This goes in the bad news section for people living in these areas. That said many supported this policy and are surprised at the "unintended consequences" of their decision.
I get a chuckle out of it.
I get a chuckle out of it.
Desert Hound
DA
Always looking through a political lens.
@kickingandscreaming was pointing out the poor records of the "experts".
You look at that and immediately go political.
Evaluating how the experts performed should not be a political exercise. And yet you and others seem not to be able to do anything without using the political angle.
kickingandscreaming
PREMIER
Who knew?
The truth hurts.
Interesting, but no surprise. Projections, forecasts and predictions are not medical science, they are simply scientific opinion and shouldn't be given any more weight than that. I disagree with the study's assessment that "Some (but not all) of these problems can be fixed." I think it would be more accurate to say "Few, if any, of these problems can be fixed." The underlying problem isn't methodology, its academic arrogance. It doesn't matter how expert you claim to be, you can't predict the future and its arrogant to think you can. I've said this before, if you could predict the future you wouldn't be working at some University lab, you'd be on the beach of your own private island in the Caribbean sipping Mojitos.Forecasting for COVID-19 has failed - PMC
Epidemic forecasting has a dubious track-record, and its failures became more prominent with COVID-19. Poor data input, wrong modeling assumptions, high sensitivity of estimates, lack of incorporation of epidemiological features, poor past evidence ...
I've posted a number of times, but as a refresher I will post it again.
Why Experts are Almost Always Wrong
No one, not even the experts, really knows what's about to happen
www.smithsonianmag.com
Desert Hound
DA
No it doesn't.
The US is basically in exactly the same place as pretty much every other W European country. I know early on the press and the Ds were saying the Euros got it right. Looking now we are all basically at the same place.
Kind of like CA vs TX or FL.
The virus did what it did.
Now back to the "experts" and their predictions which was the point of the @kickingandscreaming post.
Did you read the article beyond the headline? In the Appendix ("...a fool's confession...), the principal author (Ionnadis) recounts his own failed prediction that the deaths due to covid in the US would be around 10,000.
Ionnadis also rushes quickly by the possibility that the extreme measures (sanitation, handwashing, mask protocols, isolation, the shutdown of non-essential activities, etc) might have contributed to the fact that the worst-case scenarios did not evolve.
Other quotes from the article --
Let us be clear: even if millions of deaths did not happen this season, they may happen with the next wave, next season, or some new virus in the future. A doomsday forecast may come in handy to protect civilization when and if calamity hits.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, we had randomized trials showing 38% reduced odds of influenza infection with hand washing and (non-statistically significant, but possible) 47% reduced odds with proper mask wearing.
Despite lack of trials, it is sensible and minimally disruptive to avoid mass gatherings and decrease unnecessary travel.
Bruddah IZ
DA
True. Knuckle head should have know what the makers of Lysol and Clorox wipes have known for decades. Corona has been around forever and never warranted the tyrannical shutdowns that you and Derv are advocates for.
Zooming In: Visualizing the Relative Size of Particles
From wildfire smoke molecules to the coronavirus, this graphic compares the relative size of particles that we, for the most part, can't see.
www.visualcapitalist.com
Your smoker experiment would be a fire hazard. You’d have to have the smoker wear the mask, with the cigarette inside the mask. Masks are to limit the source, remember? They work by limiting how far his breath can travel, not by filtering out the smoke.
I like the cherry lozenge experiment. The lozenge kid should be the class clown, because you want someone who is going to talk with their mouth full. Then try it again with different parameters. (masked, unmasked, inside, outside.) Ideally, each kid marks how much time it takes before they can identify today’s lozenge flavor. Would give you a decent idea of the relative value of masks and outdoors.
For the cigarettes, we all had to run that experiment as kids. 18 yards outside was nothing. Entering a room where several people had been smoking 20 minutes before? That was awful. But it tells us a lot about inside/outside and nothing about masks.
Zooming In: Visualizing the Relative Size of Particles
From wildfire smoke molecules to the coronavirus, this graphic compares the relative size of particles that we, for the most part, can't see.
A valuable graphic, but it doesn't go down to the size of the molecules you can smell in tobacco smoke or cherry lozenges.
Don't know for sure about the throat lozenge for sure, but the smoke is not released in single molecules. Is the human nose even sensitive enough to smell a single molecule of tobacco smoke? The issue also isn't just the mask material and the holes in it, but the gaps along the side of the mask.
You’re still trying to assess cloth as though it was a filter.
For the most part, a cloth mask is not acting as a filter. It is acting as a baffle. It slows your breath so it doesn’t travel as far before convection carries it up.
As long as your breath can’t go very far, it is working. If you can blow out the candle, it isn’t working. Your breath is going too far.
Tobacco smoke is not a single chemical. Some of its components are simple (and therefore small) molecules that are readily detectable by smelling them, such as formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, benzene, and the like.
